“Feel the bliss of the sea,” Cynthia Bristol intones while leading beachside yoga at St. Kitts Marriott Resort. As trade winds cool guests doing sun salutations, palm fronds rustle overhead and kite boarders sail the blue Atlantic rimming this side of the Caribbean isle.

The resort offers ample antidotes to Beltway hustle and bustle. “You won’t want to hurry, and because you’re on island time, you don’t have to,” says Kirstin Prell, visiting from Hampstead, Md. At the Emerald Mist Spa, she’s having the Kittitian, during which virtuoso therapist Ruthlyn Tyrell massages away desk jockey stiffness with rhythmic strokes in time with Caribbean melodies. Kittitian’s the moniker for St. Kitts local.