Unforgettable Wellness Experiences, Intentionally Designed.
For luxury hotels, retreat properties, boutique hotels, wellness spaces, retreat spaces, and private clients seeking depth, beauty, and transformation.
Guests remember experiences, not amenities.
Most properties already have the pieces. A spa. A yoga deck. Treatment rooms, a meditation space, a roster of practitioners, architecture worth photographing.
What they often lack is the thread that connects them: a clear idea of what wellness means at this property, and a guest journey that carries someone from arrival to departure with intention.
Without that thread, wellness stays an amenity. A guest books a massage, takes a class, and leaves with a pleasant memory that could have happened anywhere. Astara's work is the thread.
Who we work with
- Boutique and luxury hotels
- Destination wellness properties
- Retreat centers
- Regenerative communities and properties
- Spas and wellness clubs
- Private membership communities
- Developers of wellness-led properties
- Founders launching hospitality and wellness concepts
Three ways to work with Astara
One understanding of how people change, applied at three scales: properties and organizations, individuals in transition, and the spaces and objects that carry the practice home.
Properties and organizations
Experience design and wellness consulting, concept development, guest journey programming, practitioner curation, ritual design, and team training — an ongoing wellness strategy for hospitality, retreat, residential, and healing spaces.
Individuals
Private work for people moving through meaningful thresholds: high-touch one-on-one mentorship, transition and integration work, ceremony, intuitive reading, and bespoke experiences built around where you are.
Spaces, objects, and ritual tools
A curated collection of sound, ritual, and wellness pieces designed to bring the experience into a home, treatment space, or property.
The way people choose places is changing
People are choosing places differently.
They are choosing based on how a place makes them feel, who they become there, and whether the experience supports the life they want to live.
$6.8T
global wellness economy
$584B
wellness real estate market
1/5
travelers seeking self-discovery or mental wellbeing
18.7%
of tourism spending driven by wellness travelers
Amenities can be copied. Meaning cannot.
A spa menu or a list of amenities can be duplicated in a season. How a place makes someone feel can't be. That's what people remember, and what brings them back.
Astara designs the experiences, rituals, programming, and emotional throughline that turn a property into something people remember, return to, and want to belong to.
Selected Experience
A decade across hospitality, wellness, retreat, and transformation.
Cristina's background spans luxury hospitality, international retreats, wellness clinics, private clients, and regenerative projects.
Her experience includes work connected to luxury hospitality environments such as Four Seasons and One&Only, alongside years of designing and facilitating transformational experiences across multiple settings.
Hospitality
Guest experience + wellness programming
Retreats
Immersive transformational experiences
Private Work
Integration + transition support
Wellness Spaces
Programming + practitioner curation
Founded by Cristina Joy
Meet the founder
Cristina Joy has spent nearly a decade studying how people move through change, healing, and transformation.
Her work bridges trauma-informed practice, nervous system awareness, ceremonial facilitation, and the wisdom of traditional healing cultures. She is trained in death doula care, yoga, breathwork, sound healing, Internal Family Systems-informed parts work, psychedelic integration, and rites of passage, with years spent living in Mexico and studying alongside the Wixárika people.
Cristina has also served as a Global Wellness Director for international wellness and transformational organizations, designing retreats, trainings, and immersive experiences around the world. Through Astara, she brings these worlds together, supporting individuals and organizations in creating experiences that feel deeply human, intentional, and transformative.
Training and experience
- Former Global Wellness Director at Nauka, associated with The Ritz-Carlton
- Luxury Hospitality & Wellness Experience Design
- Retreat Strategy, Programming & Facilitation
- Development of Luxury Hospitality & Retreat Concepts
- Regenerative Hospitality & Community Development
- Psychedelic Preparation & Integration
- Trauma-Informed Facilitation
- Internal Family Systems-Informed Parts Work
- Ceremony & Ritual Facilitation
- Rites of Passage & Transition Support
- 400+ Hours of Breathwork Training
- 400+ Hours of Yoga Teacher Training, including Kundalini Yoga
- 100+ Hours of Sound Healing Training
- Meditation Teaching & Facilitation
- Certified End-of-Life Doula
- Astrology & Intuitive Work
- Nearly a Decade Living and Studying in Mexico
- Study and Cultural Immersion Alongside Wixárika Communities
- Double Major, Magna Cum Laude
Tell us what you're creating.
A property, a retreat, a concept, or a threshold in your own life. Share a few lines about where things stand and Cristina will reply personally.