HAPPY SOUL IN INDIA

Red’s executive editor Sarah

Tomczak tries the holistic approach for mind, body and spirit

Ihave never meditated. In fact, I’m not even sure I’m that spiritual really. I still get the urge to giggle in the middle of the “om” at my very sporadic yoga classes. It’s for this reason I choose to go to Raas Devigarh, a serene and spectacular Indian-palace-turned-spa, on the outskirts of elegant Udaipur. This, and the fact that I feel a little bit broken. Intense job, small kids, no time for myself, forever planning the next thing I have to do. I wondered if the three-day Devi Blessing Journey, a “transformative healing experience” that includes daily treatments and meditations, will help me to be more present and find my spiritual side.

It’s my first visit to India, so naturally Udaipur is an intense, joyful, culture shock. Wild cows amble between the airport traffic, women in saris walk past with giant baskets of fruit balanced on their heads and entire families pile onto the back of scooters. Then I reach Raas Devigarh, and all the mayhem falls away. The milky-white fortress rises up from the small village of Delwara, serene and majestic with its ornate balconies and turrets. I’m shown to my suite, and inside it’s elegant and spacious, with carved wooden tigers guarding the king-size bed and vast windows with views over the ancient Aravalli hills.

My Devi Blessing Journey starts at the hotel’s new glossy Ila Spa with a Prayer of the Earth treatment, a grounding ritual intended to cleanse my root chakra (my lovely Tibetan therapist tells me it’s for people who are burnt out or have become disconnected from their foundations). I am asked to sit over a small wooden barrel, from which warm, fragrant frankincense smoke unfurls. I try to relax and be open to the experience. After, comes a slow, earthy massage, which is more familiar ground, and I gently drift off to the sound of my therapist’s whispering chant. That night I dine alone in the restaurant, ignoring the wellness menu in favour of the richly spiced curries on offer. Without a companion to talk to, I feel out of my comfort zone and it’s too dark to read a book at my table, so I eat quickly and am in bed by 9.30pm.

The next morning, I’m woken by the delivery of my ‘bed tea’ – a pot of masala chai with two sticky energy balls. By 7.30am I have joined the Ila Spa manager, Faraaz, for a private yoga session in one of Raas’s many little

hideaways. As we perform lengthy sun salutations, I see birds swooping outside the windows and hear the rhythmic chanting of morning prayers outside. At the end of the session, Faraaz’s deep om reverberates around the small room and instead of giggling, I’m surprised by how emotional I feel.

Later that day, my Smiling Heart Offering – designed to nurture peacefulness – combines a coarse Himalayan salt and poppy seed body scrub, with a massage using rose oil and a warmed rose quartz. As the quartz is lifted off my chest at the end of the two-hour session, I have the sense of being a little lighter. Then, at dusk, after a Yoga Nidra meditation session, I find myself in deep conversation with Faraaz. He says he finds it bizarre that people come to India to “find themselves” when surely “self” is an ever-evolving thing, constantly changing shape with every new experience or influence from the outside world. I go to bed with my mind buzzing with his philosophies and my skin still tingling from the salt scrub.

Day three, and it’s almost time to leave. I’m briefly hurled back into the bustle with a morning in Udaipur, and that afternoon I have my final treatment

– Ananda facial therapy, which targets the energy centres in the face with massage. Finally,

I join Faraaz for sound healing in one of the highest points of the palace, a meditation room decorated with sadhu inscriptions. As the sun sets once more, he teaches me where to channel my energy during an om. He tells me to focus on the movement of the sound, not the length of my breath, and after a few attempts I relax into it and my chant becomes pure and melodic.

My last night brings a private supper in my room. I feast on a thali and gulab jamun, sweet dumplings soaked in cardamom syrup. I don’t feel such a desire to rush this meal. Maybe it’s because being present doesn’t seem quite such a challenge, because my mind – and therefore my body – isn’t rushing off to the next place I need to be. I vow that I will bring this centredness back to London with me – to recognise that everything I am is right here – and to appreciate the moments that are shaping me as they happen, no matter how big or small. SARAH TOMCZAK

HAPPY AT HOME

Take 10 minutes to let your attention rest on each part of your body in turn from head to toe, to release stress before falling asleep