Travel
As technology takes control of more and more aspects of our lives, including our wellbeing, there’s a growing hunger in the West for holistic healing. It’s time to move out of the fast lane, disconnect from the apps and head to tuscany for a spiritual reboot.
ByLucy Gillmore
Published February 4, 2024
This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
Open a paper or look at a news website and chances are there will be another story about the unstoppable rise of AI (artificial intelligence) and the Frankenstein-style dilemmas associated with its current state of development. Unsurprisingly, AI has also infiltrated the wellness sphere, with apps and chatbot platforms monitoring and analysing our physical and mental health. However, as the Western world hurtles forward on a fast track to the future, increasingly hooked on technology, there’s an evolving counter-culture — a turning back to age-old, intuition-led wellbeing philosophies from the East, from sound healing to forest bathing, chakra cleansing to crystal therapy. This craving for a more spiritual way of living and healing hints at a realisation that the race for material success doesn’t necessarily bring happiness and fulfilment. Thankfully Eastern wisdom and wellbeing practises are now within easy reach, as a corner of India has recently sprung up in Italy.
Datu Wellness, launched in autumn 2023, is a curated series of ayurvedic retreats in Laticastelli, a medieval hilltop village turned hotel, founded by Constantin Bjerke. Derived from the Sanskrit words ‘ayur’, meaning life, and ‘veda’ (knowledge or science), ayurveda is a nature-based Indian medical system focused on mind, body and spirit that’s been around for over 5,000 years. “What you get here is ancient wisdom,” Bjerke explains.
Bjerke’s own journey, from media producer to holistic wellbeing guru, took him to India and back — and then back again to bring a group of ayurvedic doctors and therapists to Tuscany. It’s not the only place in Europe offering ayurveda, but Datu’s one-week retreats offer an in-depth experience in dreamy Tuscan surroundings, set in over 740 acres of ancient olive and oak woods.
Days are filled with consultations with the doctors, yoga sessions, pranayama (breathwork) and meditation. There are sun salutations by the pool gazing out over poplar-fringed hills, and yoga nidra (yogic sleep meditation) wrapped in blankets in the piano room, with its ancient beams and windows framed by floating white curtains. Sound healing lying on mats beneath the trees in the garden slows the mind and encourages the body to enter a dreamlike state, while the 12th-century, candlelit wine cellar is the setting for Om chanting, believed to purify the environment around you and create positive energy. All the while, haunting Indian music floats through the grounds of the medieval village, transporting you to a faraway exotic land.
For guests — clad in white pyjamas and poncho — each day starts at sunrise with Agnihotra, the traditional Hindu fire ceremony where cow dung and ghee are burnt in a copper pot and Sanskrit mantras chanted to dispel negative energy. At daybreak and sunset, guests are given an individually prescribed pungent ayurvedic herb concoction.
The day ends with a Satsang (yogic instruction) in front of a roaring fire, with talks on nutrition and philosophy. Dr Ramadas, of Vaidyagrama, an ayurveda hospital in Tamil Nadu, India, discusses digestive fire and the tenets of the ayurvedic diet, teaching guests to become more attuned to what their bodies need. More specifically, combining foods for optimal digestion. For example, this can mean not eating fresh fruit with dairy or grains, since they digest at different speeds. This helps avoid gas, bloating and other digestive woes.
Elsewhere, guest speaker Dr Therese Augsburger, a psychiatrist who once ran ayurvedic retreats in the Swiss mountains, puts the teachings into a Western context: “Ayurveda opens the mind to the bigger picture,” she says. “The Western approach is goal-oriented — it’s a straight line or an arrow. Ayurveda is a circle, a journey. It can frustrate us in the West, as we like a manual. We need to open our minds to something larger than us.”
Nuggets of Eastern wisdom are delivered in bitesize chunks as you sip herbal tea. “Yoga is controlled trauma teaching the body to deal with trauma in our lives through breathwork,” therapist Chiara Napolatano explains. And after a visit to nearby thermal springs to soothe muscles and relax the body, ayurvedic treatments go deeper, aiming to work on people’s emotions. “Abhyanga nadi, a full-body massage, improves arterial circulation, taking blood and nourishment from the heart to the limbs, but it also works on a subtle level, releasing emotions from the heart,” Chiara reveals. “The effect is not always immediate — things might emerge the next day or in your dreams.”
The day ends with a sleep ritual before bed, where a hot water bottle is tucked under the covers and a flask of hot milk is placed on the beside table with a quote from spiritual guides such as the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi: ‘When I run after what I think I want, my days are a furnace of stress and anxiety; if I sit in my own place of patience, what I need flows to me, and without pain.’ A sound bite of ancient wisdom for the modern world.
Technology will always have its place, but we also need to slow down and reconnect with our inner selves (and indulge in warm almond milk laced with cardamom and chamomile before bed).
Published in the Spa Collection 2024, distributed with the March 2024 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK).
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