How a week in a fitness retreat changed my life

By Mark Hodson

Five years ago I wrote an article for The Sunday Times Travel section entitled, Holidays that will Change your Life. As part of the research I spent a week at a health and fitness retreat in the Tuscan countryside. Although I was skeptical of the potential benefits, a funny thing happened amidst the packed schedule of yoga, circuit training, hiking and detox meals: it really did change my life.

I love going away but I always tend to return to work feeling drained. It sounds like a cliche, but I need another break to recover from the first one.

This experience was not like that. Although it was physically demanding – I normally like to start the day with a mug of builder’s tea, rather than an hour of sun salutations – I arrived home brimming with energy and vitality, my skin aglow and my eyes visibly brighter. As a result, I resolved to give up caffeine, cut down on booze, take up yoga and completely change my diet.

Since then the company behind the retreats has become a hit with high-spending corporates.

In the meantime, my lifestyle has slowly become less healthy. Althouh my diet is fairly healthy, I drink too much wine and too many cups of tea. And I flunked the yoga classes.

I work too hard, always in front of a computer screen and I’d acquired a couple of niggles: a sore hip, a tight shoulder and dry eyes.

It was time to check in again.

in:spa takes over a small property and brings its own staff including a cook, masseur, nutritionist, yoga holidays teacher and a couple of personal trainers. This particular hotel was on the Moroccan coast, a beautiful streatch of isolated beach. It was quiet and untouched by tourism, with superb Atlantic sunsets.

A typical day started just after dawn, often with a run on the beach followed by a huge buffet breakfast. The food was plentiful. But you don’t get served any dairy products, wheat or sugar.

You are never far from your next physical challenge. At 10am, when the sun is blazing overhead, you might find yourself summoned for circuit training on the terrace: 40 minutes of non-stop lunges, squats, press-ups, dips and crunches. Circuit training was, sadly, compulsory.

At around 11am we were allowed to fuel up on seeds, nuts and fruit. Then we were straight into a 60-minute yoga.

Lunch was buffet style, served al fresco. On a typical day it might be chicken with harissa, couscous, lentils, pasta salad, tomato salad, aubergines and olives. Exhausted I would head back to my room for a doze.

Meanwhile I was starting to feel a lot more healthy. With no screen to stare at and no mouse to click, my dry-eye condition and tight shoulder had sorted themselves out. Even my hip problem was resolved (I was told it was directly caused by the tightness in my opposite shoulder).

By the time the week was over I felt fitter, stronger, healthier and more relaxed than I had been in years. With time on my hands, I could think about life in general.

It won’t last forever, of course, but so far I’m feeling the benefits. And if the cure was permanent I wouldn’t have an excuse to go back in another five years times, would I?

Mark Hodson is founder of 101 short breaks

Cure by way of Yoga

Yoga in a preferred place Yoga, one of the world’s oldest forms of exercise, is experiencing a rebirth in our disturbing fashionable world. You wouldn’t suppose that a 3000-year-old exercise could increase its popularity. But yoga is now being prescribed even by some medical practitioners for a variety of well being ailments and illnesses, as a stress reliever and to complement different health programs.

Speak to anyone who practises yoga and they will rapidly extoll an infinite checklist of benefits. It seems newbies rapidly grow to be converts. They believe it’s the key to good well being and happiness in at the moment’s world _ a standard goal for many people. But in all probability the best advertisement for yoga is the truth that it seems to have graduated from the weird and alternative ranks right into a place of pretty wide group acceptance.

Housewives, businessmen, sportspeople, teenagers and the aged are all practising quite a lot of yoga positions, meditation and related respiration exercises. For many, yoga turns into a way of life _ typically giving a extra spiritual side to people’s lives, though not necessarily linked to religion. One college of belief maintains that chronic and accrued stress is the rationale for a lot of of our fashionable illnesses.

Proponents of yoga argue that it has a multiplicity of strategies to counter that cause and, unlike drug therapy, attack the cause, not simply the symptoms. It affords, they say, a holistic strategy to well being and fitness. Many professional athletes, on the lookout for the edge have turned to yoga as a supplementary type of training. They have discovered that yoga aids their state of mental and physical rest between coaching sessions, and their crucial construct-as much as massive meets, the place a competition is usually gained or lost in the mind.

Maybe considered one of yoga’s major attractions is that it combines physical and mental exercise. It is wonderful for posture and suppleness, both key physical parts for many sports-people, and in some respects, there are strength benefits to be gained. Yoga lecturers say that the strategy of yoga therapy is without doubt one of the best methods of attaining the mental edge that athletes seek.

Marian Fenlon, considered one of Brisbane’s main yoga lecturers of the previous 20 years, is the creator of two books on the subject and has had thousands of yoga pupils. A lot of them have, in turn, grow to be teachers. Imagine it or not, she has even taught yoga to footballers. A few years ago, she took Brisbane Souths rugby league crew for an eight-week course and, amazingly, it was well-received. She says there are eight elements to yoga therapy – attitudes, disciplines, posture and adaptability, respiration, sensory consciousness, focus, contemplation and meditation. Yoga can play a substantial supporting position to fashionable medicine, and complement different health and exercise programs. While there isn’t any great element of cardio health in yoga therapy, it complements cardio exercise due to respiration strategies that may be learned. So there are benefits for even probably the most demanding of cardio sports – swimming, cycling and running. There are quite a few documented cases of yoga relieving or curing severe illnesses – equivalent to Parkinson’s disease, a number of sclerosis, heart disease, and respiratory illnesses like asthma and emphysema.

Adolfo has been writing articles on-line for almost 4 years now. Not solely does this creator specialize in yoga, you too can take a look at his newest web site on dog barking control and dog training tips.

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