A forward-thinking Central City entrepreneur is inspiring people to take responsibility for their health with rooftop retreats designed to boost well-being.
We should be moving more, but we are not. In a world where most people wake up, get into a car or any mode of transport, sit in front of a computer all day, go home, watch television, go to bed, and repeat this sedentary lifestyle, Gina Levy of 360 Degrees Human has created Roof Retreats to allow people to reconnect with their bodies and nature and adopt healthier habits.
Levy is always questioning the status quo and imagining how the world could work better. She says we often abdicate our health to someone we don’t know, but being empowered with the right tools can lead to managing stress better, making sustainable food choices and reducing the risk of ill health and disease.
The retreats started on 8 December 2021 and have taken people by storm. Participants gather on various CBD rooftops such as Rooftop on Bree, The Terraces and Park Inn by Radisson Cape Town Foreshore, which they would not ordinarily have access to, to enjoy a multi-disciplinary experience of sessions with local and international professionals covering mindful movement practices, martial arts, yoga, dance, breathwork and meditation. The first hour is dedicated to movement and the second is for cooling down whether with a sound journey incorporating soothing sounds, breathwork or meditation so people get into a state of total relaxation before they leave.
FINDING BALANCE
On the day of the interview, Levy is fresh off a plane from a Global Wellness Summit in Tel Aviv, but her infectious energy is palpable, and she is excited and inspired to get people to balance their “inner and outer ecosystems” and “live whole”.
“It’s about elevation and lifting your spirit,” she says. “The idea is to go up, out and inwards where you can have some relationship with nature since we don’t have this in our office spaces. To give people that exposure, we’re saying walk outside your office and go to a rooftop where you don’t have issues of safety or harassment and can learn different movement modalities from the incredible teachers I’ve curated and who are the teacher’s teachers because they are that good.”
People from all walks of life are welcome, from novices to those who have already incorporated classes such as yoga or qigong into their daily lives. While her retreats have attracted international visitors to the CBD, she would like to expose more local patrons to these sessions and “festivals”.
Levy explains: “Most of the time retreats are offered in a green space away from the city and they are expensive, exclusive and you’ve got to take time out from work. But what we’re doing is giving you a snapshot of that experience once a month. If you think about a festival, it’s jam-packed into three days with different offerings. What we do is take one festival and cut it up into twelve parts which we host over the course of the year. So, you’re getting a snippet of different people, modalities and experiences each month and by the end of that experience, you’ve had exposure to different things.”
A WIN-WIN SITUATION
Due to the array of practitioners available who don’t always get an opportunity to showcase their work, each Rooftop Retreat is different, and the same combination is never offered twice. Levy also uses these events to support small businesses that produce environmentally friendly goods and products.
“It’s a win-win on many different levels. It’s also a win for the community who get to meet more people as you would in a festival or retreat. You never know who’s coming to these rooftops, it could be a CEO, secretary, student, or government official,” she says. Bespoke Rooftop Retreats are also available for businesses looking to host weekly or daily well-being days for their staff.
Levy’s Rooftop Retreats fall under the 360 Degrees Human umbrella that includes a Holistic Think Tank & Design Studio focused on designing holistic solutions because “the space in which we live and work has a direct impact on how we feel”. Between December and January, Levy will launch an educational podcast covering everything related to wellness from nutrition, alternative medicine, and well-being entrepreneurs as well as design and architecture.
AHEAD OF THE CURVE
The entrepreneur’s background is multidisciplinary. She studied architecture and has been involved in photography and the nonprofit sector where she created different platforms and programmes. This included Translate SA, aimed at getting local languages into the marketplace, Supernews, a citizen journalism network for positive news, and Upstarts which was aligned with the University of Cape Town and the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
It concentrated on students becoming entrepreneurs while still at university and enabling them with resources for those businesses to become reality. It was here that Levy saw the pressure the pupils were under and that they did not have the tools to handle stress.
Levy says while Rooftop Retreats is gaining momentum and buying into the so-called Life Audit (which urged people to rethink their life choices) prompted by the pandemic and trends such as living a cleaner life that’s kinder to the planet, she has always been ahead of the curve.
“In all the things that I’ve done, I’ve always been ahead of my time and then people caught up which has been very frustrating for me because it takes years and years to develop these things and by the time you do, you’re already onto the next thing and someone else is then doing it when the zeitgeist has evened out. What Covid has done is accelerated that process and people have become much more aware of their health very quickly and suddenly these two have converged. So, it’s perfect timing in the sense that there is this offering which people are receptive towards. Obviously, we still need to build a brand, but people want to learn and experience more,” she concludes.
IMAGES: CCID, Rooftop Retreats