St. Lucia’s Health & Wellness Retreat 2011
Retreat Date: Thursday November 17 – Sunday November 20, 2011
Venue: Soufriere, St. Lucia
Activity Venues: Jalousie Plantation, Stonefield Estate Resort Villas & Spa, Ladera Resort, Hummingbird Beach Resort, LaHaut Plantation, Hotel Chocolat
The Soufriere Foundation, in collaboration with the St. Lucia Tourist Board and other tourism partners, including local hoteliers, hosted the inaugural Health and Wellness Retreat in Soufriere, the EDEN OF THE CARIBBEAN. Milestone Development was proud to be the company of choice to organize this prestigious event.
The four-day event brought together several leading experts in Yoga, nutrition, and lifestyle coaching to offer a comprehensive wellbeing package. Yoga Master John Schumacher taught Iyengar yoga to yoga enthusiasts. William Spear educated participants on Feng Shui, Joan Spear had her audience in tears with her presentation on Awakening the Dreamer and Dr. Stephen Brewer delivered a profound seminar on Optimal Wellness.
Local instructors demonstrated our cultural flare. Luigi St. Omer taught art classes, Michelle Elliott taught pottery painting and Danielle Devaux thrilled her participants with the photography class.
The local Soufriere hotels spiced things up by giving cooking demonstration. Ladera, Hotel Chocolat and Jalousie Plantation all took part and had participants mouths watering.
Overall the retreat was a great success providing the participants with the tools to enhance their health and general well being.
Speaker’s Quotes:
“As health educators for more than thirty years, my wife and I were honoured to be a part of the first Health and Wellness Retreat in St. Lucia. Those communities wise enough to focus on preventative measures in the next few years will benefit enormously from events like this that carry such great promise to create a better life for St. Lucians. The old adage “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” comes to mind, since what we shared can hopefully inspire others to explore lifestyles that maintain wellness and prevent serious illness. The Soufriere Foundation, Senator Chastanet and all the local hoteliers, restaurant owners and organizers can be proud of this extraordinary effort that will not only boost tourism to your beautiful island paradise but also become a focal point for what is possible when a few committed individuals think long range with an understanding of the bigger picture. We are both very grateful to have played a small part in this inaugural event and look forward to returning to work more closely with organic growers, local entrepreneurs and other like-minded people who recognize the immeasurable value in lifestyle education. Thank you for this rare opportunity to be with such wonderful people in such a beautiful setting.”
William Spear
“I have never seen so many friendly happy people as I have in St. Lucia and I have been to several other islands. After several visits to other Caribbean islands I noticed that people were unhappy and this time around the friendliness and happy demeanour of the people was overwhelming.
Felt a great acceptance from the audience in terms of health. The amount of questions received afterwards and throughout the presentation was very much in keeping with what is happening in the world of health and wellness today.”
Dr. Stephen Brewer
“All of us are so fortunate to have been able to take part in the inaugural St. Lucia Health and Wellness Retreat. To the excellent organisation to the magical beauty of Soufriere and the Pitons, everything conspired to bring healing knowledge and an awakening experience to the participants.”
– John Schumacher
Iyengar Yoga instructor
“Morning Lisa .I personally enjoyed doing the class and the ladies were great sports . With most of these things it takes time to get them up and going .I would like to congratulate you on a job well done and thank you for inviting me to be part of such a lovely concept !”
Michelle Elliot-Rebo
Participants testimonials:
“- Good evening Lisa
I would like to congratulate you and your team and the SRDF on a very well organised and professionally run seminar. My only regret was that I did not have the time to attend more seminars.”
Heather Floissac
“- Hi Lisa,
I had the most amazing weekend at the Health and Wellness retreat. Unfortunately I couldn’t make all 4 days and just went to the Friday and Saturday. From my point of view the retreat was a superbly organised event, everything ran very smoothly and that’s pretty amazing for an inaugural event. I’m sure you had some glitches behind the scenes, but we all remained totally unaware of them. All those involved in the organisation worked tirelessly to ensure all the participants had a fabulous and relaxing time, so thank you to Milestone Development, Jill Hagar, Mairi Low, the staff of the Soufriere Regional Development Foundation and the staff of all the hotels and restaurants that we visited.
Yoga with John Schumacher was an incredible experience. I feel blessed to have been able to take some classes with him and fired up about my yoga practice as a result. His teaching style perfectly complements that of my teacher, Jill Hagar, and has also made me realise how lucky we are to have her in St Lucia. All the visiting lecturers were knowledgeable, informative and entertaining, I can honestly say that at no point in time did I feel tired or bored during their talks and I learned a lot from them. Thanks too to have to go to Dani Devaux for a fun and interesting photography class. She quickly adapted her prepared talk and demonstration when she realised that the only cameras we had were of the little point and shoot variety and made sure that we had fun and learned something about how to use our cameras better and develop our own photography skills. Hotel Chocolat, great demonstration and fabulous food! I really appreciated the fact that you promoted the local talent that we have in St Lucia and I know the other participants also loved the pottery and painting classes and thoroughly enjoyed the cooking demonstrations.
I’m a wedding planner in St Lucia and I know how stressful it is to make sure that everything goes smoothly for an event. In my book, you did yourself proud and you and your team should be commended for a job done exceedingly well. The key for me was to not feel stressed myself and the smooth organisation of the event made that my reality. Everyone, from the boat driver to the guys and girls ushering us around to the taxi drivers to the wait staff, were friendly, helpful and attentive.
I can’t wait until next year, I’ll definitely be there for all 4 days this time and as soon as I know the dates I’m blocking them off in my diary and saving my pennies!”
Thank you, Michele Ince
