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Kripalu Center forYoga and Health


Saul

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Dear ALL,

 

I'm leaving tomorrow morning for three days of R&R at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and

Health, in Stockbridge, MA (in Western MA in the Berkshires).

 

It's a wonderful place for doing yoga, and has the best, most CR friendly,food that

I've seen anywhere.

 

I recommend the place highly -- it's the largest Yoga resort in the Western hemisphere,

and happily is only four hours drive from me.

 

(There is also a shuttle from Manhattan; and it's not far from Philadelphia (Michael,

take note :). Also not too far from Pittsburg (Dean! :)

 

-- Saul

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  • 10 months later...

Do Wellness Tourists Get Well? An Observational Study of Multiple Dimensions of Health and Well-Being After a Week-Long Retreat.

Cohen MM, Elliott F, Oates L, Schembri A, Mantri N.

J Altern Complement Med. 2017 Jan 9. doi: 10.1089/acm.2016.0268. [Epub ahead of print]

PMID: 28068147

http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/acm.2016.0268

http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1089/acm.2016.0268

Abstract

BACKGROUND:

Wellness retreats use many complementary and alternative therapies within a holistic residential setting, yet few studies have evaluated the effect of retreat experiences on multiple dimensions of health and well-being, and no published studies have reported health outcomes in wellness tourists.

OBJECTIVES:

To assess the effect of a week-long wellness-retreat experience in wellness tourists.

DESIGN:

A longitudinal observational study with outcomes assessed upon arrival and departure and 6 weeks after the retreat.

SETTING:

A rural health retreat in Queensland, Australia.

INTERVENTIONS:

A holistic, 1-week, residential, retreat experience that included many educational, therapeutic, and leisure activities and an organic, mostly plant-based diet.

OUTCOME MEASURES:

Multiple outcome measures were performed upon arrival and departure and 6 weeks after the retreat. These included anthropometric measures, urinary pesticide metabolites, a food and health symptom questionnaire, the Five Factor Wellness Inventory, the General Self Efficacy questionnaire, the Pittsburgh Insomnia Rating Scale, the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale, the Profile of Mood States, and the Cogstate cognitive function test battery.

RESULTS:

Statistically significant improvements (p < 0.05) were seen in almost all measures (n = 37) after 1 week and were sustained at 6 weeks (n = 17). There were statistically significant improvements (p < 0.001) in all anthropometric measures after 1 week, with reductions in abdominal girth (2.7 cm), weight (1.6 kg), and average systolic and diastolic pressure (-16.1 mmHg and -9.3 mmHg, respectively). Statistically significant improvements (p < 0.05) were also seen in psychological and health symptom measures. Urinary pesticide metabolites were detected in pooled urine samples before the retreat and were undetectable after the retreat.

CONCLUSION:

Retreat experiences can lead to substantial improvements in multiple dimensions of health and well-being that are maintained for 6 weeks. Further research that includes objective biomarkers and economic measures in different populations is required to determine the mechanisms of these effects and assess the value and relevance of retreat experiences to clinicians and health insurers.

KEYWORDS:

anxiety; cognitive function; depression; lifestyle; organic food; sleep; stress; wellness tourism

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Interesting study. I wonder how much of that benefit comes from the vacation from work itself, and how much might come from the healthy diet at this particular kind of retreat.

 

It would be nice to just send a control group to Paris for a week with good whole food meals and see if there is any additional benefit to the "wellness" type of retreat.

 

P.S. I would volunteer to participate in this study.

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  • 2 months later...

Dear CR Forum readers,

 

I'll be at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, doing R&R, from about noon on Friday, March 31, until about 2PM (or later) on Sunday, April 2, doing R&R.

 

As always, I'll do yoga twice a day (6-7:30AM, and 4:15-6:45PM or so), and enjoying their CR friendly plant based meals.

 

Fish is usually available only for one weekend dinner; but I won't miss it, with the wonderful vegan buffets that are available for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Breakfast requires care -- there's a lot of, what I would call junk, carbohydrate food ("whole grain"), egg preparations and other junk and dairy -- but happily steamed vegetables are present as well.

 

Lunch and dinner are always fantastic.

 

If any of you will be there during all or part of this time interval, by all means let's get together!

You can email me at lubkin@math.rochester.edu.

 

  --  Saul

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Thanks Mechanism!

 

Love to see you there if you and Kathy if you can make it! 

 

I'll probably dine near the main buffet line, on the right (vegetarian) side, towards the back (near the almond milk dispenser).

 

  :)xyz

 

    -- Saul

 

P.S.:  I once tried to talk Dean into trying Kripalu; but he has a longer drive, coming from Pittsburgh.

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