Wellness travel is based on the premise that you work hard and deserve travel opportunities to restore your body and mind. Travel can be exhausting and stressful, as well as amazing, but this new wave of travel ensures you get the best of travel with a healthy perspective. Below you read about the exact meaning of wellness travel, learn about its benefits and find some examples of vacations, trips, and retreats that embrace its values.
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What is wellness travel?
It’s a modern movement and new way of travel. Wellness travel is a way of traveling based around socially rising ideas of mindfulness, meditation, and generally healthy minded lifestyles. There is a big call for holiday packages and group trips focusing on wellness activities such as spa vacations and yoga retreats. However, wellness travel is beyond just healthy activities. It is becoming a whole new mindset of travel, incorporating slowness, mindfulness and healthy living into complete destinations and journeys.
Travel is developing into a lifestyle for more and more people. With so many people going on regular world trips, a healthy body and mind on vacation are growing in popularity. The best thing is that these trips reduce the downside effects of travel – stress, tiredness, laziness. Instead, you can feel more relaxed, secure, healthy and well connected to your body and mind. This gives you more energy and enthusiasm to enjoy only the best of travel – exception people, places and moments.
Tourism companies are targeting to this contemporary wave of travelers and offering some pretty incredible opportunities in the process. So jump on the movement and enjoy the best of wellness travel!
Yoga and Meditation Retreats
These holidays are the first kinds of wellness travel. People have been embracing the tranquil atmospheres and feel good consequences of yoga and meditation retreats for years now. Travelers can choose from destinations all over the world. Some of the most popular locations include India, Bali, and Spain.
Classic wellness travel holidays, you can start from learning beginners yoga and meditation to perfecting your skills and learning practices to take back with you to everyday life.
Surfing
This is one of the more modern examples of wellness travel. As people realized the benefits of yoga, detox and meditation retreats, they started applying the mindset to more adrenaline based activities. Now there is a whole travel niche combining adventure, extreme activities and sports with a mindful attitude.
Surfing is one of the coolest ones at the moment. Once contained to the typical beach locations of California and Australia, this trend is expanding all over the world. And it’s not just about warm weather and beautiful clear ocean waves anymore, travelers are embracing the surf in northern seas – swapping shorts for swimsuits.
Some people are abandoning the outdoors altogether. Think you need waves for surfing? Various fitness studios containing surf simulations can prove you wrong. It’s becoming more of a mindset – the chilled attitude and healthy lifestyle but without the sand and cold winds. Wellness travel has turned some surfing activities into a workout routine for people to embrace in worldwide locations. And people are loving it.
Extreme Sports
The new wave of wellness travel has gone far more extreme than surfing. Adrenaline based and life-threatening, dangerous sports are also jumping on the trend. It might seem like a bit of a contradiction – stressful activity with a movement that is focusing on stress-free travel? But it’s working. A lot of travelers are finding perfect harmony.
Many people are balancing extreme sports and adrenaline filled activities with the exact opposite: spa retreats and relaxing resorts. A week of mountain climbing followed by a week of lounging in a jacuzzi. A day of zip-lining across a forest canopy followed by an evening of massage treatments. It’s actually a type of Zen and an official therapy – balancing the contrast of stressful adventure with quiet relaxation.
Other travelers are just fully embracing the stress and adrenaline of extreme sports as a wellness activity in itself. Research shows that stressed people often seek stressful activities. They use dangerous situations as a way to live fully at the moment and experience an extreme type of mindfulness.
Festivals
Have you noticed how festivals have become more and more focused on mindfulness in the last few years? There are regular yoga classes, meditation sessions or spa opportunities at most festivals now. It’s not just about pumping music, muddy fields, and unhealthy food and drinks anymore. People are yearning for a healthier mind and body – and the festivals are giving back.
Going to a festival is always a great thing to incorporate into a travel journey. Especially in the summer, you can plan a whole trip around jumping between music, culture or gastronomy events. But it doesn’t have to be a week long binge of sleepless nights, empty beer cans and takeaway dinners.
Festivals have always contained a lovely hippy, bohemian element but now, they are becoming more and more focused around spirituality. People are getting up at 6 am to do yoga with the sunrise, instead of sleeping late in their tent with a hangover. People are staying up for a late night meditation session instead of jumping around to ear blasting music (or just doing so afterward). All in the name of wellness travel.
Cruises
Cruises are another traditional holiday jumping on the wellness travel trend. Although cruises have always focused on relaxation and tranquil atmospheres, some are becoming even more concentrated on health and wellness.
Some ships are completely dedicating themselves to retreat based activities. Beauty treatments, spa sessions and yoga classes dominate the decks. Instead of lazily sipping cocktails, travelers can upkeep healthy lifestyle on a wellness cruise.
Many of them also focus on wellness travel for stopovers and cruise destinations. Activities on land focus around mindful experiences of culture, embracing the local mindset of a place or getting involved in a volunteer project of the community.
Wellness travel primarily concentrates on the anthropology and spirituality of the local area. So jump on the trend – it’s a good and healthy one to embrace. There are numerous benefits of enjoying the wave of wellness travel. It offers personal space and time, extending your experiences to everyday habits that you can take home with you. Let us know what you think of wellness travel in the comments below!
