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Holiday for Good Health
A stay at a health retreat can result in profound healing benefits. The cumulative effects of the various therapies, natural environment and focus time for yourself, presents a rare opportunity to make tremendous progress with your level of health whilst you recharge and relax. With expert guidance and the ability to apply alternative health knowledge, as well as access to a full range of therapies and treatments, a health retreat is the perfect setting to restore balance to our busy, stressful and sometimes chaotic lifestyles.
The health retreat experience is also often a holistic journey, where balanced attention is provided concurrently to your physical body as well as your emotional, spiritual and mental wellbeing.
Whether you participate in a detox, weight loss retreat, women’s, spiritual or relaxation retreat you are bound to return home feeling more healthy and radiant. Below you will find general information about health retreats and their greatest benefits, as well as tips to assist you in choosing the right health retreat for you.
What health benefits can you expect from your health retreat experience? Due to the broad nature of therapies, workshops and general focus on lifestyle improvement you will find most health retreats assist in:
• Increasing your level of motivation to live a healthy, peaceful lifestyle as you experience healthy eating, exercise, stress management, relaxation techniques and therapies like massage styles, yoga and meditation and a natural environment where sensory overload is reduced. When you eliminate all the daily, unnatural busy-ness, your take the burden off your nervous system and your body can heal rather than live in a constantly alert and tense state.
• Personal development is often an important focus of most health retreats. This may be offered through various therapies, counselling, life-coaching and workshops on self-esteem, goal setting, overcoming fear and obstacles such as sabotage patterns
• Specific diseases, disorders, signs and symptoms may be addressed through treatments - often the fundamental therapy is a naturopathic consultation (using nature’s herbs, nutrients and diet to support the body). A range of other therapies are usually available depending on the practitioners employed at the chosen health retreat.
• Chronic conditions. The symptoms of obesity, cardiovascular diseases, food sensitivities/ allergies, arthritis, asthma, hormonal imbalances, migraines/ headaches, chronic stress/ anxiety, chronic fatigue, heavy metal toxicity, cancer, cellulite and many more can be greatly improved through detoxification. There are many ways to detoxify at a health retreat but the most common forms may include juice fasting/ wheatgrass juices, colon cleansing, living, raw food cuisine, vegetarian meals, and various cleansing supplements and procedures. This is also a great opportunity to enjoy healthy, flavoursome and tasty foods without any food preparation or effort on your behalf.
Many diseases start in the digestive tract, where incompletely digested food can lead to infection, ulceration and inflammation. Improper breakdown of foods also means inaccessible nutrients for your body, ultimately resulting in deficiencies and disease. The good news is that the digestive system can repair and renew itself quite quickly if you give it a break from refined, incorrectly balanced foods and at the same time nourish it with natural foods, which are superbly digested and assimilated. Some form of colonic cleansing is also advisable and general detoxification procedures are a fundamental aspect of spring-cleaning the body where chronic health conditions exist. Some retreats may also have organic foods – which is ideal from the point of view of reducing the chemical load that your eliminative organs have to process and breakdown in the first place.
Health retreat staff should be able to assist with a personalised program to aid detoxification and digestive repair – this needs to be individually tailored and supervised because if you detoxify too quickly your eliminative organs may not be able to keep up and you will experience a healing crisis with some undesirable side-effects. This can be minimized if a practitioner can support your body with herbal extracts that assist each of the five eliminative organs to cope. A naturopath or medical herbalist should be able to prescribe this, and most other detox components, for you after a thorough individual consultation. The herbs prescribed will vary from person to person, but such an individual approach will provide you with better results at the end of your detoxification period.
Also make the most of sessions in a sauna, as the sweating that these encourage, removes with it heavy metals such as lead and mercury, and other toxic substances. Detoxification is critical in removing toxins that may be impeding your optimal physiological functioning. Saunas and living raw foods brimming with enzymes are two of the most powerful tools for successful detox as well as weight loss.
• Lifetime benefits are often gained as you become aware of what healthy living means for you. The lessons learned and new tools and resources acquired can often be easily applied to your everyday life once you return home.
How to find the perfect health retreat for you.
• Know your objectives: What is it that you would like achieve by the end of your retreat experience? A healthy relaxation break, a super pamper, tools to increase mental and emotional awareness, learning new healthy lifestyle and nutrition habits, a cleansing detoxification, a spiritual experience or all of these?
• Activities: Consider what you would like to do in your spare time. Are you an active person who would enjoy the thrill of an adventure or the ability to keep up with your regular workouts at the gym? Perhaps you would prefer to have access to some health and wellbeing reading material during your stay?
• Location: Are you willing to travel a long distance for the right retreat or are you happy to settle for something closer, but perhaps not as ideal? It can be really liberating to actually break-free from the usual surrounds and gain a new perspective by being far away from your normal environment. Nature in itself is a powerful healing force. Clean environments, open spaces, mountains, seaside and fresh air and sunshine that can easily boost your spirits and freshen the mind.
• Style and size: What is the overall experience you are seeking? Consider if you are happy to participate in a setting with lots of people or are you into having a really private retreat experience with very little interaction (or interruption) by other people’s presence. You can ask the staff how many people are usually there at one time and also how many staff members are on hand.
• Price and duration: Give some thought to how much time you can dedicate to comfortably participating in your health retreat experience. If you have unavoidable situations that you need to address by interacting with people back at home you may be better off either postponing your program to a time that is not interrupted or perhaps opt for a shorter stay. Prices vary considerably and generally you get what you pay for.
The whole is greater than the sum of its part – in other words enjoy the journey as all the individual experiences you have at a health retreat can culminate in some serious emotional and physical breakthroughs that individual sessions alone may not provide. Often the combination of removing stagnating physical waste, reducing the energy spent on the digestive processes, increasing energy for detoxification, nourishing the body with the correct nutrients, enhancing circulation and breathing with gentle exercise, time with mother nature, time to reflect and loving emotional support and counselling from qualified staff, are all catalysts for change.
Izabella Siodmak is a naturopath, nutritionist, herbalist and life coach who is passionate about empowering her clients to live healthier, more meaningful lives through the foundations of natural health, mindful awareness and sustainable lifestyles.
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