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To the retreat, I will be bringing :

Aside from making half of the fresh juices during the week with Amida, I am the main source of information on fasting and detoxification, as well as the overall structure of the week's programme.

This is primarily through the discussions around diet and detoxification during the afternoon nutritional talk. But each morning I am available for one-to-one sessions to discuss your personal fasting experience.

My area of interest and knowledge is the physiology of what you will be going through during the week, as well as the psychology, in which I am well versed, though the Kate is perhaps better qualified to answer your questions about the emotional side of what we do.

About Dao

I came from a background of standard English schooling, which I left at 16 to join the - then thriving - printing industry. School had left me somewhat unprepared for the world, and the thought of the print industry's bloated wages was enough to set me on that track. However, I soon found its 'bully-led' system of management, as intimidating as the 'child-squashing' school system I came through, so as soon as my apprenticeship ended, I was off...

Thailand for six years, Japan, Taiwan, India for two, Spain for three, and coming up for a decade back in England.

I spent my first few years turning my resourceful mind to the depressing subject of covert politics - how larger nations keep their dominance over the developing world through influencing politics and business, and are very happy for the rise to dictatorships that promise profitable trade.

It was only once my head was so full of such darkness that I started my explorations in a lighter direction. This was my first step in taking responsibility for myself, my thoughts and my actions. I began to think about how our beliefs and choices affect us; whereas beforehand I was too busy blaming the world for my choices to see that there was actually any choice at all...

Hope Springs Abundant

My travels soon became a search for a home and a people, and in Taiwan I started reading into Chinese Medicine, Tai-Chi, Chi-Gong, etc. Eventually I discarded this, as it offers many practical solutions, but few answers; and I had plenty of questions! However, through it, I came across the work of Dr. Jensen, and the ideas of raw food, colon cleansing, fasting, and the like.

Slowly as I began to play with my life more consciously, and the results attracted the attention of others.

Whilst still living in Asia, my health and body started to change in ways I never heard in ways no school of medicine talked about. And my own experience of life lent me the conviction to start teaching.

Later, whilst in Australia, I studied Permaculture; a real thinkers view of the world. I still see much of the world through this practical and simple paradigm; choice, action, cause, effect. More effective and appropriate action means less work and less to clear up! For me it remains humankind's greatest practical hope in the face of dire forecasts.

Setting up an intentional community in Spain taught me much about my fellow humans, and then parenthood started the journey back to myself, and how to apply all I had learned. Slow progress, but the things that really matter: Heart, Home, Health, Humanity have been blooming since our move back to the UK, and I have been forced to settle into my here and now.

Down to Business

Making a living is one undeniable impact of parenthood, but I had to meet it from myself. The importance of ethics had to meet reality, and become more doable. So, my living had to encompass 'right-livelihood'.

After years of taking friends and colleagues through Jensen-style fasts and colonics, Shoshana brought structure to meet my knowledge, and blew life into the business that started as Home Colonics in 2002 in Spain with Yamuna (our daughter) swinging in a sling, and both have been growing ever since. We renamed ourselves Karuna Retreats (meaning "compassion" in Sanskrit) when we got to the UK, as it better reflected our empathetic approach.

It was during these years with retreat groups that I refined and evolved my reasons for running these retreats. I now know that it is not in the colonics, or in the fast itself, but in the talks, that I come alive. And it is through these talks that I make a difference to peoples lives by cementing the insights of the fasts into a potentially life-changing shift in understanding themselves biologically.

The format of the fasts were basically in place, and having gone as far as I could go with Shoshana, I searched for a work environment that that better suited my ‘we are all in it together’ approach, so I started Sura Detox with Amida, Kate and Benita.

Both Sura & Karuna now thrive, and run parallel as sister companies, using the same venue, the same prices, and the same basic structure. Only the individual input of the team members generate the different flavours between us.