‘There’s no such thing,’ she assured me.
I had just completed the Usada 5-day Rainy Season Detox and was sitting across from its creator, Ulli Allmendiger (MSc Ayurveda), a seasoned Ayurvedic practitioner with a near-cult following in Turkey.
She agreed to discuss my experience, counseling me on how to interpret what had just happened.
‘Completed’ is generous. More like airlifted to the finishing line. For several days I wasn’t entirely sure I would make it there at all, or if it was worth it.
But now that the dust has settled, it would be disingenuous of me to say that the detox did nothing for my life. Actually, it helped.
I should state from the outset, I am deeply against diets and fasts, along with any other forceful or restrictive practice. That is to say, I’m against them for myself. Intermittent fasting might suit those wrestling with sugar or extra weight, and CrossFit turns the already disciplined into Greek statues, but for me? Mostly, these things just make me ache in strange new ways.
Given my current high-intensity life, anything that spikes cortisol is destabilizing. Even a small, everyday jolt, like being startled by the construction crew that decided to wake me up with unscheduled roof repairs at 5am, can trigger a surge of anxiety that takes some time to settle. Needless to say, I’m not the ideal candidate for detoxes, where prolonged hunger – a massive cortisol trigger – is a normal part of the experience. In the pre-detox brief I was told, quite reasonably, to sit with hunger and observe it. That advice works beautifully for many people.
And yet, this particular detox seduced me.
In my more than a decade in Bali, I’ve learned that anything coming out of Ubud’s Dapur Usada tends to carry a certain intellectual and cultural gravity. Plus this particular detox was designed specifically as a ‘spring cleanse’ for the post-rainy-season period we just came out of. That’s something that resonates with me.
In Bali we constantly negotiate with dampness. I’ve had to abandon several beautiful houses because of black mold. I’m still in deep mourning for all the beautiful clothes, shoes and books that surrendered themselves to it with lascivious willingness. A few of my friends eventually left altogether because their health–and their children’s health–was seriously compromised by the elements. The rainy season is romantic for a week. Living in it can be heavy. Especially for a delicate porcelain bule like myself.
So the idea of a ‘Rainy Season Reset’ made perfect sense. The detox promised to address the issues many Western bodies develop in Southeast Asia. The excess mucus. The stubborn candida. The general lymphatic sluggishness; digestive, and immune imbalances.
I skimmed roughly half a page of the fairly detailed brochure. Clearly the gold standard of due diligence when signing yourself up for five days of mild torture. I was fairly relaxed about it as I’ve done detoxes before. Serious ones. I’ve done Panchakarma, the full Ayurvedic cleanse, traditionally lasting 21 days. I did 30. I assumed I knew what I was getting into.
I didn’t.
The Spring Cleanse program itself was deceptively simple. Three delicious small meals per day from Usada’s very own restaurant. 3 herbal teas. A parade of specialized drinks – jamus of all sorts, vegetable juices, and strongly fermented “happy juice.” All perfectly packaged and delivered to your doorstep. The program asked for no snacking. Nothing beyond what arrived in the morning bag. There were also some additional Ayurvedic lymphatic boosters in there, a dry brush and a tongue scraper for ritualized self-care.
After just one day, I messaged Ulli to say I needed help adjusting. If I followed the instructions exactly, I would destabilize quickly.
To keep myself from insomnia, my dinner must include a generous portion of warm carbohydrates with a little bit of protein. A lesson learned through years of trial and error. A light soup dinner would have me pacing until morning. Nor would the small portions of mostly carbs work for my other meals, as I need an adequate amount of fat and protein to keep my blood sugar steady through the day.
Detoxes are, in some sense, designed to confront the participants with hunger. It is meant to open the door to emotions and tensions that have long been pushed aside. For people like me, however, the response is physiological and less reflective. My body shifts straight into a fight-or-flight response, hijacking my capacity to process or cleanse.
I’m not alone in this. I know someone who can spiral into depressive or manic bipolar extremes simply from missing a meal, which is a sobering reminder just how much bodies differ.
So no, this detox is not suitable for absolutely everyone.
That said, Ulli was flexible. She understood that when the body is under pressure like this, adapting the plan to what your system can actually handle becomes crucial. She checked in daily and helped with tweaks. I added rice or legumes to almost every meal, introduced more gentle proteins like tofu and fats like olive oil and avocado, and cut the blood sugar–spiking drinks.
No detox should be taken lightly, even one marketed as gentle or seasonal. Detox is hard work. And to truly benefit from it, most people would need to slow down. I didn’t. Between deadlines, meetings, and daily traffic it simply wasn’t realistic for me to keep up.
And yet, most people in our detox group did manage to stay with it. Everyone was a bit grumpy in the first couple of days, that seemed universal. But by day four, the mood in our WhatsApp group clearly took a turn for the better. Messages started appearing: ‘Not hungry anymore,’ ‘feeling light,’ and even, ‘skipped breakfast as I wasn’t hungry
Skipped breakfast?? I nearly cried when I opened my morning package to see that one of the meals was a blended vegetable soup, a portion smaller than I give to my 3 year old.
For many, the detox seemed to land exactly as intended. I was clearly an outlier.
I modified the program, both deliberately and accidentally, but adopted its core principles. And even with the considerable modifications I had some surprisingly powerful revelations. I was confronted with how I use food for emotional soothing, an easy shortcut that numbs my discomfort and distracts me from deeper ways of caring for myself. Psychologists note that these habitual indulgences, while comforting, usually let us skip the awkward, inconvenient work our bodies and minds actually need.
By introducing structure and temporary restriction, the detox removed my buffers and shortcuts. And without them certain realities became harder to ignore.
It wasn’t all confrontational. The detox forced moments of attention I usually skip. As I dry brushed myself in the shower I found myself present in a way I hadn’t been in ages. The warm drinks and morning tinctures became little devotions. In the best Buddhist tradition, the ordinary became sacred.
For that alone, the whole detox experiment paid off. There may, indeed, be no such thing as a failed detox. My ‘failure’ reminded me that attention is finite, and mine had been spent on things I wouldn’t choose to prioritise, like destructive habits and slightly tragic black mold.
Would I recommend this detox? Yes, but only if you are in a place to sign up for a fairly involved adventure and widen your expectations. It seems to me we jump into such detoxes for a deceptively clear list of promised benefits. I don’t think life works as neatly as that. Transformations have no money-back guarantee. A good detox may just help you open the door to them, though.
For more info on the detox
IG : @ulliayurveda & @usada
websites : www.ulli-ayurveda.com and www.usadabali.com
