You wait all year for a chance to slip away to the beach for a week. It’s a time to indulge, stay up late, eat too much and play hard. Is it any wonder that many of us go home exhausted and sore after a week of “rest and relaxation”? Many vacationers are taking the opportunity to spend their vacation focusing on improving their health and well-being.

In the tradition of European health centers, where relaxation and rest go hand in hand with physical and emotional rejuvenation, there are now centers here on the Gulf Coast that promote well-being in a vacation setting. Imagine how wonderful it would be to go home from your vacation feeling more rested than you did on your arrival. Perhaps you’ve been wanting to stop smoking or began losing weight but the day to day stress of job and family make it difficult. Tension and worry may have caused you to have trouble sleeping or even added to back pain and mobility problems. By addressing these problems during your “time off” you can focus on your needs and address the underlying causes, allowing yourself to return home with keener insight and new tools for improving your physical, mental and emotional health.

Dr. Richard Rizzuto knows how closely your success in life is tied to your well-being. Give someone a million dollars and a migraine and see which one they focus on. Dr. Rizzuto provides a wide range of services at BACK ON TRACK, CHIROPRACTIC & WELLNESS CENTER. His work with chronic pain patients, sports injuries ad Fibromyalgia have earned him a large following. Along with adjustments of the spine and other joints, the Center offers massage therapy and acupuncture. Perhaps most importantly, Dr. Rizzuto will send you home with a personal therapy and training regimen designed to further promote your progress. He can be reached at (251) 955-2225.

On a side note, after Hurricane Ivan, Dr. Rich purchased a motor home and outfitted it with a mobile therapy room. He provided on-site therapy to emergency workers free of charge, investing time, money and energy to let them know how much they were appreciated.

If you’d like to stop smoking, lose weight or sleep better, you might want to examine hypnotherapy. Writings from as far back as 3000 BCE describe the use of hypnosis in the treatment of human illness. The American Medical Association officially approved hypnosis for use in all areas of of medicine and surgery in 1958. By anyone’s standards, hypnosis has a proven track record.

Island Health Arts, under the direction of Rio Barlow, CCHT, has helped locals and vacationers overcome both physical and behavioral problems. Rio is a Clinical Hypnotherapist and specializes in helping others quit smoking, lose weight, pain management and relaxation. By guiding her clients into a state of focused consciousness and relaxation, Rio is able to offer directed suggestions that promote the cessation of negative behavior. At the end of the session, the client is given a cd to reinforce and continue the therapy. Judging from her following, Rio is very successful in helping others help themselves.

Community Centers, Resort Activity Centers and gyms all over the Gulf Coast also offer tai chi, yoga and pilates classes. Most welcome walk-ins and are more than happy to send you home from your vacation with a new and positive outlook on life.