I’m throwing up like an elephant, puking saline water in one enormous wave. I’ve just swallowed a litre and a half of tepid, salty water – drinking several glasses very fast under the unwavering watch of my yoga teacher, Sandeep Aggarwal. At his instruction, I’ve tickled the back of my throat with my fingers, before belching more liquid into the sink. As I do this, an elegant woman in a sari walks past the open door of the therapy room and smiles encouragingly. ‘You’re a natural,’ Sandeep enthuses simultaneously, watching me chuck up. There are few things more curious than forcibly evacuating the stomach in public, on purpose and being congratulated for it. ‘Not many Westerners ask to do vomiting,’ adds Sandeep. I cannot think why.

I’m on the new Yogic Detox programme at Ananda in the Himalayas. The week-long programme includes: different Hatha yogic techniques for cleansing internal organs (known as Shatkriya); yogic postures (asana); breathing techniques (pranayama); meditation; and an Ayurvedic diet (based on the ancient medical system). The aim is to balance our three doshas (think constitution). If you want to get technical, there’s Kapha (which relates to mucous and is connected with being reliable), Pitta (think bile and fiery) and Vata (which denotes wind and indicates fast-moving personalities). Imbalances are believed to result in disease and illnesses.

If throwing up sounds crazy, mostly the treatments are wonderful – and they take place in one of the world’s loveliest destination spas. Ananda is in a stupendous location, overlooking the Ganges and set in the Maharaja of Tehri Garhwal’s palace estate near Rishikesh, India. There’s the Maharaja’s private summer palace, a restored Viceroy’s Palace (with its museum-like Vice-Regal suite where Mountbatten stayed) and comfortable modern accommodation. Then there’s the spa the size of an Indian state which has won more awards than most Hindus have had past lives. It’s vibrates to the sound of chants of Om and Indian flute music; there are Ganesh statues with marigold garland necklaces and rose petals floating in bowls.

But back to the vomiting. The aim of Kunjal (as voluntary regurgitation is known) is to cleanse the stomach, oesophagus, throat, lungs and chest. (You have to do it early in the morning, on an empty stomach and after ‘finishing nature’s call’.) It’s said to wash out strong acid and excess mucous and, in yogic therapy, it plays a key role in alleviating asthma and preventing ulcers. Yogis have practised these techniques for centuries. The idea is that sneezing, defecating, crying, sweating – you name it – are very cleansing. (‘You should try to be positive and relaxed, to feel that you are doing it for your own purification,’ explains Sandeep.) Just as a sauna or scrubbing the skin helps the skin to breathe better, so flushing helps the digestion and is said to make it work better. It takes me ten minutes to chuck up – a pro can do it in three – and, frankly, leaves me feeling rather grotty.

Now it’s time for my Jal Neti treatment, which is a way of cleansing the nostrils with warm salty water. It’s a practice aimed to alleviate sinusitis, bronchitis, hay fever and negative thinking. Great if you’re prone to coughs and colds. The technique involves filling a doll’s house sized tea-pot with another brew of warm saline solution, tilting my head, popping the spout up one nostril and pouring. The water goes up one nasal cavity and comes out of the other nostril, first in a drip and then in a steady stream. I keep my mouth open and the effect is like choking on the Indian Ocean. Afterwards my sinuses are born-again and I feel delightfully light and clear-headed.

Another important part of the Ananda cleansing programme is the diet. It’s prescribed by their Ayurvedic doctor Dr Adarash, for clients’ specific doshas. I’m diagnosed as Pitta Vata and told to avoid sour and spicy food, overeating, pickles, sour cream and vinegar. We start our meals with a nasty cup of hot water sprinkled with spices and a tiny glass of detoxifying juice with herbs and rock salt. ‘Keep enjoying,’ insists Akshay, the head chef cheerily. The dishes are small and inventive. Think Indian cottage cheese (paneer) kebabs with cous cous (231 calories) or spiced bitter gourd with yellow lentil stew (221 calories) and sugar-free apple cinnamon pieces with home-made vanilla ice cream (129 calories). There are also international Ayurvedic dishes, aimed at helping people replicate the food at home. It’s not my favourite food but I don’t feel hungry or tired after meals. I get a detox headache on day three – as does everyone in my party – but don’t feel any cravings between meals.

There are superb therapies to facilitate further detoxing. The Ayurvedic ones start with a spiritual ritual: foot cleansing in a bowl with Ganges pebbles and the chanting of an Ayurvedic prayer, a supplication to Guru the creator, sustainer and destroyer. They range from Abhyanga (a traditional four-handed synchronised massage on a wooden Ayurvedic massage bed and with sesame oil, which leaves me smelling like a frying pan) to Choornaswedana, a dreamy massage with dosha specific oils and warmed herbal poultices, Shirodhara (where luke-warm herbal oil is poured from a dangling brass bowl in a stream onto the forehead) to Indian head massage, which eliminates toxins and stimulates circulation.

Ananda is in a place of pilgrimage said to be the birthplace of yoga, meditation and Ayurveda, so it’s fitting that we practise yoga daily in the amphitheatre outside as the sun rises and peacocks wander past. Toe Bending, Half Butterfly (‘place one foot on top of the opposite. Hold the toes…’) The Cat Stretch pose, the Cobra, the Snake and the Crocodile; each day I become more supple. Additionally I have private Pranayama lessons which teach me to breathe properly and my yoga instructor works with me on my psychic energy centres – but I fall asleep.

It’s possible to escape to the palace for cream teas, scrabble, billiards on a 100 year-old table, classical music and bagpipes. Alternatively there are activities that are more strenuous and with a spiritual twist. One day we walk through villages with tethered goats and past fields of yellow mustard, through the mist to the nearby Kunjapuri temple, a holy shrine dedicated to the Goddess Sati. There’s a climb of 306 steps to reach the temple, but who’s counting? Once there we’re given bindi markings on our foreheads, red ‘kalawa’ temple bracelets (to represent God) and blessings.

Another day we trek nearly three hours to Rishikesh, through the fluorescent green landscape, past a lurid snake, monkeys and smiling kids requesting: ‘you have chocolate, please Auntie?’ We sit on the banks of the Ganges for the daily evening Aarati ceremony, an auspicious Hindu ritual performed at Parmarth Niketan Ashram. Small, symbolic lamps are lit while the local orphans chant mantras and a Bollywood-style priest looks on ethereally as his Guru sprinkles the holy riverside fire with herbs and ghee to purify the environment.

What makes Ananda so special though, are the endlessly helpful staff who have a way of anticipating everyone’s needs before we’ve even thought of them. After the exertions of our Rishikesh trek, unrequested, someone runs soothing baths with herb poultices and lemon verbena leaves for our party. They genuinely want to make everything wonderful for their guests. I fall asleep at 9.30 pm every night and aside from waking several times – who wouldn’t on the gallons of fresh ginger and lemon tea we drink? – I sleep soundly. Nobody ventures out of their kurta pyjamas all week except perhaps to put on a shahtoosh.

I leave floating on a spiritual cloud feeling calm, happy, wise, and with luminescent skin, having lost a few pounds and with my sinuses and (supposedly) chakras cleared. Perhaps the excellent treatments achieve the spectacular results. Maybe it’s the clean air, peace, beautiful location or my vegetarian diet. Throw into the mix too the sunken bathtub overlooking the valley, the Kneipe foot bath (where you walk on stones to improve your circulation) and sauna overlooking the jungle views and Ganges. And the fact that the air is cool and there are no crowds. Whatever, I reap great benefits from the Yogic Detox programme although I’m glad it isn’t an extreme package. After all, Ananda offer oil enemas and Nasyam (where medicated oil is poured into the nostrils) but thankfully they don’t offer the variation of Jal Neti called Sutra Neti, where a fine thread is taken inside one nostril and pulled out of the mouth through the throat. And I won’t be vomiting again in public…

After just a day off booze or cigarettes – or even after a serious detox – there can be few better places for a retox than the Four Seasons in Koh Samui, Thailand. It’s a luxury resort that deserves a squillion stars (and stripes.) They offer torpedo-sized cigars, burgers so big and fresh that they almost moo, and chips to love more than life itself. And the place is full of Eastern promise and Asiatic charm with an American twist – a perfect retox ambience.

Koh Samui lies in the Gulf of Thailand, the principal island in an archipelago of 48 islands. The 4S (as the Four Seasons is known to aficionados) is set amid lush tropical rain forest and beside a whiter-than-cocaine beach overlooking the distant islands of the gulf. The weather is hot and perfect for tanning, as it should be for a good retox.

Staff deliver chilled towels, Coca-Cola floats and cocktails to a supine me on the private beach; so there’s little reason even to walk the 50 steps from my recliner to the ocean’s edge. When I tire of lolling there’s an opportunity to have a Minor Affair for the day (such is the name of the resort’s vroomiest of high performance speed boats with a sound system, DVD and TV ). Otherwise I can splash around with kayaks and stand-up paddle boards – not too much exercise, mind. That would smack of healthy living.

After all, I’m at the resort purely to overcome any vestiges of my Kamalaya detox (see Lusso article, ‘OM, OM….OMG’). I’m here to try to raise my toxin levels to those of the average McDonald’s quaffing, midwestern American; and to do my best to pile on the pounds until I can go up two sizes and make a British size 16 dress look figure-hugging. Except, let’s face it, I am as unlikely to manage this as I am to live on air and juice on a serious detox. But I can dream.

Fortunately the resort is close to Chaweng – which is renowned among international fun-makers as ‘party central’. Forget Ibiza – so last millennium. The Chaweng discos throb with techno, rave, house and ambient DJ music – and there’s particularly feverish party activity on full moon nights. Starz Club gets top billing: it’s where party-goers sip Lusty Ladies and get into the Cage aux Folles spirit as the silver lamé curtain rises on the cabaret…and the kathoeys (‘ladyboys’) strut their stuff.

Back at 4S, my accommodation has good retox possibilities. I have a delicious private villa with my own infinity pool and panoramic views of Laem Yai Bay. More importantly, I have a panoramic view of a 42” flatscreen. For those of us on a serious retox, there are 34 channels, DVDs, an iPod docking station and copies of Newsweek and Time. Why on earth would I ever want a ‘no news, no shoes’ holiday when I can have lots of news and lots of shoes? (On which note, tennis shoes of all sizes are available at the 4S tennis court, should I wish to amble down there with a cocktail to watch people playing).

To achieve a full retox and to help my waistline expand, a golf buggy service is available 24 hours a day. Even for journeys of less than a yard. Unusual fact: it takes three weeks to pass the test to get a golf buggy driver’s license. Another good fact: it’s just a short buggy ride to visit the resort’s drive-in wine fridge: an electrical wonder that could double as an air raid shelter for several guests in the event that attacks from the mosquitos on a mission to kill escalate into full-blown mosquito war. (Joking aside, this is the sort of wine cooler you generally find in French chateaux….but here you can also follow up a visit with an elephant trek on paradise island.)

Once my retox is seriously underway and I’m having what can best be described as colonic irrigation in reverse, there’s little inducement for me to move from my room. Fortunately there are plenty of ways for me to try to rid myself of my luminous skin without stepping outside. There’s a fridge in my room with Mentos – sweets which, thankfully, have at least 500 additives and colours; a drawer filled with whisky and Scotch; another dedicated wine fridge; and a mini-bar plus an Espresso machine. Who in their right mind would ever want ‘barefoot luxury’ when you can have instead a key to this, your personal upmarket deli?

Yes, I’m now following a hardcore retox programme. The only exercise I’m prepared to do is to step into my delicious egg bathtub, a work of art in itself. I wallow in coconut bath salts, a breeze on my face and watch a boat bobbing on the waters below. Retox bliss? But with sudden dread, I realise this is all unhealthily healthy. So I order a champagne breakfast with scrambled eggs with white truffle oil with a side order of Shrek’s favourite corn chips and a cheesy Hula Hula Hawaiian pizza. (Detox fans say that giving your liver a chance to clean itself out helps eliminate nasties through the digestive tract and skin. But doing it in reverse doesn’t have the same nasty side effects.)

My order is delivered by staff with cigar-length smiles, and arrives in less than a nano of a nanosecond: service that puts the 4S in a league of its own. Even the most (four) seasoned retoxer will rarely have encountered service like this. The staff will probably stop the resort’s palm trees swaying if I ask. “An elephant, madam? I’ll have it with you in five minutes.”

If I want to join in, there are endless retox activitities: 24-hour business services; beach evenings of eating popcorn and watching Academy Award winners under the stars; tropical drink and cocktail mixologist classes; and beach barbeques with authenticity lite fire-eaters and Thai dancers. And, reassuringly, it’s all watched and done by honeymooning Americans, investment bankers and ladies with trout lips, pert boob jobs and full maquillage. Not for me the detox crowd in bad moods and kaftans.

As my holiday draws to its end, I reduce my retox activities, aiming to find a level that I can realistically incorporate into my life at home. There’s no point in retoxing, just to go back to my bad old habits of healthy eating and living. But I know that there will be social situations when I cannot be a hardline retoxer and still have friends. To prepare myself for a return to my real life, I eat Thai cuisine in the resort’s restaurant, Lan Tania. It’s sublime gnocchi from mashed ‘potato’ made of boiled jackfruit stones; and as for its green tea bread….mwah.

The resort’s spa provides another way to wean myself off the more drastic elements of my retox – another good way to avoid retox withdrawals and the possibility of going cold turkey on the return Bangkok Airways flight. Treatments take place in an enchanted kingdom of villas and salas (covered verandas) in thick tropical rainforest and reached via wooden plank walkways and wooden steps. It’s the spa that Tarzan and Jane would have chosen for their honeymoon. They should be so lucky.

I try the Siam Fusion. First there’s Thai massage, which is like being in a one-person wrestling match (the brochure calls it ‘Thai yogic stretches’). Next the therapist does battle with my pressure points. Then she rubs me with Luk Pra Kob (warm compresses of lemongrass and ginger) and finishes with an energizing deep pressure massage with essential oils. It’s A*. (The poor woman does an excellent job of trying to detox me; but, after my dedicated efforts to eat and drink myself silly, luckily there’s some way yet to go.)

I was a Four Seasons virgin. Now I’ve been deflowered, I’m a Four Seasons junkie. I’ll visit the 4S again when my retox levels become dangerously low. What’s not to like? The fine fast food? Ambience? Activities? The location? Nothing. It’s hardly surprising that I’ve become a 4S retox junkie. It’s a resort that’s luxurious and allows guests to replace toxins at their own pace: to overfeed, overindulge and listen to what your body really wants. As a pleasurable aside, the 4S is also the genius hotel group that introduced Wi-Fi airport transfer limos. The first service of its kind. Just to ensure that I can keep addicted to technology even on a brief car drive. Wi- Fi retox where have you been all my life? But then that’s another story….

The Sukhotai may be surrounded by the noisy concrete jungle of Bangkok. Yet it’s that rare thing – a resort hotel in the centre of the city. It boasts landscaped gardens with water features and even an Olympic-sized pool. The décor is stylish and contemporary Thai, with miles of sage and copper silks, vases of lotus flowers and jasmine-garlanded statues of Buddha and friends. But there are other details that are more Silicone Valley than Siam: bedrooms with adaptor sockets to fit iAnything; and iPad restaurant menus. Try dishes with ‘rice paddy herbs’, ‘pandanus leaves’ and ‘garden chillies’ or visit La Scala, their European eaterie with a visiting roster of Michelin chefs. Everywhere staff glide by with hands clasped in ‘sawasdeeka’ greeting. Ask for a room overlooking the courtyard with its decorative, pike-filled pond. Go for the hotel’s impeccable service and for its convenience. Go for the power of calm.

It’s time for me to rejuvenate a body more burnt-out than an old firework. Maybe have the opportunity to live on air alone. Or perhaps do the sort of intensive detox that leads, above all, to dreams of meringues and ice cream. You know, a kind of Victoria Beckham diet.

Hang on a moment – before I’m pushed into a week of juice, watered down water or of three anorexic squirrel’s meals a day – it’s not possible to get through a serious detox without having a dreaded colonic, is it? Maybe even a cappuccino enema. Another hiccup is that I’m not a fan of detox herbal remedies, either. It doesn’t take much to realise one thing then: that it’s a no to a hard-core detox programme for me.

One of the biggest growth markets in travel is of people investing in their bodies. And Kamalaya in Koh Samui, Thailand, is one of the planet’s – or possibly galaxy’s – leading destination spas and the place to invest in my-body-is-my-temple.

Kamalaya offer 70 fitness, weight loss or rejuvenation therapies. There’s a stress and burn-out programme that includes Thai and Chinese practices plus Ayurvedic Shirodhara massages (that’s the one that involves a continuous stream of warm oil drizzled onto my ‘third eye’, as if I were a poppadom).

There’s also a sleep programme which includes naturopathy, Traditional Chinese Medicine and enough massages to open a parlour. Once I put head to buckwheat pillow, it’s hard to remember all the detailszzzzzz.

Kamalaya integrates medical science and Eastern healing traditions – which means there are diagnostic tests and healing hands aplenty: think holistic made hip. There’s a crack squad of practitioners…Traditional Chinese Medicine doctors, naturopaths, homeopaths, Ayurvedic therapists, registered nurses, energy healers, an allopathic doctor, Thai therapists and visiting gurus. A kind of Carry on Doctor series de nos jours.

There’s an infrared sauna that burns 600 calories in 30 minutes. That’s if I have any calories left after climbing the hill every day for meals and treatments.

Kamalaya is a beautiful hillside retreat of swaying palm trees, looming granite boulders and tropical jungle foliage borrowed from a Gauguin painting – with an add-on of landscaped swimming and plunge pools. There are lotus ponds, ginormous orange butterflies, hot pink hibiscus and loadsa ribbiting frogs. There’s even a herbal steam cavern hewn into the rock and an ancient Buddhist monks’ cave. It all puts the ah into spa. Can there be anything better?

Well, yes, it overlooks an aquamarine lagoon and a beach that out-beaches the one in From Here to Eternity. Forget Gauguin: this place has been borrowed from a Hollywood studio fantasy landscape with bells and brass knobs on.

It is to Kamalaya that Oliver Stone came for weight loss. Best call him Oliver Lost A Stone now. Fergie went all spiritual here (in her autobiography, Finding Sarah, she devotes 35 pages to the retreat. Recalling a meditation session she wrote: ‘We sat cross-legged on mats around the fire, with everyone chanting, “Ohm.”’ Ohm indeed). Annie Lennox travelled the world and the seven seas to get here. Add to these slebs a number of stressed-out investment bankers, Ozzies in singlets and CEO’s in sarongs, and you get the picture.

There’s a programme called ‘Balance and Revitalize’ – detox lite – which aims to fight modern stresses and combat adrenal burnout. That’s what I opt for.

My programme starts with a body bio-impedance analysis – a conspiratorial electronic device which, it’s claimed, is there to determine an individual’s specific wellness needs, but is probably only there to tell me I need to lose some lard. Beam me up, Scotty. Next I have a naturopathic consultation.

Then it carries on through a detox body scrub, foot massage, head massage, face massage and even intestine massage (it’s called Chei Nei Tsing and is a Taoist therapy). There’s only a centimeter patch behind my ear that goes unmassaged. I’m saving it for next time. All the treatments work on an energetic, emotional and spiritual level.

Instead of lolling by a pool reading Fifty Shades trilogies, I spend time with Smitha Jayakumar – a monk who lived in a monastery for 10 years and is now a spiritual-life-coach (think Buddhism meets Hinduism and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy). There are no televisions here. If I want Made in Chelsea or Graham Norton, forget it. Instead the waterfalls and ponds are a recording studio for love-lorn frogs – and alongside them packs of local dogs howl at the moon.

Suddenly I hear the siren song of French fries. The lyrical lure of the Mars bar. But it’s easier to find a nun in a whore house than a super-size-me anything in Kamalaya. So far so good, for the likes of me – someone who has less discipline than a randy frog and who is wanting to detox (that much said, there’s an infrared sauna that burns 600 calories in 30 minutes. That’s if I have any calories left after climbing the hill every day for meals and treatments. Go forth and sweat).

The food isn’t just for raw-food junkies and lactose, peanut, meat-allergic weirdos. It’s spa food that makes me go ‘om’ and ‘ah’. It’s deliciously organic, fresh and pleasantly medicinal – but not preachy (I can eat pancakes and chocolate mousse if I want. And, boy, do I want…). The cuisine is based on ancient Asian healing traditions and the latest Western nutritional research Black cod and banana blossom salad. Mieng Kam – fresh green betel leaves with dried coconut, tamarind, ginger and shallots…. It’s enough to turn the hardest fast food junkie’s heart to tofu.

Kamalaya is young and sexy, in the first flush of youth. It’s a spiritual place that favours authenticity over luxury and pampering. It catches me by the toe and pulls me in gently, casting its magic spell slowly. It’s so addictive it should be a classified drug. At the end, I’m ready to do everything my team of therapists suggest – as long as it’s not a colonic. I leave trim, fit and with luminescent skin. Who wants a week-long detox affair? I’d like this to be a marriage for life.

Everyone leaves there having made at least one change in their lives. That’s what I’m told about Kamalaya health spa in Koh Samui, Thailand. Guests rid themselves of multiple pounds (in weight and currency), have a turn of direction in their heart-attack-headed lives, and rejuvenate bodies more burnt out than a forest fire.

The hottest trend in travel is to invest in your body. And Kamalaya, one of the world’s leading destination spas, is the place to do it.

It offers healing hands aplenty and Eastern traditions alongside the best of the West, including state-of-the-art diagnostic procedures. This translates into diverse healing and spiritual approaches: a holistic combo that is targeted at the mind, body and soul.

There is a crack squad of practitioners, encompassing traditional Chinese medicine, naturopathy, homeopathy, Ayurveda and energy healing, as well as registered nurses, an allopathic doctor, Thai therapists and visiting guru types.

Shoulders and chakras
I’m at Kamalaya to release shoulders that have more knots than a yacht covers in a storm, to catch up on several lifetimes of deprived sleep, and perhaps to buff my soul and open my chakras. My companion, my Ritalin-filled 17-year-old nephew Henry, wants to find alternative approaches to his ADHD (or rather, that’s what his mother wants).

The location on its own starts the healing process. The spa is on a hillside of swaying palms and tropical foliage borrowed from a Gaugin painting. It sits beside a crescent-shaped beach and an aquamarine lagoon. It’s a Garden of Eden with plants that probably talk, lotus ponds and ginormous orange butterflies

There is a herbal steam cavern hewn into the rock and a Buddhist monks’ cave. It’s a close to heaven as you can get while still alive.

Who’s here…
Here you’ll find the likes of Annie Lennox, Oliver Stone (who lost more than a stone), stressed-out investment bankers and ladies who don’t lunch. There are singletons who meet at the dining table for singles, and couples on a health kick. And the hard-core detoxers whose treatments include the dreaded colonics.

Then there’s the founders: Karina Stewart, a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine who also trained in anthropology and wafts around on a spiritual cloud dispensing healing energy; and her husband John, a yogi who devoted 16 years to spiritual studies in a Himalayan community.

…and what they’re doing
The spa offers 70 treatments and programmes, from weight loss to yoga. The latest is the sleep programme, using naturopathy and Chinese therapies to take people to the land of zizz on a buckwheat pillow.

Days are also sugar-free-jam-packed with activities, from aqua aerobics to mediation and Qi Gong. Recalling a meditation session at Kamalaya, Fergie, the Duchess of York, wrote in her memoir: “We sat cross-legged on mats around the fire, with everyone chanting Om.” Bring on the incense, bruv.

The food is organic and fresh, combining ancient Asian healing traditions and the latest Western nutritional research, and including diets derived from Ayurveda and naturopathy. The precept is that when the diet is wrong, medicine is of no use; and when the diet is correct, there’s no need for medicine.

The chef works from the belief that we are much more than what we eat – but that what we eat helps us to be more than what we are. It’s to this end that the mini-bar contains roasted pumpkin kernels and aloe vera juice.

My programme starts with a body bio-impedance analysis (which measures body composition electronically and rudely informs me on a printout that I’m a little overweight) and after which I have a delicious meal. Black cod and banana blossom salad, where have you been all my life?

I also have a wellness consultation with a naturopath, magic-handed massages (including Chei Nei Tsing, a Taoist tummy massage), and nutritional advice. I spend a particularly interesting hour with Smitha Jayakumar, a one-time Buddhist nun who lived in a monastery for ten years and is now a spiritual life coach.

All the treatments work on an energetic, emotional and spiritual level. But does it do the trick?

Well, yes and no. I am shadowing Henry (in the interests of journalism and at the instruction of his mother) and writing articles. So I don’t really experience the essential switching-off element of the programme.

But by the end there’s definitely a spiritual spring in my step and a luminescent quality to my face. Not to mention a trimmer body, achieved partly by so often climbing the hill to the dining area and treatment rooms.

Some people say they leave Kamalaya with reignited spirits and hearts, and with more than Band-Aid to deal with their wounds. We leave feeling healthy, happy and relaxed. (So that’s more than one change in our lives, then.)

Most spas claim to make you feel well; Kamalaya actually delivers. It does what it says on the tin. And more.