What is a destination rehab?
A destination rehab is a treatment facility set in a desirable location. Destination rehabs are often built in settings naturally conducive to healing and recovery, such as by the sea, forests, the desert, or mountains.
The grounds of a destination rehab facility are meant to bolster feelings of safety, ease, and harmony. Offering a measure of seclusion and/or exposure to a healing climate, the facilities may be nestled in natural environs, healing gardens, or working farms.
Depending on the program, a destination rehab may emphasize the luxury of accommodations or place more emphasis on the chance of interaction with greenery, animals, and features of the natural world.
What are the benefits of traveling for treatment?
There is a reason that for many thousands of years, people have traveled to the seaside, mountains, forests, and other healing nature locations to recover from illness of both the psyche and body.
Not only are such environments harmonizing to the physiology, restoring us through exposure to nature’s many healing and settling properties, but the physical act of taking distance from one’s home – getting a literal change of scenery – is a powerful way to create a protective boundary around the intention to recover.
Sequestering temporarily in a faraway healing setting is a way to get a fresh start and open a new blank page in the book of your life. In a destination rehab, it is much easier to focus on recovery due to being relatively free of distractions, interruptions, self-sabotage, and all that might keep our old patterns running as they were.
What is ecotherapy in a destination rehab?
One of the benefits of attending a destination rehab is the opportunity to participate in ecotherapy.
Ecotherapy, sometimes called Ecopsychology, Green Therapy, or Nature-Based Therapy, is a branch of the mental and behavioral health field that incorporates the power of nature, animals, gardening, and outdoor activities into the healing process.
While many people intuitively sense the many ways that nature helps us heal, it is only really since the 1970s that the effects of nature have been studied in a way befitting modern scientific requirements.
The study of nature therapy can be said to have begun in Japan, where the practice of forest therapy was first noticed, measured, and compiled into a method of treatment.
The evidence in favor of ecotherapy continues to amass. Studies support beneficial effects not only in subjective reports of how nature works to soothe and heal one’s inner world but also in objective measurables such as heart rate variability, cortisol levels, immunity, faster wound recovery, and more.
In a destination rehab that offers ecotherapy as a part of its programming, as we do at Villa Kali Ma, you have the opportunity to learn how you may relate to nature as a resource. Nature exposure can take many forms, including gardening, animal-assisted therapies, nature walks, hiking, foraging, making art out of natural materials, nature-bathing, and more.
What are things to consider before traveling for treatment?
Many women find that the advantages of a change of scenery, as well as entering treatment in a neutral, harmonious setting, outweigh the potential benefits of staying close to home for their treatment experience.
Some factors to consider before going to a destination rehab, however, include that it may make it harder for family and friends to visit you or participate in your treatment, at least in person (phone and Zoom sessions allow for more possibilities, but still).
While it’s important to stay in the now, you may also want to think loosely about what you intend to do upon completion of your treatment. It is often a good idea to stay connected to the treatment center staff and perhaps even enter a sober living environment close by. Keeping close in the first weeks, months, and even years of your early sobriety is often a lifesaver, protecting women from relapse, isolation, and overwhelm.
Staying close by makes it possible to participate fully in aftercare programming and keep the local recovery connections you made. The time just after you complete a treatment program is understandably wobbly for many women, and it is a time during which foundations for your future are laid.
However, it’s also normal not to know yet what will come after your treatment. You don’t have to know everything in advance. As a mental exercise, all the same, it can be clarifying to weigh the pros and cons of treatment close to home versus treatment in a destination rehab.
If you know that you will be returning to your home environment because of work or family, then it is relatively clear that your rehab will be a fully temporary retreat, with a clear beginning and an end. This also means that your follow-up treatment and new foundation will be laid back at home.
If you are not sure what will happen after treatment and you are open to a change of scenery, you may want to take into account whether you like the part of the world in which your destination rehab is located, just in case you decide to stay in the area for some period of time.
If you are overwhelmed by these considerations, don’t worry. Both options can be good for your recovery, and our treatment team will help you figure out how to best support your new life, whatever environment you choose for your after-treatment life.
Villa Kali Ma offers mental health and addiction treatment
Villa Kali Ma is a unique provider that blends holistic modalities with clinical treatment for addiction, mental health disorders, and trauma.
Located in the warm, sunny coastal San Diego area, we are rooted in a part of the world that offers exposure to the many healing factors of the seaside. San Diego is famous for being a health-oriented part of California, where people prioritize care for the physical body, spend time out of doors, and enjoy the beach as much as they can. And no wonder, as the ocean is a great healer, emotionally and physiologically.
In our residential treatment facility and our trauma recovery center, the Retreat, as well as in our Intensive Outpatient program, we offer many options for experiencing nature-oriented healing modalities related to the coastal climate and other features of our area. Through yoga, creative arts therapies, earthing, Reiki, massage, Ayurveda, equine therapy, gardening, outdoor activities, and more, we help women connect with the many healing possibilities of our destination.