DEPARTURES TRAVEL IN
DEPARTURES TRAVEL IN GOOD COMPANY 30 Paddleboarding the tranquil lagoon near Habitas Bacalar, in Mexico’s Quintana Roo Wellness festivals are all the rage across the globe – and the very best are reminders of the power of communal experiences. by Kate O’Brien Are We Healthier Together? “GROUP SHARING over the fire is where the magic happens,” says Anna Bjurstam, who runs the wellness offerings at Six Senses hotels. “This is when people really connect, where they laugh, cry and celebrate life and return home forever changed from where they started. After all, it doesn’t really matter how rich we are, unless we are well and happy, too.” Welcome to Alma, a three-day wellness festival that is the brainchild of Bjurstam. Held most recently in November at the hotel brand’s Ibiza property ( sixsenses.com), Alma offers guests the chance to not only participate in a range of cutting-edge wellness experiences – soul-stirring sound-healing and energy-medicine sessions, transformative yoga and ecstatic dance, not to mention intimate conversations with some of the world’s leading thinkers TANVEER BADAL
FROM TOP: © HABITAS, LUANA FAILLA Right: sunrise yoga at Habitas AlUla in Saudi Arabia; below: roasted root veggies at Six Senses Ibiza’s The Orchard restaurant “The warmth and energy generated when people come together in community is quite special. That energy and the close friendships you make stay with you” – Anna Bjurstam, Six Senses Ibiza – but also to nourish body and soul with (primarily) plantbased cuisine, while they dream in a fresh new way. And all this while being cosseted in Six Senses’s elegantly earthy home sprawled across a pine-clad hillside that tumbles into the sparkly blue waters of the Mediterranean below. Bjurstam began the festival – as opposed to the more common type of personalised wellness retreat – because she believes that society (even pre-pandemic) is living through an epidemic of isolation, and people are desperately seeking meaningful connection with something greater than themselves. “This lack of close friendships has led to unprecedented rates of loneliness and heightened feelings of vulnerability,” she adds. “We know how difficult it is for people, and the warmth and energy generated when people come together in community like this is quite special. We go deeper – and that energy and the close friendships you make stay with you.” It’s a perspective shared by Jeff Krasno, co-founder of Wanderlust Festival (wanderlust.com), which started life as a single music festival built around yoga in Squaw Valley, Lake Tahoe in 2009. Since then, Krasno has witnessed the event escalate to 68 events in 20 countries. “Wanderlust’s founding mission was to help people cultivate their best self and ‘find their true north’, but now, as society has become sicker and lonelier, it has a new-found purpose,” he says. “And, in the best-case scenario, they will bring this inspiration back into their quotidian lives.” Others, like Oliver Ripley, co-founder and CEO of Habitas (ourhabitas.com) are crafting more intimate group retreats in exquisite far-flung locales, bringing guests on a deeper dive into the human condition. From feminine archetypes to sexuality, intimacy, shamanic wisdom and much more, experiences like these are more focused and draw guests deeper and further into their souls, igniting inner change and a better way of being. To Ripley, wellness is not a word, it’s a way of living that enhances body and soul and facilitates greater human connection. “We are creating safe spaces for people to let their guards down, so they can gather around the fire, be open to new experiences and ultimately see the world from a different perspective,” he explains. “It shifts the mindset a little.” Beautiful natural settings. Communal activities. Conversations around the fire. There’s something almost primordial about these back-to-the-future wellness festivals – and they all remind us, if that is needed, that life is better when shared with others. 31 DEPARTURES
