Detoxing in Thailand: My fabulous five day fast.

As the Muslim month of fasting officially was coming to a close and Indonesians were all returning home to family for the celebration of Idul Fitri, Hal and I headed off to the Sanctuary at Koh Phangan in the Gulf of Thailand to undergo a fast of our own.

We'd both done 3 day fast before and loved the renewed energy it gave us, so we opted for the 5.5 day, seven night cleansing program and signed on the dotted line.

Arriving by boat on the tiny beach at Haad Tien where the Sanctuary is located, I instantly felt at home among hatched roof huts nestled into the surrounding jungle populated by a tribe of smiling relaxed interlopers, chilling out on cushions and hammocks in the shade. The whole place had a welcoming and distinctively laid back style.

The first thing you have to do is report to the Wellness Centre and pass a ph test to see if you have an healthy amount of electrolytes in your system to commence the fast. If you are going to be releasing toxins from the colon you want your body to be capable of handling the load efficiently.

Greeted by the effervescent and irrepressible Moon, our cheeky Thai guide for this odyssey, we spit on our little bits of paper, and pass with flying colours. Two weeks pre-fast preparation of a largely fruit and vegetable diet and no alcohol, dairy, wheat or processed foods probably helped quite a bit.

We down our last supper of ‘hot and raw’ soup, a lurid shade of green and surprisingly delicious. Armed with our first bentonite clay and psyllium shake and some intestinal herbs we are ready for day one and head off to bed.

Meanwhile on facebook a lot of people are concerned. Our feed slowly fills with people’s externalised fears and attachments about food: ‘I could never do that’. ‘Is that dangerous?’ ‘You guys are crazy’, ‘What about all that great Thai food you are missing.’ And so on.

You clean your home, so the line goes, why not your insides!?

The aim? Rid our bodies of acids, and toxins, remove blockages and stagnation in the digestive tract, and improve nutritional absorption and circulation around the body. Our good gut bacteria should also get a boost helping our immune system to work better. In short we should look and feel better, from the inside out! 

Our diet is largely vegetarian and pretty healthy but we’d be lying if we didn't admit it also contains a regular share of processed and refined flours and sugars, rich restaurant fare in heavy sauces and the occasional pizza takeaways, not to mention caffeine and alcohol, eating on the run and all those preservatives, food additives and chemicals we were never designed to consume that seem to creep their way into everything.   

Just the act of stopping food intake is beneficial all on its own. It takes around 24 hours for the body to start diverting the enormous amounts of energy usually spent digesting food, to eliminating toxins and healing and repairing the body. If you think about it historically the human body is conditioned to having regular periods of feast and famine as food sources and fortunes change across the seasons. Science is now telling us that one of the key indicators for longevity is calorie restriction and intermittent fasting is all the rage. (Tell your mum - skipping breakfast is not bad after all!)

Giving the body a break to help rid ourselves the accumulated goop of bad food choices makes perfect sense once you look into it. The actual process of cleansing the body from the inside is a little more mysterious until you do it.

Which is what brings us to Day 1 of our fast.

Day 1: Our printed timetable requires us to report to the Wellness Centre approximately every 1.5 to 3 hours for an alternating intake of herbal supplements which will assist in the cleansing and elimination process. For a fast it seems like a lot of stuff going in. We are told the bentonite psyllium shakes act like an intestinal broom and will help us feel full.

Filled with holiday excitement I embrace everything on offer – complimentary herbal tea in the 'tea temple', hatha yoga, three rounds in the steam room and plunge pool, and a massage - which follows my very first colonic. All in all a pretty full day!

As the sun dips below the horizon I can feel a headache coming on. I’ve experienced this on previous fasts so skip the film night – a Lenoard Cohen biopic screened in the restaurant where real food is served - and head to bed.

Day 2: I wake up feeling worse for wear after a night spent getting up every few hours to pee. The result of the 3 litres of water we are expected to consume daily.

The detox is hitting me surprisingly quickly – my head aches and I’m slightly nauseous. I decide to take things a little slower, getting intimately acquainted with the hammock  and library of nutrition books in the wellness centre. 

The charming staff breeze about mixing up shakes for everyone with big grins while listening patiently to detox symptoms from the clientele that saunter in and out. Drink more water and take a rest are prescribed remedies for just about anything. They've seen it all before.

Day 3: We have yet to feel any signs of hunger yet the only real nutrition we are consuming is one 200ml carrot and cucumber juice at 1pm daily. The clay shakes are doing their job despite starting to taste a little gross! I’m still showing far more signs of detox than both boys. This mainly consists of headaches, nausea and the added bonus of aching bones in my legs each night. I’m also having strange dreams, recalling things I haven't thought about in years. A brutal break up, strange encounters with my long dead relatives. Other long past dramas surface during my morning meditation. Releasing old emotions is one of the outcomes of the cleansing process.

We end each day with so called 'soup' – its essentially water in which a few vegetables may or may not have been momentarily bathed. Plates of lime and cayenne are provided for flavour. It tastes bad but gives us a reason to come together with our fellow fasters. Some are finishing up a 10 day fast and seem quite lively and energetic. They could just be trying to encourage us newbies!

Day 4: I instantly feel better including watermelon in the shakes. My experiment with no sugars had made the detox a lot faster. I regain some energy and enjoy a walk to a neighbouring beach and a swim. After being very introspective for a few days I'm starting to feel the results of the fast. My body feels light, and my mind calmer and less busy with thoughts. I indulge in a hot stone massage and yoga in the hillside studio that is nestled by a gurgling stream threaded with bright blue plastic irrigation pipes. When the teacher asks the fasters in the class to raise their hands I almost forget that’s me.

Day 5: I suppose I need to say something here about the daily colonics. We each have our own private colonic bathroom assigned to us for the duration of the fast. The spotlessly immaculate set-up includes a gravity feed colonic bucket filled with filtered water and coffee. Our colourful demonstration from Moon on day 1 inducts us into the process. 

As you lie back and try to imagine you are somewhere else (a Thai beach perhaps?) a speaker pipes a selection of mainly soothing and sometimes slightly erratic music into the room. You have complete control of the flow of water entering into your colon.  A warm sensation not at all unpleasant followed by a feeling of fullness lets you know it’s time to evacuate. It’s less about revulsion and more a kind of fascination that comes over you seeing what comes out of your body particularly after you haven’t eaten anything for 4 days.

This is the day I was told to start to expect to start to feel results. It’s an accurate assessment as I wake up with loads of energy. Even the shakes taste slightly less like mud - or is it just that I know it’s my last day today? I enjoy the morning yoga, a swim, walk on the beach. I'm honestly looking forward to breaking my fast the following day. More for the pleasure of being free from the routine of supplements and shakes than any driving hunger pains.

Floating about in the warm salty sea water I sense a feeling of calm from deep within. Something akin to complete joy at being alive fills my body. The world is bright, clear and I’m wearing a grin as wide as the bright blue bay.

Day 6: The day dawns enticingly with my final colonic a soothing camomile concoction rather than regular coffee. On completion, I feel as empty and new inside as the day I was born. Today I go back to the land of food. Surprisingly I feel no sense of urgency.

Coming off a fast is often the part that people have the most problems usually due to introducing too many foods at once and too quickly. The key is to reintroduce very simple raw fruits and veggies for a day or two and chew everything thoroughly. At least 20 to 30 times for each mouthful. Adopting this habit alone can make a huge impact on your digestive health. As someone with a habit of inhaling my food its going to be one to watch!

The papaya takes strangely foreign in my mouth at first. It takes my fellow fasters and I a good 90 minutes to eat our first breakfast sized bowl.  A grin feels permanently fixed to my face. I celebrate with more massage, swims and steam room. The day drifts deliciously by chatting with fellow travellers about where they are off to next. When I toddle off to bed I sleep soundly for the first time since we arrived. Wouldn't it be incredible to feel this full of life all the time!

Did it work?

The aim of our fast was to cleanse our bodies, improve digestion, and lose any excess weight while gaining a range of other benefits including improved moods and eating habits. So how does that translate into how we actually felt before, during and after the fast?

While it wasn't always a picnic, the fast really has made me feel fabulous inside and out. Hal and I felt completely renewed and revived - and this is something that has stayed with us.

For those concerned about such things I can honestly also say that I, Hal and Marky actually never felt hungry on the fast. Not once. And both boys went on to continue on for an additional 3 days after me, a total of 8 and a half days without food.

Before experimenting with fasting, I like many people had imagined that no food meant not only weakness and depletion of energy, but a risk of getting ill. Yet increased energy is the number one benefit listed by participants on completion of a fast.

That was certainly our experience.

Marky and I complete a cross country 3 hour trek through heavy forest and up and down a steep ridge to the main beach at Haad Rin some several kilometres across the island. Marky on day 7 of his fast – and me with only some papaya and a raw slaw in the belly since resuming food the day before. We feel exhilarated and amazing after our climb. A little eye opener that smashes a few myths about what our bodies actually need in terms of energy!

Plenty of people around us are do the 10 day cleanse and over the years I have met many healthy, vibrant people who have fasted for up to 30 days to great benefit. While the experience is not always pleasant, tiredness, and some discomfort can show up as you release lots of stored gunk from your system – it’s far more about healing and never about lack of food.

And once you undergo the cleansing process you feel lighter on so many levels. Its as if a whole lot of emotional baggage off loads from your cells along with all the toxins. Besides kilos shed, one of the most noticeable external effects is that your eyes become brighter - they literally shine!

Since fasting my skin, digestion, and general vitality has also improved. I am eating more raw foods and really enjoying simple vegetable dishes. I'm also noticing what my body does and doesn't like. Milk immediately gives me sinus and runny nose, wheat and yeast products cause my belly to bloat. Sour dough - well chewed - is okay. One, maybe two glasses of wine feels like plenty. The three kilos I lost - not the aim of my fast - has largely stayed off.

It’s amazing how ill-informed we are about food and our relationship to it. Fifty years of the nutrition industry and its conflicting messages telling us what to eat and not to eat –high fat low fat, no fat, low carb, high protein – it’s no wonder we have lost our ability to trust in our own bodies, let alone hear our inner compass that can guide us to making the right choices.

Fasting has been practiced for millennia as a vital part of maintaining good health and healing of all kinds, and as a way to reach heightened states of consciousness. Yet a lot of fear and confusion surrounds the practice. We come from a culture of such food abundance that the idea of abstaining from food by choice seems to incite irrational fears.

Given all our knowledge and the relevant abundance of food in the Western world you would think we would all be enjoying longer lives and freedom from illness. Yet chronic diseases and obesity are at epidemic levels.

Thankfully many of us are embracing the idea that shunning the food ‘industry’ and its packaged processed products is a vital step in reclaiming our health and reducing the risk of disease. Yet what if all those great organic wholefoods— brown rice, fresh veggies from our garden, home pickled olives, activated nuts and seeds we are consuming are not giving us all the benefits they might due to a beleaguered and toxic digestive system? Perhaps detoxification and cleansing are the missing link in the formula for lasting good health that we and many others have been missing?

For me the benefits are in. Restricting food intake and undergoing a cleanse is not only beneficial for a healthy body and mind, its one of the keys to long life. It will certainly become a yearly feature on my personal wellbeing program. I encourage everyone to try it at least once.