I'm sinking my toes into white sand, as the turquoise Caribbean Sea gently laps centimetres away. A gentle breeze cools my face, and I have rum punch in my hand.

I'm at the beautiful Galley Bay Resort & Spa in Antigua, to learn how to holiday properly. This means learning how to be in the moment - and staying there. For four days. And I will achieve this though wholesome activities like yoga and sketching.

The Elite Island Resorts Group, a collection of beachfront locations in the Caribbean, is offering new activities designed to ensure every moment of your holiday is actually spent holidaying, with the help of relaxation and mindfulness skills that can be used back at home too.

In my room, I find a beautiful Colour Me Calm colouring book, co-created by Puffin illustrator Adam Stower and existential psychotherapist Dr Nicole Gehl; her private practice is based in London but she spent her formative years on Antigua, and returns regularly.

Galley Bay offers the book to guests as part of its reassuringly named 'Ink & Drink' sunset colouring sessions, which for me involve settling down on a charming wooden rocking chair on the resort's beachfront deck with a Coco Loco (a Pina Colada with a twist), and colouring in Stower's sketches of the various resorts' views and landmarks.

Yes, there's rum involved, but I post my painting on Facebook to near universal acclaim, a suggestion I frame it, and only a little gentle mirth from my seven-year-old daughter.

This holiday is about taking care of the body too, in the form of Floatfit Caribbean classes: 20-minute high-intensity interval training (HIIT), or stretches on Aquaphysical's Aquabase boards, which are effectively solid floating yoga mats.

I try out a session at the St James's Club & Villas lagoon, down the coast from Galley Bay. It's at this point that all my carefully curated mindfulness goes straight out the window, in front of a bemused group of tourists, who clearly realised early on that we would be providing the afternoon's entertainment.

It's about as hard - and fun - as it sounds to exercise on a floating board, but that's the genius of it.

Not only are you putting your body through lunges, squats and planks, but your core is getting a double workout by simply trying to stay out of the water.

With a couple of days left to practise our newfound skills of mindfulness and living in the moment, we take a catamaran trip down the coast to a spot called Pigeon Point, where we swim ashore and settle on the beach to sketch the view of the bay in shades of blue and green.

The last page of my little colouring book has a note on returning home from this paradise and suggests taking just 10 minutes a day to keep this "place of centre, this island-like quality within yourself to draw on in times of stress".

Dr Gehl suggests that once back home, we "deliberately take the long way round or get into the long queue" and notice the frustration that arises, but then "imagine the feeling as a surfboard on which you're able to stand and ride it out".

There. Simple. I get home, order the dog's tablets and get name tags sewn on school uniforms.

And embark on a plan to get back to Galley Bay for a refresher course next summer.

Travel facts

Josie Clarke was a guest of Hayes & Jarvis (01293 762 456; hayesandjarvis.co.uk) who offer a seven-night holiday to Galley Bay Resort & Spa in Antigua from £1,999pp including all-inclusive accommodation, transfers and return flights from London Gatwick with Virgin Atlantic. Departs May 16, 2017.

Wellbeing activities also available at other Elite resorts. Visit eliteislandresorts.com