Women's Retreat Recap

The following blog is about our previous Women's Retreat. If you're interested, stay tuned in your emails about any retreats in the near future!

There are many reasons for attending a wellness retreat - needing a getaway, looking to connect with like minded individuals and even for the knowledge provided. Well, those that attended our Leasure Retreat last October received all those things and more!! It’s our hope we will be able to again hold our retreats in person - in the meantime I hope you can relive our last one through this post!

We had a private estate on Lake Como filled with inspiring, fun and energetic women from the northern suburbs and downtown Chicago. We brought in a private chef that doubles as a wellness coach and we got to work.

Our retreat started on Friday night with a welcome “cocktail” provided by Kombuchade - a local wellness company providing organic kombucha - a thousand year old drink of fermented tea. If you haven’t had it, you must. It is not only incredibly flavorful but it’s great for your gut health! Since the topic of this retreat was the Gut, Kombuchade was a perfect welcome beverage. Served in Champagne glasses it’s effervescence was almost indistinguishable from champagne.

After a quick ice breaker activity in which we learned Kristie doesn’t own cats, Dr. Jordan has eight tattoos (including the office logo) and Jenny has traveled around Europe, we set sail to complete our vision boards. While working on the vision boards we consumed paleo-based heavy appetizers provided by Real Clean Paleo. RCP provides most of doctor Jordan's meals as well as those for Mr. Parker! If you're finding it a challenge to provide healthy meals for your family this may be the answer!

We concluded Friday evening with a fire ceremony where we released unwanted energies and thoughts that have been holding us back and set our intention from what we wanted to accomplish in 2020.

Saturday morning started with a beautiful walk around Lake Como while some participants stayed on base and received incredible massages provided by North Shore Pro-Active Health’s own Julie & Kristie. Our breakfast was again provided by Real Clean Paleo and was comprised of farm fresh eggs and waffles with a warm apple compote and walnut topping. Who knew eating healthy could taste so good! Saturday provided the opportunity for educational workshops ranging from Financial Fitness for Women by Sara Samuels to Gut Health for Beginners and even a Chinese medicine approach to a Healthy Gut this fall including auricular acupuncture treatments.

Saturday's meals were provided by our in-house Chef Annette, who not only prepared her meals but taught us the benefits of what we were eating. She's a wellness coach in the western suburbs and you would never know that we ate vegetarian all weekend!

We concluded Saturday night with a tea ceremony provided by Love that Spice in Highland Park. Did you know that tea was first used as medicine?

Some of what Dr Jordan taught included the power of the gut when it comes to mood, motivation and even our hormones. As women we are often taught that symptoms we’re experiencing are “normal” or should be expected - but we learned there is a big difference between common and normal. There is no pain that should be considered “normal” and that “gut instinct” that we are all born with - trust it and you can even fine tune it!  

The weather held out and we were able to do yoga on the roof Sunday morning! Our good friend Erin O'Neill the Traveling Yogi taught an incredible class that helped us understand how healing yoga can be for the gut. She concluded our class with a healing meditation just as the sun was peeking up over the rooftops.

We spent Sunday morning setting our intentions for the remainder of the year and how we're going to implement everything we learned over the weekend - to not only lead healthier lives for ourselves but for those we love and our entire community.

Living a healthy life needs to be intentional and it can be a challenge when there is no ribbon at the end of the race. As they say life is a journey not a destination but it's a lot more fun when you're healthy enough to enjoy it. If this resonates with you and you'd like to join us our retreats are currently virtual and you can register today right here!