Learn not to give a...
Ian Belcher, The Guardian, Saturday 3 January 2009
Desperate to avoid mung beans and chanting, Ian Belcher finds a hedonistic retreat in the Italian hills where he is actively encouraged to eat, drink and swear. A lot....
And relax ... the retreat is based in a beautiful farmhouse in the Marche.
Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi
Tree hugging is just so last year. With a series of savage left-right jabs and guttural grunts, I am - and there's no easy way of saying this - knocking 10 bells out of a pine sapling. My punches stop inches from its adolescent bark, but this youngster's getting the message: don't mess with me, you little woody bastard.
I'd like to point out that no greenery was harmed in the making of this Italian holiday, but pine abuse isn't what you expect from a holistic retreat. Along with a gaggle of other sapling worriers, I'm harnessing internal power through the martial art shing-yi as part of a very different mind, body and spirit break. Forget "finding your inner voice", and don't even think about "discovering your true angel" - this is the less flaky Fuck It week.
One of a new wave of new-age escapes, it aims to bridge the gap between spirituality and real life - to bring it back to planet Earth. Its recipe picks'n'mixes eastern philosophies, adds a soupcon of martial arts, a dash of shamanism and a big dollop of humour. The ingredients slow cook for seven days under a hot sun, hopefully producing an emotional and spiritual toolbox for coping with 21st-century life.
"Holistic holidays often seemed a leftover from the 1970s," says John Parkin, a former London ad man who runs the magnificently irreverent course with his Italian wife, Gaia. "They were an earnest search for stuff, where you rose early to meditate and chant. But we don't go for that. We believe everything's spiritual: swearing, drinking, laughing, scoffing chocolate cake, and the desire to be peaceful. It's spiritual hedonism."
Sounds intriguing. But I'm nervous. Who the hell takes a holiday named after an expletive? I've never been within an Ashtanga breath of a holistic retreat. I'm English, with a crippling fear of public revelation, emotional honesty and dancing with the lights on.
At least The Hill That Breathes - could an address be any more holistic? - is heartbreakingly lovely. The simple yet tasteful honeyed stone house snuggles into a pine-covered slope near Urbino in the Marche region. It's engulfed by a crumpled duvet of forested valleys and vertiginous fields where tractors need crampons.
And it's popular, so popular in fact, that next month John and Gaia are launching the first Fuck It weekend in the UK (see below for details). Back at the Hill, there are 24 guests, pushing three of us into an overflow farmhouse with dramatic views. My fear of the course attracting a relentless tide of tie-dye and lentils evaporates. The predominantly professional women appear friendly and refreshingly down-to-earth. On the first night, Mary, a London businesswoman, emerges from the house with a bottle of red wine, a deck of playing cards and a question: "Who knows how to play Shithead?"
But they're also exhausted. When people reveal why they've come, in the first of two daily sessions, many are drained by work. Some have insomnia, others RSI, some are taking career breaks. "Fuck It doesn't get 18-year-old layabouts," says John. "It gets people who've buckled down for 10 or 20 years, people who care too much."
This opening "group share" scares me. As my turn approaches, my hands turn clammy - a flashback to school shyness. I blurt out about my chaotic sleep patterns and feelings of powerlessness as a freelancer, but hold back the real juice - my naked tenpin bowling habit, the autopsies on domestic pets - for later in the week.
Then we're off, walking anti-clockwise around the geodesic dome that hides in the forest like a golf ball in heavy rough. We're learning how to let go of the safe but destructive habits, careers and even relationships we cling to. We're also being taught to tune in to physical and emotional messages from our bodies; to rediscover "teenage self-consciousness without the fear and judgment".
If you're psychobabble intolerant, this is the holistic week for you. John, who combines Wayne Hemingway's style with Eddie Izzard's flights of surrealism, is more "entertaining mate" than "po-faced teacher", fusing common sense advice on work, love and life with regular demonstrations of relaxation exercises. He constantly slaughters new-age sacred cows. "I hate the words 'spiritual journey'. It's life. We're all on it. This week, say 'fuck it - this is what I want out of it.'"
And yet things occasionally go just a wee bit weird. Day one ends with hypnotic shamanic drumming as we visualise another world where we'll meet our animal spiritual guides. Oh Lord, this is what Mum warned me about. I try, I really do. But all I can see is a black and white cow - and she's peeing.
Other people have seen elephants, whales and stags. They talk seriously about how they once had butterflies but now have tigers. Helen, a lively, witty charity worker who seems perfectly sane, asks me with genuine surprise: "Haven't you done this animal stuff before?" After admitting it's the first time I've consulted an incontinent Friesian, I discover the Druid Animal Oracle - it's next to Pagan Parenting in the small library. My cow is the goddess and "her nourishment is present in the natural world I'm blessed to live in". That's Clapham.
Over the following days we continue to decompress from our busy lives. "Turn to face the dome and close your eyes," says John, as I await more words of deep enlightenment. "It reduces the twat factor. Twat awareness can limit your thinking."
He's right. At 11am, surrounded by strangers, I'm dancing like a dad at a wedding: some James Brown leg wiggles, some Bez-like manoeuvres with visualised maracas, and the odd bit of standing crawl. It's not particularly pretty, but it's incredibly liberating - and nobody takes any notice. It's a pivotal moment. I feel the more uptight among us opening up with less embarrassment, our twat radars being blunted. Meanwhile, we're making the most of the promised hedonism: swinging in hammocks, lazing by a dreamy swimming pool and eating supremely tasty veggie scoff - gorgonzola and truffle pasta, ricotta wrapped in aubergine, courgette with honey and tamarind - washed down with cheap, excellent vino.
It spawns a safe atmosphere for counselling. Clumps of women sit around listening and nodding sagely. I even find myself offering some poor sod relationship advice - like Gordon Brown giving tips on charisma.
Only occasionally do I feel an imposter. People can be so damn positive. When mosquitoes blitz my ankles, someone with perfect, untouched olive skin tells me, straight-faced: "If you really don't want them to bite, they won't."
At the heart of the week is an instant form of chi kung , the ancient Chinese discipline claimed to relax and energise. Your GP may raise an eyebrow, but unblock our body's meridians - let go of that negative stuff, dude - and we'll synchronise with our natural energy flow or chi . That, according to John, is "pure fuck it", when the good stuff happens.
And so the dome's full of people slapping themselves, channelling chi like camp bullfighters and twirling imaginary cups of tea overhead. To help Dyno-Rod my meridian blocks I visit tepee three where the magnificently silent Fabio - yes, really - offers shiatsu massage.
To accompany our fast-track Chinese moves, we learn fast-track breathing techniques - another ally in the search for serenity and vitality. They turn out to be the week's most bizarre element.
My toes, legs, fingers and lips start to tingle and spasm. You can call it chi - some would say hyperventilation - but for 15 minutes I can't move. I'm stranded like a jellyfish, unable to call for help. It wouldn't be much use anyway. John's lost in his own world. He appears to be growling.
When Gaia finally helps stabilise my breathing, I get a lunatic urge to run through the pines. In slow motion. Possibly semi-naked. Except someone's already out there, getting sap in her hair. Later it emerges that Leigh, whose ex-husband offered her the price of the holiday not to go - "they'll brainwash you, it's a cult" - had enjoyed a public orgasm, something Judith Chalmers never managed on Wish You Were Here? That we know of.
That night I can't sleep and wander around the farm at 3am. An urgent wind is blowing clouds across a full moon, and I find myself in my underpants, looking up and uttering, "Ah, the spirits are restless". I clearly need a break.
Perfect timing. Day four swaps the dome for hiking in the foothills of the Apennines, exploring lush valleys and swimming in waterfalls. It's a glorious recharge for the final sessions, including self-hypnosis and shing-yi among the trees - evidence that the week is about fighting back as well as relaxing. "Every course has one or two people who return home and immediately quit their jobs," says John. "I've started suggesting, 'give it at least a week'."
By now, saying "fuck it" appears to have become an aggressive western mantra. "It's acupuncture for the mind," says John. "It sticks the needle in just the right place." After our final session, I spot my neighbour's notebook. She has scrawled "I am" in capitals on an otherwise blank page. It's either brilliantly insightful - or she's on the verge of a breakdown.
But something has changed. The group ends with less harmony, more backbiting. Mary tells me she's accessing her inner bitch. Perhaps it's inevitable when you isolate 20 people in a house with generous supplies of booze and stir up the chi . Big Buddha rather than Big Brother.
Still, fuck it. It's all spiritual hedonism and doesn't detract from what has been a thought-provoking week. Yes, it's occasionally gone a bit lentil bake, but the only casualty's my dignity. And John's no hypocrite. The course structure goes with the flow. He's contemplating introducing a Fuck You week, perhaps followed by a Fuck You, Too week. He's even considering a Can't Be Arsed week. "It's brilliant. The teacher doesn't even turn up."
Sound unlikely? You haven't been to the Hill.