I went to the health retreat that inspired Nine Perfect Strangers

This story was first published on ensemblemagazine.co.nz.

A lavender-filled meditation hill, daily tai chi classes, delicious nourishing vegan smoothies, a luxurious spa – reading Liane Moriarty Nine Perfect Strangers I couldn’t help but feel like I had been to Tranquillum before.

I’ve visited many retreat centers over the years, but the luxury wellness retreat led by cult guru Masha, played in the Amazon adaptation of Nicole Kidman, felt oddly familiar to me.

When I reached the acknowledgments at the end of the book, of course it was there – “with thanks to the golden door”, a retreat that I have visited several times and where Moriarty has stayed while she was researching his book on a group of strangers staying in a fictitious and enhanced equivalent.

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The retreat itself was familiar, but so was the shared experience of attending a wellness getaway. ??

Masha [Nicole Kidman]: “Why are you here?”

Jessica [Samara Weaving]: “A transformation? I am really interested in fixing what is broken.

??The first time I went to a health retreat, I stumbled upon it by accident.

It was the year 2000. The world itself hadn’t ended, but my world had; the dotcom I had worked tirelessly on since launch had folded and I took my woes and redundancy to backpack Thailand (yes that could be a modern day tale minus the travel) .

I stumbled across a very basic beachside detox retreat and checked in for five days of pineapple juice and coffee enemas.

Twice a day, between gentle yoga and chi nei tsang (Thai abdominal massage), I would go to the “health center” and collect my bucket of coffee, bring it back to my hail and hail hut on the beach where a hook hung from the ceiling above the Turkish toilet, which was next to my bed. I would run the plastic hose that I had been given to tap from the bucket to my anus, lay back down and let gravity happen.

At night I would walk down the sweltering and rugged street to the internet cafe, trying not to inhale the delicious scent of the street vendors, emailing home to let them know I was alive, then I returned to the “resort”.

After dark, the mice would run across the floor of my hut and disappear under my bed. I checked my mosquito net in the mattress after going to bed every night, terrified mice were using it to climb onto my bed. So I spent as little time as possible in my room, instead of forming a social clique at the resort’s lovely restaurant / bar, which only served bone broth, fresh coconut water and juice. pineapple mixed with some sort of bentonite clay / psyllium husk combo (all the better for pooping, honey).

It’s an interesting concept, hanging out with a group of strangers around a table, for long periods of time, without food or drink. As disparate as we may have been, we all had one thing in common: we were all desperate for something enough to put a plastic pipe in our butt twice a day.

With bare feet tucked in the warm sand under the table and sipping on a fresh coconut, we were talking about the two topics we had in common – what our trip had been to get there and poo.

Layoffs, divorces, health problems and mourning; we were all united in a major life change and the search for answers. There was no therapy as such offered here, but the table, with its uneven surface, provided just that.

Poop provided a different kind of therapy, as we all looked deep within ourselves and shared our findings. Color, smell, texture; we desperately searched our guts trying to find answers to all of life’s problems.??

Napoleon [Michael Shannon]’: “I was emotionally constipated. Yesterday evening, I came to uncork a bit.??

The first time I visited Golden Door in NSW Hunter Valley in 2006, I was three years after breast cancer diagnosis and recently off hormone therapy which had caused complications leading to a misdiagnosis of secondary ovarian cancer. ??

My period had not returned and no one knew if they would. I was 29 and had just gotten engaged.

A shuttle took us, mostly women, to the Sydney Domestic Airport terminal. The discussion on the way focused on panic over the lack of alcohol, chocolate and coffee. It was like a conversation by the campfire on Survivor. The absence of these things interests me little; I put my iPod on and zoned. ??

Lars [Luke Evans]: “Everyone has a story.??

One thing I have learned over the years is that trauma is both personal and universal. I met someone at this retreat who lost her husband in the Boxing Day tsunami while on a honeymoon in Thailand. I also met a woman who had given up her career to support her husband’s business and raise their children. The children were older now and she was mourning her loss of identity.

I was in retreat with all the characters from Nine Perfect Strangers in various places around the world. I have sat around tables eating various iterations of “healthy” foods and drinks with them. Our collective experience in the search for personal growth, a desire to be nourished and heard brings us together.

Luxury or basic, all the fancy facilities in the world and all the legitimate Mashas and medical professionals you can get – but it’s sitting with complete strangers that you will never see again where the magic happens.

??Francis [Melissa McCarthy]: “Most of us have come here in search of desperate measures.”??

The second time I visited the Golden Door, my second child had just turned one year old. I had spent several years pregnant or breastfeeding and was late for a mammogram. I had also recently lost two very dear friends to breast cancer.

“Scanxia” and the fear of recurrence are things all cancer patients can relate to. While on the outside I was a happy young mother of two beautiful boys, inside I was constantly writing farewell letters to them, planning a future I didn’t think I was there for, feeling like an impostor to exist.

I booked retirement as an extravagant reward for completing my mammogram, but also as a chance to come to my senses.

Installation at Golden Door is a schedule of activities each hour to choose from, then spa treatments and access to a range of practitioners that you can book around them.

Everyone meets at mealtime (and for sunrise tai chi on Meditation Hill each morning), and the food is eaten together. The treats are shared during meals: the massage therapist who must be seen, the kinesiologist who makes people cry with joy. Once a commendation is made across the lunch table, the spaces fill up. Someone mentioned a hypnotherapist that they evaluated. Puzzled, I made a reservation immediately.

I did not hide the fact I like a little woo woo. In my constant travel to come to terms with and grow from my cancer diagnosis, I did strange things and loved 98 percent of them.

I spent time with a spiritual healer in a river in Ubud, Bali; steamed my vagina in Ponsonby; frozen in a cryotherapy chamber in LA (and made contrast therapy in Auckland’s Gray Lynn). I appreciate the care I received from my acupuncturist as part of my cancer treatment as much as that of my oncologist.

But honestly, this hypnotherapy session has really changed my life.

I entered it broken. Physically my body to injure. I had had a major reconstruction on the right side, using a muscle from my back to rebuild my chest. Carrying the toddlers and feeding the babies on the remaining side had made the existing problems worse, and everything was exacerbated by the weight of the anxiety.

I sat down in a very ordinary office and explained to a very ordinary man that my crippling fear of recurrence got in the way of motherhood. From there, it was a straightforward process; I laid down in a relaxed state (I was conscious; if he had been scary I could have hit him) and he showed me around “myself” at key times in my life.

I had to visualize the younger me, sit with her, reassure her that everything was going to be okay, tell her that there would be challenges along the way but that I would be there to help her overcome them.

I sobbed throughout, tears of joy. The kindness that I showed to myself was extraordinary and poignant. But more than anything else, the sheer loneliness that I had suffered for years has dissipated. I now had someone on this trip with me. The irrational anger I felt for those around me and their lack of understanding of my inner pain faded.

It was there – that transformation everyone looks for in retirement, the palpable difference they leave with that is worth more than a salad dressing recipe and a (temporary) inch off your waistline.

Would I have had the same breakthrough if I had attended this meeting during the lunch break of my daily life, without the encouragement and support of a group of strangers? Unlikely.

There is a fine line between the sinister and the genius, especially in the troubled world of well-being. I watched the retreat guests in Nine Perfect Strangers dig their own graves and lie down hopefully because they had dirt strewn all over them. I saw myself at that point, looking through my poo for parasites, lying on a table to comfort myself younger.

As things get darker and darker for them, they still don’t want to give up hope that the transformation they seek is imminent. In my case, it was.

The first three episodes of Nine Perfect Strangers will premiere on Amazon Prime Video on August 20, with new episodes launching weekly.

– Ensemble Magazine