The Hills are Alive . . . with the Sound of Wellness I am just arriving to Cesena Italy for this year’s Global Wellness Summit and I find myself reminiscing about the summit from two years ago in Kitzbuhel, Austria. Kitzbuhel, a small town in the Austrian countryside, was the perfect setting for a […]
This week, Intelligent Life magazine posted an article on their blog refuting the benefits of spas. Spas often take a bad rap as being a superficial luxury indulgence (“dedicated to narcissism” the Intelligent Life article says.) The article describes spas as “a mish-mash of promises” using a hodge-podge of modern technologies alongside ancient healing remedies […]
I am proud to welcome Sara Firman, BSc. MPhil. LMT, to The Psychology of Wellbeing. She is an independent spa therapist, consultant and writer who shares a her wonderful perspective on spa culture on her Vision Spa Retreat blog. Her unique perspective comes from working in clinical, spa and private settings as both a therapist and a manager in […]
Good news for the spa industry: The science of touch is exploding. Through my own work in the spa world, I’ve always been an advocate of getting more science to support the work of healing through touch. Previously on this blog, I’ve had articles about the effects of massage on health (see “Get Thee to […]
In the last several years, psychology has been flipped on its head with the growth and popularity of positive psychology. While psychology traditionally has focused on studying things we want less of such as depression and mental illness, positive psychology has focused on things we want more of: happiness, positive emotions, optimism, strengths, and meaning […]
This special Friday edition of The Psychology of Wellbeing features an essay by Dacher Keltner, Professor of Psychology at the University of California Berkeley, that originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center– Dacher Keltner is its executive editor. In this article (and the accompanying video,) Keltner elaborates on […]
I recently spoke at the New York Spa Alliance (NYSPA) annual symposium (see the SpaTrade blog here, and my blog on another session from the conference here). The theme of the symposium was “Pampering versus Wellness,” a debate which has been raging in the spa industry for the past few years. Actually, it hasn’t been […]
