IN THE YEAR Spirituality+Health launched, I launched American Spa, a trade magazine for a burgeoning industry. People from all over were ready to explore spirituality and were eager to learn about what spas had to offer. We all wanted to dig deeper. Twenty-five years on, I’m still digging—though it feels at times like the ground has gotten harder.
I can’t count the hundreds of spas, wellness centers, and retreats I’ve experienced in 25 years, but I can count the small number of experiences that made a lasting impression. These are places that truly transform; that teach new and better ways to be in the world, with loved ones and with yourself. Places that give a fresh new take on life. Places that help heal what ails you—both inside and out.
Not so long ago, I traveled to one such place: the historic village of Naturno, tucked away in Italy’s storybook South Tyrol. Going to the mountains for big answers is a tradition as old as time, and there’s an entirely different intentionality when you make the decision to travel to a remote mountain range to actively seek out solutions. I had been invited to Naturno to experience the Integrated Healing Retreat, a new weeklong retreat at Preidlhof, a superb destination spa run by renowned spa director and wellness alchemist Patrizia Bortolin, who oversees a team of accomplished and elite healers. I went to Preidlhof not only as an expert spa critic, but as a pilgrim in need of healing.
This story is from the March/April 2023 edition of Spirituality & Health.
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This story is from the March/April 2023 edition of Spirituality & Health.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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ONE WORD TO BEAT WINTER BLUES: BIOMIMICRY
CREATURELY REFLECTIONS
THINKING ABOUT RESTITUTION
THE HEART OF HAPPINESS
WAITING IN LINE
OUR WALK IN THE WORLD
ENTER THE SAUNA
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the trail of ATONEMENT
One Ashkenazi Jewish family escaped pogroms in Russia and then flourished in South Dakota, but the “free land” of their new homestead had been unfairly taken from the Lakota by the United States. Generations later, a celebrated investigative journalist set out to tell the truth of the Lakota and her family, calculate The Cost of Free Land—and pay it back.
STALKING YOUR Mind
Stalking the Mind is part of an ancient Indigenous American Medicine Way to tame your guilt, fears, and shame. What we’re “stalking” are our thought patterns and beliefs that seem to create the opposite of happiness and wellbeing. It’s a powerful psychotherapeutic journey of healing without the diagnosis or labels.
LEAVING MESA VERDE
After 21 years of service at Mesa Verde National Park, RANGER DAVID FRANKS recently guided his last tour of the pueblos and cliff dwellings. He says he was fortunate to assist the archeologists with a variety of work and never lost his amazement with their ability to figure out how and when things happened. The question he still wrestles with is much deeper: Why they left?
BECOMING YOUR OWN LEAD RESEARCHER IN HEALTHCARE
PEGGY LA CERRA, PHD, downloaded a health app to aggregate her medical records and was stunned to see the phrase \"aortic atherosclerosis.\" What she did next is a helpful model for all of us.
ARCHETYPAL ASTROLOGY
\"Is astrology true?\" is the wrong question, writes RABBI RAMI SHAPIRO. He suggests that the truth is out there, but out there is really in here.
WELLNESS IN THE WILD
Spa aficionado MARY BEMIS takes the [cold] plunge at Mohonk Mountain House.
