Daisy Dooley Does Divorce

Hello everyone!

My friend Anna Pasternak has some news for you.

The Starting Over Show is hosting an event that takes place at the Barcelo Old Ship Hotel in Brighton, UK on 15 March 2009 and will include a workshop with Divorce Doctor Francine Kaye and a talk by Daily Mail columnist Anna Pasternak (Daisy Dooley Does Divorce). Read more here http://www.startingovershow.co.uk/index.php/visiting/key-speakers/

You can read Anna's Starting Over story here:

http://www.startingovershow.co.uk/index.php/starting-over-by-anna-pasternak/

We'd love to read your comments, so please leave one.

You can also discover 7 ways to leave your lover, just in case you're thinking about it, here:

http://www.startingovershow.co.uk/index.php/seven-ways-to-leave-your-lover/

Thank you for your continuing support.

Love & light,
Christine for Team Daisy x

Laxatives at dinner, drinking vinegar and electric shock treatment... Welcome to extreme spa detox

By Anna Pasternak
London Daily Mail
13th October 2008

Anna Pasternak spends a week extreme detoxing. Here she reveals the results...

As a spoilt spa junkie, I've pretty much covered the whole global gamut: ayurvedic abhyanga (oily massage) in the Alps, Chi Nei Tsang (deep and delicate abdominal delving) in Thailand and shamanic stuff in the States.

But I've never experienced anything as extreme - or expensive - as meridian clearing in the mountains of Merano.

Nestled in the foothills of the Italian Dolomites, The Palace Hotel is the hottest detox destination du jour.

Tatler has just voted it the most life-changing spa in the world, while secret devotees - Princess Caroline of Monaco, Elle Macpherson, Uma Thurman and the president of Georgia (forced to leave early due to the recent Russian incursion) - confirm its A-list ascendancy.

So, what attracts the private jet set to this unassuming hotel, where colonic irrigation and sporting foil headcaps, which make you look like a baked potato, are de rigeur?

They are all disciples of the cult of Chenot. A French expert in Chinese medicine, naturopathy and a pioneer of bioenergetic psychology, Henri Chenot has spent 30 years devising a health system called biontology.

This aims to rebalance, return us to our optimum weight and combat accelerated ageing. Bonkers or brilliant? thick layer of cloud over the mountains. A storm is brewing, which, like my headache, is going to be a monster.

DAY ONE:

It's not really a spa, more of an intense wellness clinic: it feels as if I'm staying in an obscure royal palace crossed with a detention centre.

My fellow voluntary inmates include the Emir of Qatar, plus entourage of 20, and a member of the Fendi fashion family.

The sect-like vibe is exacerbated as everyone is in towelling robes, carrying hessian Henri Chenot bags and reading Chenot's book The Secret Code Of Health. It's health rehab for the uber-rich - who look utterly miserable.

After lunch, I understand why. Everyone is starving. Lunch is three mini courses. Minute, exquisite combinations of fruit, vegetables and complex carbs - all PH neutral foods designed to balance our acidic systems.

I devour the sliver of orange rind in the chicory 'cappuccino'. Already, I feel an almighty detox headache looming and hunger induced hysteria.

We sit at individual tables staring ahead, all melancholy Hotel du Lac style. My fellow guests are mainly Russians addicted to their mobiles.

Dinner is the same. I go to bed feeling bloated - ironic as my stomach is so empty - and feeling oppressed.

DAY TWO:

Breakfast is a bowl of pureed apple. I'm as gloomy as the thick layer of cloud over the mountains. A storm is brewing, which, like my headache, is going to be a monster.

The medical care, though, is second to none. The doctor - on call 24 hours a day - explains that the emphasis is on elimination and increasing our digestive capability.

The 'cure' comprises of the Chenot method massage. This is an inspirational blend of cupping - Gwyneth Paltrow is a fan of these vacuum cups and once had red weals on her back to prove it, but thankfully, I bear no war wounds - and meridian clearing, in which a different organ (such as the liver or gall bladder) is stimulated each day using tiny electric pulses.

There are also daily hydroaromatherapy baths, phyto-mud wraps, hydro jet therapy and acupuncture (with electric currents, as opposed to needles).

It's almost macabre that people are paying £4,000 a week to strip buck naked and enter a white tiled room with concentration camp bright lighting.

There, holding on to a metal bar, you stand while high-pressure jets of hot and cold water are blasted at you. How can this not feel like ritual humiliation, especially as it's followed by a daily naked weigh in? I do the bio-energy testing, which calibrates my entire body analysis from my body mass index to the energy circulation in my body.

Quite how this machine works I have no idea as I simply sit at a computer, holding metal conductors, my feet on special pads, a Hannibal Lecter-style band around my head and stare for 20 minutes at pictures of nature.

Yet later I am given the most incredibly precise printout of my body functions, from my BMI to how my lungs and heart function.

At lunch I want to drop my head into my carrot slivers. I feel so sick and hungry. I go to my room and contemplate bursting into tears. Too much effort, so I sleep for two hours instead.

In the afternoon I have an elimination facial. Boy, these pesky toxins get everywhere. Another electric current is pulsed through my cheeks, which makes my fillings feel as if they're falling out and causes the side of my mouth to spasm as if I've had a stroke.

I've had blood tests, urine tests and more wires attached to me and currents pulsed through me than a flat car battery.

At dinner, next to a white rose on the table, are silver teaspoons and piles of white powder. Surely not cocaine to stimulate weight loss? Nope. Special laxatives that expel water from the outer intestine. Great.

DAY THREE:

Do you detox your dreams, too? Apparently, nightmares are common here. Hunger has taken second place to a seismic headache and lower back ache. My beleaguered liver is working overtime, I'm told.

After the hydrotherapy bath, in which I felt incredibly queasy, I am put in the mud wrap and start feeling it was sick that people pay for this torture.

Then, hold on, I am going to be sick. So I lumber from the waterbed on which we lie, stark naked, covered in mud, to the loo and start wretching.

Then I sob because I feel so awful. But the service is five-star, and they bring me a folded bath mat to put under my knees.

I am so dizzy I think I'm going to faint, so they help me shower off while I gulp honey from a minute packet. Then the doctor comes and I sit crying, obsessed by how hungry and lonely I'm feeling.

How I wish I had a boyfriend and was retoxing on some Maldivian island instead of shivering in some swish hydrotherapy centre, detoxing for my 'holiday'.

Hallelujah! They see that I'm 'distressed' so I get taken off the detox and put on the bio-light diet (1,200 wheat, dairy, sugar and fat-free calories a day as opposed to the detox 800).

When the staff hear this they look at me as if I'm Pavarotti - who stayed here, too, and had a special gigantic hydrotherapy tub made - and I feel as if I've got a giant 'L' for Loser tattooed on my forehead because everyone else is about to embark on a 24-hour mushroom broth fast. Plus the laxatives have kicked in and things happen. All. Day. Long.

By 6pm my migraine is raging, so I demand a painkiller. Catch-22; you can't take them on an empty stomach or you'll be sick (not again), so I go to the bar (herbal teas only) and ask for a piece of bread.

In shock, as if I'd just pulled out a gun, the barman says bread is verboten but he'll get me some 'mice gallettes', which I think is a bit odd, but if it takes eating mice to rid me of my headache and ravenous hunger, so be it.

Fortunately, it turns out to be some mini rice cakes.

DAY FOUR:

Yippee - a bio-light breakfast of fruit, an Henri Chenot probiotic yoghurt (sold in supermarkets throughout Italy) and two slim slices of chewy black bread.

The others view me with disgust, as if I'm having a fry-up. Afterwards, I'm actually full. Staying here shrinks your stomach.

I see the naturopath for the results of my tests. My 'vital energies' are on the floor. How can I boost them?

'By doing things you enjoy. By taking time for yourself. The most important thing is love.' Ah, the lack of a boyfriend again. My eyes water.

Detoxing makes you ridiculously over-sensitive. The doctor says he sees five people a year, like me, who are 'psychologically broken' by the detox. Our stress levels are so high we can't tolerate further assault.

For my optimum weight, I must lose four more pounds - and I've already lost three.

The good news? I have the 'liver and kidneys of a baby'.

DAY FIVE:

Another facial drainage massage. Later, in my meridian clearing body massage, my hormones are blocked, so I have more currents passed through me than a high-voltage electric fence. I am so tired; fatigue is seeping out of my pores.

In the afternoon, I have IPL laser treatment on my face to stimulate collagen. Intense light is pulsed through my skin.

Sharon Stone has one of these machines at home, apparently, hence her flawless complexion.

For £317 you sign a disclaimer (terrifying), have ice rolled across your face, before short bursts of hot colour pin-prick your skin.

The results are outstanding. Slight tightness, no redness and my skin feels softer and plumper. I'm indoctrinated into the cult of Chenot. I feel as if some interior light is finally sparking within me.

DAY SIX:

I still can't help laughing at the men - who have scalp treatments to stimulate hair growth - walking around with little foil caps on their head. They look ridiculous.

Horrors, I've put on 300g. I'm not drinking enough - any more water imbibed and I'll dissolve, surely?

I glug gag-inducing apple cider vinegar mixed with water to eliminate fluid retention.

I take a walk outside but quickly return to the cocoon of privilege and pampering. It feels safe here because your body is so closely monitored that if you burped, they'd note it.

DAY SEVEN:

I feel fantastic, but am conflicted about having to be constantly hungry for the holy grail of thin thighs. I've lost more than 5lb and my skin is glowing.

I've shed my mumsy, middle-aged spread and re-educated myself into eating less.

Although it was a shocking experience - the first three days are unmitigated hell - I can see what biontology believers are banging on about.

This intense internal cleansing banishes bloating and radically reboots your digestive system.