Opportunities and threats of global wellness: A lesson from the Czech Republic Jana Stara, Jun 23, 2014 Wellness in the 21st century is truly a great chance for people and businesses from all around the world to thrive, but the global interest brings both opportunities and threads. In many languages there is no synonym or translation of the word “wellness” in the dictionary, and basically nobody provides an explanation or a definition to it. Due to this international lack of meaning, today’s wellness faces the risk of being everything and nothing, or just another buzz word. All humans share the basic need of living a healthy, quality and satisfying life, but the application is very different in India, United States or Czech Republic. International wellness should accept the whole spectrum of wellness realities from the point that we can learn from one another, but especially when applying somebody else’s approach, we have to be able to distinguish between the general transferable truth and its cultural background. The wellness in the Czech Republic follows the European tradition of spa and medical services, and the trend can be traced globally according to the Global Spa and Wellness Summit, that labels it as the wellness tourism. As a matter of fact, wellness is in the eyes of many Europeans reduced to spa hotel services, which forces us as wellness professionals to aim for a harmonized understanding of the wellness concept and to broaden the perception of wellness beyond the walls of wellness centers. In my Czech approach I stand between the American health-oriented wellness and the European notion of wellness as spa, relaxation and pampering. On the National Wellness Conference I would like to share the experiences and design of my first wellness course which took place from February to May 2014. In this course we used the wellness concept of John Travis, alongside with methods of the Czech holistic approach to experiential pedagogy: dramaturgy, group work, reflection and lots of fun. This topic was presented at the National Wellness Conference 2014. See the full presentation in Prezi.