At 76, King Charles has been making increasingly frequent comments about his declining activities, sharing late last year that he has “too many injuries” to continue riding horses, while last week he admitted that skiing is now “behind” him.
However, it doesn’t sound like the King is simply kicking back and relaxing, with his stepson Tom Parker Bowles telling The Times last week that the royal is “the most hard-working man I’ve ever met.”
Of his stepfather’s on-the-go approach to life, Tom added: “I don’t think he’s the sort of person who can just flop onto a deck chair and disappear into a book.”
© Getty ImagesWhile his role as Head of State certainly keeps the King busy, making time to rest is of huge importance – and crucial for good health.
“As humans, we’re not designed to be constantly busy or for our brains to be functioning 24/7,” cautions life coach Julie Leonard. “We need time to decompress, to process our day, our thoughts and our emotions. Rest is essential to complete the stress cycle and reset back to a healthier level.”
As a busy man, King Charles seems to consider rest to be unnecessary, but Julie explains: “Rest is not a waste of time; it is important for health and happiness and it needs to have priority status. It’s an activity to be planned and appreciated in its own right.”
Charles and Camilla’s differing approaches
While Tom was quick to share that King Charles isn’t a fan of resting, his mother, Queen Camilla, seems to have the right approach, juggling her busy royal schedule with plenty of downtime.
© Getty Images“If you give her the sun and a book, she’s perfectly happy,” Tom said of his mother, sharing that she “hates” skiing and in his childhood would meet them for lunch after they’d had a morning on the slopes.
While the King prefers to keep busy and his wife enjoys a leisurely pace of life, they are both known to be fond of checking into health retreats, with holistic health and wellness centre Soukya Camilla’s destination of choice.
RELATED: Sarah Ferguson’s exclusive £2,300 per night ‘healing’ health retreat
A seven-day stay at the Indian retreat costs from £2,800 and the Queen has reportedly visited eight times, going for the first time in 2010. She even treated her husband to a trip there in 2019 to celebrate his 71st birthday.
© GettyThe King and Queen’s health resort
Soukya offers the divisive Panchakarma ritual, a method of cleansing the body of all unwanted waste, clearing the mind and the gut, as well as the respiratory tract and sinuses.
Panchakarma is intense, so needs to be done under supervision – it can be life-threatening and fatal if it is not performed by a qualified person using proper precautions, so we’re glad the royals take a cautious approach.
While it would be better for the King to take regular breaks, one intense rest surely does the royal a lot of good!
