Oprah Winfrey, Madonna, Kate Winslet, Jane Fonda and Bill Moyers have all stayed at the famous hotel. Rancho La Puerta Resort & Spa, a stunning collection of cottages, suites, pools and mountain-edged gardens on 4,000 acres in Baja California, Mexico.
But the property's biggest star is Deborah Szekely, who co-founded the farm with her husband in 1940, and now – at 102 years old – is the embodiment of everything the property aspires to offer: health, longevity and peace of mind.
“The morning I turned 100, I lay in bed and thought: ‘Huh, I’m 100. What's the difference?” “I couldn't think of anything,” Szekely says. luck, She recently sat down for an interview in her hotel suite in New York City, where she had traveled from her home in San Diego to speak at two different health conferences. “I've had a beautiful life and when it's over, it's over. But I enjoy it,” she says. “I really don't tolerate worries that I can't do anything about. Otherwise I'll be an old lady! But when I can do something, I do something.”
This Brooklyn native has accomplished an amazing amount in her life, including creating and operating Rancho La Puerta and also Golden door, a luxury Japanese spa and resort in San Diego (which it sold in 1998). At age 60, she ran for Congress and served as party chair Inter-American Foundation; At the age of 80, she fulfilled a long-cherished dream and founded a foundation Museum of New Americans and Immigration Learning Center In San Diego.
All are extensions of her formative years, rooted in values like healthy living, veganism, and sustainability as put forward by her mother, an Austrian-Jewish immigrant and “health freak” who was an RN and vice president of the Vegetarian Society of New York. Who put her family on a fruit-only diet. In 1934, she made a bold decision that changed their lives forever.
It was the Depression. “And my father was very depressed,” recalls Szekele, nee Scheinman, who was 12 when her mother caught him checking a life insurance policy and feared he would commit suicide.
“One day, my mother came to dinner and said, ‘We’re leaving in 16 days.’ My brother, my father, and I looked at her, and my father said, ‘Where?’ ‘Tahiti.’ And we said, ‘Where is that?’ And she said, ‘I don’t know.’ She chose the destination because Its fresh air and fresh fruit—both of which were in short supply in New York during the Depression—and soon they were all boarding a steamboat, spending several weeks traveling by sea to their new home, Pitt.
“Since then, we've had a different kind of life,” says the 10-year-old, adding that she remembers “a lot” of the few years she spent in Tahiti, where they lived a rural lifestyle in a grass hut, and that she still… “She thinks in French most of the time” because of her education since that time.
While there, the family met another health-minded person: Edmund Szekely, also known as “The Professor,” a prosperous Romanian immigrant and health guru known for his writings and lectures on philosophy, ancient religions, exercise, and the value of fresh, organic vegetables. They all eventually returned to the United States, and Deborah's family attended his summer “health camps.” That's when Deborah decided to work for him and when she and Edmund fell in love. They married when he was 34 and she was only 17.
“I did it as a way out,” she explains. “He was president of the British International Health and Education Association, and was heading to England. I thought: I'll go to England, and if it works out, that's fine. If not, I'm free. I can go to France. And it worked. So I stayed.”
Founding of Rancho La Puerta
The new couple, who had been looking for a place to set up a health camp together, found their way to Baja, partly as a way for Edmund to avoid the fact that he did not have immigration papers that would allow him to remain in the United States. There, they settled on a large plot of land at the foothills of Mount Kochuma, and he wrote to friends and invited them to come and stay on the land.
“For $17.50 a week, it was like bringing your own tent,” she says. It was a big success, she adds, because “my husband was well-known.”
They set up their own permanent tents, soon replacing them with cabins built from surplus army packing crates, and then added vegetable gardens, exercise classes, a dining hall containing mostly raw vegetarian food (today the menu is vegetarian), and a printing press for Edmund's books. . Advertising in Los Angeles attracted a Hollywood audience, as did the Golden Door, which Deborah created in 1958 after traveling to Japan dozens of times in a single year for inspiration.
The couple had two children, and today the resort is run by her daughter, Sarah Livia Brightwood, who has planted thousands of trees on the property.
“She's the boss,” says Deborah. “She makes the decisions… and I don't interfere.” (One of her grandchildren, A Professional server– is on the board; The other is a recent graduate with highest honors from the University of Southern California.)
Today, Rancho La Puerta, which she calls “the ranch,” is a “little town” with 400 employees. Guests charge $5,100 and up per person for week-long packages, and it's packed with 20 full-time fitness instructors, 11 gyms, a cooking school, an organic farm, three spa treatment centers, and programs including group hikes and workshops, and tranquil nature trails for kids . Walking – with not a single golf cart in sight. Of the 10,000 acres, only about 300 acres are actively used by guests, part of a conscious effort to keep the footprint as small as possible.
“We're not growing,” says Deborah. “We're smaller than we were, by design.”
Deborah is at the hotel three days a week and still holds weekly Q&A sessions with her guests in a always packed house, often asking questions about how she manages to live a long and healthy life. People want to know what kind of water she drinks — a question that makes her laugh — and what skincare routine she follows, to which she answers: “Soap and water.” as you say luck, “This is not my profession. The fact that I don't worry is more important than the water. I've really accepted what I can and can't do.
But in fact: what is its secret?
Her healthy lifestyle — including never eating red meat and continuing to walk a mile a day even after breaking her hip twice (she now uses a wheeled walker) — has certainly been a contributing factor to her longevity. But Deborah knows that's not all: her father lived to be 81, but her mother died of cancer in her 60s. Edmund died in his seventies (after their separation), albeit because he refused to have surgery for his umbilical hernia. “He died of a strangulated hernia as soon as he arrived at the hospital,” she says. She outlived her brother. Then there was the biggest loss of her life: the death of her son (which she refused to go into detail about).
But when it comes to holding out more than a lot of people, Deborah says, “I don't think about it. You just accept.”
She tends to have much younger friends, which helps. “I've always had younger friends — because of the conversation, the theatre, the plays we go to see, the activities we do, you know? They're in their 40s,” she says. “It's fun.”
Her advice to others seeking longevity is to keep the body and mind active, and to read often, as she does, with a preference for ninth-century Japanese mysteries. “I love Buddhism,” she says. “I call myself a Jewish Zen Buddhist.”
But an active mind, for Deborah, does not include rumination.
“The thing is, I don't allow negative thoughts. We're in control. We can say, 'I don't want to go there.' You just don't go. You say, 'I'm not doing that.'” “I mean the world is a terrible place and there are terrible things happening all the time.” Time…but I'm trying to help as many people as I can live healthier lives.”
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