The Beatles went to India for enlightenment. Prince joined the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Madonna converted to Kabbalah, while both Christy Turlington and Sting became world famous yogis. In the 80’s and 90’s it seemed having it all was synonymous with giving it all up.

While The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards relied on class-A drugs and rock n roll to achieve his good looks, the rest of the world looked on and took notice.

Golden Door Health Retreat Elysia

Circa 2016, authentic health and enlightenment endeavours are now part of our holiday programme. It has even become quite fashionable to tie in a bit of self-development, while we’re enjoying your longer breaks. Cooking classes in Ubud. Yoga at an ashram in India. Surf camp in Sri Lanka or just an essential oil course by the beach in Bronte. Whatever it is, the idea is to get centred and become a better person. Indeed the idea of living sustainably is starting to catch on. Burn out is never a place you want to be, no matter how successful you are.

So when planning holidays and Christmas why should we consider a mindful escape? According to our resident experts – health and meditation help you to experience what Christmas is really all about. Being present, experiencing unlimited energy and accessing natural joy. Contiki tours and Club Med be damned, health retreats are now the place to dose up on the dopest stuff.

Integrated Health Coach Zane Kung Faust says most people don’t realise what they’re truly capable of. “We’re all spiritual beings having a human experience. The majority of the time, people don’t know the body is like a jet and yet they drive it like a tractor. Most people don’t know that if you switch on a few buttons they can actually fly!” Zane’s executive health clients usually present to him with mainly the same symptoms, a lack of energy being the biggest one. “If you have tons of energy then you feel that you can take on the world, there’ s no problem. Most people who see me want to know how to get more energy, how to manage stress better and how to achieve a greater work-life balance,” Zane says.

While different techniques work for different people, he says Pranayama or deep breath techniques always work. “Over oxygenating the body – that’s one tool everyone has at their disposal. And in the health world it’s commonly understood that as a race of humans, the majority of people don’t breath properly.” Zane is also quick to point out that better nutrition can sort our bouts of depression or lethargy through changing the levels of serotonin produced in the gut.

Kim Elliot’s Cooking with Awareness course

“My experience is twenty plus years working with yoga, mediation and martial arts,” says Zane, who lived in both China and India in his twenties teaching rock climbing and studying Kung Fu and Tai Chi from an bonafide Zen master. “Mostly I’ve been my own guinea pig. I have tested, tried and hacked pretty much everything. From breath control and raw food to no food, to extreme temperature treatment to delta wave stimulating devices to shift your brain patterns, to Chinese super tonic herbs,” he says.

Today Zane runs his own business, holds a Harvard MBA, is a trained nutritionist, has two kids and is married to a Bikram yoga champion. He likes to mix up modalities when treating hard nuts, but definitely recommends a daily meditation or yoga practice and advises a strategy at home of divorcing work and all technological devices from the family connection areas like the dinner table. He limits his children’s screen time and asks his family to use technology as a tool for business or education – not entertainment.

“I think any retreat is good that lets you to reconnect to what is real. Some might say that meditation is about being aware in the moment – so you shouldn’t need to go anywhere to do it. But if you are new to it, and you are trying to find some peace and establish a new habit pattern, then being away from your every day life can be a good place to get started,” he says. “You can do it right here in Australia.”

“A friend of mine from London, who works in corporate finance, he’s a M&A guy who’s always very active, busy social engaged, he came to me recently and said that while he’s been very successful in business, he has not been successful in his personal life. He came to Australia looking for meditation experience, but he ended up going to a horse ranch, and just helping out on the farm.

“His deepest mediation experience was riding a horse and it was euphoric! “For him, that experience just grew and grew. Just doing hard labour, being outside in nature and connecting with what’s real, brought him so much inner development and peace. “I think any mind state, where the mind stops; it could be stand up paddle board camp or surfing – anything that really requires complete immersion to the moment is good.”

Hepburn Bathhouse and Spa

Charlotte Dodson is a celebrity yoga teacher who leads courses at Lord Howe Island’s Pinetrees Lodge. Charlotte was once the private yoga teacher of supermodel Miranda Kerr and continues to work with celebrities in Sydney. “We run wellness weeks three times a year and our getaways incorporate yoga, island activities like hiking or kayaking and lifestyle offerings such as cooking classes. These health events have been successful for us for over six years now and we have many clients who return year after year.

“Many guests start off their yoga training in a state of distraction – they find it tricky to focus or to breathe properly. But as the days pass they come to realise that the emails can wait and that the only precious moment is right now.” Charlotte says being on the island helps people to shut off from the noise of their normal business lives.

“Digital interactions have become a centrepiece of our daily lives, and people have started to grasp that this way of communicating, learning and doing business, requires a lot of balance and caution. It’s certainly been added to the list of why people look for a ‘detox plan’ to aid them with finding inner peace during the holidays,” Charlotte says.

In her case she found yoga after a surfing accident and has practiced a dynamic hatha flow yoga and kundalini ever since. She is also developing yoga for people who catch a lot of long haul flights and has online classes for people needing to practice in the digital realm.

“On Lord Howe Most people find it’s refreshing to digitally detox and realise how it feels to be immersed in nature, away from any technology. And just how nice the simple joys can be, like having conversations with the person next to you!

“The wellness weeks on Lord Howe Island are certainly a go-to place for this kind of ‘revival’ , as there actually is no internet connection on the island!
So what people find is that by the end of the week, it feels like you’ve been away for months. It’s a truly magical place.”

Emirates Wolgan Valley One & Only

Closer to home, Vedic Meditation teacher Matt Ringrose of Bondi Meditation says learning to detox from digital world is a smart move for parents as well as kids. Matt teaches vedic meditation and retreats from his studio in Bondi. “I decided to run the Digital Detox course because it was something that was affecting me personally. I was fully addicted to my phone and had started using it in all sorts of weird situations and becoming increasingly reliant on it. “I wanted to give up and I saw my son my 12 year old son using his phone all the time like an addiction. I really wanted to say something to him, but I couldn’t while I was just still addicted myself,” says Matt.

Matt says practicing mindful use of the phone or perhaps moving to ‘dumb phone’ can be extremely liberating. He believes that some people, but not all people, are looking for more conscious holidays and are waking up to the negative and insidious uses of digital technology in our daily lives. Like looking for outside validation, instant gratification and increased self esteem through the ‘smart phone’.

“What I find vedic meditation teaches people is how to approach Christmas and the holidays with a “beginners mind”. Without the clagging filters of past experience. If you are really present during your holidays and not caught up in your phone, or in the past or in your expectations or whatever, then you can learn to look for the spaces in between the defined events and enjoy the spaces in between.

“Meditation and mindfulness is all about becoming more present and that means more adaptable. And through adaptation we can live more creative lives.”

Emirates Wolgan Valley One & Only

2017 Escapists Guide

Pinetrees Lodge, Lord Howe Island
Health retreats with yoga teacher Charlotte Dodson offer a daily program of yoga, spa treatments, massage, aerobic fitness and wholefood cooking classes, allowing you to completely disconnect from the outside world.

Vipassana Meditation, Blackheath
Get back to the basics of breath with Vipassana, which means to see things as they really are. It is an Art of Living course like no other. The course includes accomodation and daily dissertations about the Vipassana method by Mr. Goenka.

Golden Door Health Retreat Elysia, Hunter Valley
Golden Door offers in-built accomodation and 7 Night Health Enhancement Programs in conjunction with their health spa and professional training staff.

Emirates Wolgan Valley One & Only, Blue Mountains 
This luxe spa resort with mountain views is set on a 2,800-hectare conservation and wildlife reserve within the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area. Detox from city living with bike riding, swimming, hiking, bird watching, holistic therapies and fitness centre.

Hoshinoya Fuji, Japan 
Hoshinoya Fuji is located on the slopes of a hill overlooking Lake Kawaguchi, near Mt. Fuji. It is a back to nature resort that is intimate, hidden from the world by a pristine red pine forest and mountain mists.

Luxe Escapes, Noosa
A day escape that takes you beyond the beach and into some of Noosa’s hidden nature trails and waterways. This is an active day escape, perfect for the adventurous traveller who wants to do more than sit by the pool.

Bondi Meditation Rounds Retreats, Bondi
All retreats include instruction in rounding, pranayama, meditation and a 10 minute lie down done in successive order and accompanied by freshly cooked, ayurvedic organic meals.

To stay up to date with all neighbourhood news from BresicWhitney, subscribe here.