It could be right out of "Fantasy Island." On a brilliant Sunday afternoon, two dozen strangers enter an exotic paradise. They're an intriguing lot: a purposeful Manhattan obstetrician, a Nashville millionaire, a jaded documentary-film maker, and a devout executive couple from Atlanta, among others. They've paid a small fortune to plumb their souls, to wrestle with their private pain, to rethink -- and perhaps to redesign -- their fast-lane, high-stress lives.

But our story has more to do with reality than with fantasy. These characters have arrived at an oasis known as Canyon Ranch Health Resort, located in the cactus-studded foothills outside of Tucson, Arizona. Here they will spend a week confronting difficult questions that they rarely ask -- let alone answer -- throughout the rest of the year: If I'm so wealthy, why don't I feel happier? If I'm so successful, why don't I feel more satisfied? If I'm so busy, why do I spend so much time on things that seem so unimportant? It's all too easy, amid the daily blitz of staff meetings, business trips, and Little League games, to brush off such vexing questions. The more these people achieve, though, the heavier those questions weigh on their minds. The tensions in their lives (the tensions between their ambitions at work, their financial goals, their family commitments, and their personal health) become even more urgent -- until they almost have no choice but to visit Canyon Ranch.

Make no mistake: For many guests, the ranch is just another high-priced fat farm. Its luxurious spa caters to jet-setters like Julia Roberts and Barbra Streisand, as well as to Wall Street titans and corporate kingpins. The business elite and the cultural elite meet here to shed pounds, to nosh on edamame soybeans, and to indulge in all the aerobics, yoga, and massage that their bodies can take. The price for single occupancy: $3,480 or more per week during peak season (October to mid-June), plus an 18% service charge.

But Canyon Ranch is more than just a pricey escape: There's meat tucked into all that tofu. Its Life Enhancement Center, a sort of spa within the spa, offers a weeklong program that's designed to help overachieving professionals search for answers to some of the defining personal questions of the new world of work: When so many life goals seem attainable, what kind of life is desirable? In an age of more, more, more -- more travel, more sales, more stock options, more challenges, more dreams -- when does the pursuit of less make sense? How much is enough? Guests at the ranch attend seminars, as well as one-on-one consultations with therapists, physicians, nutritionists, and physiologists. All of that professional attention won't reinvent anyone's life in just a week. But the ultimate goal is nothing less than helping guests to turn their lives around.

Dan Baker, the center's clinical director and spiritual helmsman, leads the search for "enoughness." A tall man with broad shoulders and wire-rimmed glasses, he exudes the intensity and enthusiasm of a professor eager to connect with his students. (In fact, for many years, he taught psychology at the University of Nebraska, and today he is an adjunct professor at the University of Arizona College of Medicine.) Baker, 52, is too grounded to call himself a guru. He credits others, including M. Scott Peck and Viktor Frankl, with coining many of the insights that he espouses. Yet, over the years, CEOs, celebrities, and entrepreneurs have sought Baker's ministrations. "We've tried to create a goal-oriented environment that has a transformational element," says Baker. "By the end of their week here, people often have a different perspective on life. They go home committed to taking the next step."