The different faces of wellness

Choosing the best ways to stay healthy can be stressful. Simon Hertson offers guidance

At a time when buzzwords spring up and disappear almost weekly, one of the more enduring in recent times has been “wellness”. Like most such phrases, it’s meaning is both obvious and obscure—a blend of exercise, a healthy diet and something less tangible often called “lifestyle”.

A useful barometer of the popularity of a trend is Harrods. And sure enough, this summer the Knightsbridge store opened Farmacia Urban Healing at Harrods—a drop-in wellness centre selling everything from GP consultations to face creams. It also has a PhotoBionic scanner that measures the level of antioxidants in your skin (a crude, if effective, measure of overall health).

Saif Zaher, Farmacia’s manager, says: “Our mission is to help people achieve optimum health throughout their life. We promote inner health and outer radiance.”

And who can argue with that? The Farmacia centre encourages customers to measure antioxidants using the scanner. Due to the lives we lead, most of us have low levels of antioxidants, making us susceptible to everything from common sniffs and colds to more serious diseases, including cancer.

Another essential part of wellness is exercise. Tim O’Connell is world marketing director for Technogym, the fitness equipment supplier that describes itself as “the wellness company”. So what does he understand the term to mean?

O’Connell says there is a misconception that wellness is passive—focused on spas, face creams and relaxation. Not surprisingly, O’Connell says wellness should start with movement and exercise. He adds that wellness is different from fitness because it’s more reassuring.

“With fitness there is a sense of obligation that ‘I must go to the gym’,” he explains. “With wellness, it’s more ‘I want to do exercise, because I enjoy it’. We all need to find ways of making the experience enjoyable, so that people look forward to doing it.”

Technogym’s latest offering is Kinesis Personal—a wall of carefully designed handgrips, cables and weight stacks that uses gravity to create resistance. Because all mechanical parts are hidden behind panels, there is nothing to prevent the user moving in any direction. “It allows full 360-degree, three dimensional movement while exercising,” says O’Connell. “People have the freedom to move how they want.”

Kinesis Personal’s sleek design, courtesy of Italian legend Antonio Citterio, has another advantage—it won’t mess up your interior. In other words, it’s a machine that will please your interior designer as much as your personal trainer.

This is also the time of year that people start to feel the impact of seasonal affective disorder (SAD), caused by a biological reaction to a lack of strong, natural sunlight. The answer? A Physiotherm Infrared Therapy cabin, which uses special lava sand heaters to generate a heat that feels similar to warm sunshine. The cabins offer relaxing smells and music—three therapies for the price of one.