Paula Hurlock helps women to achieve wellness with one-day retreats

It’s hump day! The middle of the workweek and the agenda is filled with meetings, making deadlines, trying to eat right, exercising, and fulfilling spousal or maternal duties all the way to the weekend. It all can seem like an impossible mission, lacking any real quality time for yourself. Paula Hurlock is encouraging her fellow females to unwind, engage in self-love and refill their cups with her women’s wellness one-day retreat.

The treat is specifically designed for women who are coming into awareness about natural healing, those who are interested in a lifestyle change, or those who are suffering from anxiety, stress, or are generally overwhelmed. The one-day wellness immersion includes spending a beautiful day in nature for quiet reflection and introspection through yoga, meditation, and educational talks.

“One of the things that I recognised during the pandemic was that just being still and being immersed in nature was valuable in terms of balancing out the body. The earth carries such a strong vibration of healing. If you were troubled or not feeling well and you went and spent some time at the beach or by a river or laid under a tree, you would feel much better,” the creator and founder of Wellness Experience Jamaica told The Gleaner.

For Hurlock, wellness means happiness, finding stability and harmony with the well-being of the mind, body, and spirit. “It is the ability to deal with everyday situations with grace, poise, and ease. Being fit, flexible, and agile in body and mind. Being adaptable to any situation,” she explained further, noting that being too rigid or set in your way is an indication of imbalance, which results in the beginning of unhappiness and anxiety.

AFFORDABLE ONE-DAY TREAT

But what she discovered in her own findings was that the average Jamaicans, particularly women, weren’t able to afford the luxury of relaxation and rejuvenation. So, Hurlock decided to make it accessible via a one-day treat.

The wellness enthusiast recalled growing up in a nuclear family, whose members all strove for excellence. Her days were simple yet structured and the expectations from her parents were unspoken yet understood. What she could remember vividly was spending quality family time by the beach.

But things took a turn for the worse as she got older. And she found herself introducing wellness into her life, due to illness. “I was working in an imbalanced way; focused on my career to the exclusion of everything else. So there was no sleep, very little or no food, lots of stress, lots of driving, lots of deadlines, setting lots of goals and hitting them to the complete detriment of my body,” the fashion designer highlighted.

As she got older, what she was once able to do in a blink of an eye as a youth was no longer the case. She had anaemia with fibroids, and developed depression associated with a B12 deficiency; toxin build-up in the body became evident in her skin colour, which was darker and ash grey.

“My ability to cope and deal with stress was diminished as I was always sleep-deprived and malnourished. Nerves were strong and I would get angry at the drop of a hat,” she revealed.

Her journey took a turn for the better when she crossed paths with a naturopath. Now her wellness routine includes silent meditation, her action of the day. Her second order of business is to go for a brisk and challenging walk in nature. There, she clears her mind, oxygenating the body while exercising it. “Movement is medicine, oxygen is medicine,” she enthused. Medicine, for her, is also found in food; herbal teas, green juices, fruits and vegetables, and soups.

Nature, Hurlock discovered, is a healing modality. When persons aren’t feeling well, this is due to “…an imbalance in their energy field before it registers in their physical body. If the energy body can be cleared and nourished then the likelihood of becoming unwell is diminished.” She aspires to hit reset with her retreats.

“It’s an opportunity for women to access the beauty, luxury, and serenity of fresh fruits, fresh air, clean rivers and other bodies of water, and beautiful trees and nature. One of our mandates is getting Jamaicans to recognise the value of where we are as a healing space and being able to take advantage of it,” Hurlock shared.

Over the weekend, the dedicated team explored womb wellness at Hermosa Cove in St Ann. “Your womb is magnetic. What we created was a space for relaxation and beauty, but what we got was a potent collective healing experience created by those gathered there; for each other. Each woman came with a strong intention that they ‘wombifested’. There was openness, honesty, sharing, and clearing of these traumas held for so long in the womb space.”

There is another exhilarating retreat scheduled for this weekend, September 10.

krysta.anderson@gleanerjm.com