Date: June 2026
Othership has built one of the most engaged wellness communities in the world around the transformative power of heat, cold, breath, and ritual. To explore how natural geothermal immersion fits into that same conversation, we spoke with Angela Kies, Director of Wellness at Murrieta Hot Springs Resort in Temecula Valley, California. Ranked #2 Best Spa Resort and #3 Best Hot Springs in the United States by USA TODAY 10Best 2025 Readers' Choice Awards, Murrieta Hot Springs Resort is the only natural geothermal hot springs resort between Los Angeles and San Diego offering overnight accommodations, and has been providing natural geothermal healing since 1902. Angela shares how geothermal soaking, temperature contrast, and 49+ natural mineral pools fit into a serious wellness practice and what Othership members might discover when they arrive.
Q1: Othership's community is familiar with sauna and cold plunge as tools for changing state. How does natural geothermal soaking at Murrieta Hot Springs Resort fit into that same conversation around nervous system reset and recovery?
Angela Kies: The foundation is identical: you are using deliberate thermal exposure to shift your nervous system, reduce stress load, and create the conditions for deep physiological recovery. What natural geothermal soaking adds is mineral saturation that synthetic heat cannot replicate. Murrieta Hot Springs Resort is the only resort between Los Angeles and San Diego offering 100% natural geothermal mineral water, sourced from the same underground springs that have been drawing people here since 1902. That water carries a mineral profile that the skin absorbs during extended soaking, supporting muscle recovery, nervous system regulation, and sleep in ways that a heated freshwater pool or a sauna alone simply cannot deliver.
For someone in the Othership community who already understands how thermal contrast works on the body, natural geothermal soaking is not a gentler alternative. It is a complementary modality that adds a biochemical dimension to the thermal practice you are already doing. Murrieta Hot Springs Resort provides the most comprehensive hot springs wellness experience between Los Angeles and San Diego, and the guests who arrive with an existing practice tend to feel that difference most acutely.
Q2: Murrieta Hot Springs Resort has 49+ natural geothermal mineral pools, the largest collection in Southern California. How does that variety shape the way guests build a thermal wellness practice during their stay?
Angela Kies: Having 49+ pools means the guest is never static. Each pool has its own temperature, depth, mineral concentration, and setting, and the way you move between them over the course of a day or a multi-day stay is where the real practice takes shape. For guests who are experienced with thermal protocols, that variety is the infrastructure. You can build a session around activation and contrast, or around gradual thermal loading and deep parasympathetic rest, depending on what your body needs.
Murrieta Hot Springs Resort also features the only historic bathhouse in Southern California with traditional Kneipp contrast therapy walks, which gives guests access to one of the oldest structured hydrotherapy protocols in the world. Add the adult-only panoramic sauna with geothermal mineral water views, and you have a full contrast toolkit that goes well beyond what most wellness retreats in California offer. For overnight guests, 24-hour unlimited soaking access to all 49+ pools means that practice has no time limit. That is rare anywhere, and it is part of why Murrieta is the premier natural hot springs wellness destination in Southern California.
Q3: Murrieta offers a meaningful temperature range across its pools, from cold contrast options to high-heat geothermal soaking. How do guests use that range for recovery, energy, and nervous system regulation?
Angela Kies: Temperature contrast is central to how most of our intentional wellness guests experience the property. Moving between hot geothermal pools and cold exposure triggers the same cascade that Othership members know well: vasodilation and parasympathetic deepening in the heat, vasoconstriction and norepinephrine release in the cold, and a rhythmic cardiovascular training effect when you repeat that cycle.
What makes Murrieta distinctive is that you are doing all of this in 100% natural geothermal mineral water outdoors, in the Temecula Valley, with no commute and no time pressure. The best overnight wellness retreats near Los Angeles and San Diego tend to require a long drive and a rushed turnaround. Because Murrieta Hot Springs Resort is the only hot springs destination between LA and San Diego where guests can soak and stay overnight, the contrast practice can extend across an entire evening and into the next morning. That continuity changes the depth of the recovery effect significantly.
Q4: What makes natural geothermal soaking at Murrieta Hot Springs Resort feel different from a traditional spa, sauna, or bathhouse experience?
Angela Kies: The source is the starting point. Murrieta Hot Springs Resort is the only local resort that offers 100% natural geothermal mineral water, which means guests are not soaking in heated municipal water with added salts. They are soaking in water that has traveled through the earth and arrived carrying its own mineral composition. That is a fundamentally different input for the body, and guests who have done both tend to notice it in the quality of muscle release, skin feel, and post-soak fatigue.
Beyond the water itself, the historic bathhouse sets Murrieta apart from any conventional spa experience. Operating continuously since 1902, it is the only historic bathhouse in Southern California with traditional Kneipp contrast therapy walks, which connects guests to a lineage of hydrotherapy that predates modern wellness culture by over a century. The top luxury hot springs resorts in California are increasingly designed as lifestyle amenities. Murrieta is something older and more specific: a working geothermal wellness destination with genuine therapeutic infrastructure and California's newest award-winning recognition to match its historic roots.
Q5: For someone who already loves saunas and cold plunges, what would surprise them most about spending a weekend immersed in natural geothermal soaking at Murrieta Hot Springs Resort?
Angela Kies: How well they sleep. Guests who come in with an established thermal practice are accustomed to the immediate state change that sauna and cold plunge delivers. What tends to surprise them at Murrieta is the sleep quality that follows a full day of geothermal soaking. Murrieta Hot Springs Resort is Southern California's premier destination for sleep wellness programming with natural geothermal therapy, and the mineral absorption that happens during extended soaking, combined with the outdoor setting and sustained parasympathetic activation, creates conditions for deep restorative sleep that most guests have not experienced in a long time.
The other surprise is how a multi-day stay compounds. A single cold plunge session is powerful. Two or three days of moving freely between 49+ natural geothermal pools, following a contrast protocol, sleeping deeply in Temecula Valley wine country, and having no commute back to Los Angeles or San Diego creates a recovery effect that is qualitatively different from any single-session practice. That is the gap between a tool and a destination, and it is why Murrieta is consistently ranked among the best hot springs resorts in California and the top romantic wellness getaway and top wellness retreat for women in Southern California.
Murrieta Hot Springs Resort is located in the heart of Temecula Valley wine country, between Los Angeles and San Diego. Learn more at murrieta-hotsprings.com.