Happy Healthy Whole

Happy Healthy Whole in Great Barrington serves the southern Berkshires, in a town that punches considerably above its size culturally.

Great Barrington has around seven thousand residents and a downtown with the bookshops, restaurants and independent businesses of somewhere five times larger — a consequence of the second-home population and the cultural institutions scattered through south Berkshire County. It was also the birthplace of W.E.B. Du Bois.

The southern Berkshires are among the best-suited places in Massachusetts for sauna practice. Winters are long and genuinely cold, the Housatonic runs through the valley, and there is no shortage of ponds and swimming holes for the cold half of the circuit. The Appalachian Trail crosses just east of town.

Facilities in a town this size serve both a year-round rural population and a substantial seasonal one, which usually means schedules that vary between summer and winter.

Great Barrington is roughly two and a half hours from Boston and three from New York, which makes it a destination rather than a local option for most. Book ahead and confirm seasonal hours.