“We Have Turned Looking After Yourself Into a Hobby That Needs a Shop”: Inside the Thinking Behind Hotel Komune

We are apparently living through the golden age of wellness. My watch can tell me how badly I slept, my phone can remind me to breathe, and somewhere on Instagram, there is almost certainly a woman with excellent skin telling me to plunge into freezing water before my children wake up.

We know more about health than any generation before us, yet somehow looking after ourselves has started to feel like another full-time job. Track your sleep. Count your steps. Hit your protein. Lift weights. Meditate. Cold plunge. Get sunlight. Don’t look at your phone, while simultaneously checking your phone to see whether you’ve successfully avoided looking at it.

Then Hotel Komune co-founder Tony Cannon said something during our interview that stopped me. “We have turned looking after yourself into a hobby that needs a shop.”

Well, yes. Suddenly, I wanted to know more about the thinking behind this beachfront resort in Keramas, because Hotel Komune’s approach to wellness isn’t really about adding more to your life. In many ways, it’s about stripping them away.

Tony Cannon, co-founder of Hotel Komune, talks about finding “a slower clock”. Alongside him, movement and performance specialist Rodrigo Perez, who brings more than two decades of experience working with elite athletes, offers another perspective: recovery shouldn’t be something we get around to after we’ve exhausted ourselves doing everything else. It needs to be considered part of the plan. What started with a world-class surf break has gradually become an exploration of something much bigger: how do we keep doing the things we love for as long as possible, without turning living well into yet another thing we’re failing at?

Because that, ultimately, is why this conversation matters beyond Hotel Komune. Most of us aren’t professional athletes or surfers. Some mornings I’m calling it a win if I’ve found both children’s shoes and remembered where I put my coffee. But we do want bodies that let us travel, play with our children, get down on the floor and back up again, carry our own bags, walk up a hill and keep saying yes to the things we love. Perhaps wellness has become so focused on what we should be doing that we’ve lost sight of what we’re actually trying to protect.

It Started With a Wave, But the Idea Was Bigger Than Surfing

Hotel Komune’s story begins at Keramas, on Bali’s east coast, and for Tony it began with the wave. He first surfed there in 2008, when the coastline looked very different and development was clearly on the way.

“The wave got me to Keramas. The idea was to make sure the place survived us. When I first surfed it in 2008, the coast was wide open, and you could see exactly what was coming: someone was going to concrete it. We wanted to prove you could build on a wave like that without wrecking it.”

That philosophy influenced how Hotel Komune was designed from the beginning. Rather than building something intended to dominate the beachfront, Tony wanted the resort to almost disappear into its surroundings.

“So the resort was designed to disappear. From the water, you can barely see it. More than 80% of our team come from the village, we put a significant % of profit back into Keramas every year, and we planted 13,000 plants so the place reads as jungle from the lineup.”

That last part matters because Tony’s description of Hotel Komune isn’t simply about preserving a nice view for surfers. He talks about the resort, the environment and the community around it as things that should coexist. The resort didn’t push the jungle aside to make way for itself. It became part of it. And the village wasn’t something happening somewhere beyond the resort gates.

According to Tony, the part guests least expect often stays with them. “What people come to find is a slower clock. They book a wave and a pool. What they get is waking up looking at the ocean, being in it before breakfast, and a village living its life around them. People arrive expecting a resort and go home feeling they were let into a community. That is the bit they did not book, and it is the bit that brings them back.”

And maybe that’s the first clue to the bigger idea here. Slowing down isn’t necessarily something we need to become better at. Sometimes we just need to create the conditions for it to happen.

Maybe We Haven’t Forgotten How to Slow Down

I asked Tony and Rodrigo whether, in a world that constantly tells us to achieve more and squeeze more into our days, we’d forgotten how to slow down. Tony’s answer was better than my question.

“I do not think we have forgotten how. I think we have stopped believing we are allowed to.”

As a parent, that landed. Even when we’re technically resting, how often are we mentally running through everything we should be doing instead? There is washing somewhere. An email unanswered. A lunchbox that needs packing. Something for school that one of the children definitely told us about, probably while we were doing three other things.

Tony is quick to point out that he’s hardly floating through life in a permanent state of zen himself. “I am no saint on this. I am up at 4:30 most mornings, and I run businesses in two countries, so I know the dilemma. Surfing taught me you cannot hurry the ocean. You sit in the lineup and wait, a set arrives when it arrives, and an hour goes past without you touching your phone.”

There is something beautifully inconvenient about the idea that you cannot hurry the ocean in a world where we’ve become accustomed to almost everything responding immediately when we want it. For Tony, that became part of Hotel Komune’s design brief.

“We did not want a place that tells you to relax. We wanted one where the slowing down happens to you, because the ocean sets the clock instead of the itinerary. The buildings are hidden in the trees and the first thing you see in the morning is water. Do that for a few days, and the body works it out without a lecture.”

There is a lesson in that even if the closest most of us get to a surf break on Tuesday morning is driving past the beach on the school run. Perhaps slowing down isn’t another task to master. Perhaps we need to stop filling every available gap and then wondering why rest feels impossible.

Professional Athletes Might Be Better at Resting Than the Rest of Us

Rodrigo’s perspective on slowing down surprised me for a different reason. When we think about professional athletes, most of us probably imagine people who are exceptionally good at pushing themselves. Train harder, go faster, do more, repeat. But according to Rodrigo, we’re only seeing half the picture.

“The people who are best in the world at slowing down are professional athletes. That surprises people. They assume the pros are the ones going hardest, and in the water they are, but off it they are ruthless about doing nothing on purpose. They sleep, they eat, they get their hands on treatment, they sit still. Recovery is in the diary, not left to whatever is left over at the end of the day.”

Imagine that. Recovery actually making it into the diary. Mine is currently competing with school sport, work deadlines, birthday parties and a reminder to buy something beginning with the letter “S” for a classroom activity I will almost certainly remember at 8.17am.

Compare that with how many of us approach rest. We get through work, children, school runs, exercise, emails, washing and whatever else the day throws at us, then perhaps collapse on the couch at 9.30pm and decide that counts as recovery.

“Everybody else has it the other way around. We treat rest as what happens once we run out of energy.”

That one hurts a little, because it is probably exactly how many parents operate. We don’t schedule recovery. We collapse into it when there’s nothing left in the tank, usually on the couch, possibly while pretending we’re still watching the television when we’ve actually been asleep for 20 minutes.

At Hotel Komune, Rodrigo wants recovery to have the same legitimacy as movement and training. “So at Komune the recovery is scheduled the same way the training is. It is not an optional add-on at the end of a hard week. It is half the week.”

For parents, that idea might be more radical than any ice bath. Most of us aren’t failing at rest because we don’t know it’s important. We’re failing because we’ve put it at the bottom of the list, somewhere after work, children, dinner, washing, exercise, and everyone else’s needs.

Rodrigo’s point isn’t that we need to recover like professional athletes. It’s that perhaps we could borrow one thing from them: stop treating recovery as something we have to earn.

No, You Don’t Need to Start Training Like a Professional Athlete

Most of us aren’t elite athletes. Some mornings I’m calling it a win if I’ve found both children’s shoes and remembered where I put my coffee, so nobody is mistaking me for one before breakfast. But I wanted to understand what Rodrigo learned from more than 20 years in performance that could translate into everyday life, especially for parents who can’t reorganise their entire existence around a wellness routine.

His answer challenges the assumption that elite athletes simply possess some superhuman level of discipline. “The main thing I have learned in over twenty years of this is that elite athletes are not more disciplined than you. They are better assessed. They start from an honest picture of what their body can actually do today, and then they work on the two or three things holding them back. Everyone else starts from a program they found somewhere and hopes their body agrees with it.”

According to Rodrigo, the actual work is considerably less glamorous than the highlight reel. “The second thing is that the work itself is boring. What I do with a Joel Parkinson or a Jack Robinson is not the highlight reel. It is breathing, hips, ankles, tissue work and sleep, done over and over. I am a jiu-jitsu black belt, and a black belt is not a talent; it is ten years of turning up. Longevity is the same. Consistency beats intensity every single time.” Which is reassuring for those of us whose current fitness philosophy occasionally consists of doing one extremely enthusiastic workout, being unable to walk properly for two days and then congratulating ourselves for “listening to our body”.

That thinking feeds directly into The Art of Longevity at Hotel Komune. Rather than handing everybody the same wellness template, Rodrigo says the program starts with the person before they even arrive.

“The week starts with two private sessions before you even fly, so we begin with your body rather than a template. Then movement, nutrition, breath work and recovery, in a place where doing all four is the easy option. You leave with a handful of things that fit your actual life, not a program that needs a life you do not have.”

That last sentence might be one of my favourite lines from the entire interview. There’s little point in returning home with the world’s greatest wellness routine if maintaining it requires three free hours every morning, a private chef, and nobody yelling, “Muuuum!” before you’ve finished your first coffee.

And perhaps that’s where the wellness conversation has gone slightly wrong. We’ve become so focused on finding the perfect routine that we’ve forgotten why we have one. The goal isn’t to become brilliant at wellness. The goal is to feel well enough, strong enough and capable enough to keep living the life you actually want.

What If Fitness Isn’t About What You Look Like?

Somewhere along the way, many of us learnt to measure fitness through numbers and appearance. How much can you lift? How fast can you run? What do you weigh? What’s your body fat percentage? What does your body look like?

Rodrigo’s approach shifts the focus to what your body lets you do, and the tests he cares about are surprisingly simple. “Yes, and the tests I care about are ones anybody can do on their living room floor. Can you get down to the ground and back up without using your hands? Can you squat and sit there comfortably? Can you hang from a bar? Can you carry something heavy for a hundred metres? Can you walk up a hill breathing through your nose? Those tell me far more about the next thirty years than a bench press number or a body fat reading.”

As a parent, “Can you get off the floor without using your hands?” feels particularly relevant. I have spent a considerable portion of motherhood sitting cross-legged on floors surrounded by toys, LEGO, and snacks, though until I spoke with Rodrigo I hadn’t realised this could technically be considered longevity training.

Suddenly longevity stops sounding like an abstract ambition to live to 110 and starts looking much more relevant. Can I still get down on the floor with my children? Can I travel? Carry my own bags? Walk up a hill? Keep doing the activities I love?

That’s when longevity starts to matter to the rest of us. Not as a quest to live forever, but as a way to protect our independence, our experiences, and the parts of ourselves we don’t want ageing to quietly take away.

For Rodrigo, that’s why movement needs a purpose beyond training for training’s sake. “That is why the movement at Komune has a purpose attached. You surf, you swim, you skate the bowl, you walk, you do Pilates so the surfing stops hurting. The pros I work with are not training for a mirror, they are training to keep doing the thing they love for as long as possible. That is exactly the same goal as a fifty year old with a desk job. Recovery is simply what lets you do it again tomorrow.”

Tony has an even more personal measure of success. “I have never cared how much I can lift. I care whether I can paddle out at Keramas at 75 and still get to my feet. That is the only test that matters to me.”

And perhaps that’s a better question for the rest of us too. Not simply, “How long do I want to live?” but, “What do I still want to be able to do when I get there?”

Hotel Komune Didn’t Suddenly Discover Wellness

It’s easy to assume Hotel Komune began as a surf resort and later added wellness because wellness tourism became fashionable. According to Tony, the two ideas were sitting at the table before the first brick was laid.

“Both, but the lifestyle came first. Tony de Leede came in as my partner in 2009, before we had laid a brick, and he did not surf. He had come out from the States to open Fitness First gyms here, and he had bought Gwinganna at a time when nobody in this country was talking about wellness tourism. He had to give up weddings and day visitors to do it, which were the most lucrative parts of that business. I would argue that was the genesis of wellness tourism in Australia. So from day one Komune had a surfer and a wellness operator at the table.”

Tony also points out that long before we tracked recovery scores on our wrists, surfing itself included many of the behaviours the wellness world now encourages. “Surfers were the original wellness crowd anyway. Up at dawn, in the ocean, eating well, in bed early, because the wave demands it. The Health Hub, the Pilates studio, the Recovery Centre and the farm all grew out of things we wanted for ourselves or that guests kept asking for. The deliberate part came later, which was the decision to do longevity properly with someone like Rod leading it rather than bolting a spa onto a surf resort and calling it wellness.”

That’s probably why the philosophy behind Hotel Komune feels less like prescribing a perfect routine and more like creating an environment where some fundamentals happen naturally. And that’s important because wellness that only works while you’re inside a wellness resort isn’t particularly useful once you’re home. The interesting part of Hotel Komune’s approach isn’t simply what guests can do while they’re there. It’s what is simple enough to survive the flight home, the school run, and the moment someone announces at 7.45am that today is, in fact, Book Week.

Have We Made Wellness Far Too Complicated?

This brings us back to the quote that started this whole conversation. With more health information available than ever, why are so many people still confused, overwhelmed, and stressed about how to be healthy?

Tony doesn’t hesitate. “Yes, we have overcomplicated it. We have turned looking after yourself into a hobby that needs a shop. If someone arrived here overwhelmed, I would want them to leave with five things. Move every day, preferably outside. Sleep like it is the most important appointment you have. Eat food that looks like food. Get in the ocean, or at least into the light and the fresh air. Be around people.”

No revolutionary gadget. No 27-step morning routine. No requirement to become the sort of person who happily drinks something green that tastes suspiciously like lawn clippings.

Tony points to the village beside Hotel Komune, where many of those fundamentals are simply woven into daily life. “The village next door does most of that by default. People walk, they work the fields, they are at ceremony, they eat together, and nobody is tracking any of it. We built our farm, the Recovery Centre and the program around those basics because the basics are the part that still works once you get home.”

Rodrigo comes at the same issue from his performance background. For him, the problem isn’t necessarily a shortage of information. It’s what we try to do with all of it.

“I would add one thing. The confusion is not really about information, it is about sequence. People are not short of good advice, they are trying to do all of it at once, in the wrong order, and then concluding they have no willpower. Pick the thing that is furthest behind, usually sleep, and fix that before you touch anything else.”

There is something enormously reassuring about that. You don’t need to fix your sleep, overhaul your diet, start strength training, meditate, take up Pilates and become a cold-plunge person by Monday. Perhaps you just need to work out what needs you most.

That’s also what makes this conversation relevant beyond a resort in Bali. We may not have a Recovery Centre waiting for us at home, but we can stop thinking that looking after ourselves only counts if we’re doing everything. If the basics are what survive real life, perhaps they deserve far more of our attention.

Maybe Longevity Isn’t About Adding Years. It’s About What You Refuse to Give Up

This is where the conversation stopped feeling like one about wellness tourism and started feeling much more personal. I asked what “living well for longer” actually means if the real goal isn’t simply adding years to our lives, but keeping up the things that make those years worth having.

For Tony, the answer isn’t theoretical. His partner and children spend months each year at Hotel Komune, and his children grew up around the village. When he imagines ageing well, he isn’t imagining a number on a health report.

“For me it is not abstract. My partner and kids spend months every year at Komune and the kids have grown up in that village. Living well for longer means being the bloke who can still paddle out with them when they are my age, still walk the site with the team at six in the morning, still sit on a concrete floor drinking Bali coffee with the Gusti brothers the way we did the afternoon the deal was done. It is not a number. It is a list of things I am not prepared to give up.”

That might be my favourite definition of longevity yet: a list of things you’re not prepared to give up. For one person it might be surfing. For somebody else it might be travelling, gardening, hiking, playing with grandchildren or getting onto the floor with the kids and, importantly, being able to get back up again without making that involuntary noise adults apparently start making somewhere after 35.

Maybe the useful question isn’t, “How long do I want to live?” Maybe it’s, “What do I want to still be doing while I’m here?”

Tony sees a connection between that idea and the property he helped create. “And that is what Komune is. We built a place designed to outlast us. We planted a forest in and around it, we staffed it from the village, and it is still there and better than the day it opened. If a resort can be built to last, so can a person. What Rod and the team do is the same idea applied to a body instead of a building.”

Perhaps that’s the simplest way to understand longevity. It’s not really about becoming obsessed with living longer. It’s about protecting what makes you feel like you for as long as possible.

Perhaps the Real Luxury Is a Slower Clock

There is a nice circularity to the Hotel Komune story. It started because Tony wanted to protect a wave and prove that development didn’t have to destroy what drew people there in the first place. Along the way, the jungle came in, the village stayed part of the story, wellness grew out of the lifestyle, and longevity became less about chasing a number and more about preserving what people love doing.

But I keep coming back to that slower clock. Most parents don’t need another person telling us to optimise our lives. We’re already quite spectacularly good at squeezing things in. What many of us aren’t particularly good at is believing we’re allowed to stop squeezing for a while.

Perhaps that’s why Tony’s surfing analogy works so well: “What surfing taught me is that you cannot hurry the ocean.” You can be organised, productive, highly caffeinated and extremely committed to maximising every minute of your day, but the next set is going to arrive when it arrives.

Hotel Komune’s philosophy isn’t that we should all abandon our lives and become surfers. Nor is the takeaway that we need to fly to Bali every time we’re tired, although after travelling with children I am personally willing to hear arguments in favour of that.

What Tony and Rodrigo are really talking about is surprisingly transferable. Move. Sleep. Eat real food. Go outside. Be around people. Work out what your body actually needs. Make recovery a part of your life before your body demands it. And stop measuring wellness by how many healthy things you can cram into a day.

Because perhaps the question isn’t really how we live longer. It’s what we want to still be able to do with those extra years.

Tony wants to paddle out at Keramas at 75. For somebody else, it might be travelling, running around with grandchildren, getting down onto the floor with their children, carrying their own suitcase or simply waking up with a body that still lets them say yes to things.

That’s the part of this conversation worth taking home from Hotel Komune. Longevity isn’t about becoming better at wellness. It’s about staying capable of the life you don’t want to give up.

And maybe, every now and then, remembering that you cannot hurry the ocean.

Discover Hotel Komune

Hotel Komune Resort & Beach Club sits on Keramas Beach on Bali’s east coast, bringing together surfing, accommodation, dining, movement, recovery, and wellness, while staying connected to the surrounding Keramas community. Explore Hotel Komune, its accommodation and wellness experiences via Hotel Komune Resort & Beach Club.

Disclaimer: This Behind the Brand editorial was developed from interviews and information provided to Parenthood360 by Hotel Komune and its representatives. Direct comments from Hotel Komune co-founder Tony Cannon and movement and performance specialist Rodrigo Perez are quoted throughout and reflect their own views and experiences. Information regarding Hotel Komune, its programs, facilities and experiences was correct at the time of publication but may change. Readers should confirm current details directly with Hotel Komune.