RELAX & RESET
Peace. Wellbeing. Mindfulness. Healthful eating. Whatever you are seeking, a visit to Elysia Wellness Retreat delivers it in spades.
The Elysia Wellness Retreat is a welcome sanctuary in a hectic world.
Elysia Wellness Retreat is famous across the country as a wellness retreat par excellence. Designed as the perfect place to ‘reset’, most visitors are looking for a break from the grind; an opportunity to slow down, eat well, cleanse body, mind and spirit, and often get in better physical shape.
Set in 10 acres in Pokolbin, a couple of hours’ drive north of Sydney, Elysia means, fittingly, Heaven.
Guests are accommodated in villas decorated in soothing neutral colours, with their own private balcony. Sitting on mine looking out across the serene Hunter Valley, there is very little noise bar the chirping of birds and the croaking of frogs. Several kangaroos hop lazily around the outskirts of the resort, nibbling contentedly on the grass – bright green after an unusually rainy summer.
I take a stroll around the resort and despite there being 40 guests in residence, I barely see a soul. The grounds are designed in an oval shape
Elysia’s Day Spa offers over 50 therapies and treatments.
with the villas dotted around the edges. In the centre is Meditation Hill, a 50-metre hill atop which tai chi is held every morning at sunrise. Sitting up there myself, in the afternoon sun, I have a 360-degree view of the countryside. The air is perfectly still. The contrast to my busy city existence could hardly be more stark.
“Some people come here because they want to make friends,” Aly Chapman, Elysia’s resident counsellor tells me. “Others don’t want to speak to someone all week. Both are fine.” Most of the guests at Elysia come on their own – up to 60 per cent. “People come back again and again – often on their own, but also as friends; mothers and daughters; even fathers and sons,” says Aly.
The resort has a fully equipped gym, tennis courts, indoor and outdoor pools, a Wellness Centre for physical therapy and a luxurious day spa for enjoying restorative beauty treatments and relaxing in the steam room and jacuzzi. There’s as much or as little physical activity as you’d like – in the shape of tennis/running/swimming tuition, yoga, Pilates, walks, stretch classes, cardio sessions and kung fu.
“People have been so overwhelmed and stressed by the past year. Here, you can’t help but unwind,” says Mel Ingram, clinical health services manager and retreat physiotherapist. “We can’t communicate with our loved ones as much as we used to in person, so many of us have become addicted to having our phones with us all the time, in our hands.” For this reason, Elysia has a gently enforced ‘no phones’ policy (at least outside your villa). You can still get in touch with loved ones in the privacy of your room, although a total break with the outside world is encouraged.
A few of the guests I meet are bereaved and seeking some quiet time to recover in a peaceful, healing environment. Most of the people I chat to during my stay are here for a variation on the theme of ‘reset/ recharge/reintroduce healthy habits/ take a break from modern life’. And almost everyone I talk to has visited Elysia at least once before and has returned for another break from the ‘hurry and worry’. Every day begins with tai chi, followed by a brisk walk or deep water running. After breakfast and throughout the day, there are a host of seminars on offer with titles like Building Resilience, Eating for Health and Women’s Wellness.
TAKING TIME OUT OF LIFE
During my week at Elysia, I learn that it’s okay – indeed advisable – to take time out for yourself to just ‘be’, breathing mindfully and not outwardly ‘achieving’ anything. A novel concept for someone who’s always run their life at 200km/h. I also learn about neuroplasticity and rewiring our brain to have healthy responses to stress instead of automatically reaching for alcohol or a sugary treat when the going gets tough, or taking our mood out on our nearest and dearest.
“GUESTS COME IN, FRAZZLED. FIVE DAYS LATER, THEY HAVE A LIGHTNESS OF SPIRIT.” JAYE HOELSCHER
I am not surprised to learn that food is the most abused anxiety drug, and that physical exercise is the most-underused antidepressant. And at a seminar on dealing with stress, the importance to our mental health of oxytocin, the hormone of love, trust and all things warm and fuzzy, is reinforced for all of us – involving things like spending time with people you love, forming and nurturing relationships and physical touch.
Another seminar deals with the breath and how inhaling and exhaling correctly can improve both our physical and mental wellbeing.
Tai chi and meditation teacher Brad Thompson assures us, “If you can train yourself to be calm under physical stress by using your breathing slowly, calmly and diaphragmatically, any other kind of stress is a piece of cake.”
Vitality and good health emanate from both Thompson and from Elysia’s resident nutritionist, Gina Burn. She has plenty of easy-to-follow advice for optimal nutritional health, including keeping a bottle of plain water nearby all day as it transports nutrients and oxygen to our cells, and substituting your 3pm energy slump sugary treat for a chai tea and piece of fruit.
“It’s a journey,” she says during her Eating for Health talk. “You won’t achieve it in a week or a month. But if you consciously eat more fibre, fruit, vegetables, nuts and seeds, improved health will take care of itself.”
Sous-chef Corryne Parkhill has worked with the wellness retreat for 13 years and has had a big hand in developing many of the delicious menus at Elysia. The resort has its own veggie and herb garden that supplies the kitchen. Paying a visit, I spot cucumber, zucchini, lettuce, beetroot, beans, broccoli, kale, chilli and pumpkin, all of which have graced my plate this week. Edible flowers sit alongside herbs such as parsley, basil, chives, lemongrass and sage.
A WHOLEFOOD DIET
The meals at Elysia, says Parkhill, constitute “a wholefood diet, mostly organic, and increasingly sustainably farmed and grown. The menu features a large variety of fruits and vegetables, plus chicken and fish, and we make seasonal changes to it twice a year.”
Meals are flexible in that you can ask for bigger portions if you are hungry, or half portions if you are trying to shed kilos. There is also optional morning and afternoon tea every day (my favourite snack was a deliciously creamy banana smoothie). Jaye Hoelscher, guest experience and program lead, says: “The aim is to make the food exciting, interesting and accessible. As well as eating from the garden, we also have close relationships with local growers and producers. Our chefs are really interested in providing accessible food experiences. What they want to do is explore wholefood in a way you can look at it and say, ‘This tastes amazing AND I could do it at home’.”
As well as seeking improved physical health through movement and eating well, many visitors to Elysia are seeking guidance with mental health issues. Hoelscher says, “I feel privileged to be a part of those healing journeys that happen here. People feel safe and comfortable to explore whatever is on the table for them. Everybody has a story.”
Although we are all indeed here to do some work on ourselves – physically, mentally or spiritually – humour is never very far away and the staff members ensure there is also “a lightness and a joy” at the retreat. “Around 30 to 40 per cent of our guests are return visitors,’ says Hoelscher. “We have known some clients for years; people do love a sense of familiarity and community. Whatever it is they are going through, we deliver that.”
COVID-19 meant higher numbers wishing to visit Elysia, which won Oceania’s Best Wellness Retreat at the 2018 World Spa Awards. “We experienced a big boom as a result of COVID-19 and we had to turn people away,” says Hoelscher. “But it doesn’t feel crowded. Even when we are at full capacity, you can be the only person doing laps in the pool.”
In her 14 years with Elysia, she never ceases to be amazed at the transformations achieved by guests.
“We see them coming in looking frazzled, then five days later their eyes are shining, their skin is clearer and they have a lightness of spirit.
“That’s the guest giving themselves the opportunity to step out of the hectic lifestyles, off the treadmill and into a place that is focused on health and happiness.”