Diagnosed with severe stress, I managed to unwind thanks to this resort

My heart is racing faster than one would hope after two days at a health retreat. I’ve come here to relax, but have spent the morning feeling an edginess that is now escalating to panic.

I’m standing in front of a machine that resembles a plush, white Tardis. I’ve stripped down to my underwear, and I am staring at the garments I’ve been given to put on; fluffy slippers shaped like oversized tennis shoes, long socks, ear muffs and a pair of faux-fur pink gloves. Once dressed like a midlife K-pop fan, I’ll be stepping into a padded chamber in which the temperature has been lowered to minus 110 degrees Celsius.

I hate being cold. I’ve refused once-in-a-lifetime experiences, such as swimming in the Dead Sea or at an Antarctic beach, to avoid it. But I’m hell-bent on relaxing at this wellness retreat, and while the baths and massages and breath work have been balm for the soul, I feel I’ll be letting myself – and my readers – down if I don’t try one of the more hardcore options. The hyperbaric chamber for oxygen therapy isn’t yet open. The “colonic hydrotherapy” (aka enema) is a bridge too far. So here I am at the cryosauna, about to be frozen and, frankly, I’m freaking out.

I’d arrived at RXV Wellness Village with, as my doctor had described it a few months before, severe stress. It’s nothing any working mother wouldn’t recognise; the constant whir of too many balls in the air, juggling work deadlines and the odd existential crisis with kids’ sport and school schedules and getting to the supermarket.

A month earlier, I’d done a Zoom consultation with the RXV Wellness Village nurse while squatting in the corridor of a Sydney courthouse during a break from a case I was covering. Irritated lawyers glared at me. The nurse had asked me what I hoped for – to relax and de-stress? Yes, I nodded wildly, as an Italian leather shoe clipped my foot. A good sleep would be nice, too, as would avoiding a repeat of that stress-induced back spasm from a few weeks earlier. Still, even finding time for the wellness consultation was stressful. I feared I was a hopeless case.

I arrive in Bangkok soon after 6pm. It’s a 10-hour flight, give or take, and the plane is delayed. The 1½ hour drive from the airport takes two hours due to peak-hour traffic. By the time I arrive at the retreat, it is dark. Stress has given way to exhaustion and my already-tight muscles are even tighter. I eat dinner – a small slice of pan-fried salmon – in the brightly lit restaurant and go to bed, for a fitful, restless sleep.

I wake as the sun rises over the little lush patch of jungle tucked into outer suburbia. Suan Sampran is a leafy estate on the banks of the Tha Chin River in Nakhon Pathom province, near Bangkok, and was established 60 years ago to preserve a 100-year-old Pikul tree. The bustle is not far away – a giant, grey noodle factory sits downriver – but the area is peaceful and quiet, dotted with old Thai wooden houses, bonsai bushes and mango trees.

I walk out of the air-conditioning into the dense air for a jog around the lake, and abruptly stop. I’d forgotten how mugginess fogs up one’s glasses – the telltale sign that a myopic has arrived in the tropics. It blocks my vision for a minute or so, as if the climate was in cahoots with the three-day, three-night rejuvenation program, forcing me to stand still, surrender control, and focus on my other senses.

The humidity, embracing me like a sweaty hug. The quiet, broken occasionally by birdsong. The smell of incense from the morning offerings, still hanging in the air.

My early morning is free, but most of my day has been set out in an itinerary given to me on the first night. Here, there’s no White Lotus-style full moon parties or drunk nights with Russian robbers. RXV takes wellness very seriously.

Breakfast is at 8am. I duly arrive at the restaurant, but it feels too cold and brightly lit. I opt to sit outside in the mugginess beneath trees hung with vines, where I watch clumps of water plants floating with the current.

The meal begins with a juice and a tea, designed to help me relax and promote sleep (getting me to sleep, I come to realise, seems to be the explicit intention of every staff member who interacts with me at the retreat on my first day, from the kitchen to the clinic. I must look as haggard as I feel). The food is light – today a salmon bagel, tomorrow oatmeal and berries, the following day avocado toast – finishing with a herbal tea served with an egg timer, to ensure it’s seeped just right.

My busy day of relaxing begins at 9.30am with a quick consultation with a nurse at the wellness centre, which is separated from the hotel by a covered walkway through the gardens. They want to know my health conditions and medications. Next is a sound healing class, which involves lying on a mat while a woman runs a mallet over crystal singing bowls. The idea is that the sound waves have healing properties. Certainly, the vibrations are so intense that they sometimes knock every other thought out of my head. But crystal bowls will not be enough for me.

My next stop is the doctor. She shows me through the medical side of the village – the hyperbaric chamber, colonic irrigation room and the cryosauna (“but you don’t like the cold,” she says, perceptively – or maybe they’d asked me that day in the corridor). She recommends an IV vitamin drip, including vitamin B for stress and magnesium for sleep. I nod, with slight unease about what my no-nonsense doctor might think, and assume my position on a couch in a sunroom.

With a drip in my arm and a pillow behind my head, I slump to sleep.

After lunch and a swim in the enormous hotel pool, I’m at another consultation, this time for my spine. The physiotherapist runs a hand-held machine up the length of it, and has images on her screen within a minute. It’s not in great shape. My core could be stronger. My lower back could be more flexible. This is the bit I don’t like about wellness retreats – where they highlight things you’ve been intentionally ignoring, and suggest your wellbeing might improve if you do something about them.

Happily, though, I can put those thoughts out of my mind during hydrotherapy at the most luxurious bathhouse I’ve ever seen. There’s a “revitalising” spa bath; an oxygen bath; a soda bath; and a cold bath. There’s an infrared sauna, a steam room, and an extravagant shower, which has four settings that mimic spring rain, tropical rain, cold mist and a Caribbean storm, with different temperatures, pressures and sound effects to match. Even better, I have the whole place to myself.

I follow the directions on the wall, which advise different baths for different lengths of time, depending on one’s ailment. The deep sleep series starts with the oxygen bath, and cycles through the various spas and saunas for 38 minutes. It is glorious. My final stop for the day, before another light, plant-laden dinner, is a “good night sleep” massage. By 7pm, I can barely keep my eyes open. I hit the pillow – a specially contoured one – an hour later. I can’t remember the last time I slept that well.

Still, there’s something on my mind. I feel like a coward for not opting for the cryosauna. The IV drip might have been delightful, but it doesn’t add much to my story. Regrets about the Dead Sea and Antarctica loom large.

I’d learned about cryosaunas a few months earlier, when I’d written about the superstar podcaster Joe Rogan and his bizarre physical regimen. The idea of freezing oneself seemed nuts to me, but it’s actually moving in from the fringes. There are cryosaunas in Sydney and Melbourne. They’re supposed to reduce muscle soreness and inflammation, and possibly stress and anxiety as well, by triggering a fight or flight response that sets off physiological responses such as drawing blood flow to the core.

Sounds unpleasant, but I’ll give it a crack.

The next morning of busy relaxing involves a stretching class followed by a personally tailored session with the physio, who follows up on the spinal bad news with stretches and exercises to help. It is useful, and I feel great afterwards, determined to keep doing the exercises and address those perennially stiff hips and lower back when I come home. And, in good(ish) news, they’re able to fit me in for a cryosauna at midday.

So there I find myself, with ear muffs, oversized slippers and a racing heart, waiting outside the chamber. It’s big enough for one person to stand in. I am comforted by the fact that the door can open from the inside at any time, should the freezee want to escape. The screen outside lists the temperatures; minus 110 degrees for beginners, for between 30 seconds and three minutes; minus 120 degrees for the intermediate, minus 130 degrees for advanced, and minus 140 degrees for “professional”. The nurse advises me to keep moving to music while inside. I opt for Eye of the Tiger.

The liquid nitrogen has already sent the temperature well below zero when I climb in. It’s bitterly cold, yes, but doesn’t feel as intense as the 15-degree cold spa in the hydrotherapy room. I jog on the spot, as directed. It grows colder and colder and colder. My skin is screaming. After about two minutes, I’ve had enough. It wasn’t as physically shocking as I thought, but I didn’t feel much better. The IV drip had a more noticeable impact.

For the rest of the trip, I cycle through more treatments. A Thai massage. A gut massage, from Chinese medicine (I carry tension in my liver, apparently), which involves lots of rubbing of my tummy, and a crystal mandala workshop, in which I make a pattern out of crystals and coloured flowers and the consultants read my chakra (the short version: I spend too much time worrying about things).

My second night’s sleep is as sound as the first. By the second day, the buzzing in my head has quietened. My body feels sore from the exercises, but light – due in part, perhaps, to the food, which is summery and fresh compared with the winter stodge back home. My mind stops whirring like a broken toy. I put down my phone and read a book.

I’d been sceptical when I arrived. But over three days, I have been unwound, from a tight ball to – well, a much looser one. When I come home, friends remark on how relaxed I look. I also learn strategies to keep the stress at bay, and a renewed appreciation of how important that is. I’m hankering to do it all over again.

The details

Fly
Qantas and Thai Airways operate regular flights to Bangkok.

Stay
The three-day, three-night package includes accommodation, meals and some laundry, as well as access to group classes, daily hydrotherapy, a doctor’s consultation, a physio assessment and six treatment credits, which can be used for massages, IV treatments, and the cryosauna. For a single person, prices range from 54900 THB (around $2600) to 57900 THB ($2750), depending on the season.

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Visit rxvwellness.com

The writer travelled as a guest of RXV Wellness Village.