sowa rigpaSix Senses Vana · Rishikesh
Tibetan Medicine (Sowa Rigpa)
Sowa Rigpa, the Tibetan system of medicine, sold as a five-, seven- or 14-night programme in the Himalayan foothills at Dehradun.
FromUS$11,116per person
Wellness goal · Rest & balance
Sleep retreats
“I fall asleep fine and then I am awake at three.”
Sleep
What to know before you choose
The complaint this whole category was built on, and the one that responds fastest to simply being somewhere else.
Read more about sleep
Broken sleep is rarely a sleep problem on its own. It arrives attached to something — a schedule, a screen, a stimulant, a worry, a menopause, a gut — and the reason a fortnight away can shift it when a year of sleep hygiene did not is that a residential programme changes all of those at once and holds them changed for long enough to matter.
What a good sleep programme actually does is unglamorous: it fixes your light exposure, moves your last meal three hours earlier, takes the caffeine out, puts a long slow treatment where your evening screen was, and gets you outside in the morning. The Ayurvedic and naturopathic houses dress that differently, and underneath they are all doing a version of the same thing — plus, in the Ayurvedic case, shirodhara, which is a warm oil stream on the forehead for forty minutes and is very hard to stay anxious through.
The measurable part matters. The houses that track your sleep and revise the programme on the data mid-stay get better results than the ones that hand you a questionnaire on arrival, and we will point you at the former.
Programmes
The sleep programme we plan
Where to stay
Houses suited to this kind of journey
Programme approaches
The traditions that address it
Ayurveda
Shirodhara and evening abhyanga are the classical interventions, and they are timed to the evening rather than the morning for exactly this reason. Add a narrowed, earlier diet and the digestion-sleep loop that keeps people awake at three tends to break.
The guide
Yoga
Yoga nidra and slow pranayama in the hour before bed do more for sleep onset than the asana practice does. Any competent house will make this the last thing on the timetable.
The guide
What to expect
What a programme for this actually does to your fortnight
A good trip starts with realistic expectations — these are the routines you are likely to meet.
- 01
Your last meal moves to about six in the evening and stays there. Most guests find this harder than the treatments.
- 02
Caffeine goes on day one, and days two and three are unpleasant. That is the caffeine, not the programme.
- 03
A long passive treatment in the evening instead of a screen — shirodhara, abhyanga or a warm bath, most days.
- 04
Morning light and a walk before breakfast, prescribed rather than suggested.
- 05
A written night routine to take home, which is the part that decides whether the fortnight lasts.
How long should a sleep retreat be?
Relevant programmes commonly begin at seven nights. Ten to fourteen nights offers more time to settle into the routine and understand what can travel home with you.
Where can I go for a sleep retreat?
On this site: Rishikesh (India). Each destination page shows its best months, its houses and how to get there.
How much does a sleep retreat cost?
Programmes for this goal start from US$11,116 per person. Every stay is quoted individually — the room, the length and your dates set the final figure, confirmed in writing before you pay.
Is a sleep retreat right for me?
Sleep that is broken by pain, by breathing, or by a mood disorder needs a diagnosis before it needs a retreat. Untreated obstructive sleep apnoea in particular will not respond to any of this and should be investigated at home first — snoring plus daytime sleepiness plus waking unrefreshed is the pattern to take to your GP. If you take a prescribed sleep medication, nothing on this site is a reason to stop it, and no physician at any house here will tell you to. Whether a programme is medically suitable is a decision for your own doctor and the qualified team at the property — our role is the travel planning.