We have become hooked on BBC2's new Reality TV programme, The Retreat, and, from various conversations with students and friends, we've found we're not to the only ones!
The Retreat takes a small group of people, including a police woman and a taxi driver, all of whom are looking for a lifestyle change, away to a Thai island for a month. Whilst one participant is suffering from serious health problems such as diabetes, most are living with general background levels of stress, fatigue, and a sense that their health - both physical and emotional - is some way from being optimal.
The experience
The guests embark on the programme with various degrees of skepticism, as they are put through their paces with a week of fasting, followed by a strict regime of early starts, vegan food, yoga, reiki and twice-daily enemas. As viewers, we're party to the group's first experience of yoga, 1:1 healing and setting up for their enemas.
The guests experience a roller coaster journey of skepticism and surprise, highs and lows - and it's difficult not to be moved by small personal triumphs, as weight is lost, clamped-in emotions find a way out, or a yoga pose is mastered. But the power of the series comes from the fact that these guests are all yoga and retreat newbies, rather than die-hard yogis or experienced detoxers; their freshness to the experience makes for very engaging viewing,
Whilst the daily routine is far more regimented and intense than guests can expect on our own retreats, a similar process is at work, and it is participants' openness to this change that is inspiring and even quite humbling.