Where Nic and I

Parted Ways

BC went to Tao Garden Health & Wellness Center Chiangmai and returned with more than just good vibes and stress-free muscles but also a freedom from a long-standing bondage to Bad Old Nic.

I have not Stumbled upon any great discovery. But after three decades of bondage, this window of opportunity will at least allow my body to repair itself. I am being realistic. It is so easy to give up not trying. Easier still it is to hide behind statistics that says only 6% of those who tried quitting made it. Cases of patients dying of lung cancer ask for cigarettes paint the picture eloquently. For someone who until recently smoked 40 sticks a day, the ride was going to be rough. I knew that. Been there, done that. Many times.

Surprisingly, this time the withdrawal jitters did not drag on. This is the nth time I am trying to quit. Not that I am a sado-maso, but I do wonder why it is so much easier this time?

I venture a theory based on what I learned during my stay at Tao Garden. The Taoists believe that the lungs and large intestines are interlinked and when organs in the body are rid of toxins, they become 'balanced' and hence perform better, helping the person handle stress better, for example.

I have also not relied on litres of coffee to me keep going, except for the occasional cuppa, I am quite happy to be without coffee. For someone who used to 'drink tobacco and smoke coffee', this is another minor victory.

BUT NOW it seems so long ago since I walked through the gates of Tao Garden. I also recall now how guilty I felt making Arun, the driver who picked me up at the airport, wait in the car while I had my last few sticks of cigarettes at a roadside cafe. Well, he offered to stop so I could; I did not make him!

Before visiting Tao Garden I had communicated with Walter Kellenberger, the CEO to ask what I ought to know about the place.

He had wisely suggested that I went like a clean sheet of paper. Yet, playing at the back of my mind at that time was a picture that I could not put away. I had half-expected Tao Garden to be a place where people in loose-fitting white cloaks glide by silently- like in an ashram of some sort. Was I wrong!

Walter appeared on a bicycle soon after I arrived. He sounded like he was more comfortable speaking in Thai than he did English, and told me that he would pick me up for a quick tour of the place before lunch. He gave instructions for me to be sent to Unit 802.

We took less than an hour in a golf buggy to complete a tour of the 80-acre resort. No fossil fuel powered vehicles are allowed here. I learned that Walter who hailed from Switzerland that he had been Master Chia's student since the 1980s. A pioneer resident-instructor he has been living at Tao Garden since the early 1990s.

It was easy to see why anyone would have been smitten. Located at the eastern foothills of the Himalayas, this one-time wasteland has clear streams running through it. The place must have been waiting to be tamed. Now it is a veritable garden that proliferates with all sorts of fruit-bearing trees as well as those that give shade and yield useful medicinal parts. Every tree here has a role and purpose.

According to Walter every brick used to build the earlier townhouses was sun-dried and hand-made with materials from the property. "Let's go for lunch," he said before guiding the buggy over a narrow steelreinforced bridge towards the farm. "Some of our food is grown here."