August 22, 2020

Episode 1:8 Aras Erekul Shares Watermark's Vision of Well-being

32 minutes

Aras Erekul, MD, MMH is the National Director of Integrative Well-being at Watermark Retirement Communities. His unique blend of health and hospitality led to his current position in senior living—overseeing resident, staff and community wellbeing at 65 Watermark properties nationwide. As the senior living industry evolves to embrace a deeper understanding of holistic health approaches, he serves as the lead well-being architect for Watermark, weaving innovative technology with ancient wisdom practices for both existing and future Watermark communities.

About Aras

Aras is a wellness innovator who merges medicine, integrative therapies, and hospitality business insights to create life-transforming communal experiences. His educational foundation is in clinical medicine from Hacettepe University in his native Turkey, followed by a Master of Management in Hospitality at Cornell University, focusing on wellness resort development, as well as a Fellowship in Integrative Medicine from University of Arizona.

Before joining Watermark, he was the Corporate Director of Experience Development for Canyon Ranch, one of the leading healthy lifestyle and luxury hospitality brands in the world, curating and improving all wellness experiences provided on land and at sea. Aras is also a founding member of the Vitality Lab at Google, an invitation-only collective of experts from diverse backgrounds, exploring innovations to encourage more people to live purposeful, healthy lives.

Key Takeaways:

Post-Covid-19 there is a need to communicate to both existing residents and prospective residents that it is safer to be here than in your own house. And two, your well-being will fare better in a community environment then you would achieve on your own.

Having a purpose and giving back contribute to happiness, according to Professor Laurie Santos from Yale University in her course The Science of Well-being. How can senior living facilities build purpose, volunteerism, and mentoring into the programming?

Watermark in Tucson offers Equine Therapy where residents interact with the horses or are in their presence or do a guided meditation or a Reiki session.

Software developers are taking from The Playbook of hospitality customer relationship management Technologies, helping Watermark create engagement benchmarks across all the communities and drawing insights from meta-analysis.

...more

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By Nancy Griffin