A Wellness Week in the Bull City

I am originally from New Jersey, and I did my therapy and life training in Philadelphia in my twenties. In both places, speed is a personality trait. You walk fast, you eat standing up and a packed calendar counts as evidence that you are running your life correctly.

Then I came South. I moved to Durham in 2017 to be with my partner, and I had no idea how much this city would come to play a role in my healing. Being a therapist, you need space to feel, to process, and to recover, over and over again. Durham gave me that space and after the most devastating loss of my life, I healed here. If you are looking for a wellness retreat in Durham, NC, you will not have to look past the city limits.

Coming South did not slow me down on its own. Nothing does that on its own. But Durham, I found, did not reward the hurry. I stood out like a sore thumb. This city has history, a thriving QTBIPOC community and a pace that lets a person come back to herself. 

Still, I turned 39 last year and realized I had never taken a vacation that felt like a vacation. 

Hear me out. I have been all over the world. I have gotten on planes, I have seen things worth seeing and I have come home with the photos. But I went with other people, and on every one of those trips I prioritized what they wanted to do and see. I came home with a full camera roll and an empty tank. I never once gifted myself a trip on my own terms, doing everything and only what I wanted. Not once until this year. 

I have spent thirteen years as a therapist asking people the same question in different ways: what does rest actually look like for you? I finally had the nerve to start asking myself. 

Traveling for myself has been the biggest eye-opener of this stretch of my healing. And the funny part is where it kept pointing me: right back home. The slow mornings, the room to wander, the permission to want what I want were all things Durham had been offering me for years. Durham has become my home and my healing playground, and it can be a place to come back to yourself, too, whether you are here for a weekend or a week. 

I moved my body, belongings, and practice to Durham almost ten years ago and started asking myself the same questions that help my clients heal. What I found is that this city is unusually good at letting a person slow down. You can eat well without a reservation made six weeks ago. You can be alone in a garden on a Wednesday and feel solitude rather than loneliness. 

I build retreats for a living, and when I get to design one, I am looking for five things: movement, stillness, water, art, and food;, well-paced so nobody is rushing between them. Durham has all five within a fifteen-minute drive. 

So here is the week I would build if you were coming to Durham to be well. A wellness retreat does not have to be a resort. It can be a week here. 

Sunday: Ground Yourself

Durham is a running town, which surprises people. Start your wellness week with a run to clear your head.

I joined a track team in middle school, and it became one of the most beautiful places for my growth. It was where I learned to connect with my peers, where we practiced handoffs for relays until they were second nature and where we spent hours sitting in the stands waiting for our heat, talking about everything and nothing. Running has felt like home to me ever since.

I love a runner's high as much as anyone. But what keeps me coming back is simpler. Running gives me a moment to think. It is something I do for my body and for myself, something to focus on and grow from. As a therapist, I can tell you that is not a small thing. Moving your body gives your mind somewhere to put what it is carrying. Stress has a physical outlet, your breathing finds a rhythm and the thoughts that spin when you are sitting still start to sort themselves out. You do not have to run to get there. A long walk does the same work at a gentler pace, and I recommend both. Here are some of my favorite places to run and run clubs in Durham, NC. 

Running and Walking in Durham

On Your Left Run Club

On Your Left Run Club is a run club for women, built for anyone who has ever been afraid of being last. They meet every other Sunday at 8 a.m., and the location moves, so check before you go. Routes run short or long, 2.5 miles or five, and you pick your own.

I love this one because it is really a hot girl walk and a run at the same time. You sit, you talk, you stretch and then you move with the community at whatever pace you brought with you. Bring your toddler if you are a mom like me, or come by yourself and be fully awake by 9 a.m.

Durham Queer Runners

A running and walking group for BIPOC and 2SLGBTQIA+ movers of all speeds, meeting the second and fourth Sundays at 9 a.m. No drop means nobody gets left behind, which for a lot of people is the difference between showing up and staying home. Recent meetups have started at the American Tobacco Trail trailhead on South Street and at Esmeralda's Cafe, with everyone landing somewhere afterward. I have run with them, and with On Your Left, and what stays with me is how it feels to be seen as part of a group. If you are visiting, that is the fastest way I know to stop feeling like a visitor.

Bull City Running Co. 

Bull City Running Co. is a locally owned, specialty running and walking shop with locations in South Durham and downtown. Their trail runs go out on Sundays, and their big, weekly Run Club meets Wednesdays at 6 p.m. at the downtown store, with routes from one mile to six and change. It's also the place to go if you flew in with the wrong shoes.

We Run Durham 

Not a Sunday group, but worth knowing about for the rest of your week. Elite runners train Mondays at 6:30 p.m. at the Duke University track. A more casual group meets Wednesdays at 6:30 p.m. at Durham Central Park and Saturdays at 9:30 a.m. at Nectar Cafe, and there is a real social calendar attached. 

The American Tobacco Trail

Run or walk the American Tobacco Trail on your own time Twenty-two miles of flat, shaded rail trail open to walkers, runners, cyclists, and strollers, 11 paved miles in Durham, and you can pick it up right downtown. 

Where to Eat at the End of the Trail

Lutra Cafe and Bakery

213 Blackwell St.

Lutra sits at the north end of American Tobacco Campus, open at 9 a.m. on weekends, serves breakfast and lunch seven days a week. You cannot go wrong with the biscuits and gravy or the French toast bread pudding. But to be fair, everything there is good. I have been eating these buns since Chris was selling them out of a window at Queeny's, long before there was a storefront, so consider the source. 

Monday: The Reset Day

I built this day around touch because Monday is when most people are already braced for the week before it starts. I have spent this year practicing slow Mondays instead. Therapy can often be about how you feel, and so focusing on touch and contrast therapy is a way that we bring grounding practices into the body. Here is what that can look like: 

Morning: Massage and Contrast Therapy

Lymphatic Massage at Auroraflow

607 William Vickers Ave.

I will be honest about how I found this one. I am a therapist, so people assume I come to every healing modality through research. Not this time. I found lymphatic massage on social media, watching the girlies I follow talk about what sounded to me like a fairly unconventional massage, and I tried it mostly out of curiosity. It ended up helping parts of my body I had quietly stopped expecting to feel different. A massage does not have to be a knee in your back.

Contrast Therapy at Sauna House

326 W Geer St.

Hot, cold, rest, repeat. Their standard thermal cycle runs two hours, drop-in starts around $40 for the communal bathhouse, and private rooms are available if you would rather not do this in front of strangers. The cold pools sit between 45 and 55 degrees, deep enough to stand in. Phones stay out of the public areas, which I consider a feature. It is a few blocks from Durham Central Park.

Here is what I tell clients who are scared of the plunge: you are not being asked to be tough. You are being asked to stay with a sensation that your body has already decided is an emergency, and to find out that you can. Ten seconds counts. Getting in up to your knees counts. The point is not the cold. The point is the moment after, when your system figures out it is safe.

You also do not have to plunge at all. I go here pretty often just for the sauna, to be honest.

Afternoon: A Latte and a Real Sit

Nectar

620 Foster St.

The biscuit, hands down. I went with a friend group one afternoon, tasted it, and the craving has not left since. This is the meal of the day as far as I am concerned, and I do not rush it. 

Then a walk through Durham Central Park, four blocks of open air in the middle of downtown and the easiest transition I know between a treatment and the rest of your day. 

Evening: Movement

NorthStar Church of the Arts

220 W. Geer St.

Mondays from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. NorthStar Church of the Arts sits in the former Ephphatha Church, built in 1930 for Durham's deaf community and now on the National Register of Historic Places, and it operates as a church of the arts centering Black, queer and working-class artists. The movement classes are free, run in seasonal sessions with rotating teachers and are built for all bodies rather than for people who already know the poses. Times shift a little from season to season, so check before you go. After a whole day of being worked on, this is the part where you are among people again, and that is its own half of a reset.

If bodywork is not your thing, check out community acupuncture with Austin Dixon at Practice Space. She offers private sessions and community sessions on a pay-what-you-can basis, which means cost is not the thing standing between you and a treatment. Or book a facial with Annette at Bold and Beauty Wax, another go-to of mine.

Tuesday: Movement and Massage

Full-Day Wellness Retreat

Aje Wellness

4316 Erwin Rd.

Did you know Durham has its own Black-owned, women-led wellness club and retreat center? Aje Wellness is runs as a membership club, but Tuesday is the drop-in day. No membership, no application, nothing to join. You walk in, and you rest. 

Aisha built Aje as a true third space, and the name is not decorative. In Yoruba cosmology, Aje is the mother force, the secret of life itself. The place runs on weekly rhythms and a set of amenities that, put together, let a person heal and feel honored and supported rather than processed. It lives in a midcentury home on land that belonged to the Tutelo and Saponi-speaking peoples, now known as Duke Forest. Here, Aisha is building isa grounded, holistic community, and you can feel that before anybody hands you a towel. 

Here is what a day there can look like: 

• 7:30 a.m., gentle yoga with Aisha.
• A twenty-minute sauna sweat. Cedar heat and eucalyptus steam, opening right into the forest. Shower when you are ready.
• Breakfast. An oatmeal bake made that morning, with infused water and tea on the counter. Eat inside or take it out to the patio.
• Co-working. Post up with your laptop or pick up where yesterday's puzzle left off. Wi-Fi, quiet, nowhere to be.
• Nap time. Think Korean spa: floor beds, soft blankets, or one of the hammocks. Bring your knitting if that is your thing.
• Afternoon flexibility. Escape to the basement office for a phone meeting, tackle the rest of your emails, or have lunch in the hammock.
• Afternoon sound bath. Their moldavite and quartz bowls sing differently. Roll out a mat, grab a bolster, get comfortable.
• Rest, and Girlfriends re-runs on the projector. 

Build Your Own Full-Day Wellness Retreat

Because Aje is a space for women, here is an alternate full day built the same way, open to everyone:

Morning: Radical Movement

621 William Vickers Ave.

Whit and Camelle, Durham’s favorite queer, twin trainers built this as an intersectional space for all bodies, focused on strength, mobility, and pain-free longevity rather than aesthetics, and it is one of the few gyms I can recommend to my clients without a caveat. I have trained here for over a year, and it is the most welcomed I have ever felt in a gym, full stop. Book ahead, because slots fill. An open gym pass also gets you their quiet basement, seven hundred square feet meant for stretching, foam rolling, or just lying down, which is the most honest amenity in Durham fitness. 

Lunch: The Can Opener

205 South Gregson St.

Named for Durham's infamous low bridge. It is a food truck park with an indoor coffee and beer bar and a covered patio, so a group of four can want four different lunches and nobody has to negotiate. Open from 7 a.m., and it is a short drive from Radical rather than a walk, so plan for that. I am a literal sucker for a Blue Moon and Chick-N-Que. 

Afternoon: Sacred Sea Acupuncture and Massage 

1904 Front St. 

Katie Depre is both a licensed acupuncturist and a licensed massage therapist, so you can book acupuncture, bodywork, or cupping in one place and let her decide which your body actually came in for. Closed Saturdays, so this is a weekday stop. 

More movement in other corners of the city:

Yoga Off East, The Movement Studio, Base Moves and The 360 Approach are all doing good work. 

The point of this day is not the destination. It is that you gave yourself a few things to do instead of six.

Wednesday: Reading and Heat

Books have always been my safe place. Whether I am lost in a Yaa Gyasi novel or deep in someone's memoir, I am home. As a therapist, I can't help it: I am moved by the way people tell their stories, and I learn something about healing every time someone is brave enough to put theirs on the page. There is nothing I love more than sitting in the shade with a good book and a snack. People always say they wish they could stop time. This is the healthiest way I know to do it. 

Morning: Find a Book

Durham is a reading city, and the rooms are as much of the point as the books. 

The Regulator Bookshop

720 Ninth St.

Durham has kept this one going since 1976. Different neighborhood, different mood, and an easy pairing with anything else on Ninth Street. 

Letters Community Bookshop

116 West Main St.

In 2024, Letters became a community-owned cooperative, with ownership shares priced at $116 as a nod to the address and the books priced to reflect a selection of new and used titles. Go upstairs. The second floor holds music and art books under a stained-glass ceiling, and it is one of the prettiest rooms downtown. They also run a Silent Book Club, which is the only book club I have ever wanted to join. 

Golden Fig Books

2706 Durham-Chapel Hill Blvd.

A thousand square feet of new and used titles in a room full of natural light, and they will buy your books back if you overpack on the way home. Closed Mondays. 

Afternoon: Read

Sarah P. Duke Gardens

420 Anderson St.

My secret weekday morning spot. Fifty-five acres, free to walk and a weekly favorite of mine. 

Grab a snack at the café or bring your own, find a big tree and sit. Look up. Eat your lunch. Read your book. Meditation does not have to look performed. Sitting in stillness can still mean you are taking in everything around you. This is my go-to spot for reading or the kind of meditation that is really just self-soothing. 

Aaktun

704 Ramseur St.

A coffee shop in the daytime that nobody hurries you out of, open from 7 a.m. on weekdays, and then at 5 p.m., the same room turns into the entrance to a buzzy, Tulum-inspired restaurant. Go in the afternoon with a book and stay long enough to watch the lights change. 

Evening: Hot Yoga in Durham, NC

Threehouse Studios

1505 Morehead Ave.

This is one of my favorite studios, and the best thing they offer is the private hour. I learned in my own healing that having a space to center myself mattered more than I expected, and private yoga was a big part of that. If you have never tried it, a private is not a splurge version of a class. It is a different thing entirely. 

Other ways to practice in other neighborhoods:

Virge Yoga in the Durham.ID building downtown. Heated vinyasa, sculpt and gentle vinyasa, with showers and validated parking behind the building. Try Yoga Off East and Boomerang Pilates if you want a different neighborhood or a different pace.

Thursday: Care That's Pleasure

I am a therapist, so people expect me to recommend the serious stuff. But maintenance is care, too, and a good nail appointment and facial have done more for some of my clients than a journaling prompt ever will.

Morning: Movement

Prevailing Pilates

2223 NC Hwy. 54 STE. J 

Sabrina teaches an incredible class, mat or reformer, and I never leave without feeling like I got something back. It is also a beautiful studio, and it is genuinely hard to walk out without snagging merch on the way. 

Afternoon: Nails and a Treat

Bliss Nail Bar

810 9th St. #127

If you have the time, the Hawaii pedicure is my order. Sixty minutes of a citrus scrub, a warm herbal neck wrap, a collagen mask, paraffin, and a warm stone massage to finish. Their own menu calls it a day at Waikiki without the airfare, which is exactly the level of seriousness I want from a pedicure. 

The Parlour Junior

1821 Green St.

There is always a fun flavor on the board, and I always consider it, but I am a classic vanilla or chocolate girl. Waffle cone, every time. 

Evening: Walk and Chill

Hayti Heritage Center

804 Old Fayetteville St.

The Hayti Heritage Center is housed in the former St. Joseph's AME Church in what was Durham's Black Wall Street district and Hayti neighborhood. Those steps become a dance floor, and if you catch them at the right moment, you will understand this city better than any plaque could explain it.

Redhead Hemp

413 E. Chapel Hill St.

Open until 9 p.m. most nights and until 8 p.m. on Sundays. Downtown's first canna cafe, and more shop and living room than dispensary, with hemp-infused drinks, house-made baked goods, and staff who will talk you through what you are actually buying. You can order everything un-infused if you want the room and not the effect. Twenty-one and up. 

Friday: Getting Closer to Nature in Durham, NC

Morning: Take a Walk

Before you eat, before you check anything, get outside and walk. I say this as a therapist, not a fitness person. Walking is one of the most underrated tools I know for processing. When your body is moving forward, your mind tends to follow, and things that feel stuck while you are sitting still start to loosen. Time among trees does something similar for the nervous system. The noise drops, your breathing slows without you asking it to and your attention gets to rest on something that is not asking anything of you. A lot of my clients have said the hard thing out loud for the first time on a walk, not on my couch. 

Durham makes this easy. The city is full of trails, from urban greenways to protected forest. Duke Forest is one of my favorite ways to start a day: quiet, shaded and close enough to town that you can be back for brunch. If you want a little adventure, take a morning drive to Hillsborough and walk the Riverwalk, a greenway along the Eno River with stretches of wooden boardwalk, bridges and plenty of benches for when you want to just sit and watch the water. It opens at 7 a.m., and the main entrance is by the Eno River Parking Deck at the end of Nash and Kollock Street, right off downtown. 

Afternoon: Lunch Outside

Jean's "By The Sea." 

617 Hicks St.

That is the restaurant's full name. A fish shack in the old Wimpy's Grill building in Old West Durham, with a patio and lawn out back that seats more people than the dining room does. Counter service, oysters, Calabash-style baskets and ceviche when it is warm. They open at 11 a.m. and are closed Sundays and Mondays. Go in the early afternoon, sit outside and take your time, because the rest of the day does not need you until the light changes. 

Evening: Golden Hour at the Eno River

Fews Ford Access at Eno River State Park, 6101 Cole Mill Rd., is about eleven miles northwest of downtown and still has plenty of open trail, plus a visitor center and the Cascades. No entrance fee. 

Saturday: Spend

Morning: Outdoor Shopping

Durham Farmers' Market

501 Foster St.

The Durham Farmers' Market is the place to be on Saturday mornings at Durham Central Park. The move here is always the same for me: fresh flowers and fresh bread. Almost everything else you buy at a market is a plan for later in the week. Flowers and bread are for today. Buying something for today is its own small practice, and most of us are out of the habit. 

For the bread, Loaf. They bake sourdough in a custom brick oven on Parrish Street and run a stand at the market on Wednesdays and Saturdays. If you miss them there, the shop at 111 West Parrish is open until 2 p.m. on Saturdays, a block off Main Street and easy to fold into your wander. Ninth Street Bakery has been at this since 1981 and will also do right by you. 

Afternoon: Lunch and Scent

Isaac's Bagels

1003 West Chapel Hill St.

Because I am a Jersey girl and I have standards about this. Isaac started selling at the farmers’ market before he had a storefront, which is the most Durham origin story there is. Takeout only with a few tables on the sidewalk, open until 2 p.m. on Saturdays, and you can order ahead online if the line is long. 

Bright Black

2020 Chapel Hill Rd. STE. 24

Tiffany and Dariel Griffin run a fragrance design studio that treats scent as storytelling rather than decoration, and their Durham scent is tobacco, cotton and whiskey, which tells you they were paying attention. The custom fragrance session runs $45 a person, Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. or Sundays from 2 to 4 p.m. Book ahead. This is the closest thing on the list to an art class, and you leave with something nobody else has.

Evening: Have a Fancy Dinner

I eat in the middle of the day, so this week puts the real meal at lunch. That does not mean I have nothing for you after dark. These are my go-to dinner spots, and you cannot go wrong at any of them. 

Pizzeria Toro

105 E. Chapel Hill St. 

The most amazing pizza in Durham, and that is coming from a Jersey girl, which is New York adjacent, so understand what I am putting on the line by saying it.

M Sushi

311 Holland St.

The best sushi in Durham. Not a close call. Make a reservation, or walk-in and sit at the bar.

Nanas

2514 University Dr. 

Nanas is my go-to for a luxury, fine-dining experience. 

JuJu

737 Ninth St. #210

The spicy tuna rice and the crab rice. On a fall day, sitting outside with the sangria, that is the whole plan.

Seraphine

324 Blackwell St. Ste. 4

Order the charbroiled oysters, and tell them to keep the bread coming. Dipping them in the butter is half the experience.

Nikos

905 W. Main St. Unit 21B

Order every appetizer. You cannot go wrong. 

Why a Week in Durham, NC 

I built this Durham to-do list the way I build my retreats, which means the order matters. Movement early, stillness in the middle, water when you are tired, art when you are ready to feel something, and the real meal in the middle of the day, where I think it has belonged all along. 

You do not need a trip around the world to come back to yourself. You need a few days somewhere that will let you.