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Sunday, January 4, 2015
Vilayat Dagestan. Amir Abu Muhammad Agachaulsky: "Our patience is over» - Kavkazcenter.com
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Instant Alert: The Most Exclusive Winter Retreats In The World - robertjcotter@gmail.com - Gmail
The Most Exclusive Winter Retreats In The World by Jo Foley on Jan 2, 2015, 10:36 AM Here are four of the most exclusive winter retreats in the world, where privacy is paramount and exceptional spa treatments revive guests after icy adventures. St Moritz It all began in St Moritz 150 years ago, when the proprietor of the Kulm Hotel, a certain Johannes Badrutt, promised his departing summer guests that a winter holiday would be just as enjoyable.Foolishly, he promised them a free stay if they decided to put it to the test -- and his guests, all Brits, took him at his word, returned that December and a whole new love affair with the Alps (and its wintertime sports) was born.  Originally they skated, curled, took sleigh rides and snow-walked, but this eventually grew into sledding -- especially on the frozen Lake Moritz (the birth of the Cresta Run) -- and sliding down the slopes with planks of wood attached to the feet. Fresh air and healthy outdoor pursuits were the order of the day then, but now the Kulm Spa has all that a sybarite as well as a serious skier needs, including indoor and outdoor swimming pools, the latter one of the best ways to enjoy the invigorating air. There are steam baths, a Finnish sauna, hydro jet baths and an infrared cabin, all providing therapeutic relief for tired or strained bodies, a full menu of massage and body treatments and a Kneipp foot bath to revive boot-strapped feet.Each day there is also a choice of fitness classes, or guests can book time with a personal trainer should extra be needed to cope with the 350 kilometres of slopes in the Engadin. If you're feeling brave, try the bobsleigh run and book a special three-day course, which includes training and full use of the spa for the ensuing relaxation. For those not feeling so brave, take a ride with your own driver down the course from St Moritz to Celeron. (Around £1,350 and £700 respectively.) Otherwise, the commemorative 150 years of winter tourism offer includes gentler horse-drawn sleigh rides along with champagne andspa treats, before retiring to Herr Badrutt's quarters, jazzed up for the 21st century. Three nights from approximately £950. kulm.com Aspen Spa comforts in Aspen are best enjoyed in the elegant, traditional style of the Hotel Jerome, a mini-slalom from the centre of town, where even the standard rooms have cashmere curtains. Its Auberge Spa has a menu of body and beauty treatments which use some of the traditional healing elements of local minerals and ingredients, adapted over centuries in the environs of Roaring Fork Valley, and incorporating the latest technology. The signature Sanctuary of the Mountains body treatment includes a clay exfoliation followed by a healing balm of arnica, white willow and calendula and helps to relax and calm tense joints and muscles. Its High Altitude Recovery Mountain massage is a firm-pressure offering, which helps improve mobility (great for stiffness) and relieves muscle fatigue after a long day on the slopes. Guests at the hotel have special access to the world-renowned Aspen Club and Spa, with its Sports Medicine Institute and acclaimed team of fitness and rehabilitation experts. From around £600 per suite per night. hoteljerome.Verbeir The new Chalet Sirocco in Verbier is totally private and comes complete with its own spa, with three hours of treatments included in each day's costs. An entire floor is dedicated to the spa and houses an indoor pool, hamam, steam room, sauna and hot tub. Extra treatments are available from £100 an hour, including a deep tissue and an Indian head massage.Yoga, personal training and boxercise classes can also be organised, or guests can head to the nearby Wholeycow training centre for a range of classes and private lessons from spinning to Zumba. The chalet is on four floors, with the ground floor dedicated to the spa and an entertainment zone with cinema, and each of the four vast bedrooms has its own balcony. £4,100 per person per week (includes full board, daily massage and two days' ski instruction) summitretreats. Courchevel When privacy is what is required, head for Courchevel and the penthouse apartment on the top two floors of the Hôtel de Charme Les Airelles. The private spa on the top floor has an indoor waterfall at its entrance, a Jacuzzi on the 1600 sq m terrace with magnificent views over the mountains, a sauna with large bay window so guests can still enjoy the view, a sensory shower (herbal, rainforest, eucalyptus and more) and an ice fountain. Each of the four suites has its own steam shower. At the spa, meanwhile, a full range of body treatments, aromatherapy and massages (Swedish, sports, back, head and foot) are available, as are facials for sun-dried skin. From £16,000 per night) |
Saturday, January 3, 2015
BMJ Blogs: The BMJ » Blog Archive » Richard Smith: Dying of cancer is the best death
This is an interesting POV by Dr. Smith. My first reaction was that I always felt that my mother's death was peaceful, graceful and well prepared. She left this world in a manner that I would prefer over other ways of dying. She had leukemia for about two years. She enjoyed a period of remission....doing some world traveling with dad.
That said, I believe that death is a very individual experience and no two deaths are exactly the same. How do I want to die? Thinking about it is not a pastime that would be productive. Only that I want to be at peace with my God and my loved ones and feel that my life has left the world a little better place. Then I will be best ready to accept whatever death I face. I have almost been there once, at age 55, and as a result, fear of dying is not as horrible as it once was.
Luis Buñuel, filmmaker, surrealist, iconoclast, moralist, and revolutionary, thought a lot about death. “Sometimes,” he wrote in 1982, a year before he died at 83, “I think the quicker the better—like the death of my friend Max Aub, who died all of a sudden during a card game. But most of the time I prefer a slower death, one that’s expected, that will let me revisit my life for a last goodbye.”
That said, I believe that death is a very individual experience and no two deaths are exactly the same. How do I want to die? Thinking about it is not a pastime that would be productive. Only that I want to be at peace with my God and my loved ones and feel that my life has left the world a little better place. Then I will be best ready to accept whatever death I face. I have almost been there once, at age 55, and as a result, fear of dying is not as horrible as it once was.
Richard Smith: Dying of cancer is the best death
31 Dec, 14 | by BMJ
Luis Buñuel, filmmaker, surrealist, iconoclast, moralist, and revolutionary, thought a lot about death. “Sometimes,” he wrote in 1982, a year before he died at 83, “I think the quicker the better—like the death of my friend Max Aub, who died all of a sudden during a card game. But most of the time I prefer a slower death, one that’s expected, that will let me revisit my life for a last goodbye.”How do you want to die? You must think about it.
Buñuel was clear about how he didn’t want to die. “I’m not afraid of death. I’m afraid of dying alone in a hotel room, with my bags open and a shooting script on the night table. I must know whose fingers will close my eyes.”
“An even more horrible death,” he wrote, “is one that’s kept at bay by the miracles of modern medicine, a death that never ends. In the name of Hippocrates, doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival.”
Buñuel saw how Franco died and found himself pitying a man he hated. Franco’s death in 1975 still stands for the most horrible medical death, a death that only doctors could devise. Organ after organ failed, and the doctors tried to compensate. As a medical student a year before graduation, I watched in horror. I think of the death as an incompetent carpenter trying to get a table level, sawing something of one leg, then the next, and eventually ending with the table on the floor.
Buñuel died of pancreatic cancer in Mexico City in 1983. He spent his last week discussing theology with a Jesuit brother.
His long time friend and collaborator, Jean-Claude Carrière, wrote: “Luis waited for death for a long time, like a good Spaniard, and when he died he was ready. His relationship with death was like that one has with a woman. He felt the love, hate, tenderness, ironical detachment of a long relationship, and he didn’t want to miss the last encounter, the moment of union. ‘I hope I will die alive,’ he told me. At the end it was as he had wished. His last words were ‘I’m dying’.”
Will you be ready? Will I be ready?
There are, as I endlessly repeat, essentially four ways to die: sudden death; the long, slow death of dementia; the up and down death of organ failure, where it’s hard to identify the final going down, tempting doctors to go on treating too long; and death from cancer, where you may bang along for a long time but go down usually in weeks. Suicide, assisted or otherwise, is a fifth, but I’m leaving that on one side for now.
I often ask audiences how they want to die, and most people chose sudden death. “That may be OK for you,” I say, “but it may be very tough on those around you, particularly if you leave an important relationship wounded and unhealed. If you want to die suddenly, live every day as your last, making sure that all important relationships are in good shape, your affairs are in order, and instructions for your funeral neatly typed and in a top draw—or perhaps better on Facebook.”
The long, slow death from dementia may be the most awful as you are slowly erased, but then again when death comes it may be just a light kiss.
Death from organ failure—respiratory, cardiac, or kidney—will have you far too much in hospital and in the hands of doctors.
So death from cancer is the best, the closest to the death that Buñuel wanted and had. You can say goodbye, reflect on your life, leave last messages, perhaps visit special places for a last time, listen to favourite pieces of music, read loved poems, and prepare, according to your beliefs, to meet your maker or enjoy eternal oblivion.
This is, I recognise, a romantic view of dying, but it is achievable with love, morphine, and whisky. But stay away from overambitious oncologists, and let’s stop wasting billions trying to cure cancer, potentially leaving us to die a much more horrible death.
Richard Smith was the editor of The BMJ until 2004. He is now chair of the board of trustees of icddr,b [formerly International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh], and chair of the board of Patients Know Best. He is also a trustee of C3 Collaborating for Health.
Competing interest: RS will die, perhaps soon: he’s 62.
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