High above Dubai at Atmosphere, the lounge on the 122nd floor of the Burj Khalifa, Emirates Woman and Emirates Man brought together four professionals for a wide-ranging hour-long conversation on wellness in the Middle East, moderated by Emirates Woman’s Senior Editor Jessica Michault
Rounding out the panel was Michele Moro, managing director at Technogym, whose work sits at the intersection of movement, data and behaviour change, and who brought a technology lens to the conversation, from wearable tracking to Technogym’s own six-dimension wellness diagnostics used to calculate a guest’s biological “wellness age.” Along with him sat Madisse Matar of the commercial department at Intercontinental Residences Dubai Business Bay and Kimpton Seven, speaking to how hospitality spaces are being redesigned around rest and recovery; Neeta Bhushan, a mental wellbeing expert, entrepreneur and author of four bestselling books, on the psychology of stress and emotional release; and Arnaud Thulliez, who consults on food and beverage for Fairmont and Accor, on how nutrition and local farming are reshaping hotel kitchens.
Together the five of them moved through personal coping rituals, the commercialisation of wellness, hotel design, food systems and what an inclusive wellness culture in the region might look like five years from now
Jessica Michault: We’re here today to talk about something everyone on the planet is dealing with, but I think feels especially timely here in the Middle East during this current climate of uncertainty, and that is how to lean into acts of wellness during moments of high stress and anxiety. In this region, we’re watching conflicts unfold in real time and navigating new economic pressures, and well-being in general has gone from a lifestyle aspiration to a genuine act of resilience. But wellness is also a booming industry, and the tension between commerce and genuine care is something that we’re going to explore honestly today.
Madisse Matar: When I’m stressed, I like to go to my kitchen, where I’m sure that no one is going to be joining me, so I have some time to clear my mind and at the same time maybe cook something for the family. I go for a walk without anyone, just by myself, even without music, no phone, nothing, just listening to my thoughts. And if greenery is around, that’s a perfect space. This is my real space to be by myself.
Michele Moro: Whatever I do, I end with a good session of stretching, because if you don’t complete or finish with a good stretching, you may build up some imbalance or some stiffness that then leads to some sort of injury. Balance in all things is very important. The famous saying from Latin wisdom, mens sana in corpore sano, perfectly applies with a stressful situation, but in general, because afterwards sleep will have a better quality too.
Michele MoroManaging Director
Neeta Bhushan: You cannot do anything without your breath. If we are stressed out, the first thing that happens is I do a lot of emotional release practices, especially with my kids. A very simple thing that anybody watching this can do right now is put your hand over your heart, really connect back to yourself, and take three deep breaths before responding to the email, before looking at your phone, before yelling at your kids. We have to release a lot of this pressure. A lot of times we have all of these emotions, but we suppress them, and then they have nowhere to go but to get released somehow.
Arnaud Thulliez: You are what you eat. What you put into your body is actually your first medicine. Going back to food, it’s where it all starts. We had the opportunity to reinvent one of our operations, and with that we incorporated a farming aspect. We built a hydroponic farm to grow all our greens. If you look at greens you’d find in the current market, within 24 to 48 hours you lose all that nutrition. Because we’re harvesting every day, the product ends up on our clients’ plate within four hours, and you retain all those nutrients, and the eating experience is quite unique. Crispy, fresh, tasty.
Moro: There is no one solution that fits most or all, and everybody has to discover the way that works for them. The availability of options may overwhelm all of us. We need to find something that is enjoyable and keep the balance, because whatever we force, we have a bounce back
Matar: We started with a six-month wellness program. It had three aspects: mental wellness, food, and keeping your body moving. It’s not just being healthy meaning I eat superfood or I eat some salads. Mentally, they really need it. We focused as well on the community, so we’ve done many activities with organisations like Alzheimer’s, for example, and the autism centre, where guests feel that they can participate and support the other people staying with us.”
Bhushan: Everything starts with us and the breath, going back and being able to take a moment for ourselves because we are so consumed with so many things, so many tabs, so many events. I think two things can be true. Everyone has so much knowledge and awareness now. And yet still, we still have our daily stressors. It starts with checking in with yourself first. There are going to be times where I have to say no, and that’s actually okay.
Neeta BhushanAuthor, Speaker & Health and Wellbeing Expert
Moro: What we’ve developed is a very interactive solution called the Technogym Checkup, where we measure six dimensions of wellness, body composition, strength, cardio, balance and flexibility, and cognitive. The analysis gives us the wellness age, so based on your gender, your age bracket and your body composition, you can start to see, okay, I’m younger in strength, but my cardiovascular health is older, so I need to catch up. There is no one else than ourselves who can walk and run the wellness journey. It has to be built day by day with awareness.
Matar: If you think about it, sometimes we go into a hotel lobby and we immediately feel better, and that’s not just good vibes, it’s because it’s well designed. You go to your room and you have a desk, but the light is so dimmed, that’s not good design. Lighting is very important in your bedroom. The ventilation in the room is very important as well, so you feel I’m able to breathe. All of these items together will make you feel, as a guest, that this is the right place for me to be.
Thulliez: The menu is actually the starting point. We highlight all the allergens, the typical fourteen types, so we clearly convey that message. What we’ve done in the last six months is train our chefs to interact directly with the client, to ask what they’re looking for that day. It’s about really listening to what makes that personal interaction, and we capture those preferences into our system, so when a client returns, it feels like coming back home.
Matar: In Dubai we say we have everything and anything for everyone. I like to go and walk in nature, so I don’t have to pay lots of money to do a workout. If I like swimming, I’ll go to the community pool. It’s up to us how we want to see it, how we want to perceive it. We don’t really need to focus on the commercial side. We need to go to the people, to the inner of ourselves
Madisse MatarCluster Commercial Director — InterContinental Residences Dubai Business Bay & Kimpton Dubai
Moro: Wellness is definitely a luxury product, in the sense that health is wealth, in Italy we say there is nothing more precious than our own health. But it’s not necessarily expensive to access. Dubai and the UAE is a place where we have so many options available now, in terms of infrastructure, parks, cycling tracks, jogging tracks. It depends on us how we embrace it
Bhushan: Never before have we been in a time where all of this information has been democratised. You have tons of accounts, from TikTok to Instagram, that offer yoga classes, breathwork classes, all for free. I think being here in Dubai, the number of times I see a free class or a pop-up, I feel like companies are doing so much more for that inclusivity than I’ve seen anywhere else, and I moved here just over a year ago from the US.
Thulliez: I don’t know if everybody is aware, but there are a couple of things running in the background with the Dubai government. If you look at Dubai Municipality, every meal served in a school today is being screened by the authorities to ensure it’s low sodium, low sugar, healthy carb, with the fat content at the best nutritional level, and a minimum of nutrients available across the meals consumed at school. This is something that’s introducing health at a younger age for our kids, and it’s not, I think, often highlighted.
Thulliez: “I think the UAE is definitely moving in the right direction with putting all those initiatives forward, looking at manufacturing much more locally. One apple a day keeps the doctor away, but maybe not the ones that have been sitting in a chiller for a year.”
Arnaud ThulliezFounder & F&B Wellness Consultant — Fairmont Hotels & Resorts
Bhushan: I would say this return to ritual. All of these rituals that come from our lineages, personally the Ayurveda ritual from my dad’s lineage. Even in our kitchen, even in the way that we operate, to give ourselves permission to pause in our day and have these kinds of rituals that we can then pass down. Maybe it’s the OG biohacking that’s always been there, but we’ve taken it for granted.
Moro: I think Dubai is already ahead of the game. Dubai is a hub also from the wellness point of view. In five years it will become the benchmark. There is still some work to do, probably from the food or agricultural point of view, but I think in five years Dubai will definitely be the capital of wellness
Matar: What I would personally love to see in the next five years, not only in Dubai but in the world, is more focus on mental wellness and <a href="https://lumeamara.online/?p=5307" title="‘America’s saddest murder trial’: mental health in focus in Lindsay Clancy case”>mental health, because I think we talk about it more than we do something about it. We are grateful and blessed to be here. So many initiatives related to food and wellness in general are already happening, and I think the world needs to learn from that
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