Not All Wellness Retreats Are Equal: Here’s How Women Can Find the Right One

Wellness retreats offer women self-care

With retirement looming and travel increasing, I want my “time away” to be about de-stressing, staying active, and enjoying activities in nature. Wellness retreats offer all that. Since COVID began, I — like many other women-focused more than ever on healthy living and self-care, not just at home, but on the road. According to the Global Wellness Institute, the wellness tourism industry is on track worldwide to become a $1.4 trillion sector by 2027. I’m not alone in wanting to feel restored through travel, with time to “retreat” while still discovering new people and experiences and ways to stay healthy.

The Global Wellness Institute identified “recovery retreats” as one of 2024’s wellness trends, with recovery being about prioritizing “wellness and self-care” – both physical and mental – over sport. The Institute identifies technology as playing an increasing role in this wellness trend, from wearing devices to monitor our stress, quality of sleep and physical activity, to high-tech therapies such as photobiomodulation (a type of light therapy), to hyperbaric chambers (where you breathe 100 per cent oxygen) to red-light therapy, IV vitamin drips and lymphatic compression. Depending on the form, purported health benefits range from improved circulation to reduced inflammation to changing or boosting biological functioning.

How is a wellness retreat different than a wellness resort?

Often, a wellness “retreat” is a retreat from the outside world. It provides an opportunity to connect with yourself and other like-minded people, get a break from daily stresses and obligations, see your life with a different perspective, have more “authentic” experiences, and learn strategies and lifestyle habits that you can then draw on when you return home. The idea is to step out of your life so you can eventually step back in, with a new perspective and tools for a healthier lifestyle.

These retreats are often located in natural settings that promote healing. That might mean on a beach, in a forested area, in the desert or somewhere else away from urban concrete. Some retreats outright ban phones, computers and other technology, although most simply discourage these electronic “distractions.”