Dharma Centers~ Offering Holistic Healing and Wellness Retreats

A lot of Dharma centers are struggling to survive now, and this was happening before the pandemic. Buddhist Dharma is a complex series of long analytical teachings, logic and powerful training methods, that can take quite a few years, if not “lifetimes” to learn, let alone master. Does the Buddhist Dharma as it is, really work in the west, in 2020? Is the traditional body of teachings really grabbing the next generation, the millennials and beyond? There were many scandals over the past few years and there’s a marked trend away from organized religion, the “I know and you don’t” model, in general, and I suggest we consider evolving with the times, and re-examine what really helps people to heal and grow.

My husband is from Sweden and all over Europe they have these holistic wellness retreat centers that people go to de-stress. I think it was in one of Michael Moore’s movies that in Germany, if one is having job burnout, anxiety, they are mandated to go to a healing retreat to recharge. There seems to be a trend away from just Buddhism with the focus of top down dharma lectures and long monetized levels, to healing and wellness like some of these European holistic retreat models.

There is such a need for this in society, and there is a marked tendency away from these religious institutions in general, and a tendency toward earthy, grounded, body based, nature, “tribal” and healing based modalities. Spirituality is replacing Religion. For example: yoga, breath, sitting, simple affirmation mantras, oil massage and healing warm baths, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, trauma work, conscious communication and relationship healing, rebirthing, healthy eating and weight loss, somatic, Tibetan Medicine and Craniosacral, open senses running, nature and grounding to help with anxiety, could be offered and emphasized more at these holistic healing centers, and indeed is already the Dharma in essence, reinvented.

Here are some proposed tracks:

• Conscious Aging/Caring for Self and Others

• Weight loss/ balanced body and mind

• Conscious communication, the art of conversation, healing relationships

• Retreat, renew and recharge, sitting and nature bathing