The Prestige Awards — a UK-based recognition program that evaluates small and medium-sized businesses across more than 40 regions worldwide — named Aknanda Academy the Best Wellness Center in Central America & the Caribbean. The award recognizes businesses that demonstrate consistent quality, clear expertise, and genuine value to their communities.
Aknanda is not a spa. It’s a Academy
What gets evaluated here is how well you move, how efficiently your nervous system responds under load, and whether your structure is building toward longevity or working against it. The foundation is traditional: Qigong, Tai Chi, Meditation, Zen Kung Fu — practices with documented lineages that predate the wellness industry by centuries. The method is Bharú’s: rooted in Daoist and Buddhists wisdom, biomechanics, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and more than two decades of direct transmission from teachers in China, Indonesia, Thailand, Germany, Italy and Argentina.
The recognition landed in Nosara for a reason. This town sits inside the Nicoya Peninsula, one of the world’s five Blue Zones — regions where people measurably outlive global averages. The local culture is already oriented toward slow living, daily movement, and community. Practicing here isn’t a retreat from ordinary life. It’s an extension of the environment.
What Aknanda Qigong adds to that environment is precision. Knowing why a posture works. Understanding what the breath is doing to the fascial system. Learning to distinguish effort from tension. That specificity is what the students who travel here from the US, Europe and beyond are looking for — and what, apparently, Prestige Awards was looking for too.
This belongs to everyone who has trained, asked hard questions, and kept showing up.
