So there I was: a burnt-out case. Frazzled, winter-weary, physically scrunched up and mentally flat. I’d spent a great deal of time and energy working on a big project, and had never properly recovered. Sleep had not previously been a problem for me, but now I found myself lying in bed staring at the ceiling in the small hours, head whirring. The only exercise I was getting was from my weekly game of five-a-side football – a lung-bursting, joint-punishing affair that was probably not doing me much good. I was even having the odd cigarette. I was drinking, if not too much, then certainly too often. Meals were bolted rather than savoured. Life had become a greyish blur. I needed a break, and not just time off work: I’d tried spending a week at home, pottering and piddling about, but it didn’t touch the sides of my weariness.
Then came the chance to go to Thailand for a week; good. To a destination spa; even better. Here, I could de-stress, find peace, unclutter my head, unscrunch my body and perhaps even find a way to sustain myself when I got back to my desk a week later. A flight to Bangkok, a short connecting flight to Phuket, a car journey and brief boat ride through the starlit night later, I was banging the “wishing” gong in a ceremony undertaken by every arriving guest at the Six Senses Destination Spa at Naka Yai, a small island off the coast of Phuket, then being driven to my villa on an electric buggy along fairy-lit roadways. My accommodation: a simple, curvaceously designed thatched villa, with a huge bed, an “outside” bathroom, my own pool, and a view over the Andaman Sea. Parked outside the villa was my own bicycle. And there was no TV. Instantly, I knew that this was my kind of place.
The one thing I didn’t want to do when I got to Naka was to weigh myself down with appointments: too much like work. So I was trepidatious when I sat down for the personal consultation that starts every guest’s stay and my schedule for the week began to look distressingly full – massages, exercise classes, beauty treatments, even lectures. When would I get the chance to do, well, nothing?
Actually, as the week went on, I found that I couldn’t get enough. Never an early riser, I found myself up at dawn, while the air was still cool, in the pagoda on the hill overlooking this immaculately tended resort, learning tai chi, or qigong, or in a stretch class while taking in the view of tranquil sea and the hills of Phuket beyond. I went on a cycle ride around the island. I joined a group that kayaked up the coast, past mangrove swamps. In between times, I swam: in my own pool, in the resort’s big, deep infinity pool, and in the sea. I had energy to burn. I wanted to flex my muscles, stretch my joints.
And stretching was certainly what I needed. Massages at Naka are offered in a repertoire of styles, in four treatment environments: Indonesian, Indian, Thai, and Chinese. During my first massage, the Six Senses Oriental Fusion (a sort of cocktail massage), the masseuse said very little, except: “You have a very tight body.” By which she meant I was, as I already knew, scrunched up. She did her best, with her deft kneading, to untighten me, but this was an epic task. My back was a Gordian knot, my shoulders a messy tangle, my neck a crooked cricky thing. I signed up for more massages: Himalayan hot stone massage, energising massage, pra kob Thai, hands and feet massage. Dammit, I was determined to be unscrunched.
Most memorable were the Thai massages: the traditional Thai, which involved a great deal of very satisfying pulling and stretching and kneading; and the pra kob Thai, in which a herbal hot compress is pushed and stroked against the skin, held in one spot just long enough for it to reach that exquisite point where pleasure tips over into pain. Also: the Ayurvedic Indian head massage, in which hot oil is dribbled on the forehead. The oil itself had no aroma, but the rhythmic ritualistic process of drizzling and massaging, drizzling and massaging, was hypnotic. And the facial was a soothing, smoothing experience, especially the final application of a mask of cooling cream, while afterwards my face felt fresh and lustrous for days. Now I know why women love facials so.
Meanwhile, I went from passive to active with the exercise classes. These were hard work, but not in the way I expected. I’m a reasonably fit man; my blood pressure is good, I’m not overweight, I can run, walk, climb stairs without collapsing in a heap afterwards. But what was being tested here was not my overall fitness but my flexibility, and my core stability, the strength of the deeper muscles supporting the spine and the abdomen. Here, I was found wanting, especially during the dastardly kinesis session (using variable-resistance pulleys, in case you’ve never tried it). And tai chi was a revelation: I’d assumed it was just something nice and gentle that Chinese people of a certain age did to get their joints moving in the morning. In fact, holding certain positions for a minute or so, or moving with concentrated slowness, was muscle-tremblingly tough.
And then there was watsu, a form of shiatsu. This remarkable treatment belongs in a category all of its own: part hydrotherapy, part hypnotherapy, part rebirthing therapy, part religious experience. There’s nothing like it. It takes place in a small pool. The therapist – in my case a small, powerful Thai woman in a bathing suit and cap – asks you to close your eyes, and swings you through the water, pausing for contemplation, or to stretch you out, then swinging again, rhythmically, hypnotically, then pausing again. It lasted about an hour, but I lost sense of time. At one point, for some minutes, the therapist simply rested the back of my head on her shoulder (my legs were kept from sinking by flotational bands). The only sounds were birdsong and running water. It was very, very intimate. I felt serene, protected, nurtured, childlike. For some, watsu is overwhelming, reducing them to sobbing. For me it wasn’t quite that, but still, tears were welling up as I felt the stresses of the previous months draining away.
Throughout all this, I was nourished by just about the healthiest food I have ever eaten. The food at Naka is meat-free (though there is fish) and outrageously fresh and vibrant – a festival of Thai-infused flavours. The slowness with which meals were taken, the relaxed feel of the beachside restaurant, and the fact that the food came in several small courses, meant I never ended a meal with that bloated feeling.
It would be perfectly possible to spend a couple of weeks at Naka doing nothing but sun-worshipping, sleeping, eating and flopping about in the water. And doubtless this is what some people do; there is no pressure to “join in”. But I was relishing the chance to be active. It was bliss.
Around me were similarly stressed businessmen and women, some with spouses, some alone, some mothers with daughters. There were slighty more women than men, but not so many as to make a solo bloke feel out of place. The atmosphere was easy-going, supportive.
There is also, should your inclinations lead you that way, a spiritual dimension to Naka: on hand (though their services cost extra) are psychics and healers and crystal therapists and suchlike. At the mention of such things, I could feel my Western metropolitan cynicism rising. Nevertheless, I booked a session with a “psychic and Bedouin healer” who told me, among other things, that 2014 will be my lucky year. I’d like to say that I took it with a pinch of salt, except that, for obvious health reasons, salt is not routinely made available in the restaurant. But I will wait and see what 2014 brings.
More pragmatically, the guiding philosophy behind Six Senses, and its sister resorts, is one of eco-awareness and sustainability, and this philosophy is apparent in the form of the vegetable gardens around the resort, growing organic produce for the restaurant. No food miles here, just food metres.
So, what have I brought back with me? Well, a determination to slow down. I was doing everything too fast, and not doing it well; slow contemplation, especially when there is food involved, is a better way. And I take great pleasure in stretching, especially before football. Also, I am determined to find a tai chi class; again, it’s about the slowness, the calm contemplation. De-stressing is neither physical nor mental nor emotional, but all three, and that was why Naka hit the spot.
Which brings me back to those knots. In my final massage, the masseuse set to work and dug deep into my back and shoulders; I could feel the muscles and tendons pinging, and untangling. Finally, after a week of kneading and treading and stroking and stretching, I was properly unscrunched.
