Cristina and Ángel, managers and owners of Experiencia Wellness, have 16 years of experience in the thermalism sector and 28 years in the wellness sector (Yoga, meditation, mindfulness, relaxation) being, also, trainers in all their services.
At the moment the company is in a digitization process to create customized trainings of our services for the personnel of the thermal centers, and thus to be able to make them arrive most of the training in an online way and the practical part in a face-to-face way.
Explain a little more about your vision, and what led you to create Experiencia Wellness...
Experiencia Wellness aims to occupy an important place in the Wellness of society, offering activities, multi-day retreats, and training.
Our vision is to generate a milestone in the life of each user who enjoys our Wellness services. To create experiences that generate a before and after in the development of people. Beyond the experiential reality of each person, the transformation occurs when changing the way of seeing life.
Our mission is to generate integral wellness in people, covering the physical, mental, and emotional dimensions. To this end, it connects people with the natural environment (forests and hot springs), facilitates states of introspection, abandons the burdens, and leads processes of personal improvement.
Do you think it is important that there are activities and therapies around the waters: spas, spas, thalasso, etc.? Why?
Before COVID-19, wellness and health tourism had already been growing exponentially worldwide, motivated by a general greater physical, mental, and environmental concern due to the dynamics and a society with a continuous frenzied routine.
The forced pause that the pandemic meant, also made me reflect on the importance of health and well-being, both physical and emotional. This has led to a health and wellness tourism market recovering faster than other types of tourism, achieving greater prominence.
It is also evident that we are living in times of change, to which the sector must adapt to respond to immediate needs by creating new business opportunities.
As part of health tourism, wellness tourism aims to improve physical and psychological balance. It is not a treatment that people go to for ill health, but (often) seeks to get to know and adopt healthy habits, which can change the quality of life.
These two concepts -health tourism and wellness tourism- are often separated, as they are considered incompatible. In addition, there seems to be a witch hunt against therapies erroneously known as "alternative."
Within wellness services, there are ample possibilities that are by no means alternatives to health therapies, but complementary to them, especially when it comes to disease prevention and the promotion of health and healthy habits.
The creation of healthy habits and routines is a basic need today. In this field, the eastern techniques-currently on the rise-are an answer. We are not only talking about applications in senior programs; at present, problems such as anxiety, stress, muscle tension, headaches, insomnia, depression, etc. are increasingly common in lower age groups.
In addition, it is clear that the thermal centers have to adapt to the new tendencies and, therefore, renew their clientele beyond the programs of social thermalism, by means of new activities that bring the younger people to the benefits that their waters can contribute to them.
From our company Experiencia Wellness, we offer Wellness services in the form of Thermal Yoga®, Relaxation with Sound Therapy (quartz bowls, Tibetan bowls, gongs, koshis, cymbal, ocean drum), and Wellness Retreats (with an extensive program of activities over several days).
Among your activities, which one or ones benefit the most from the thermal waters? Why?
Thermal Yoga® is our star activity. In addition, as part of this activity, we perform relaxation techniques with sonotherapy inside the thermal water.
Both people who practice this activity on a regular basis, as well as those who practice it sporadically, obtain benefits in their quality of life in the short term.
Our audience covers a wide age range, both because of the appeal of yoga among the youngest, since it is so fashionable, and because of sound therapy, which is a pleasure for the senses. Although there are more and more studies on the health effects of this technique, our focus of work is prevention, an area in which we are specialists, with a history of 28 years of experience.
Since we teach Indoor Yoga and Yoga in thermal water we can evaluate the differences between the 2 styles. At this point, it should be noted that Thermal Yoga® is an adaptation made after having acquired training in thermalism. Although it is developed with a focus on health promotion and healthy habits, it requires knowledge about the different thermal centers, types of waters, effects, temperatures, contraindications, etc. to be able to do a good job safely. Thermal water is therapeutic in itself, so to work with it, it is necessary to have a specific preparation.
It is worth highlighting 2 positive aspects of Thermal Yoga®:
- To the benefits of yoga are added the benefits of thermal water
- Because of the flotation effect and the temperature of the hot water (over 36 degrees), both mobility exercises and relaxation exercises are much easier to perform. For overweight people it is an ideal way to practice yoga.
And a negative aspect:
- The difficulty in maintaining still postures, requires more concentration and balance. On the other hand, they are 2 aspects that are developed with practice.
Tell us a little more about the activities you do in the thermal baths of Ourense and spas in the area.
In the Thermas de Ourense we have done Yoga Termal®, here called Ioga Termal, from 2016 to the present. In pre-pandemic we have even had groups of 70 people. In these cases, the techniques that are selected stand out for their simplicity of execution and for not involving risks, since it is very difficult to control all the people at the same time. Because of the way we work, at all times we guide each movement so that the postures are a consequence of the whole technique, avoiding having to make corrections or adjustments.
It has always been a success the Thermal Ioga, I would almost dare to say that it is already part, even if just a little bit, of the differentiating thermal tourist attraction of the city.
We are also at the Caldas de Partovia Spa, 2 days a week giving 2 classes of 1 hour in a row, so we have 4 groups, with people attending 1 day a week and people attending 2 days a week.
At Balneario de Cortegada we are carrying out a monthly session of 2 hours, where we go a little deeper into relaxation with sound therapy. The activity takes place on weekends.
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