The Retreat

We have become hooked on BBC2's new Reality TV programme, The Retreat, and, from various conversations with students and friends, we've found we're not to the only ones!

The Retreat takes a small group of people, including a police woman and a taxi driver, all of whom are looking for a lifestyle change, away to a Thai island for a month. Whilst one participant is suffering from serious health problems such as diabetes, most are living with general background levels of stress, fatigue, and a sense that their health - both physical and emotional - is some way from being optimal.

The experience

The guests embark on the programme with various degrees of skepticism, as they are put through their paces with a week of fasting, followed by a strict regime of early starts, vegan food, yoga, reiki and twice-daily enemas. As viewers, we're party to the group's first experience of yoga, 1:1 healing and setting up for their enemas.

The guests experience a roller coaster journey of skepticism and surprise, highs and lows - and it's difficult not to be moved by small personal triumphs, as weight is lost, clamped-in emotions find a way out, or a yoga pose is mastered. But the power of the series comes from the fact that these guests are all yoga and retreat newbies, rather than die-hard yogis or experienced detoxers; their freshness to the experience makes for very engaging viewing,

Whilst the daily routine is far more regimented and intense than guests can expect on our own retreats, a similar process is at work, and it is participants' openness to this change that is inspiring and even quite humbling.