Diving into the world of wellness travel, this episode presents a captivating exploration of how our travel choices can directly influence our overall well-being. Zoa introduces the concept of the Wellness+Travel Profile, a comprehensive framework that helps individuals identify their unique travel preferences and wellness needs. This profile is built upon seven essential aspects: space, speed of travel, movement, mental flexibility, temperature, digestion of life, and stability, each accompanied by thought-provoking questions that encourage self-reflection.

Through the lens of real client experiences, Zoa shares the transformative power of personalized travel planning. For example, Amelia, who faced challenges with stress and connection, found healing through a nurturing retreat tailored to her wellness profile. Conversely, Matilda sought inspiration and movement, leading her to a carefully curated travel plan that balanced exploration with stability. These rich narratives underscore the importance of tailoring travel experiences to individual needs, ensuring that every journey contributes positively to our health and vitality.

Listeners are invited to take part in their own wellness journey by engaging with the Wellness+Travel Profile quiz, which serves as a fun and insightful tool to discover how they can optimize their travels for better health outcomes. This episode encapsulates the essence of intentional travel—it's not just about where we go, but how we travel and the choices we make that can elevate our wellness and enrich our lives. Whether you're a seasoned traveler or just dreaming of your next getaway, this discussion is sure to inspire you to travel in a way that celebrates and enhances your well-being.

Take The Wellness+Travel Profile Quiz: intentional-vitality.com/quiz

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Find Zoa:

Zen and Vitality with Zoa (zenandvitality.com)

Intentional Vitality Retreats (intentional-vitality.com)

Music Credit goes to Lemon Music Studio at: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4XWZhZ32YrVV5lvpF7cr1E?si=tnbSklR7SJyPNKiHP4MbHA

Welcome to Sustain youn Vitality, the podcast that gives you a nurturing kick in the ass so you can take action.

Every day to feel better, not older.

Your lifestyle holds the power to change how you feel and no matter your age or health issues, you are in the driver's seat.

I'm your host, Zoa Connor and I am a PhD level physicist, a well being lifestyle alchemist, a travel strategist and a retreat leader.

Zenin Vitality with Zoa is my functional wellness studio.

Join me for an Intentional Vitality Retreat for a whole new way to use travel to support your well being.

I'm here to help you figure out.

How to lower your stress, increase your energy, put yourself into a healing state, boost your drive and pleasure in life, prevent disease, and feel the best you ever have in your whole life with no regrets later.

Let's go.

This episode of Sustain your Vitality is all about your travel identity or what I call your Wellness plus Travel Profile.

Career consultants make use of a variety of personality and aptitude assessment tools that describe you so they can work better with you to identify your very best path forward to a more satisfying career.

Personal trainers put you through your paces to understand your strengths, weaknesses, flexibility and your body's movement patterns.

After that, they can design a fitness program that builds you up to reach your exercise and body goals.

Medical doctors deploy a whole collection of diagnostic tools designed to quantify your health and supply information used to make a health diagnosis.

So as a travel strategist and a certified travel coach, I also have a set of tools that I use when helping clients with putting travel to work to improve their well being and I use these tools when I design the customized private and group retreats that I offer through Intentional Vitality Retreats.

The first tool I recommend is my Wellness plus Travel Profile quiz.

This little quiz considers the seven aspects of travel that we use as a first step to deciding where you should travel to and what you should do there.

So let's talk about these seven travel aspects.

They are space, speed of travel, movement, mental flexibility, temperature, digestion of life, and stability.

We'll go through them one at a time.

The first one is space.

So here we're thinking about questions like do you need to be left alone a fair amount during the day and night or do you want to be around people a lot?

Is solo travel good for you or do you prefer group travel?

Do you like your accommodations to be petite and cute and cozy or do you want to have a plenty of internal space to move around inside?

Do you need access to the outdoor air or to easily take a step out into nature?

Do you need to see the horizon?

Do you want to see 100 miles away from your window?

Or does looking at the neighboring building give us a sense of coziness that you like?

The second travel aspect is the speed of your travel so fast or slow.

Do you want to hop around several time zones at once or do you want to stay steady and support your circadian rhythm and sleep?

Do you want to have an extra long travel day so you can kind of get it all over with, arrive and get settled, or would you rather split up your travel into small bites, maybe four or six hours long?

The third travel aspect is movement.

Here we're talking about your body's movement fast or slow.

How well do you sit?

Do you need to get up and move around every few hours or every few minutes?

Do you need to stop frequently if you're in the car or avoid long flights?

Is a train a better option so that you can get up and move around whenever you need?

Do you never stop moving and so it's hard to sit still at all?

All?

Is it hard to get moving and get all the walking done that is involved in airline travel?

Do you get tired before you get even halfway to your gate?

The third movement is important for knowing how you should travel in order to keep your body feeling good.

The fourth travel aspect is mental flexibility.

Here we're talking about spontaneous or planned.

So do you desire to be guided through your trip or do you want to be free to be spontaneous?

Which one satisfies your mind and your energy levels?

Do you normally feel tied to a calendar and tethered in life?

Do you desire to be decision free or to be fully in charge of your decisions?

Which one satisfies your brain?

Do you need to conserve your energy and reduce decision fatigue?

Do you feel competent and joyful and prioritizing your own needs over yielding to others?

The fifth travel aspect is temperature.

Hot or cold.

This is both you and your environment.

So if you are in the northern hemisphere, do you head south at the first sign of cold temperatures outside?

Do you head indoors if it gets a little chill in the air?

Do you hide from the sun because it makes you too hot?

Do you have chronic inflammation because that will make you hot all the time?

Do you keep the thermostat set pretty low so you can sleep and not wake up at night sweating?

Does the idea of purposely going to where there is snow outside create confusion in your mind?

Why would anyone go to where there's snow does the idea of visiting the desert make you say no thank you and run for a cold shower?

The sixth travel aspect is digestion of life.

So here we're talking about fuel and fire.

What will feed your personal vitality?

Yes, food is an aspect here, but this is about more than food.

Do you need to see and experience a lot of new things because you have felt like life is stagnant and you've been stuck?

Do you need to be inspired?

Do you need to tune out the world for more than just an hour long yoga practice?

Because you're saturated with all the things you have to do and all the things that are around you?

Are you full and need chance to digest or are you hungry for more life?

The seventh travel aspect is stability.

And here we're talking about depth versus breadth.

For your trip, do you want to stay for a long time in one place so that you have chance to immerse fully in that location?

Or do you want to sample many places by moving around frequently?

Do you want to set down routes and return to the same place over and over?

Or would you rather have acquaintances and memories from as many countries and cultures as possible?

These seven travel aspects are part of your Wellness plus travel profile and we use your profile to help you plan your trips so they can be more supportive of your wellness.

Let me give you some examples of clients that I have worked with and how we have used their Wellness plus travel profile successfully.

So the first client is Amelia.

Now, Amelia is a perimenopausal woman, a wife, a mother of three.

She hasn't had a full night's sleep in over 10 years.

Her marriage is a struggle, her oldest child has a chronic illness and she and her family live in a small apartment with two big dogs.

She was far from family, but had recently moved to a new state.

She had not yet replaced her long local friendship network with a new one.

So her Wellness plus travel profile agreed with exactly what you're already thinking.

She needs a community.

She also needs some space.

So for her private well being metamorphic intensive, I brought her to my space, to my functional wellness studio to join the amazing ladies in my studio community.

She participated in group classes and engaged in impactful connecting conversations.

Our one on one sessions were done in rocking chairs.

With a cool drink in her hands, she gazed and sat across.

Well, she didn't sit across from the lake.

She sat in front of the lake and gazed across the lake.

She took walks in nature, she browsed for healthy snacks and she did it all by herself.

The retreat I arranged for her provided the social connection she was missing, the space to think that she was craving a connection to nature that did not require getting in a car first and a chance for her nervous system to recalibrate.

Now, Matilda, client number two is completely different.

Matilda is a 20 something young woman.

She grew up in a rural area close to suburbia and you needed a car to go anywhere.

Just as she was getting ready to jump out into adult life, pandemic hit, illness hit.

So she needed to travel for inspiration and to generate opportunities she wanted to take in the world, but at a rate that her nervous system could keep up with.

Her Wellness plus Travel Profile indicated that she needed time to immerse and explore, but had a strong desire to keep moving.

So daily walks and excursions into both nature and society blended with staying a month at a time in a comfortable stable apartment so she could maintain movement without carting her luggage to new places every few days.

Now, Amelia and Matilda are not complete opposites, but they had such different travel and wellness needs.

If I had given them a cookie cutter trip plan, one or both would have been miserable the whole time and come home feeling worse than when they left.

Their customized travel plans supported their nervous system states, their social needs, their ability to process life and their surroundings, and their internal energy budgets.

Their Wellness plus Travel profiles offered terrific guidance during our work together and for their future trip planning.

So that's why I created the Wellness plus Travel Profile Quiz.

And so with just a few minutes of your time you can also uncover your travel identity using the framework provided by your profile.

Your next trip can be planned to support your holistic wellness with ease.

After using your Wellness Travel Profile, if you're ready to step it up one more notch then you can schedule your Wellness plus Travel Strategy session where together we will identify seven changes to make to trips so that they better support your personal well being goals.

We can work with either a past trip on how it could have gone better or we can work on the next trip you are planning so that it can make you feel like a goddess.

If you liked what you just heard and want more, you can check out.

My book Wellness in Sustainable Travel and Embodied Practices for the Midlife Earth Conscious Woman.

Or you can check out one of.

My two websites using the links in the show notes.

I have two great ways for you to start working with me.

I would love for you to take my Wellness plus Travel Profile quiz and.

Discover which Greek Goddess travels like you do.

You will get tips for planning your next trip sent directly to your email.

I would love to meet you with a free new client wellness consultation where we can discuss what working with me might look like for you.

The Show Notes have the links for both the quiz and my calendar to make an appointment.

If the Sustain youn Vitality Podcast is helping you understand what you need to feel fabulous in every way with the least amount of effort, please share the show with someone who also needs it.

Sharing is easy, just use the sharing link in the Show Notes.

The Sustain your Vitality podcast is a gift from Zen and Vitality with Zoa LLC and Intentional Vitality Retreats based in the State of Maryland, usa.

All the podcast things planning, recording, editing and producing have all been done by me, Zoa Connor, Ph.D. even though you can call me doctor, I'm not a medical professional and your safety is your responsibility.

By listening to this podcast and understanding any movement, nutrition, lifestyle or health protocols discussed, you understand and agree to take full responsibility for your actions.

Zen and Vitality with Zoa are not responsible for any injuries or issues that may occur.

This podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for personalized medical, wellness, nutrition, lifestyle or movement and fitness advice.

Always practice any fitness or movement related activities in a safe environment.

I make no claims about the effectiveness of the techniques or protocols discussed or any specific results you may achieve.

I recommend you consult with your health care professional before changing your diet, exercise, routine or health care plan.

Zenin, Vitality with Zoa and the guests of this podcast are not liable for any injuries or health problems that may arise from following the information presented.