I was recently invited to experience a new health spa in the mountains of British Columbia, the Alive Health Resort. This resort was the fledgling dream of a team of health experts, each with a passion to create a retreat where individuals could learn the tools to become stewards of their own health. For me, the invitation couldn’t have come at a better time. My work was in overdrive and any search for balance between those demands and my personal life was almost non-existent.

Upon arrival, I could see this resort was much more than a spa for it embodied the natural vitality and grace of its surroundings for a powerful healing experience. And nowhere did I experience this better than when I discovered the transformational qualities of its water.

I hiked to a mountain peak through a beautiful forested trail, and on my return, decided to detour towards a waterfall I had been told about. It was an unexpected delight; water cascading down from some thirty feet, tumbling over rocks and crevices and gathering into gentle pools that glinted in the sunlight before continuing its descent. On the shore nearby, the resort had provided two low-seat chairs, one of which I promptly repositioned to within a few feet of the falling water. As I sat facing the falls, my feet in a circling pool, the spray swirled around my body, misting my cheeks and streaming down in droplets from my hair. The water spiralled around my feet, massaging away the rigours of the morning’s walk. And, as the sun’s warmth sank into my shoulders through the dappled shade of the forest, my entire body started to shift its reality. The drumming of the splashing water became a harmonic hum, and soon, my mind was drifting into the oneness of nature.

I was told at a recent wellness seminar that, charged with negative ions, waterfalls, and fountains for that matter, have the ability to clear the mind and rejuvenate the body. Transmitted into the body through the air supply, and circulated by the blood, ions are said to be essential to our well being. Too many positive ions, from air pollution and other factors, can cause depression and ultimately illness. Negative ions, on the other hand, have a beneficial effect on the body and mind, enhancing the ability to relax, concentrate, and sleep.

This was the best of nature’s spas, giving me the space and much needed time to reflect, or more specifically, to exercise the power of intention—a dream with conscious focus—to change the way I was living. I focused on the qualities I wanted to invite into my life, and then mentally meandered to all those people and activities that fulfilled those desires. I realized the importance of purposefully scheduling “balance time” into my day once again, and imagined ideas as to how that could be done. I saw how old patterns of my type-A personality were surfacing, and conjured up a mental checklist to recognize when my drive was heading into detrimental overdrive.

My 90-minute reflection by the waterfall was some of the most profound dreaming I’ve done in a while, made all the more special because of the resort environment that allowed me to focus on myself.

I even returned to the resort with fresh clarity about the dream it was becoming, and which has since evolved into Canada’s only all-inclusive health resort. This was not a “build it and they will come” movie fantasy; this was the power of collective intention becoming reality. And it echoed my new found openness as to what was possible.


Written by Gordon Bacon
Canadian Health Style magazine

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