Thoughts of a massage with four hands (two people) and 8–9 litres of oil sounds like utter bliss to me. And more, from Ayurveda Parkschlösschen.

Our roundup of the week’s news, with Sasha Kehoe, covers:

- Pope Francis’s visit to Luxembourg on such a wet Thursday and the much-noted coffee-shop visit

- Upcoming Austrian elections with a potential real far-right win

- Former Prime Minister and President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker addressing the ongoing rumours of his alleged alcoholism

- Pirate Party Defections

- Euthanasia in Switzerland - death in a Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia.

- A bit of light relief with Pesto the Penguin at an Australian aquarium home

Ayurveda Parkschlösschen and Nestwärme

Ayurveda Parkschlösschen is not too far away at the Mosel river in Traben-Trarbach and is an oasis for the over-worked.

Kathleen Landbeck is a naturopath and psychotherapist, who leads the Resilienz Retreat at Ayurveda Parkschlösschen. Maria Hebel is an Ayurvedic Practicioner at the centre.

Dirk Hense represents Nestwärme - a family relief network across Germany, Luxembourg and Austria for families with physically or mentally handicapped children; families that need to become resilient to cope with the realities of their day-to-day existence.

Ayurveda is an ancient holistic medical system which focusses on the human being as an individual, with individual problems and needs.

Each person is viewed in terms of their ‘dosha’ (body and personality type) to help us understand our personality type and traps.

Whatever one’s background or wealth, we face different challenges in life: burdens of work, relationships and health. We also face the burden of ourselves and the weight we put on ourselves through upbringing and culture around us.

We’ve certainly come to realise that physical health impacts mental health and our microbiome. At Parkschlösschen they try to reset the digestive tract and calm the nervous system with a series of many of the things we know ourselves: good food habits, sleep, meditation, yoga, and a digital detox.

We fall in to habits and traps, and in relationships:

“Partners are our gurus, especially when it's difficult”

Kathleen and Maria plus the team meet people as they arrive high on stress hormones.

We are not always conscious of what’s hurting us, or our unrealistic expectations. Why is it that we are so driven? Or can’t meet the standards set by ourselves or others? Kathleen tries to develop the self love muscle.

We learn about the Four Stages of Life:

- Learning stage - when we are students or apprentices

- Establishing stage through work and family; wealth creation

- Doing to being - mentoring and giving back

- Returning to our spiritual selves - retreating from the doing and rest in the being

- We also learn about the importance of boundaries to maintain our emotional and physical health, and also learn about the five different levels of being:

- Physical

- Vital force

- Mind - thoughts and emotions

- Intellect - more subtle and stable than the mind

- Bliss body - deep sleep, like in a meditation (or great sex!)

Nestwärme

Nestwärme helps families in a holistic way, fostering the feeling of community and diversity. It’s so easy to feel alone with not much ‘extra’ energy when faced with an on-going stressful family situation.

And this is not an insignificant number - about 2-5% of families are touched by this in western European countries.

The work is focused on health and wellbeing where the body follows the mind, plus the intrinsic need for belonging.

The motto is ‘me, then you, then we’. We cannot sacrifice too much of ourselves or we burnout.

Nestwärme have added 7 elements of building resilience:

- Self awareness

- Self regulation

- realistic optimism

- solution orientated

- orientation to future

- orientation to network

- Ability of acceptance

And they added the importance of humour

Resilience is a muscle that must be trained. They have built and e-learning platform which is available in English, German and French.

If you wish to contact any of these organisations you can fine Ayurveda Parkschloesschen here, https://www.ayurveda-parkschloesschen.de/en/homepage-english/

with a blog here https://gb.parkschloesschenblog.de/

They are also available on instagram.

https://www.instagram.com/ayurvedaparkschloesschen/

Kathleen is about to become a digital nomad, travelling the world with her work and has a website here. https://www.kathleenlandbeck.de/de

Nestwärme is available here https://www.nestwaerme.org/lu/ with their CareYoo programme here http://www.careyoo.org

The news stories can be found here:

https://today.rtl.lu/news/world/a/2234922.html

https://apnews.com/article/austria-election-far-right-kickl-nehammer-9db1d6bebfd67d3225be787e34e0b13d

https://today.rtl.lu/news/luxembourg/a/2233867.html

https://today.rtl.lu/news/luxembourg/a/2232874.html

https://today.rtl.lu/news/world/a/2234508.html

https://today.rtl.lu/news/science-and-environment/a/2234566.html