Most people go to Koh Samui in Thailand on honeymoon, or to celebrate wedding anniversaries or to rekindle the spark. I went there to learn how to be in an affair — with my colon.
Ten kilos is a lot of weight to have amassed in a year, and I had done just that. I tried everything: yoga, walking 7 km a day, a vegetarian diet, a Paleo diet, a soup diet, you name it. Nothing worked. My doctors said I was fine, just getting older. So I decided on a detox holiday. Not the predictable variety with fancy massages and a controlled diet but one that included a week-long liquid diet, coupled with yoga, meditation and massages. And the kicker — two colemas a day.
What the hell is a colema? Quite simply, it’s a treatment in between an enema and a colonic. Simplest description: 16 litres of coffee-infused water to titillate the colon into emptying its contents.
On the day I arrived at Spa Samui, a resort built in the jungles of Samui island, there were only two other residents. My diet for the day was only raw food. At 7 am the next morning, I reported at the Detox counter where a beer glass awaited me — instead of lager, it was filled with psyllium husk and bentonite clay in pineapple juice. It served the purpose it was meant for: kill the appetite. I was also rationed several doses of herbal pills with diuretic properties. This made me run to the loo, of which there are aplenty in Spa Samui, every five minutes.
Four pm and it was time for my colemic rendezvous. The lovely Annabel, with spotless skin and a demeanour that screamed ‘alternative lifestyle’, tried to allay my fears. She introduced me to the kit that would purge my colon of all impurities. A bucket filled with coffee solution, an assortment of tubes, including — gasp — one that went into the anus, and a Thai equivalent of the K-Y Jelly.
Within the safety of a toilet cubicle, Annabel imparted the most important lesson — like the local guide of a disaster tourism destination. The bucket topped with room temperature water was to be hung at a hook above the commode. On the top of the commode was a fibre glass surfboard contraption and a cement-tiled cube opposite it. I had to hook in the tubes to the bucket, connect it to the anal insert, gel myself, slide down on the surfboard and well... stick the tube in. The bucket had six blue stickers at regular intervals indicating the amount of water I should release into the colon. I was this close to fleeing the resort, but I managed to stay on.
Talking shop Everyone at the Poo Farm — in a few days there were nine of us — discussed bowel movements in graphic detail. Nothing can break the ice better than a pile of shit. Soon enough, we were trading the most embarrassing details. Sample this: A woman’s colon threw up a Barbie shoe she swallowed as a child; another resident ‘lost the marbles’ consumed in boyhood. And there were tales of ‘anacondas’ and ‘pythons’ exiting bodies. Such camaraderie made the cups of insipid, mineral-rich broth we were made to sip every day, palatable.
Did I feel hungry? No. Did I lose a lot of weight? No. But my skin was glowing, I felt lighter and cleaner and the procedure had kick-started my metabolism. I have returned with colon-cleansing senna pod tea for weekly detox. By the end of the holiday, I was so pooped out that I spent two days recouping my energies at the Ananatara Lawana, a beach resort in Koh Samui. After that intense relationship with the colon, I deserved this honeymoon with myself.
Aparna Jainis an Integral Master Coach and an author. Her latest book 'Own It' is on leadership lessons for women