I spent three days living at the gym. It was more about zen than sweat.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.It is 8 a.m. in the courtyard of the Life Time Living apartment complex in Henderson, Nev.

A handful of neighbors and I are resting on yoga mats, listening to a man clad in prayer beads strike six crystal bowls with a mallet.This wasn’t the scene I envisioned when I arrived for a three-day test-drive of living at a gym, especially not about 15 minutes from the neon chaos of the Las Vegas Strip. I expected the industrial clank of heavy iron, the relentless thump of electronic dance music and the primal roar of a HIIT instructor yelling, “Leave it all on the floor!” Instead, I found a sound bath.This is the counterintuitive nature of Life Time Living, a current portfolio of four luxury rental buildings from Life Time, the multibillion-dollar Minnesota-based fitness giant behind more than 190 athletic clubs across the U.S.

While the perception of living at the gym may suggest moving into a frenetic temple of sweat, my stay—for which The Wall Street Journal paid a standard rate of $225 per night—felt more like an immersion in a high-end health village engineered to make wellness the path of least resistance.“This is the best lifestyle I’ve ever had,” says Chris Heard, 42, a tech CEO I first encounter at the sound bath. At noon, I run into him again at a free luncheon, which, like the sound bath, is part of monthly programming.

Some 45 residents of all ages file through a buffet catered by the adjacent athletic club’s head chef.Heard and his wife, Tania Barresi, 42, recently moved from Canada to establish a U.S. foothold for their software business.

Renting an Airbnb to plot their transition, the couple kept noticing the campus in Henderson’s Green Valley neighborhood. They didn’t know the