I sat on a low curved bench built into the undulating pink-sandstone walls of the faux cave sauna. As expected, sweat began to slide down my face in the 27-degree heat. But this was not a typical hot-box session.

This sauna had a high-definition video screen embedded in the cave wall. Drone footage of the Utah red desert played, creating thrilling sensations of swooping through striped slot canyons and barrelling upwards to towering rock formations. Haunting music played.

Next, I walked down the softly lit hallway and opened the glass door on the invigorating -10-degree world of the ice cave. It was like stepping into a scene from a David Attenborough film. Fans blew cold air onto my back as the video on the screen took me along a treed snow-capped ridge in British Columbia’s Coast Mountains on a sunny day. The camera swooped up, then down, and I felt like I was twisting my way through narrow, blue-ice tunnels.

Wellness meets augmented reality in the recently opened $3.5 million Healing Caves experience at the oceanfront Kingfisher Pacific Resort & Spa in the Comox Valley. The five-acre, 60-plus–room oceanfront property is on eastern Vancouver Island, about a three-hour drive north of Victoria. 

The only experience of its kind in North America, the six underground caves are unique enough to be trademarked. Music and sounds soothe or stimulate. It’s also fun. Videos in the steam sauna created sensations of shooting down a churning rainforest waterfall in El Salvador. The Storm Cave had me floating in the middle of a Pacific Ocean thunderstorm.

It took more than a decade for Kingfisher owner Bill Brandes to plan the Healing Caves. It’s his first wellness spa, resort marketing manager Inès le Ricque said. The first three caves – with dry and wet saunas and a cold room – are designed to calm your mind, boost circulation and ease stress. The next three –the red-light therapy room, a salt cave and the rousing Storm Cave finale – are intended to improve vigour and create a sense of wellbeing. Guests are guided through the 75-minute circuit in a predetermined sequence, spending about 10 minutes inside each 200-square-foot cave.

The initial steps of dry heat, steam and cold are familiar to any spa-goer. The next three environments include red-light therapy, said to improve skin health and ease signs of aging, and a salt cave session where le Ricque says the salt particles can nourish skin and lungs. An electrolyte bar midway provides a hit of hydration with minerals, vitamins and antioxidants.

The Astral Cave, which features red-light therapy, is meant to replicate a forest clearing. I stretched out on a comfy lounge chair, cocooned between two blankets studded inside with rows of shiny red lights. Above me, colourful planets and undulating multicoloured lights played like a trippy aurora along the ceiling. The light show was a bit weird, but also fun.

The circuit ended at the thrilling Storm Cave, the longest cave session by several minutes. The cave has its own weather system and it’s spectacular. I walked down a few stone steps into the chest-deep infinity pool. The warm water was an ideal temperature and enriched with 104 minerals, said to improve circulation, promote skin health, conjure relaxation and ease muscle pain. I felt buoyant as I started in a tranquil ocean, facing a glowing sunset on the screen. A rising, rumbling thunderstorm moved in. Rain fell from the ceiling onto my head, creating cascading sounds in the pool as fingers of lightning scratched the grey sky. The water swirled and bubbled with waves and splashes from diving dolphins. Sounds directed my attention to different areas of the pool. The churning water seemed to flow directly into the onscreen video.“It is not just a show,” said le Ricque. “It stimulates all your senses and it’s energizing.”

My skin felt softer after I emerged from the pool, but it was the Storm Cave show that stayed with me. Bobbing in warm water as weather swirled around me was a unique and stimulating experience, as promised. I dried off and went upstairs to the ocean-view lounge to stretch out beneath a puffy duvet.