Wellness trends 2022: emotional healing retreats

The growth of emotional healing retreats has taken the spa and wellness industry to another level, nurturing mind, body and spirit

Emotional healing has been a buzz word in the industry over the past 12 months as spa and wellness operators adapted their offering to support guests with specific mental wellbeing needs. Support and coaching in the spa environment is not brand new – The Original FX Mayr offers coaching with Claudia Waldner on its fasting cure to help people understand and resolve a wide range of personal issues that arise during the programme. Vair Spa at Borgo Egnazia in Italy also offers a Tarant retreat for empowering women and the Happiness Break.

But a new wave of retreats places greater emphasis on personal reflection and growth with modalities as diverse as talking therapy, movement, dance, role play, sound healing and one-to-one coaching. Addressing sadness, negativity, pain and a lack of confidence, the retreats can range from releasing trauma held in the body to heartbreak, relationship and marital problems, and much more.

Bridging the space between counselling and therapeutic healing, these retreats add a spa-like quality to the experience with complementary therapies including yoga and mindfulness, energy healing, reiki, reflexology and daily exercise and gym classes.

Euphoria Retreat in Greece offers the Meaningful Relationships Mini Retreat, helping people to understand why they may be experiencing a lack of satisfaction in relationships. Guests can learn to dissolve any blocks in this area and feel confident in attracting joyful and trusting relationships in the future.

Kamalaya in Thailand offers an Embracing Change retreat over five or seven days, exploring the inner self and emotional patterns with compassion to overcome negative habits, explore past trauma and find fulfilment

in relationships within oneself and with others.

Champneys in the UK has planned a series of programmes and retreats centred around self-healing, developing positivity and attitudinal change. Drawing on the expertise of visiting practitioners, the sessions include Attitude Is All with Tanya Wheway; Awake Your Awareness with Sandra Crathern and Roberta Pagliarulo; and the Living The Wisdom Retreat with Neil Seligman.

The Heartbreak Hotel is another new concept in the UK offering transformational therapy over a three-day residential retreat. Founded by counselling psychologist and lecturer Alice Haddon, it addresses anger and emotional pain following heartbreak with a series of therapies including CBT and NLP while guests enjoy downtime exercising in nature.

www.original-mayr.com www.borgoegnazia.com www.euphoriaretreat.com www.kamalaya.com www.champneys.com www.theheartbreakhotel.co.uk