Mobility

Joints that haven't moved through their full range in years usually complain about it first. This session is where that gets addressed.

Slow work controlled movement through the hips, shoulders, spine, and ankles. Not stretching, and not a workout. The goal is to get range back where you've lost it, and to teach your body to hold positions it stopped being able to hold.

Useful on its own, and particularly useful if you've been sitting on buses and planes for weeks, or if you're training the rest of the week and want the second half to feel better than the first.

No experience needed. If you can't reach your toes, that's information for me, not a problem.

Schedule: Mornings, by reservation, based on availability.

Kundalini & Yoga

On the terrace, either at sunrise

Morning: the jungle is at its loudest right before dawn howler monkeys, birds, everything waking up at once. You practice while that happens around you, before the heat arrives.

Beginners level. If you've never done yoga, this is a good place to start the groups are small enough that nobody is watching you.

Kundalini is different from the yoga most people have tried: more breath, more repetition, more emphasis on what happens internally than on how the shape looks. It sits closer to the breathwork we do here than to a studio class.

Schedule: Morning by reservation, based on availability.

Jiu-Jitsu

Most people who try this here have never done a martial art in their life. That's who the session is built for.

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu isn't about strength or speed; it's about leverage and understanding how bodies move against each other. A smaller person can control a larger one, and a calm person almost always beats a panicked one. That's the whole art, and it's why beginners can start at any age or fitness level.

What a first session looks like: how to fall safely, basic positions, how to move on the ground. Everything explained before it happens. No sparring, no pressure, no getting thrown into something you don't understand.

I'm a purple belt under Professor Mark Stables, Carlson Gracie México. I'm on the mat with you the whole time.

Wear whatever you can move in. We provide the mats and everything else.

Schedule: By reservation, based on availability. Beginners welcome; they're the majority.

Ice Bath

We don't walk up to cold water and get in. We prepare first.

Ten to fifteen minutes of breathwork before you enter a deliberate practice that changes your physiological state so the cold becomes something you can work with instead of something that shocks you.

What actually happens in there isn't about the temperature. It's about staying present while your body sends every signal it has telling you to get out. That's the practice. I spent twenty years teaching divers the same skill underwater, where panic is the thing that kills you. Same physiology, different water.

The recovery benefits are real: inflammation, circulation, sleep quality. But the reason most guests remember it is what happens in their head during the first ninety seconds.

Most people arrive certain they can't do it. Most people do it.

I'm in the water with you.

Schedule: By reservation, based on availability. Guided every session we don't leave anyone alone with cold water.

Temazcal

A traditional Mayan sweat lodge. Not a sauna, and not a spa treatment.

You enter a low dome, the door closes, and it goes completely dark. Volcanic stones are brought in hot, water and herbs are poured over them, and the steam takes the temperature up in waves. It runs in rounds, and between each one the door opens for air and light.

We prepare with breathwork before entering. Same principle as the ice bath your nervous system doesn't distinguish between cold panic and heat panic, and the breath works in both directions. Going in prepared changes the entire experience.

This is the session guests remember longest. Not the most comfortable one, the most complete one. Something about total darkness, heat, and no way to distract yourself tends to bring things up.

You can leave at any point between rounds. Nobody will stop you or make it a thing.

If you have a cardiovascular condition, are pregnant, or have any concern about heat exposure, talk to me before booking. There's plenty here for you to do without this one.

Schedule: By reservation, based on availability. Group experience: We run it a few times a week, depending on who's here.

Cooking in Our Kitchen

You come into Selva Café and cook with us.

Not a demonstration where you watch someone chop things; you're at the counter, doing it. What we make depends on what came back from the Palenque market that morning, which is also how we decide the menu every day.

What you actually learn: how to work with ingredients you probably can't get at home Chiapas herbs, local fruit, the chiles that grow here. And the practical version: how to build a meal around what's actually available instead of shopping for a recipe.

We eat what we made, at the table, together.

Good for couples who cook at home, for anyone curious about Chiapas food beyond the tourist version, and for people who came to the jungle and want to do something with their hands.

Schedule: By reservation, based on availability. Group activity.

Stained Glass Workshop

The stained glass in your window was made here, in this workshop, before there was a hotel.

Adriana built the property, designed every room, and made the glass pieces that throw color across your bed at six in the morning. The workshop is still standing and still working.

In the session, you make something and take it home. Cutting and shaping is the actual processYou'll understand why the pieces in your room look the way they do once you've tried to make one.

No experience required. Most people who do this have never touched glass before.

It's slow, quiet work that requires your full attention, which is why guests who came here to stop thinking about work end up finding this more useful than they expected.

Schedule: By reservation, based on availability.