Take a Break at a Wellness Retreat

Sometimes you just need a place to go and get away from it all—a place to reset and start the year off on the right foot. Wellness retreats offer opportunities to disconnect and refocus through a variety of activities and practices.

If you’re looking for a blend of rustic and luxury, Essential Yoga’s retreats might be for you. They offer two options, starting with their annual Camp Crystal mining retreat, held in collaboration with Mystical Thoughts, a local woman-owned metaphysical shop. This retreat, located at the Ouachita River, helps guests connect to the earth through crystal mining. Their second retreat—Reset, Receive, Retreat—offers women an intimate setting to transition from a cold, dormant winter to a warmer, growth-focused spring. Hosted in Bella Vista, Arkansas, in collaboration with Altruistic Energy, this retreat includes morning and evening yoga, group Yoga Nidra—or yogic sleep—and sound healing sessions, private Reiki sessions and opportunities to connect and rest.

Wellness retreats are new to Finley Farms and are designed to showcase the entire property, including unique spaces like The Workshop, Marley House, Ozark Mill, Chapel and Farmstead. Each retreat brings something fresh, with activities such as yoga, sound healing, watercoloring and slow stitching. Meals are included and thoughtfully planned to complement the theme of each retreat.

For those interested in focusing on health and nutrition during the retreat, culinary instructor Karen Gros has teamed up with Dr. Cynthia Morgan—founder and executive medical director of the Ozark Center for Lifestyle Medicine—to offer a four-day, whole-food, plant-based immersion retreat in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Gros had been teaching cooking classes for 20 years when she started having health issues, leading to the realization that she needed to switch her diet. This inspired her to get trained in plant-based nutrition through Cornell. Together, Gros and Dr. Morgan created the retreat, offered twice a year, for those looking to prevent, reverse or manage conditions like early-onset diabetes and other chronic conditions. “We thought, we just need to have them taste the food and understand why certain foods cause inflammatory responses,” Gros says. “It’s powerful what we can do with nutrition.” The retreat includes food education, stress management, movement, relaxation and other mindful practices. Participants lodge in luxury cabins, hike through the Ozark Mountains and learn from Gros in her own kitchen.

For the young at heart, Circle Yoga Shala offers a six-day summer camp for adults in Jasper, Arkansas. “People participate because it’s an opportunity to reconnect with nature, to rest and rejuvenate and to participate in engaging activities,” says founder and owner Holly Krepps. The camp is designed to foster authentic connections, provide five-course meals, offer fresh perspectives and enhance mental clarity. Activities include cooking classes, restorative yoga, meditation and horse intuition communication.

Interacting with horses to reduce stress and mental clutter is becoming a common therapeutic practice. Horses of Hope in Rogersville offers weekend retreats for Equine Facilitated Psychotherapy, where a mental health professional teams up with a therapy horse to help clients. They host women’s wellness, family, husband-and-wife and mother-and-child retreats providing gentle horse interactions and activities designed to enhance self-awareness, emotional healing and personal growth. Some of those activities include yoga with horses, music therapy sessions, songwriting, art journaling, farm-to-table cooking and more.