RETREAT IN LUXURY
Awarded New Zealand’s Best Wellness Retreat, Resolution Retreats and Resilience Retreats founder, Joelene Ranby speaks to us from her Karapiro-based retreat. ‘Head of Healthy Habits’ is the hat that best fits Jolene, but that wasn’t always the case for this chartered accountant. Here she shares insights into her background and the live-in retreats.
How did the inspiration to run retreats come about?
Thanks to a lightning bolt moment I realised I needed to change my health journey. I couldn’t cook, didn’t exercise, and my staple diet was mint slice biscuits and sultana bran with condensed milk. I wanted to stop the snowball before it got too big, so started off making one change at a time. I then wanted to create a safe, understanding and supportive environment for other women keen to also redesign where their health journeys were heading. Resolution Retreats (created in 2015 and initially BOP based) has been operating from a purpose-built luxury retreat in Karapiro since 2019. It’s my passion and now my full-time job.
Who best benefits from Resolution Retreats?
Resolution Retreats is a weight loss health and wellness retreat exclusively for women. About half the guests come for weight loss as a key goal, others for things like stress, sleeplessness, or they have a health puzzle they can’t work out. We educate and dig deep into what is going on. Our mantra is progress not perfection.
What do the Resilience Retreats offer?
These were created with a focus on personal and professional resilience, after seeing a need to help organisations look after their people’s health and wellness. We run mixed classes, and ones for women only.
Any new offerings?
Next year we will introduce mother and daughter health, wellness and self care retreats. These will be about opening taboo subjects and manoeuvring around some of the difficult challenges mums and daughters face these days.
Some wisdoms to share:
• There are areas of wellness that aren’t about exercise and nutrition - these are happiness and sleep. If you can’t get those right, it’s hard to get the others sorted
• Accept things about yourself and work around them. If you have tried to change things and it hasn’t worked, try a different approach
• Set realistic expectations.