5 Experiential Gifts for the Holidays
As it turns out, the perfect gift isn’t necessarily a material item. A study by researchers at San Francisco State University showed that people enjoy greater well-being from life experiences and consider them to be a better use of money. Caroline Rasmussen, a meditation and Reiki practitioner and founder of Antara, is encouraging a more experiential approach to your gift list this holiday season.
"It's natural to be attracted to beautiful things and to follow the culture of gifting material items to those we love,” says Rasmussen. “There's nothing wrong with enjoying these things, but it's easy to allow the consumerist flurry of the season to capture our attention to the point where what's really important about the holidays and the new year gets lost.”
Harris Group recently found that 72 percent of millennials prefer to spend more money on experiences than on material things. Most people don’t care how much you spend on them, and would prefer a gift from the heart that has meaning to it. Experiences help to build and strengthen relationships, as well as create memories that will last a lifetime.
“At the end of the day it's about connection, gratitude, and growth,” concludes Rasmussen. “Thinking outside the box in terms of tools for enhanced well-being and experiential gifting is not only extra meaningful for our loved ones, but helps to keep us more conscious during this special time."
Here, she shares the top five ways to give the gift of well-being to others for the holidays:
1. Epigenetic Medicine Testing or Traditional Chinese Medicine Consultation
Historically, wellness and medicine have always been personalized to the individual, which makes sense as we all have a unique physical, mental, and emotional composition—and what works for others may not work for us at all. While certain foods and practices do provide practically universal benefits, if you're trying to treat specific symptoms or design a detailed preventative wellness protocol, you will need to customize to your particular constitution—something Western healthcare is increasingly starting to recognize.
One way this is showing up is with epigenetic and genetic testing, which can provide valuable information for someone who’s been struggling to get to the root of something like an autoimmune condition, chronic infection, or hormonal dysfunction. While genetics refers to the genetic code itself, epigenetics involves how those genes are expressed, essentially to what degree they’re turned on or off at a given time.
The best example is our DNA methylation profiles, which influence an array of processes including detoxification and inflammatory response. Testing your levels of homocysteine, an indicator of whether you’re methylating properly, combined with understanding your MTHRF status if homocysteine is abnormally high, can help you craft a diet and supplementation protocol to address specific symptoms.
Another way this concept is manifesting in the West is with the emergence of functional and integrative medicine, which takes a whole-person, preventative approach to wellness. In this way it‘s similar to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), which has evolved a unique way of looking at wellness that incorporates both physical and emotional factors and uses acupuncture, herbs, and diet to regulate the flow of qi or life energy.
Each individual is thought to have a dominant personality or energetic archetype (wood, fire, earth, metal, or water) that has implications for both our physical as well as our psychological health, and each organ network is viewed as having physiological as well as more subtle energetic functions. This multi-layered conceptualization of wellness means that TCM treatments are inherently personalized, making a TCM consultation the perfect gift for someone interested in exploring their mind-body health through a new lens.
2. Physical Detox
Because of the environment we live in, we all need to detoxify and cleanse regularly, no matter how healthy our lifestyle. This is all the more true after the holidays when we probably have fallen off the wagon. A reliable gifting option for this is infrared sauna sessions, which provide a time-out for relaxation, boost mood-lifting endorphins without having to exercise, offering aesthetic benefits like glowing skin and weight loss, and penetrating deep into the body to release heavy metals and other toxins.
Colonic packages are a somewhat more adventurous gift that may not work for everybody, but it's worth knowing that debris from food we eat can get stuck and adhere to our colon lining for months or even years, blocking up the system and contributing to inflammation.
Another wonderful option is a cleanse and reset retreat, which you can find at various price ranges depending on the location, length, and intensity of the program. It’s the perfect gift because it can be tailored for any life situation—you can take it in a more holistic direction and go alone or with a significant other somewhere like Kamalaya Wellness Sanctuary in Koh Samui or Sukhavati Ayurvedic Retreat in Bali, or go for a more rigorous detox-oriented approach with a group of girlfriends to a place like The Mayr Clinic in Austria or We Care Spa in California.
Your loved one will come back with new philosophies and practices to support their wellness into the future, such as a better understanding of intermittent fasting protocols that work for them, or what herbs and recipes Ayurveda recommends for their particular constitution.
3. Meditation Training
Mindfulness and meditation I view as the number one tool that we have to better handle stress, improve focus and emotional regulation, and make sure we’re allocating our time to what really matters to us. Our lived experience is created by our minds, and becoming really aware of where we’re investing our attention and energy is more critical than ever in light of our hectic schedules and the sheer amount of stimulation and options available to us today.
If we don’t have the mental filters in place to manage this constant torrent of inbound information and the tools to see how things are affecting us, eventually we start to feel unmoored and anxious. This is a great gift for anyone who is experiencing burnout or feeling overwhelmed.
4. Coaching Sessions & Spiritual Refresh Retreats
We live in a fast-paced, bigger-is-better culture that makes it easy to get set into other people’s versions of success without realizing it, when in fact each of us has a unique offering that’s tied to our very individual passions and skills. If you know someone who is completely depleted or whose routine and life obligations are draining their energy rather than feeding it, some integrative coaching or a spiritual retreat can provide much-needed space for self-exploration. Especially if we’re at one of these junctures, the opportunity to disconnect from who we think we are, all the things we own, and the automatic behaviors that are built into our modern lives can be incredibly valuable in finding a path to sustainable happiness.
5. Astrology or Birth Chart Reading
Astrology and birth charts having been having a moment lately, and I think the reason is that more people are seeking a sense of purpose and meaning that speaks to them personally and isn’t provided in a lasting way by our culture’s never-ending quest for more money, beauty, and achievement. Your birth chart is a map of the planets at the time of your birth and can provide insights into your life themes, strengths, and weaknesses in areas ranging from financial matters to psychic abilities. It’s a fun and interesting way to frame your sense of self, and even the most hardcore skeptic is likely to hear something about their personality and motivations that they recognize.
For more information, visit antaralife.com and follow them on Instagram: @antaralife
Kamala Kirk is a University of Southern California graduate and has been an editor/writer for more than a decade. She has written for E! Online, Total Beauty, TravelAge West, Malibu Times Magazine, and many more. She resides in Los Angeles and is a proud pug mom. Follow her on Instagram: @kamalakirk