For cynics around the world, wellbeing retreats top the list of things of which to be sceptical. Conjuring images of fit and tanned, green-smoothie-drinking, yoga-pant-wearing health and fitness buffs or meditating hippies in sustainably sourced clothing and bare feet, it’s easy to simply dismiss wellbeing retreats as a fad for rich people or the fringes of society.
It turns out, nothing is further from the truth. Research shows that consumers care deeply about wellness, with the market exploding in recent years. Global consulting firm, McKinsey, showed that 79 per cent of survey respondents across in six countries believe that wellness is important, and 42 per cent consider it a top priority. Over the past few years, people around the world have shown a substantial increase in the prioritisation of wellness.
McKinsey estimates the global wellness market is valued at more than $1.5 trillion, with annual growth of 5 to 10 percent, and when it comes to wellness centres and retreats, Wellness Creative Co. estimates the wellness tourism market is projected to reach $919 billion by 2022.
That’s why I recently sat down with celebrity chef, best-selling author, and health and wellness life-coach, Diana Stobo. Here’s our interview.
Q: You have such a varied career in the wellness industry, and I’m interested to know what drew you to this industry and field of work?
Diana: Ha, ha. You know, I don’t think anything drew me there. I think it was serendipitous. Honestly, I think you fall into it. When I wrote my first book, which has not been published, the first sentence was, “everything that I’ve done has led me to here.”
I think that’s what we can all do. We can look back and go, “How did I get here?” And then you look at the things that you’ve done, the things that you’ve accomplished and what your life, the turmoils, the ups and downs, the adversity, and it all leads you to where you’re going. You can’t plan that. It just happens. You know that saying: we plan our lives and God laughs.
I think, I think God was laughing the whole time as I was writing my books. You know, I have a girlfriend who told me once it was it was fantastic because I actually felt what she was saying when I went through my divorce was, I feel like my soul is driving the car and I’m a passenger. And I keep saying turn left, turn left and my soul’s ‘ha, ha, turn right’, you know?
Or you say, stop, stop! And your soul runs through the light and you’re like, wow, the soul is doing something completely different than you had planned. And that’s, that’s how I got here.
Q: Surely along the way, you’re loving what you’re doing. Is that fair to say? Because you’re so successful at it.
Diana: One hundred percent, one hundred percent. Every single day I wake up and I go, if I wasn’t doing what I’m doing, what would I be doing? I don’t know. But I do pick and choose the parts that fulfil me. There are parts of what I do that I don’t love. You have to do it to get through. But I’ve learned to find people who can do it, and also let go of the outcome of you know, the control and just let people flourish in their own way, which is really great. Which is why I have such an amazing staff, because I read something once with Southwest Airlines. I don’t know if you know Southwest Airlines in Australia, but it’s “the friendly skies”, right?
So, it’s an airline that’s basically… they tell jokes, and people can wear what they want. It’s super relaxed and the guy who put it together, he said, “We teach people, we show them the protocols, and then we say, but you can break them if it benefits the client.” And that’s the part that I love, you know. I have my staff be all that they are, you know, I let them become whoever they are yet stay within the confines of what the program is.
And that’s probably how I live my life, honestly.
Q: Today we’re here to talk primarily about wellbeing retreats or wellbeing centres, and I’ll get to that in a second. But I’d like to ask a sneaky question, off topic, because you’re also one of the original pioneers of the raw food movement, a leading raw food chef, health and wellness educator and the founder and CEO of Truth Bar. And I have to ask, what is it about how humans are eating today that needs fixing? What’s wrong with what we’re doing today?
Diana: I know that when I went through menopause just recently a few years back, I started to put on weight again, and everything that I know and everything that I taught myself and everything that I teach went out the window when I started Googling. I started Googling, “What do you do with menopause?” And everything went down to supplements and ridiculous fad diets. And I got really confused, I really did. I thought maybe what I teach and what I know doesn’t work for me anymore, because I’m a new person because now I’ve got no hormones. So maybe, maybe I have to restructure everything. And so, I played the game for about two years, and honestly, I got fatter and fatter and fatter. It was really uncomfortable. And I got sicker and sicker, and so I just went back to what I know, and it worked.
So, I think that there’s so much information that people get obsessed with the information and then they don’t know what’s real, what’s not real. You know, we first were taught to read packages, but if you’re reading a package, you shouldn’t be eating it, period.
End of story, you know there’s so many things I can say about food. I can talk about food for six hours, get me on another podcast because food is such an important thing.
And now at my hotel, The Retreat Costa Rica, we have an innovative doctor, and the reason I chose that is because everything is about nature and they’ll tell you the number one most important thing is what you eat. Number one. People think it’s, ‘I gotta work out more’ or it’s psychological. Everybody tries to pin something on their disease or dysfunction, but number one, the most important thing is what you put in your body.
You are what you eat, and I don’t think that was ever taught to any of us. It certainly wasn’t taught to me. I mean, my mom used to have TV dinners when we were kids, and we would watch the wonderful World of Disney while eating something in a tin can that she heated up in the oven.
I hope no one uses microwaves anymore. But microwaves… you shouldn’t even be in a room where a microwave is running because the radiation that it emits is huge. So, I don’t know. It’s almost like we have to relearn everything that we didn’t learn. And we love convenience, just like we love technology. But none of it’s good for us. None of it’s good for us.
I really think that what we’re going through right now is… knock on wood…. It’s the beginning of something exceptional. It looks like despair right now and destruction. But I’m hoping that the storm will pass and everything will be washed away and we can look at life in a different perspective. I truly believe that we’re going to look at our history books differently. Everything is going to be different. And so, we have to be positive. Take care of ourselves. Remain healthy, happy, most importantly, and then we’ll see what unfolds. But don’t get obsessed with what’s going on.
Q: A lot of us have been conditioned to be sceptical of wellness centres. Can you help bust the myths and for people, myself included, who have never been to a wellness retreat, can you explain a bit about what it is? And why it’s important for someone to spend money on a wellness retreat for a week versus going to Vegas?
Diana: Well, that’s a fantastic juxtaposition. Wellness retreat or Vegas? Well, let’s just point out the basic stuff. You know, food and drink. That’s the first thing. When we go on vacation… it’s really funny, my brother just came to visit and he was eating a lot, and I said, you know, “slow your roll, dude. You’re a 57-year-old man. Really, do you really need to get a scoop of ice cream at three o’clock in the afternoon? I mean that should just be off limits until we’re grandparents, you know what I’m saying?”
And he says, “Hey, I’m on vacation. I’m on vacation!” And that’s such a mentality that we go on vacation to destroy all the work we’ve done on ourselves. So just think of it in terms of going to a wellness place where you know that you’re only going to get the finest things to put in your body. Okay, we all go on a vacation or, let’s say Vegas, since you use that one. We go and we need to work out, right? So, we go to the gym and we take a yoga class or we walk up The Strip or something, and we try to find [one] and it’s hectic because it’s too hot out. We’re not really here, we’re rushing to get to a class.
But you go to a wellness retreat and everything is available there for you at any given time. And whether you’re walking in nature or stretching on the yoga mats or going to the gym or getting a treatment massage, you get to choose. There’s no rush. There’s no anxiety. There’s no stress. There’s no ‘shoulds.’ There’s no ‘should nots.’ It’s all there. You can’t make a mistake at a wellness retreat. You can’t eat the wrong foods. You can’t drink too much. You can’t… I mean, there’s just nothing for you to do wrong. And if you do drink too much, you’re going to get a green juice in the morning that’s going to cure it all!
So as far as all the “woo woo” and the meditation and all that, I actually break it down really simply. The Retreat Costa Rica is very unique that way. So, everything is very light, white. So, it’s like a blank canvas, and you get to paint the world you want. There are people who go and sit by the pool and read all day. They don’t attend anything. They go get a treatment. That’s the, that’s the idea of wellness is becoming who you really are, allowing yourself to unfold and discover yourself. When you’re on an agenda and drinking and eating things that you shouldn’t be doing. You’re just clogging your system. You can’t flow.
So, why spend the money to go to a retreat rather than to Vegas? Because you want to feel good. That’s really it. I think a lot of people get wrapped up in the program and they go, I gotta do this, I gotta do this. I got to do that. And then, day three, they surrender. They’re like, you know what, I’m just going to go with the flow, and that’s, that’s where the healing happens. It really does. And I tell people, they’re like, “I gotta go, I gotta go, I gotta get to yoga!” and I go “No, you don’t.” If you don’t want to go and you’re in a conversation, having connection with another guest and being in conversation is part of your process. So, sit, relax, heal. It’s all different. You know, it depends. Every place is different, but that’s what it’s like at the retreat.
Q: So, what would a typical week look like for your guests?
Diana: The typical week? Well, I think it’s really important to see the biorhythms. Like I said, a lot of people come in there with no expectations. I think the retreat is very unique. It calls to a lot of people, and they don’t know what they want when they get there.
I see this time and time again. I don’t know if that’s true for every place, but because it’s laid out with such a clean agenda, it’s not a lot of rushing around. But a lot of people come in and go, “Okay, well, I want to go to the Volcano, I want to go to the beach, I want to make sure I have lunch. And what kind of… I want to juice this day. I want to do this. And they lay it down and they go to the front reception. And I’m telling you, they’re doing all the classes. They’re doing all their program. They’re doing it all, but they’re like trying to figure out how they can fit more in. Because they’re in Costa Rica and they want to fit it in.
So, they go to the receptionist. And of course, they’re like, can you book this? Can you book this? Can you book this? Come day three, you know, they’re like, did you book those things for me? Oh, maybe you can take that off.
In day four, they get up and they go straight to the reception and they say, “Cancel it all, I’m not leaving here.” The day starts, six am, seven am, whatever. It’s an open kitchen. So, people come in, they get their coffee, their tea, their elixirs, whatever makes them happy, their green juices.
They go to yoga. Yoga is … an eight o’clock class for an hour, hour and a half, and it ranges, all the different flows so people can get a nice blood moving. And then there’s breakfast. And then there’s a hike, and then there’s open spa. There are two pools, two restaurants, and then, of course, there’s lunch.
And then there’s another yoga. And then there’s sunset and then treatments in between and meeting with people. And another thing that happens is people come in they’re like, “I was wondering what I was going to do all day.” Then at the end, they’re like, “where did the day go?” Because it’s not very often that we take care of ourselves and just allow the day to unfold naturally.
Q: What I’m hearing from you is that the first few days they’re still working like they’re at work. And in that constant busy mode that we like to be in and put ourselves in, how do we take the lessons from a wellness centre and apply them back into our day to day lives? When you know the kid’s school’s calling and they’re sick, and your boss needs something by deadline and your parents are coming for a trip to visit and all of, you know, all of the stuff. What would your tips be for your guests?
Diana: Well, everybody is different, and some people take a lot from it. And some people just can’t surrender. They just can’t open their mind to a new way of life. They enjoyed it. Thank you very much. I’ll be back. But some people have… I would say a good portion of people have profound shifts.
And what I think is… there’s the eating component. There’s the relaxation component. There’s the exercise component. There’s the spiritual component. And even if they take just a small portion of it back home with them, the next time they come, they’ll take another portion and they’ll take another portion. And that’s why people get addicted to these wellness retreats because they find their purpose. They find their meaning in life. They discover their soul. And in the rat race you don’t have time for that. So, it’s sometimes, it’s a shift, and it changes people immediately because they’re probably ready and on the precipice of change and then other people, it’s a slow burn.
But everybody, everybody learns something. I mean, I can give you stories of people who I think probably will never learn anything, ever as long as they live.
I had this great Buddhist teacher and he said, you know, he used to say it about somebody I knew. And he said “they’re evolving at the pace of a rock.” And, if you think about that, you’re like yeah, rocks do evolve. They just take a long time, right?
Then there’s other people who are shifting like feathers in the wind. And so, everybody is different. But that’s how it happened for me. I became a wellness junkie because I started going when my kids were young. I would go for one week, and every time I came back, I felt like a new person. I thought, That’s the life I want for me. So, it took a while, took many years and a lot of visits to wellness retreats to find that.
Q: So, I assume, and I’m hearing that you practise a lot of what you preach at your own wellness centres. Can you tell me how these things have impacted you and your family’s lives? So what, what were those incremental changes that you started seeing and personally, what works for you?
Well, I think saying no. I always I always tell people say yes to the universe, but you have to say no to the people asking for favours. Because that’s not the universe. That’s just, you know, people… say no and make more time for yourself. Time management I think is really important. That was the beginning.
I think the physical part was work out less. You know, don’t work so hard on working out, like, actually find the… because I used to work out so much till my body hurt. And I don’t like doing that anymore. I think it actually creates too much acid in my body and long-term inflammation, etcetera, etcetera, that I learned to be more gentle.
Food, I mean, my expertise is food and understanding food understanding more importantly what it does to your body, like we just we think about the internal, we eat it and then it comes out the other end, right? But what does it do? What does it do when it goes inside? And I love biology. I was a pre-med, I love physiology. I understand the body and how things work. I just never put two and two together. Never, I never thought about what I eat and where it goes and what it’s doing when it enters your body. And once you learn that you can’t go back, you would never put anything you know, icky into your body ever again.
Little by little by little, you know, for some people, like they come, they go. You know, the one thing I love about the retreat is they always have a warm soup as an appetiser every night for dinner. And people actually get… They want it, they crave it, they can’t wait to have it. And so, the one thing I want to take home with me is I’m going to make soup every night. Okay.
Have you ever seen the wheel of life? You use it for coaching, right? It’s a life coach tool, and you’ve got your, you’ve got your family, career, exercise, food, your livelihood, your finance. And that’s basically it. What parts of your life are empty that you need to fulfil? Yeah, focus on those first.
Q: On that note, you did mention saying yes to the universe before. So, what’s next for you?
Diana: Well, next Tuesday, I turn 57. I’m getting tired. I gotta say, I’m getting tired of the hustle. But what I built what I started to build 8 to 10 years ago is now still being nurtured.
I mean, the Retreat, knock on wood again, is doing well. And I think that the after the storm that we went through and we’re growing, and so that is a project that’s still growing. We just added six rooms. We’re going to add 10 more rooms. And hopefully we’re creating a village, a community of wellness there. And then I have another company. Have another company is called Truth Bar. It’s a gut health bar, so I focus on the gut health and really bringing that to the surface so people can actually heal themselves with candy bars you know, functional food.
For me, I just moved across country to another state. And, you know, I’m kind of I’m excited about settling and maybe having a little bit of a social life again. Because I’ve been working so hard for so long that I really want to connect and have deep relationships and spend some time with the people I love. And it’s hard. It is hard. I mean, I didn’t do it over the last two years, all the stuff we’ve been going through, and it really put an emphasis on how important all those people are.
About Diana Stobo
The Retreat Costa Rica is the innovation of celebrity chef, best-selling author, and health and wellness life-coach, Diana Stobo. Her goal was to create a transformational wellness center that has since become a distinctively Costa Rican experience of “Heaven on Earth” — a resort and spa where guests experience a harmony of nature, nutrition, and wellness nestled among the lush vegetation of the rainforest.
Want to learn more about the science of happiness? Make sure to subscribe to my podcast Happiness for Cynics and weekly email newsletter for regular updates and news!
