Passionate about Women’s Health

This Summer, Vila Vita Parc was delighted to welcome Marta Gomes as a guest health specialist. With a background in Physiotherapy, Marta went on to study traditional Chinese medicine, helping her to develop an integrated approach to the body, health, and well-being.

Passionate about inspiring change in her clients, she further explored her preventative philosophy through functional nutrition and Pilates. Her Workshops for Women’s Health are aimed at connecting our inner self with the body, refreshing, and reactivating our relationship with it. 

Genuine, audacious, and organic, her work at the Vila Vita Spa by Sisley Paris has helped our clients towards a better quality of life, today and tomorrow. Insights sat down with Marta to talk about her time with us and her unique approach to wellness.

Yes, and once I’d graduated I worked from a clinic there. I might have stayed there, but then the pandemic happened and forced me to rethink how I worked with my clients.

Suddenly, we had to work online, and that shifted our focus onto teaching them to look after their own wellbeing rather than treating their symptoms alone. It was a challenge, but it inspired me to a new way of looking at my work - and where my life was going too.

It made us all reevaluate the way we work - and our priorities as well.

It made me think of how I needed to expand the treatments that I could offer, so I started to be more open to different treatments and techniques. Because of this, I started to travel, to gain experience in different cultures and philosophies. I was invited to work in the Seychelles, Oman, and across Europe - and so I went! 

I think it does expand the mind, to see different things, different cultures. But, for me, it was also a personal growth, helping me understand different experiences and perspectives.

During my work, as I try to discover a client’s needs, I need to be able to understand the way they think. Each body tells a story, so I need to be able to translate those unique emotions and stresses. And experiencing different lifestyles and cultures has really helped me to do that.  

I find that it's helped me to understand how different places might influence a clients general well-being. The environment that you live in, the culture you come from, these can all affect different masculine and feminine stresses, different lifestyle choices, or different ways of coping with the world. It helps me to teach them to make changes that will really benefit them long-term, not just treat the problems that they have today.  

Yes, traditionally doctors look to fix the immediate problem. So it becomes your responsibility to fix this problem. After graduation, I looked at physiotherapy the same way, that I should try and ‘fix’ the client in two or three sessions - that it was my responsibility. Chinese medicine taught me a different philosophy, one that I applied to myself too. We need to look after ourselves long-term, to know what we can change and accept it as a growing process.  

Definitely, I changed my lifestyle, I stopped taking responsibility for things I couldn’t change and starting taking it for the things I could - for myself and my patients. I wanted to share this with people, to inspire them. I started writing my blog, which helped me to do this and to process my own growth, personal and professional. With this and what I am able to do now, I really get to explore how to inspire change through my work. 

There is a challenge when you only get to see a client one time. Here I have the chance to use my experience to give advice that clients can take away with them, they are on holiday and can really focus on making changes they want to make. If they stay here for 10 days then they can see the difference the workshops have on them during their stay. This can inspire them to go home and work on these things.

It’s a place that helps to inspire positivity too...

Yes, and if I can bring positive energy to the client, that it comes from a positive place. If they experience a better quality of life, then it helps them to think, “Yes, I can have a better quality of life too…” I can help them to listen to their body and what it needs to do this. 

That’s done by reading the body, if a diaphragm is tense, we need to work on breathing. The stomach, the liver, these are all clues to what is happening, biologically and emotionally. The body doesn’t lie, it tells us what to look for. It tells our story. After that, we can explore these issues and how we can make any changes that they will require - to find harmony.   

I talk a lot about our masculine and feminine sides, biological and emotional, because we all have both, and we need to find a balance and harmony with them. My work here has focused specifically on women’s health, something I had experience with through working with pregnant and postpartum women, and through my own experience as a woman. 

I’ve held three different workshops here, all for women, and for all ages, with different themes and goals. These are challenging times for women, we have a lot of pressure to balance our professional and personal lives, with culture redefining what these are. I want to help women to listen to and be aware of their bodies needs while facing these challenges.  

The first focuses on the power of breathing, to breath deeper and relax the body, breathing teaches us to control our responses and connect with our body. It helps us be more present, which really helps us to listen to our body and cope with our day-to-day well-being.

The second is about nutrition from a feminine perspective, understanding hormonal cycles and what you should be eating to improve your health. A big problem for women is counting calories or following other bad habits, we cook together to try and create new, better, healthier ones.  

The third concentrates on pelvic movement. This communicates with breathing, but helps build body confidence and awareness. It’s a bold class, but the reaction to it has been really, really positive, at the start you see a lot of serious faces - then you see them begin to open their minds to all the positivity in the class! 

I think it’s something we're all becoming more awake to, if we can approach a problem at it’s beginning, then we can try to change it, it’s a more preventative way of looking at our health. This is really important because we all need to learn and we need to take care of ourselves. I really think things are changing in a better way - and this means that people can change their lives for the better too.