A wellness retreat can offer a vast variety of benefits for your mind, body and soul, and also have a long-term positive impact on your wellbeing. When a straightforward yoga retreat is not enough and you are looking for something much less ordinary, try one of these unique wellbeing experiences picked by Healing Holidays.
Five Senses at The Retreat, Costa Rica
Explore taste, touch, sight, sound and smell with The Retreat‘s Five Senses programme. Reconnecting with nature and stimulating all its sensual glories, this package is filled with experiences designed to awake and satisfy the five senses.
Taste: Taste delicious and healthy cuisine while learning to prepare it.
Touch: Experience the magnificence of The Retreat Costa Rica’s healing crystal scrub spa treatments.
Sight: Seeing beyond the colourful natural surroundings and wildlife and immersing in a chromotherapy mineral bath encourage guests to absorb the healing properties of colour.
Sound: Bath treatments that ignite the cells to dance and reorganise parasympathetic nerves will promote calm and peace.
Smell: Organic teas can be sampled at a unique rare tea tasting event with the resort’s executive chef.
Glowing flow session at Preidlhof, Italy
During this award-winning healing session with the in-house master therapist, highly regarded Shaman, Stefano Battaglia, techniques, conversation and bodywork attend to the needs of the body, which releases emotional blocks, anxiety and imbalance. An original researcher with a unique touch, Stefano uses several refined bodywork techniques which connect and harmonise body and mind. Specialising in Trauma Touch Skills, he helps the body to release blocked emotions caused by various forms of trauma, and he also teaches and practices meditation.
A personalised tree circle ceremony at Forestis, Italy
The tree circle ceremony at Forestis is based upon a concept of touch integrated into a unique ritual. Four tree species – spruce, larch, stone pine and mountain pine – can be chosen from within the circle. Each tree has different vibrations that are triggered by sound frequencies. The ceremony begins with the selection of a suitable healing wood, which is selected from the touch, appearance and above all, scent.
The decision is made intuitively, trusting that each person will choose the most appropriate wood according to their current needs. The scent of the chosen tree is then circulated throughout the room and the entire body is cleansed during a wrapping technique that prepares the face and body for absorbing the beneficial properties of the application. During the ritual, the wooden stick is first used for tension relief, followed by the corresponding healing stone which vibrates at the same sound frequency and activates the body’s own energies to bring the conscious back into harmony with the unconscious.
The Tarant healing at Borgo Egnazia, Italy
Inspired by Tarantism, a centuries-old Apulian purifying ritual, this stress management programme from Borgo Eqnazia has been designed especially for women who are looking for emotional support. Tarant is a traditional rhythmic dance to the beat of the tambourine, practised for hundreds of years by Apulian women.
According to the legend, a bite from a tarantula spider sent a local woman mad and in the absence of any other cure she would dance and sing freely, along with her fellow villagers, and this liberation would cure her. Since then, it has been believed that dancing like no one is watching can be a cure for many kinds of conditions, particularly anxiety and depression.
Five Elements balancing massage at Euphoria, Greece
The ancient Five Elements theory is at the heart of every guest experience at Euphoria. It’s a multi-dimensional view of human life as it relates to the natural world. The theory separates nature into five categories (water, fire, earth, metal, wood), each with distinctive characteristics which are reflected in patterns of human health and behaviour.
According to the Five Element framework, the cycle of human life and the cycle of nature, as related to the seasons, follows the cycle of the elements. The Five Element balancing massage is based on the above theory; different people associate more closely with different elements according to their physical patterns. The therapist determines imbalances in your dominant element and uses different bodywork techniques, rhythms and pressures to create harmony in your energy flow on a physical and emotional level.