Preparing For The Walk

Why Commit To Wellness Training?

Wellness Training is an opportunity to assess the overall state of your health using the five pillars; physical (always the utmost in our minds), psychological (usually considered when in crisis), relational (also focused on when in disarray), intellectual (hardly ever ‘think’ about), and spiritual (again when thrust into crisis becomes critical).

Grand adventurers cause heightened suspense even in the most experienced traveler. The confluence of fear of the unknown and excitement revs our body’s defenses and focuses our minds. When a journey is ‘out of the norm’ for a person, anxiety based on fear is normal and occurs to a larger or smaller degree but is still present! WHW understands this and is part of the logic of the twelve-week training program.

Women from all over the world and fitness levels sign up yearly to Walk the various Global Walks. We designed the Wellness program to ensure you begin the Walk confidently and enjoy the experience from start to finish. It can have many benefits and facilitate positive lifestyle changes. Your support team thoughtfully calculated the hours and distance you would walk and will be there to assist in every aspect of this journey. Then you can thoroughly enjoy all aspects of the experience. Being prepared reduces unease. What is the best preparation for your mountain trekking challenge? Get ‘Wellness’ fit and get answers to all your questions!

Completing a 12-week wellness program before a challenging trek can help individuals prepare for the adventure within each component of Wellness:

  • Physically
  • Psychologically
  • Relationally
  • Intellectually
  • Spiritually

Physical Preparation

Trekking for seven days at 25 km daily in the mountains is physically demanding. A wellness program can help individuals improve their physical fitness, endurance, strength, and flexibility, which are essential for a successful trek. Regular exercise, healthy eating, and sleeping habits also help prevent injuries, fatigue, and other physical ailments during the Walk.
Reflect on your current physical Wellness.
Do you know your ‘numbers’ — or your current medical state? Are you getting regular check-ups and using preventative healthcare? Daily healthy habits heighten your physical prowess:
  • Sleeping 7-9 hours
  • Eating nutritionally rich foods
  • Drinking enough water
  • Actively moving your body for at least 30 minutes daily
  • Managing stress

One cornerstone of physical Wellness is how your body works, how you move, and your strength, flexibility, and endurance. Is your body healthy? Can you sustain physical activities? Regular training will increase your enjoyment when you’re on the Walk, help prevent injury, improve your overall health and well-being, and hopefully create a lifestyle shift by adding regular exercise to your daily routine.

Phychological Preparation

Mental Wellness focuses on your internal state. It is a measure of how well you understand and negotiate your emotions and cope with life’s challenges.

Trekking in the mountains can be mentally challenging. Individuals may face unexpected obstacles, such as harsh weather conditions, difficult terrain, challenges socially, or different sleeping or eating patterns. Adjusting can be stressful. Developing the necessary mental toughness to persist when fatigued is a skill that can serve you well in many aspects of your life. “Not giving up” is a jewel of a skill. The Wellness Training can help you develop mental resilience, emotional regulation, stress management skills, and positive coping mechanisms to deal with challenges. It can build self-confidence, motivation, and a positive mindset for the trek.

Reflect on your current psychological Wellness. Are you aware of any predispositions? What are your triggers? What are your coping strategies, and are they productive or destructive? How can you slow your life down and allow for more contemplative time?

Relation Preparation

We are communal beings programmed to connect. This instinct does not mean we are born with or learn the skills to do this well. How well we attach can bring joy or distress, comfort or sadness, support or loneliness, and ease or tension. Our environment informs us but does not define patterns for a lifetime.

Trekking with 29 other women can be socially challenging. Our Wellness Training helps individuals become more aware and accepting of both their and others’ beautiful differences and challenges.

You can begin to develop social skills, empathy, and effective communication strategies to build strong relationships with fellow trekkers. It can also help individuals understand and respect cultural and personal differences, essential for a successful group experience. Tolerance of self and others is a key mindset.

Reflect on your current relational Wellness. Being skillful creates resilience in connecting with others. Think about your existing relationships. Are they contentious, based on stress and anger? Are they close and supportive.? Consider why they are not all you hope them to be. Do you feel secure and worthy of your social connections? What would be needed to change them to be mutually satisfying?

Intellectual Preparation

This area considers how you take in information, solve problems, use creativity, and activate your mind. How curious are you? The intellectual area also considers your vocational choices and how meaningful and satisfying they are for you. Financial stability is included here.

Knowledge is power, particularly self-knowledge and knowledge of the region. A wellness program can provide individuals with the necessary education and training on navigation, wilderness survival, and first aid. It can also help individuals develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills to handle unexpected situations during the trek and life.

Reflect on your current intellectual Wellness. In what ways do you challenge yourself intellectually? What creative outlets bring you joy? Do you create and use analytical and critical thinking skills at work? Are you sufficiently validated in your workplace? Do you feel financially secure?

Spiritual Preparation

Spiritual Wellness speaks to how you see yourself in relationship to the larger view of the world. What gives your life meaning, safety, comfort, and inner peace while framing your purpose in living?

Trekking in the mountains can be a spiritual experience for some individuals. A wellness program can help individuals connect with nature. You will have time to contemplate questions about meaning and purpose in your life and participate in discussions. We hope you are able to develop a sense of gratitude and compassion. It can also help individuals develop spiritual practices and rituals that enhance their overall Wellness and connection.

Reflect on your current spiritual Wellness. Do you find hope in organized religion? Can work or creative endeavors bring solace and serenity? Can contentment be gained by immersing yourself in nature or helping others? What are the messages from your family, and do they carry messages of peace?

Our 4 Pillars

Working within each pillar allows Walkers to explore more about themselves. By improving self-knowledge, we can better understand our strengths and challenges and forge a pathway forward based on thoughtful, personal values toward the goal of creating a strategic, achievable plan. Wellness is much more than the absence of illness. It is a proactive take charge of your life active process to create a heightened state of health through informed choices. Only by educating ourselves can we truly generate alternatives. Life is dynamic and always changing. As the earth revolves, it is in continuous motion, and every unique day presents a variety of pleasures and tests.

Culture & Heritage

This Walk was conceived and implemented with this framework in mind. By exploring our own Culture and Heritage and sharing it with others, we begin to profoundly appreciate where we are from and what it means to be uniquely us. Additionally, by better understanding at both a cognitive and a visceral level, we connect more deeply to the country in which we live.

Health & Wellness

 A strength-based Health and Wellness vision is the bedrock of this program, and its principles are woven throughout a three-month process. This multidimensional approach focuses on expanding personal strengths and developing a more stable life through work in five areas: Physical, Psychological, Relational, Intellectual, and Spiritual. As human beings, we are not singularly our physicality, intellect, connections, beliefs, and emotions. One area cannot and does not define us. The balanced integration of these different components creates a more precious, vibrant life in which we can achieve the heights of our aspirations and be our most genuine. It is useful to consider the current roles we play in our lives and how these affect each Wellness area.

Community Building

Community Building is a primal instinct. We are programmed to seek out others for comfort and protection. In today’s digital world, we are more superficially connected but often isolated and alone. Through the Zoom calls, you can also help individuals build community and camaraderie with their fellow trekkers, enhancing their overall experience and acknowledging achievements.

Strength and Leadership

Strength and Leadership center in self-knowledge. It is the physical and mental qualities required to face internal and external adversity. Strength and leadership are built from the inside and tested in the outer world. The Women’s Heritage Walk forces walkers to look honestly at their skills, abilities, personal integrity, accountability, and ethics. It further develops the courage, commitment, and persistence required to push through barriers. Confronting and mastering fears and obstacles also improves the skills necessary to inspire self and others, get clarity of goals, and create pathways forward. To build confidence, one must be aware of individual strengths and challenges and be able to confront and correct them. It all begins at the end of our comfort zones. Stretch past what is comfortable.

Culture & Heritage

Health & Wellness

Community Building

Strength and Leadership

Know Your Wellness Fitness Level And
Create A Path Forward

There are many ways to train, and you can adjust the training programs provided to fit your lifestyle and personal preference. Please reference the training handbook in the Walker’s Platform to determine your level.

Understanding how fit you are now is an excellent place to start. Knowledge is POWER in all aspects of your Wellness Journey. Self-knowledge helps you create a vision and a concrete plan to move from where you are to where you’d like to be.

CREATING WELLNESS PLANS

A Wellness Program Plan is intended to improve and promote balanced health. Targeted interventions include preventative physical and mental health screenings, smoking cessation, addiction counseling, diabetes management, cardiovascular health, and weight loss programs. If you are experiencing these troubles, please see a professional without delay.

Identify both strengths and challenges. Be honest with yourself; it is the only way to create a tailored wellness plan.

Be Your Authentic Self

Psychologists will tell you that authenticity is one of the pillars of happiness. “In a nutshell, authenticity means being true to oneself,” states psychologist Petra Kipfelsberger of the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. “There is a plethora of authenticity research showing the importance of it for well-being.”

Give each component a ranking from 1-10, with one being “can’t be worse and ten being can’t be better”.
But remember, each one relates to another, so you won’t necessarily benefit from focusing all your attention on one to the detriment of others.

Set goals

Use a five-pronged formula by asking yourself:

1. Are they detailed and specific?
2. How are they measured?
3. Are they attainable?
4. Why are they relevant to me?
5. What are the identified time frames?

Track your progress

Take daily notes to ensure they remain at the forefront of your mind. Set the alarm to remind yourself to bask in your success or move forward on your objectives.

Create a support network

Remember how meaningful social connections are, and let others motivate
you as you support them.

Update your wellness plan

Every month, every six months, then every year as you notate and define challenges and find success. Ask those close to you, “How am I doing.”Your health and well-being affect those you love.

Each individual’s recipe for the Secret Sauce of a High State of Wellness is different. How do we know how much we need or where we are deficient? Some of us come from the factory with appropriate amounts of some components and less of others. We may acquire other ingredients as options or add-ons later in life. One of the best things we can do through self-knowledge surveys or diagnostics is to clarify our values because it helps to determine what is most important to us and what we may be lacking or deficient in.

Don’t wait until twelve weeks from the start date; begin training as soon as you sign up. Once you become a ‘Walker,’ you will be given access to the Walker Platform and all the training material to get you started.

Note:
Before beginning any training program, please consult your doctor. WHW requires all participants to provide a doctor’s clearance before training. You will find the form on the Platform as well. Ask your doctor to complete the form and return it to us as part of your registration.
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Our History

The Women's Heritage Walk is a life-affirming trek inspired by the worldwide history of women who walked to feed their families, bring water to the villages, trade goods and services, and migrate to safer, more hospitable lands. Women have been on the move for centuries, often reacting to the weather, food, and resources.

The Walks was a natural corollary to the three-day Wellness Seminars established in and around the mountains of Garmisch, Germany, in 1992. This format expanded to Poland, Rome, Italy, and into schools to meet the growing need to address the social and emotional need to cope with increased stress, particularly bullying in schools. Women's Heritage Walk, established in 2015, has become an unrivaled multi-layered experience for women.

The Women's Heritage Walk is an unrivaled multi-layered experience for women. It is rooted in the belief that women empower each other, their families, communities, and themselves through growth, learning, and pushing their limits.

Preparation begins three months in advance with a curated program to prepare walkers mentally and physically for an arduous, exciting adventure. This experiential journey captivates all the senses and enhances each woman's physical strength and internal fortitude while enhancing an individual's personal health and wellness path.

This adventure allows walkers to immerse themselves authentically in the local country's cultural heritage. Daily programs stimulate a more profound understanding of our foremothers' life experiences and offer a new appreciation for the habits and customs borne from the hardships of early life.

Participants forge deeper bonds with themselves and each other through physical, mental, and emotional development. Shared hardships endured with common goals create lifelong attachments, increase mutual understanding, widen tolerance parameters, heighten mutual respect, and reinforce shared values. Once accomplished, it accentuates individual strengths and potential more fully.

This transformational endeavor impacts the Walkers and their network of friends, family, colleagues, and community members. Each person learns vicariously from the participant's persistence, perseverance, lifestyle changes, growth, reinvigoration, and heightened knowledge.

Each year brings a new adventure and opportunity to connect as we obtain the most up-to-date research to augment and improve upon the four pillars of Culture and Heritage, Health and wellness, Strength and Leadership, and Community Connection.

We employ an overarching approach encompassing all human needs. We focus on physical and mental health, joy and balance in relationships and spiritual and intellectual curiosity.

Tolerance, perseverance, self-awareness, and cultural respect are themes discussed in the Wellness Component. These become more relevant as the event brings women from multiple nationalities together. The journey provides an open forum for the women to discuss culture, values, and traditions and to learn from each other without judgment. Through it, they discover more that unites them than separates them.

Each woman takes a chance by overcoming fear and disrupting their life momentarily, hoping to find something special inside and outside themselves. Through connections to others unlike themselves, they learn and grow.

"A heart afraid never learns to dance and never takes a chance." Bette Midler

Fear isolates us and diminishes our opportunity to live our best lives by finding our best selves. We must be challenged to do this, and the Women's Heritage will challenge you. Complacency and walking through our lives on autopilot does not. When we think of adventures, we think of exploring something outside ourselves. However, in this Walk, a large part of this challenge and any arduous struggle happens inside ourselves. This Walk challenges you to go outside your comfort zone in all areas.

This program is guided by integrity and honors heritage. The Women's Heritage Walk develops personal and collective strength. Proximity and shared hardship build not only tolerance but respect. By finishing, they teach our daughters, families, and community that difficult does not mean impossible. The challenging walks teach us to persevere with compassion, humbly appreciate nature's power, and draw on inner strength to keep moving forward when weary. This gift of struggling fortifies a heightened and profound belief in oneself and gratitude for the support given.

Along with her in-country cultural experts, Jody continues to develop a modern and ever-growing tribe of a global 'sisterhood.'

26-year-old UAE national Waheeda Al Hadhrami participated in 2017 and said about the event, "Walking through our beautiful deserts and reconnecting with our past was life-changing, although it was physically and mentally challenging. The experience allowed me to meet many women from different backgrounds and walks of life, and I enjoyed the cultural exchange. I loved every step of the journey!"