Sha Wellness Clinic in Spain May Just Have Found the Cure for Burnout

Perched on a hill overlooking the Balearic Sea, the Sha Wellness Clinic ’s all-white, Modernist building stands in stark contrast to the rows of terra-cotta-roofed houses that surround it. Its simplicity could almost register as severe, were it not for the lush Mediterranean shrubs spilling over its terraces and the towering palms swaying near the doorway. This is a place that combines the trappings of a traditional resort (coastal setting, nice pool) with state-of-the-art wellness facilities, and once you step through the bright, marble-lined lobby, you realize what all the cool simplicity is about: it’s meant to offer you a clean slate. Modern-day workers’ feeling of being in perpetual survival mode is one reason wellness tourism has grown into a $639.4 billion industry. According to the American Psychological Association, 45 percent of adults report lying awake at night because of stress. As a sufferer myself, I became intrigued by purported remedies offered at Sha, which has been at the vanguard of wellness for more than a decade. The integrated- health experts there recently debuted photobiomodulation, a high-tech brain treatment developed to treat anxiety and improve mental health. Over the past few years, I’d started to feel fatigued. Even basic tasks on my to-do list required Herculean mental and emotional effort. My short-term memory rivaled that of Finding Nemo ’s beloved Dory, and restorative sleep was a totally foreign concept. Specialists at home had resorted to the decades-old solution of prescribing heavy-duty pharmaceuticals, but they hadn’t done much to help me build a sustainable routine. Frustration led me to El Albir, Spain, a quiet seaside town about 90 minutes south of Valencia, in the hopes that a stay at Sha could help me course-correct out of burnout through a blend of innovative Western medicine and natural Eastern therapies. If celebrities […]

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