Wellness is the loving acceptance of yourself. Wellness is a choice—a decision you make to move toward optimal health. Wellness is a way of life—a lifestyle you design to achieve your highest potential for wellbeing. The Article is presented with excerpts from Dr Prem’s Guide Book on Wellness Tourism.
The word ‘wellness’ in general represents “over all well being, a type of good feeling”. The term WELLNESS was first used by a physician named Halbert L. Dunn, who published a small booklet entitled “High Level Wellness” in 1961. Dr. Dunn considered wellness as a lifestyle approach for pursuing elevated states of physical and psychological well-being and described it as “a disciplined commitment to personal mastery”
- Wellness is the loving acceptance of yourself.
- Wellness is a choice—a decision you make to move toward optimal health.
- Wellness is a way of life—a lifestyle you design to achieve your highest potential for wellbeing. John W. Travis, MD, MPH
Wellness is a journey, not a destination….According to Dr Dunn and other wellness Gurus, the key components to achieve wellness includes Self –responsibility and awareness, Exercise and fitness, Nutrition, Stress management, knowing meaning and purpose or spirituality, emotional intelligence, humor, play, effective relationships.
The conscious adoption of healthy lifestyle changes including eating nutritious food, physical exercises and activity, practicing techniques to relax mind and body, enjoying humor etc. to improve and enhance the quality of the life helps a person to reach a state of wellness.
What is wellness Tourism?
The concept of wellness tourism is not new and the literature narrates that people in ancient time used to travel to distant places with an aim to improve overall health and spiritual enhancement. Such trips include bathing in holy rivers, thermal spring, visiting holy places or pilgrims nearby. In Roman times, people used to travel to the hot springs which known to have ability to treat skin diseases. Again in the 21st century, the increasingly fast–paced lives, stressful environments and detachment from nature have generated need for the people to participate actively in various activities those are design to provide wellbeing. In addition to these, excellent (easy and fast) traveling facilities have encouraged people to explore the world in search of (for the purpose of) improving quality of life and wellbeing.
The wellness tourism involves traveling for the purpose of achieving andor maintaining health – wellness, ans to prevent acquiring specific set of health disorder. It has contributed significantly towards discovering and adopting new ways to promote healthier, less stressful lifestyle. Wellness tourism can be classified under two broader categories namely:
- Complementary and Alternative therapy tourism
- Spa tourism
Benefits of wellness tourism
Traveling with the Aim: The wellness tourism is not just a passive form of traveling, it is focused on facilitating the tourist who are purposefully driven by the desire to actively seek and enhanced wellness.
Variety of activities: It is design to help the tourist to develop, maintain and improve the state of body-mind- spirit by providing range of activitiestherapies. It covers the vast scope of engagement ranging from weekend hotel- spa breaks that may include massage treatment, sauna, aromatherapy etc, to intensive longer stay at CAM-therapy center that includes yoga, mud therapy, and herbal treatment andor spiritual retreats. Some of these activities are aimed to relax mind and spiritual enhancement, or simply a sleep deprived person can adopt a healthy sleeping technique in hopy of improving own health.
Detoxification of Mind and Body: There are specific set of wellness programs which are design to eliminate physical and intangible “toxins” from an individual using relaxation and de-stressing methodstherapies. In addition to detoxifying body various wellness centers, CAM centers and retreats encourage and help people to maintain healthy lifestyle by providing nutritious, healthy diet and physical exercises or activities.
Facts about wellness
The awareness and active participation of people towards achieving wellness have created a burgeoning growth in the wellness tourism industry. The various holistic centers, spas, wellness centers and other form of health providing centers have been successful in attracting the wellness seeking foreigners and local community as well.
Countries like Indian, china, Thailand are gaining recognition as popular destinations for wellness tourism.
More comprehensive detail about Wellness and Wellness tourism Read – Dr Prem’s – Wellness Tourism Guide Book
Also Read:
- What is wellness?
- What is wellness tourism?
- What is alternative medicine tourism?
- Reasons people use Alternative Medicine and Complementary Alternative Medicine
- Benefits of alternative medicine
- Benefits of wellness tourism
- Clarifying terms in alternative and complementary medicine
- Criticisms of Alternative Treatments
- Ethical considerations for alternative treatment
- Integrative Medicine
- Statistics for alternative medicine
- The list of the most common and popular Complementary and Alternative Medicines:
- Top wellness and CAM destination