Byron's Cryo Chamber - Thermogenesis rejuvenate your body

How thinking can change the brain

In 1992, the neuroscientist Richard Davidson got a challenge from the Dalai Lama. By that point, he’d spent his career asking why people respond to, in his words, “life’s slings and arrows” in different ways. Why are some people more resilient than others in the face of tragedy? And is resilience something you can gain through practice?

The Dalai Lama had a different question for Davidson when he visited the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader at his residence in Dharamsala, India. “He said: ‘You’ve been using the tools of modern neuroscience to study depression, and anxiety, and fear. Why can’t you use those same tools to study kindness and compassion?’ … I did not have a very good answer. I said it was hard.”

The Dalai Lama was interested in what the tools of modern neuroscience could reveal about the brains of people who spent years, in Davidson’s words, “cultivating well-being … cultivating qualities of the mind which promote a positive outlook.” The result was that, not long afterward, Davidson brought a series of Buddhist monks into his lab and strapped electrodes to their heads or treated them to a few hours in an MRI machine.

“The best way to activate positive-emotion circuits in the brain is through generosity,” Davidson, who founded the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at University of Wisconsin, Madison, said in a talk at the Aspen Ideas Festival. “This is really a kind of exciting neuroscientific finding because there are pearls of wisdom in the contemplative tradition—the Dalai Lama frequently talks about this—that the best way for us to be happy is to be generous to others. And in fact the scientific evidence is in many ways bearing this out, and showing that there are systematic changes in the brain that are associated with acts of generosity.”

Davidson and his colleagues ran a simple experiment on eight “long-term Buddhist practitioners” whose had spent an average of 34,000 hours in mental training. They asked the subjects to alternate between a meditative state and a neutral state in order to observe how the brain changed. One subject described his meditation as generating “a state in which love and compassion permeate the whole mind, with no other consideration, reasoning, or discursive thoughts.”

“When we did this, we noticed something remarkable,” Davidson said. “What we see are these high-amplitude gamma-oscillations in the brain, which are indicative of plasticity”—meaning that those brains were more capable of change, for example, in theory, of becoming more resilient. The researchers also found in MRI scans of monks that a region of the brain known as the anterior insula was activated. “Every neuroscientist will have their favorite part of the brain,” Davidson said. The anterior insula is one of his, because it’s where a lot of brain-body coordination takes place. “The systems in the brain that support our well-being are intimately connected to different organ systems in our body, and also connected to the immune and endocrine systems in ways that matter for our health,” he said. The brain scans showed that “compassion is a kind of state that involves the body in a major way.” One example: Davidson and coauthors foundin another study that meditation improved immune response to an influenza vaccine—and the subjects were not “professional” Buddhist meditators, but people who had gone through an eight-week training program in mindfulness meditation. And a short “compassion training” course, Davidson and colleagues found in a 2013 study, exhibited more altruistic behavior compared with a control group.

The study of Buddhist brains has burgeoned since Davidson first met the Dalai Lama. But it’s still not known precisely how compassion alters the brain to promote better health or better behavior. Gamma waves and lit up insula can only tell you so much about the linkages between the mind and the body, and, in turn, about what it really takes to think your way to a better character.* Davidson’s research suggests, he said, that “we can all take responsibility for our brains.” In which case, cultivating responsibility itself might be the first step.

Byron's Spa expanding to Villa Hotel resort in Eastern Algarve in 2016 for both men and women

BYRON’S RIVER CLUB SPA

EAST ALGARVE PORTUGAL

REJUVANESSENCE NATURAL TREATMENTS

The Natural Facelift Treatment. (Exclusive to  Byron’s River Club Spa in the Eastern Algarve.)

Originally developed in America by Stanley Rosenberg, an American body worker who has moved to Sweden with his revolutionary 'facelift' technique.

Rosenberg had discovered the technique almost by accident. Alongside his massage work, he taught acting, and he found that some of his pupils, when asked to show emotions, could not move their faces properly. When he looked into it further, he realized this was because certain muscles were too stiff or the connective tissue was brittle.
When he gently manipulated the face he found an almost magical effect. Suddenly his actors could show their emotions. Their faces became instantly more mobile and, intriguingly, more youthful. The treatment then was brought from Sweden to England, by Margareta Loughram. She refined and perfected the technique into a course of six treatments and the theory is as follows:-

• We store tension almost from birth, and this shows later in wrinkles, lines and set of facial muscles. Over the years we get that 'frozen expression' as the muscles stiffen. By removing tension - and working on the body through acupressure and zone points on the face, we make the face come alive again, give a brighter complexion and lessen bags and wrinkles.
• By treating the 91 face, scalp and neck muscles, the Rejuvanessence technique first works on the connective tissues above the layer of the muscles.
• The connective tissue of the skin itself is made up of cells which 
  secrete collagen fibres. These weave together to form a net-like
  structure
• The cells also secrete the gelatin-like ground substance that fills 
  the space between the fibres. What we call 'aging' of the skin is
  primarily a stiffening of that gelatin. The links of the molecules 
  get bound together in long chains and the gelatin becomes hard. The facial skin becomes less flexible and lines and wrinkles become set.
• To add to our problems, the hardening of the connective tissue can
  almost 'glue' the skin to the tissues surrounding the muscles or
  bones. The face then becomes drawn, tight and pinched.

Rejuvanessence works by releasing the stuck tissue, gently helping the connective tissue to regain its freedom and elasticity. By freeing the connective tissue with gentle finger massage, and by working on the 91 muscles of face, neck and shoulders to release tension, the blood supply to the skin is improved naturally, detoxifying and improving skin nutrition for skin quality and muscle tone. This will improve the complexion and help in lessening bags under the eyes, lines and wrinkles.

A full treatment consists of six weekly sessions. While the first session works all over the face, concentration on the connective tissues, the following sessions are more specific. The second session works on muscles of the forehead and scalp; the third focuses around the eyes, nose and mouth; the fourth tackles the jaw line and the fifth the neck. The sixth session reworks a problem area.

Although the majority of clients come for beauty's sake, they generally find their overall health improves too, and people feel happier and more relaxed. This is because layers of emotional stress from face and body are peeled - one layer at the time. The results are not necessarily instant but as healing takes place, clients will feel better and better. Advice on nutrition is also given if necessary. 

A meal plan for the stay at the Golden River Spa Villa Hotel uses local produce from the local organic farm with fresh organic vegetables and fruit.

Rejuvanessence is a wonderful treatment but we cannot give back a completely smooth, youthful face - only surgery will do that by cutting away loose skin - which will often make the face look too tight, too taut and completely plastic.

However, if you prefer to look glowing, with slightly plumped up skin, a tauter jaw line, and lose a few of the wrinkles without smoothing out the 'character' lines, then the Rejuvanessence technique could be the natural and complete safe answer for you.

The above is just one example of one treatment available, and at different times of the year the menu of treatments will change depending on the therapists who are resident at the spar, we have a spring, summer, autumn and winter collection of treatments specially formulated along with special diet programs to suit all body types, ages and budgets. 

Byron’s Rejuvanessence treatments available with Spa villa packages from 3 nights £1,335 per person, full board, meals, including 6 treatments and transfers to the from Faro airport. 

Packages range from short spa breaks to 6 week life style changing packages for those that want a complete body, mind and soul make over. For those that want to change course and want to make serious changes to dietary habits, poor posture, weight loss, stress management and mental outlook.