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Digestion & the gut3Weight & metabolic health3Back, neck & joints3Detox & the annual reset3

With a diagnosis

Chronic & rheumatic pain2After illness3Longevity & prevention3

Where you are

Menopause & perimenopause3Fertility & preconception1A first retreat3Travelling alone3Going together3

By problem and place

Ayurveda retreats in IndiaThe thermal kur retreats in AustriaThe thermal kur retreats in CzechiaThe thermal kur retreats in GermanyLongevity retreats in JapanLongevity retreats in SwitzerlandEvery list →
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15 concerns, each answered with what helps, what a fortnight can and cannot do, and where the evidence stops.

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Asia

KeralaIndiaRishikeshIndiaThe Ayurveda coastSri LankaBhutanBhutanUbudIndonesiaKoh SamuiThailandBeppuJapanOkinawaJapan

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Baden-BadenGermanyKarlovy VaryCzechiaBad GasteinAustriaQuiberonFranceMontreuxSwitzerlandTyrolAustria

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The Nicoya peninsulaCosta Rica

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The atlas

Every destination, the season each one is genuinely best in, and the months we would talk you out of.

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The houses

Somatheeram Ayurveda VillageIndiaKalari KovilakomIndiaCarnoustie Ayurveda & Wellness ResortIndiaAnanda in the HimalayasIndiaSix Senses VanaIndia
Barberyn ReefSri LankaSantani Wellness ResortSri LankaAmankoraBhutanCOMO Shambhala EstateIndonesiaFivelements Retreat BaliIndonesia

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The properties the world has actually heard of — and which of them we can book for you.

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Okinawa, Japan

Longevity retreats in Okinawa

Which houses in Okinawa treat longevity seriously, the right season, and the minimum stay worth booking.

Houses
1
How long
Seven to fourteen nights at a clinic — the diagnostics alone take several days. For the Blue Zone route, ten nights and a hire car.

What we are treating

I am well. I would like to stay that way, and I would like some data.

The fastest-growing category in this market, and the one with the widest gap between the good and the ridiculous.

At the serious end this is preventive medicine with a hotel attached: several days of genuine diagnostics — bloods, imaging, body composition, cardiovascular and metabolic assessment — read by physicians, followed by a programme built on the results and a protocol for the years afterwards. That is a real product and it is priced accordingly.

At the other end it is a supplement drip and a cryotherapy chamber, sold on the word itself. The test is simple and worth applying: does the programme measure you before it prescribes, and does it measure you again at the end? If not, it is a spa.

The other honest route into this is not a clinic at all. The places where people demonstrably live longest — Okinawa, Nicoya — are not selling anything, and going to look at how they actually eat and move is a cheaper and more durable education than most protocols.

What actually helps

  • longevityFull diagnostic work-up read by physicians, with the programme written from the results rather than chosen from a brochure. The distinction between this and a spa is the laboratory.
  • mayrThe metabolic and digestive half of the same argument, at a fraction of the price, with laboratory work at both ends.
  • ayurvedaRasayana is a preventive tradition rather than a curative one and has been for two thousand years. Taken annually, which is how its own culture uses it.

What a programme actually does

  • Several days of diagnostics before anything is prescribed.
  • Numbers at the start and numbers at the end, with a physician who explains both.
  • A protocol for the year, and the assumption you will come back.
  • A great deal of unglamorous advice about sleep, muscle mass and alcohol, which is where the evidence actually is.
  • No promises about lifespan, from anybody serious.

Where to go

1 house, and what each is for

Every house →

When to come

The season in Okinawa

When to travel to each destination, by month
DestinationJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
OkinawaJapanJan: perfectly goodFeb: perfectly goodMar: book thisApr: book thisMay: we would talk you out of itJun: we would talk you out of itJul: perfectly goodAug: we would talk you out of itSep: we would talk you out of itOct: book thisNov: book thisDec: perfectly good
Book this
Perfectly good
We would talk you out of it

Okinawa. October to early November is the best window: the summer humidity has broken, the sea is still warm, and the major typhoon risk has largely passed. March to April is the second window. June to September combines heat, humidity and typhoon season, when flights are cancelled at a day’s notice — we do not sell it.

What we would tell you on the phone. Extensive screening in well people is not an unqualified good: it produces incidental findings, false positives and downstream investigations that carry their own risks, and reasonable doctors disagree about how much of it is worthwhile. Ask what happens to an abnormal result and who follows it up. Be sceptical of anything infused, injected or sold in a bottle at the end — the evidence for most of it is thin, and the evidence for sleep, strength training and not drinking is not.

Asked and answered

Questions we actually get

Will this make me live longer?
No, and nobody can sell you that. What ten nights can plausibly do is change a few daily habits by showing you a place where they are ordinary rather than effortful. That is a much smaller claim than the one usually made, and it is the only one we will make.
If the data is contested, why go?
Because the habits are worth learning whether or not they explain the statistics, and because the village stays we arrange are with families who chose to host. If you want a longevity claim backed by measurement, take the Swiss diagnostic week — it is a different product and we say so.

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