Deepak Chopra Predicts The Future of Wellness Travel After Covid – Bloomberg

The $4.75 trillion wellness industry is all around us, Deepak Chopra would argue.

Its in the air you breathe, the trees in your backyard, the spa with a garden, even right in your pocket. And if you dont see it all those places just yet, you will soon.

Thats because the health guruspiritual adviser to Oprah Winfrey, founder of the humanitarian- and wellness-oriented Chopra Foundation, integrative medicine physician, and author of 90-plus bookssees wellness as an interconnected web of digital tools, individual soul-searching, and interpersonal experiences.

A relaxing massage at Chopra retreat

Source: Chopra

His work has him engaging in all of those fronts. During the pandemic hes organizedtwice-monthly group retreats at luxury resort Civana, where participants convene in the town of Carefree, Ariz.,for six days to rid their bodies of toxins and learn to tap into primordial sound meditation. (Sometimes he makes a personal appearance; other times he leaves the program in the hands of resort physicians.)

In Januaryhe releasedDigital Deepak, which uses artificial intelligence to offer spiritual guidance that feels like its coming straight from the master himself. For $70 a year,his Chopra app is putting meditation and self-care onto small screens everywhere; it came out in August on the Apple Store with Android still to come.

All this makes Chopra the leading authority on what wellness travel looks like amid the pandemicwhen we all need itbut may not be traveling muchand how it is poised to evolve in the near future.

Traveling in nature is one way to help build mental resiliency, Chopra says.

Photographer: massimo colombo/Moment RF

Some travelers will flock to the usual spotsthe Miravals and Canyon Ranchesto lose the weight theyve gained during the pandemic, but Chopra believes that more will seek out experiences that relate to spirituality instead. Of course people want to reinvent their bodies and resurrect their souls, Chopra says. But theyre looking for a reconnection to existence.

In the future well see travel combine wellness with exploring nature in all its amazing diversity: birdwatching, walking through rainforests, connecting with the life in the savannah, spiritual sites like Bali, he says. Youre going to see an influx of wellness travel for more than one reason.

All this relates to holistic mental health and building mental resiliency, Chopra says. In the last year, he says, the people whove found acceptance and opportunityrather than feelings of grief and losswere divided by their awareness and interest in fundamental reality or spirituality.

Experiences that connect us to nature, that assert our place in the world, and link us to others, he adds, are what make us mentally fit, helping us become accepting of challenges and able to grow in our personal and professional lives.

Attendees at one of Chopras retreats.

Source: Chopra

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Group travel amid a pandemic? Choprassold-out retreats, at Civana and elsewhere,illustrate that theres an appetite for itone thatwill likely grow in step with vaccinations and the rest of the travel industry.

Travelers are not just looking to shrink they're waistlines, either. Theyre looking to engage holistically with the world around them. That explains why some of the ideas that took shape in 2020greater awareness for climate change and the positive environmental impacts of staying home, an urgency around social and economic justice issues, the inequities of global health careare being incorporated into the way we think and talk about wellness. What we need now is collective conversation, Chopra says. This pandemic has given us an opportunity to create a more peaceful, healthy, and joyful world, but we have to rethink everything.

The best way for that to happen, he argues, is through the kind of intentional human connection that happens in intimate group settings, removed from the stresses and anxieties of our day-to-day. The retreats at Civana includeAyurvedic spa treatments as well as health consultations, meditation classes, and whole health education" classes;another, at the Fairmont Mayakoba in Mexico, helps participants find themselveswith the help ofPranayama breathwork and Chakra toning.

Trying to connect over Zoom is "like trying to eat a meal by eating the menu, Chopra says.

Photographer: LeoPatrizi/Getty Images

When people are in contact with each other, Chopra says, it influences and strengthens our limbic, or emotional, brain. Examples of that include real physical contact like that of a mother and baby, hugs, embraces, and even direct eye contact, he adds.

Exercising your limbic systema set of brain structures that includes your hypothalamus, frontal lobe, and hippocampus, all responsible for regulating memory, emotion, and behaviorcomes with many benefits.When your limbic system feels disconnected from others you feel depressed, he says. And if you feel connected with societies and communities, there is something that happens called limbic resonance, which decreases inflammation and anxiety.

None of this, he explains, can be accomplished over Zoom. Its like trying to eat a meal by eating the menu, he says. The menu gives you an idea what it tastes like, but you need to be given the actual meal.

Kyoto, Japan, is on Chopra's spiritual bucket list.

Photographer: Anton Petrus/Moment RF

Each trip you take doesntneedto be builtaround spa services and meditation classes, but Chopra encouragestravelers to prioritize places that reduce their existing anxieties rather than add to them. Every vacation needs to be a restoration of the spirit, he says.

That means a repudiation of overly commercial destinations, which lead people to end up even more burnt out than when they left. If he were to build a spiritual bucket list, the places on it would be Kyoto and the islands off of Japan, Indonesia, and the islands of the South Pacific. These are the types of places, he says, that dont steal your attention to a consumer product or service. They invite your attention because you fall in love with the experience itself.(Most of these remain closed to a majority of international travelers, so plan well ahead.)

Shiratani Unsui Gorge, Yakushima Island,Japan.

Photographer: Ippei Naoi/Moment RF

Its not just that these destinations are more focused on shrines than shopping. Theyre also places to slow down, intentionally focus your senses, and restore a practice of mindfulness. When is the last time you listened to a song and wondered when it would end, or read a poem and wondered when it would finish?Chopra asks.Thats our attention span now. We read emails and speak to people and gobble sandwiches at the same time. Were addicted to technology.

Luckily, its possible to find these types of restorative experiencesin your own backyard, whether you live inthe Pacific Northwest or in Queensland, Australia.

But these days, the anxieties around travel are greater and more complicated than ever before, as people navigate vaccination requirements, Covid caseloads, border policies, and frequently changing rules and guidance.

For that, Chopra turns to a tried-and-true mantraone that hes told his children daily throughout their lives. Find your moksha,he says, employing the Sanskrit word for freedom or liberation.

Make today more uncertain than yesterday, he continues. Once you live with uncertainty, nothing ever goes wrong.

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Deepak Chopra Predicts The Future of Wellness Travel After Covid - Bloomberg