The trials and stresses of modern life seem to grow ever larger but more and more people are responding by seeking the sanctuary offered by spiritual retreats such as The Cotswold Healing Retreat and The Saltburn Wellbeing Centre. And for those willing to go further afield, destinations such as Sunflower Retreats in central Italy can be just as rewarding and rejuvenating.
Spirit & Destiny Magazine, the self-proclaimed UK’s No.1 spiritual lifestyle magazine, features these three holistic boltholes in this month’s edition. More than just centres of healing and recuperation for mind, body and spirit, they are claimed to be the kick-starts to new ways of living as visitors begin to strip back the unnecessary layers of their lives, just like peeling an onion.
The Cotswold Healing Retreat
Ann Cliff, a middle-aged mother of five from Northamptonshire, was recovering from the removal of a benign ovarian tumour when she noticed an ad for The Cotswold Healing Retreat. Arriving at the retreat - the magazine here strangely inserts the detail that she drove there in her own car - an idyllic farmhouse set amidst vast, peaceful private land, Ann immediately felt a weight lift from her.
And during her first conversation with psychic and healer Louisa Crisp, Ann says it was revealed to her that the shadow in her abdomen was the guilt from misdeeds in a past life. Not an explanation that everybody would understand, but for Ann it was the beginning of the removal of the obstacles that had held her back in life.
She went home rejuvenated and has since returned to the Cotswolds to continue her recovery. In balance, Louisa Crisp says that Spirit & Destiny have slightly misrepresented her work in that she does not run programmes, rather people spend a relaxing time at the retreat and healing occurs in a more spontaneous manner.
Sunflower Retreats in Casperia, Italy
The tranquility of more foreign climes was the setting for the re-emergence from grief of Lisa Quish a charity HR manager from Dublin. The death of her inspiring mother from cancer had engulfed Lisa in a deep depression that affected her emotional, mental and physical health.
It was yoga – a discipline practised by her mother – that attracted Lisa to Sunflower Retreats through the auspices of The Retreat Company. She picked Casperia, situated north of Rome in the Lazio region. Casperia is a hillside village nestling under the Sabina Mountains, its cobbled streets completely pedestrianised.
Life in the slow lane of this traditional setting allowed Lisa the time and space to practise yoga, horse riding and healthy cooking and have holistic treatments like chakra balancing. And the spiritual traditions of the area, such as the Easter procession brought her the chance to celebrate the life of her mother and achieve the closure of saying a fitting farewell. Lisa has returned since to Casperia and has now trained to teach yoga herself.
The Saltburn Wellbeing Centre
Training of another sort was the outcome of 43 year-old Debbie Dixon’s visit to Saltburn Wellbeing Centre on the North Yorkshire coast. Like the other two retreats it is set in quiet countryside, secluded from the timetables and demands of the world such as the catering job Debbie had toiled at for more than twenty years. She wanted a change. She wanted a vocation. Here, as in the Cotswolds article, extraneous detail is given with the information that her husband is a 42-year old steel fixer!
The resort town of Saltburn was built by Victorian Quaker Henry Pease after a visitation by angels. This spirituality continues today at the Saltburn retreat where workshops on clairvoyancy, tarot reading, mediumship and healing, run within a thriving community of local shops, cafes and galleries.
One of these workshops revealed to Debbie her own spiritual gifts, as, according to her, she found o her natural mediumship. This discovery led to a new life for her as she returned frequently to Saltburn, enjoying both its qualities of rejuvenation and her development into a trained clairvoyant, tarot card reader, medium and spiritual healer, with a certificate from the National Federation of Spiritual Healers. No where is is stated how she actually earns a living from these skills. Perhaps her steel fixer hubby pays the bills?
Debbie eventually moved to Yorkshire, near her spiritual retreat, leaving behind the stresses of her previous life in Essex to create a holistic, satisfying lifestyle and career that is centred round Saltburn.
The articles do suffer from being in the first person, thus denying the issues the perspective they require, and nowhere do we hear of the possibly negative aspects experienced by some at the retreats. Maybe, for these people, no spirituality was ever revealed, they just had a relaxing time.
But for these three women at least, the discovery of their own, personal sanctuary began a renewing process of spiritual growth that led to them finding both themselves and a new way of living.
Scott Graham - I've graduated twice from the University of Glasgow, both disciplines majoring in fiction, an MA in Politics and an MLitt in Creative ...
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