In celebration of healthy living, a day filled with healthy lifestyle activities filled Global Wellness Day 2018 (GWD 2018) at the Shangri-La’s Mactan Resort & Spa last Saturday, June 09, 2018. From scrumptious vegan breakfast choices to fun Tae-Bo fitness exercises, activities for the whole day made you feel fit and fab.
When our mind travels around the idea of wellness and having to be fit and maintain a healthy lifestyle, what first comes to mind would be no fried food, no soft drinks, and of course, a lot of sweating. With all that’s happening in our daily lives—may it be work, school or travel, it is imperative for us to live well, both physically and spiritually.
Started in the year 2012, a global wellness awareness day entitled Global Wellness Day was made to commemorate a special thing valuable to all—living well. With its slogan, “One day can change your whole life,” it is celebrated every second Saturday of June every year as an international day.
Global Wellness Day is an entirely not-for-profit day, and a social project dedicated to living well. The purpose of Global Wellness Day is to be able to ask the question, even if for just a day, “How can I live a healthier and better life?”. With this one day full of wellness activities and dishes, it aims to direct the thoughts of both individuals and society towards “living well”.
It aims include to break free from the stress of everyday city life as well as the bad habits that go along with it. It also raises awareness about living well and to recognize the value of our lives while pausing to think, even if it would be for just one year.
More than being free from illness, choosing wellness is a dynamic process of change and growth. It’s a satisfactory condition of existence; a state characterized by not only health but also happiness, prosperity and welfare.
Conscious of the development of the whole self, guests started off the day with delectable food choices with food made of seafood, homemade vegan yogurt varieties, a wide selection of fruits, and a sizable amount of greens.

Contrary to the common Filipino breakfast choices, there were no silogs found anywhere near the buffet table. It was either nuts or fruits or bread, with different detox water choices.
Aside from the morning breakfast, guests were welcomed with a taste of the hotel’s Chi Spa through a relaxing morning massage that would make you just want to go back to bed.
Rest and relaxation is a huge part of our everyday wellness. Stress can eat us up from time to time and that’s why in this year’s Global Wellness Day, Shangri-La’s Mactan Resort & Spa includes the rest and relaxation the Chi Spa at Shangri-La provides for its guests.
From a variety of body massages, to beauty facials to relaxation treatments, the Chi Spa gives you harmonious comfort right at its garden villas.
Gaining the spotlight was Chi Spa’s Water Shiatsu treatment, a gentle form of body therapy performed in warm water, (around 35°C.). It is a combination of elements such as massage, joint mobilisation, shiatsu, and muscle stretching. The receiver is continuously supported while being floated, cradled, rocked and stretched.
The simulation was done with the receiver rocked just like a baby, for a good 30-40 minutes. The therapist shares that the therapy is for nurturing the emotionally disturbed, releasing them from the the reality’s gravitational prison.
Of all the Shangri-La resorts in the world, only the one in Mactan offers the Water Shiatsu treatment at their Chi Spa. The sensation would be, according to the therapist, as if you were back in the womb of our mother. Doesn’t that just want you to feel like a baby again?

After the tour of the glorious Chi Spa, guests enjoyed a 4-course meal of still, healthy, good food at the hotel’s Acqua restaurant. The meal started off with a seafood-based dish covered in different florals and greens flavored with pesto. The soup was still a seafood dish glazed with a little bit of rum. The pasta, which was handmade, was accompanied by a local favorite in Mactan Island– the Lapu-Lapu Ragout. The dining experience was completed with a still healthy choice, covering up the sweetness of the vanilla ice cream were all sorts of fruits– from the national fruit mango, to ones uncommon such as that of kiwi.
After that one hearty full course lunch, it was time to burn off all the calories, if any, as Shangri-La’s GWD 2018 prepared various exercises for everyone to get them up on their feet. With trainors from Zink PH, the workout Pound was brought to Shangri-La’s outdoors coupled with a variety of dance programs that surely broke sweat for most of the participants.

Following the recreational workouts include an introduction to Arnis training, which is available at the resort during Mondays and Wednesdays in the afternoon. Arnis, dubbed as the national sport and martial art in the Philippines, was formerly called eskrima. Having arnis sessions within the resort is Shangri-La’s way of highlighting Cebuano and Filipino culture, especially for its tourists to know and experience.
To end the wellness exercises on a rocking note, Tae-Bo, an exercise system combining elements of aerobics and kick-boxing, was done by the beach before sunset. Caring for one’s wealth never looked this beautiful and fun, much when you’d have to groove to the latest songs and hits of the season.

The day was capped off with delectable drinks and cocktails which weren’t even the slightest bit unhealthy. Drinks were mixed with fresh fruits and greens and the mini munchers served were a mix of seafood, cheese and a healthy serving of flavored bread with ham bits. Cocktails at the Shangri-La’s Cowrie Cove prove that even grabbing drinks out or spending a fun weekend night can still leave you with a wide array of healthy choices.
With just one day, a healthy choice may change your lifestyle for the better. Whether it may be taking the long way home through walking instead of your daily commute, or choosing water instead of your usual cold carbonated drink, it’s the choices we make in the little things going on around us that promises a lifetime of wellness.
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