Energetic healing at The Place Retreat in Bali
Annabel Heseltine and her son attend a psychotherapeutic retreat together in Bali and find the joys of 'me' time and a little bit of magic
There was no getting out of this. I had to fess up. ‘That was absolutely horrible,’ I said to the serene man with a gentle smile. ‘I feel like I am going to throw up, as if I have run a marathon.’
If possible, the serene man looked even more serene. For the past hour. Michael Hallock, a practitioner in Dan Tien, a Taoist internal organ massage designed to detoxify and revitalise the digestive system, had been rummaging around in my stomach pressing and pushing, constantly checking my comfort levels.
‘I am sorry you don’t feel so well but that’s good,’ he said. ‘It means the energy is moving around your body.’
Hallock helped me off the bed. ‘Walk slowly around the room and tell me how you are feeling.’
“Be they burnt-out bankers, traumatised divorcees, crashed widows, anxious mothers, lost teenagers or just people seeking a new way, guests rarely come for just a week. More usually they stay a month or two or three”
To my astonishment, I was starting to feel rather fantastic. By the time I reached my room I felt lighter than a beautiful, white, wispy cloud, and lighter than I had in several years of negotiating a nasty divorce and caring for four teenagers, including an angry, autistic 14-year-old throughout lockdown. Instead of feeling sick, I was starving.
This was my first treatment at The Place, billed as the only psychotherapeutic long-stay retreat in the world uniquely geared to mental health healing. It didn’t take me long to realise that whether it was Japanese acupuncture, craniology, breathwork or integrative healing, Esalen or Balinese massages or other heavenly, sublime treatments, the therapists giving them were all superlative.
From the moment my teenage son and I had passed between two large, cupped hands standing sentinel at the lofty entrance into a Shangri-la of pools, buddhas, lily-ponds and kind smiles, I had felt gently held. The idea being that I felt safe enough then to explore those sensations which cuse discomfort. And there were a few. Starting with learning to allow others to look after me.
Initially, it felt strange that the only decision I had to make all day long was what was I going to eat but then I started to enjoy having so much ‘me’ time. The day began with yoga and meditation at the easy hour of 8.30 in a beautiful rooftop Shamballa, overlooked by huge buddhas and cooled by a breeze rustling through palm trees.
Breakfast at 10 was followed gracefully by several therapies and lunch before an early supper at 7. I began to see that I had spent so much time doing things for other people that I had almost forgotten who I was, and that before loving others, I really needed to love and celebrate myself.
‘I have always had an idea that when people come to do therapy once a week, there are 23 more hours and six days when the work you do is frittered away so you almost have to start all over again,’ said Jean-Claude Chalmet, when it was my turn to take fresh mint tea with the Belgian psychotherapist.
Leaving behind a practice in Harley Street to move to Bali, he found his clients following him so that now his retreat has grown from four rooms to 15 in three separate gardens around a quiet alleyway in the backwaters of bustling Seminyak beach, where padi fields melt into a hip beachy vibe.
We are sitting in the small, calming room scented with orchids and musky candles and adorned with playful gurus, where the world-renowned therapist sees all his clients three times a week.
‘I wanted to create a place where you could work intensively,’ explained J-C, as everyone calls him, distancing himself from being a rehab or detox clinic, because it’s not what his clients need or identify with.
Be they burnt-out bankers, traumatised divorcees, crashed widows, anxious mothers, lost teenagers or just people seeking a new way, guests rarely come for just a week. More usually they stay a month or two or three; 90 days being the optimum as it takes time to be transformed.
Fourteen guests, all different ages, as many men as women, American, European and English, drift in and out making coffee, relaxing on the massive wraparound sofa, reading books from the bookcase crammed with self-help books beside a huge, silent TV, or hanging out in their elegant four-postered bedrooms or one of the canopied Balinese daybeds beside the pools. The oldest of us was 81 but earlier I had spotted two 18-year-olds larking around in one of the pools, one battling anxiety while J-C gently rebuilds his confidence.
Parent and child couple visitors are not unknown. My second son had been suffering from a crippling back caused by stress. Unlike most 18-year-olds, he had no desire to hightail it off into the ether, so I had brought him with me. It says much for The Place and its nurturing handheld kindness that my son, a young man who only a few weeks before had refused any kind of treatment, including massages, not only showed up for his treatments, but engaged with J-C as well.
‘I want to teach people to be a good parent to their inner child, and as such, repair the potholes of the past, while simultaneously learning to manage their internal critic or saboteur. That doesn’t produce happiness, which is a jagged story, but contentedness, which is much gentler,’ explains J-C whose mission is to gather everyone together as a large family.
It wasn’t unusual for therapists to linger and share meals with guests. Avi, a yoga teacher and I had laughed over menopausal challenges while Dijan told me more about her meditation and tantric yoga school in Ubud.
‘Sitting with J-C is like having an MRI scan; he looks at you, then like a neurosurgeon he starts taking the tumours out,’ said a guest sitting around the large communal table in the heart of the retreat. One of J-C’s greatest tools in his holistic therapeutic work.
Meals are ordered in advance, chosen from an extensive menu; fresh juices, home-made muesli and cooked breakfasts, a range of vegan and vegetarian salads and soups for lunch and a healthy balance of fish or meat with delicious vegetables in the evening. As if by magic – that word was to become a distinctive theme — they arrive as soon as we sit down. It’s like an English house party where people live in communal bliss doing their own thing.
Only we aren’t doing our own thing; we are living communally in a tiny microcosm of the outside world, learning to live with complete strangers.
J-C explains: ‘A lot goes on in the mind. In reality, it usually isn’t that big, but here people have the opportunity to look at it, to examine it, to discuss it, and find ways forward of how to deal with it.’
It was a real ‘aha’ moment, which I carried away with me, along with a profound realisation that I could choose the way I lead my life. And that’s the magic of The Place.
