With a growing number of women approaching the age of hormonal changes — by 2025, about 1.1 billion women worldwide will have experienced menopause — the travel industry is catering to a new niche: Women who want help dealing with everything from hot flashes to mood
Menopause retreats worldwide: where to go and what to expect
By Caren Osten Gerszberg
New York Times·
9 mins to read
The Preidlhof spa hotel in South Tyrol, Italy, has a weeklong menopause-wellness retreat offered during February, March, June and September. Photo / the Preidlhof spa hotel
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After a health screening, I was given a tailored agenda to nurture and balance my ageing, changing body. First up was a personalised strength training session — squats, lunges, planks and resistance band exercises — to remedy my joint pain and build bone.
For my excessively dry skin, I was given a collagen-boosting facial — collagen production decreases with the loss of estrogen that accompanies menopause — replete with serums and a mask for hydration.
To reduce inflammation, I trembled during a daily cold plunge, followed by 15 minutes in an infrared sauna.
The finale consisted of a 30-minute bio-hacking treatment, during which I wore thigh-high compression boots — think pulsating, vibrating currents moving up and down your legs — to enhance lymphatic drainage and relax sore muscles; listened to a guided meditation through headphones while wearing an eye mask; and experienced infrared light stimulation on my face, which is said to heal the cell renewal process and again, stimulate collagen.
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At the end, my entire body felt relaxed, but what it all added up to is hard to say.
Dr Lauren Streicher, a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University and host of the Menopause Podcast, is sceptical when it comes to claims that spa treatments will reduce the symptoms of menopause.
Streicher warns women to beware of medical claims made by spas. “It’s okay if you want to talk to other menopausal women, share information and get support,” she said. “The problem is when information is presented as if it’s scientific. It can be manipulative to say a smoothie will make your vagina less dry.”
If you’re seeking medical advice about your symptoms — which some destinations offer — Streicher advises knowing what specifically you are seeking to address, and recommends consulting with a licensed physician if you are considering long-term solutions, such as hormone replacement therapy.
Biggs Bradley said she decided to offer a menopause retreat because “so many conversations on our trips have steered to the physical changes of the 40s and 50s and how to navigate them. Women were starved for information.”
When it comes to menopause travel, Dr Heather Hirsch, founder of the Menopause and Midlife Clinic at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and author of Unlock Your Menopause Type, sees the greatest benefits in terms of self-care, community and education. “The fact that you’re carving out this time and resources for yourself, which women in midlife don’t do very often, is an important thing.”
There are all sorts of products claiming to reduce symptoms, and a retreat can be a good way to get ideas and test products before committing to a purchase. These getaways are unlikely to alleviate your consistent, long-lasting symptoms, but Hirsch said, “even if the infrared mask makes your skin feel great for a few weeks, it is the combination of self-care, community and education that will stay for much longer”.
Here are a few getaways with specific perimenopause and menopause programmes. What they all have in common is a focus on facing the inevitable hormonal changes that come with the ageing female body.
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The Kripalu Centre for Yoga and Health, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, hosted its first menopause-focused retreat in September 2023.
The weekend — guided by two members of Kripalu’s lead faculty — focused less on symptoms and more on adjusting to overall bodily change. There was a combination of discussion, sharing circles, yoga, breath practices, tools from Ayurveda (the holistic approach of India’s ancient medical system), and a fire ritual to celebrate the “journey of transformation”. The retreat includes meals and access to the centre’s grounds ($775 plus accommodations; rooms starting at $380).
The Javvu Spa at the Amilla Maldives Resort offers a four-day pause menopause retreat. Led by Claire O’Sullivan, a women’s health and nutrition coach, the retreat is structured around four themes — balance, move, relax and evolve.
In addition to one-on-one coaching, the retreat includes treatments such as reflexology and light therapy. There are yoga and meditation sessions, and seminars on intuitive movement, stress reduction and hormone balancing ($9547, including room, meals and treatments).
Indagare’s retreat (the company’s first to focus on midlife and menopause) took place at Canyon Ranch Berkshires in Lenox, Massachusetts, last October.
The five-day retreat was hosted by Dr Robin Noble, an OB-GYN, specialising in the menopausal transition. Daily agendas included private consultations and daily group sessions addressing the impact of hormonal shifts on sleep, mood, bone and heart health, metabolism, fitness and sexual activity.
Each morning, guests had the option to choose among Canyon Ranch’s offerings, such as yoga, hiking, meditation and spa treatments; afternoons and evenings are reserved for cooking classes and workshops on topics such as how to become your own health advocate, optimising sexual function and strategies for navigating life’s shifting roles (starting at $7263, including room, meals and activities).
The Raj Ayurveda Health Spa, in Fairfield, Iowa, offers a menopause programme using ayurvedic treatments. A five-day programme, offered year-round, begins with a private wellness consultation, including an ayurvedic pulse assessment from which a treatment plan is created.
Guests spend several hours a day in herbal body treatments to restore balance and remove impurities. There is time for yoga and meditation, and personalised sessions with resident experts to monitor progress and devise a take-home plan to help maintain daily routines for nutrition, herbal therapies, yoga and meditation. The Raj offers the choice of eating at a table with other guests or dining alone (starting at $6295, including room, meals and treatments).
Targeting “active, performance-minded women in and beyond the menopause transition,” the weekend-long retreat took place last November at Lake Nona Wave Hotel in Orlando, Florida. Led by a fitness coach-trainer and an orthopedic surgeon, it welcomed two dozen women seeking to address the health and fitness goals that shift during menopause so they can stay active and avoid injury.
The gathering focused on exercise, strength-training and nutrition, and included a full-body musculoskeletal analysis to look at movement patterns and areas of weakness. Activities also included suspension yoga, which is performed in a fabric sling, resistance and barbell training, as well as dancing (starting at $4035 including accommodations and some meals).
Les Margeurites is a five-day retreat based at a boutique hotel in Alet-les-Bains in southwestern France. The retreat is facilitated by a nurse and a therapist, who are working to change the narrative around perimenopause and menopause — not just the hormonal changes, but also how they impact women’s lives and relationships.
Capped at six women, the retreat will include workshops and coaching sessions, plant-based meals to build estrogen, meditation, massage, tincture-making with an herbalist and yoga. Retreats will be held in November, and in April and September 2024, starting at £1350 ($2764) including room and meals.
In 2005, Paula Gallardo and Tania Smith co-founded Mamaheaven, a retreat for new mothers. Fast forward nearly 20 years, and they are now running Menoheaven, twice-yearly retreats in October and May that gather up to 12 women at the Florence House, a Victorian inn one hour south of London.
With a naturopath, nutritionist and yoga teacher leading discussions, the retreat aims to “destigmatise and demystify” the symptoms of perimenopause and menopause. This three-day retreat includes sharing circles, organic meals, healing massages, yoga, cold-water swimming and workshops that cover topics from stress and sleep to libido and brain fog (starting at $1813, including room and meals).
The Preidlhof spa hotel in South Tyrol, Italy, has a week-long menopause-wellness retreat offered during February, March, June and September. The programme includes 22 treatments — ranging from massages and acupuncture to deep breathing and holistic coaching sessions.
The retreat offers medical wellness sessions, and spa treatments accompanied by real-time biofeedback and data analysis to assess biological age. There are dance and voice classes, forest bathing (a form of meditation in nature) and many outdoor trails nearby (€1987, not including room and meals; room and meals starting at €212).
Camiral, a wellness resort located an hour from Barcelona, Spain, will offer its five-day renew and harmonise retreat this month.
Each day focuses on a theme: Reconnect highlights the body-mind connection; energise focuses on movement, strengthening and ways to alleviate menopausal symptoms; nourish concentrates on ways to nourish the body to maximise bone density and cardiac health; recover concentrates on mindfulness and stress reduction; and grow features treatments and a debrief with a nutritionist around managing hormonal changes.
The retreat is led by a fitness specialist, a physician and a nutritionist, and includes treatments such as cryotherapy and hyperbaric oxygen therapy (starting at €2128, including room and meals).
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Caren Osten Gerszberg
©2023 THE NEW YORK TIMES
