A Temple for the Body

The real reason it had to be Bali, and on Bali it had to be Canggu, is simple: the gyms here are the best on the island and, I suspect, the best in the world. Maybe somewhere there’s a better gym. But the combination — world-class gyms, and clean quality food, and the ocean with surfable waves ten minutes away, and an abundance of yoga everywhere you look — that combination, as far as I know, exists in one place: Canggu.

It matters to me that a gym be a genuine temple for the body. That means equipment of the highest class and everything arranged exactly right — and that’s what mine is, ten minutes away on the bike. Add the open-air 25-meter pool, and — most important for me — the sauna, the ice bath, and the hot bath.

And before anyone files all this under luxury: this best gym in the world costs less than a hundred euros a month. The penthouse with the veranda costs eight hundred. Bali runs on a different economy, and if you approach the choosing strategically — the way I chose Babakan — there is a version of all of it within your means. Leaving is not the expensive option people assume it is.

That trio is one of the pillars of keeping the body in good order, and my sequence never varies. First the sauna, twenty to thirty minutes — long enough that the body starts producing real stress markers from the heat. Then straight into the ice bath, and I stay there until the body produces the strong markers of cold shock — until it genuinely believes it’s threatened. And the moment it does, I go directly into the hot bath, where the body floods with relief and releases what feels like an oceanic quantity of endorphins.

The last stage is, admittedly, extremely pleasant. But the point isn’t pleasure. The point is that this cycle, practiced regularly, is a vaccine against stress. The body learns, over and over, that alarm is followed by safety — and every other stress that life delivers afterward gets met more easily and more simply. I want to be precise here: I’m talking about the bodily level, not mental constructions. The body learns this the way it learns to swim.

The training itself matters for the same reason. Muscles under load and overload produce their own hormones — the ones that carry you through stress and simply make you feel well. In a period when life has taken something large away from you, that chemistry is not a luxury.

Surfing is partly more of the same — physical work — and partly an excuse to spend an hour or two in seawater, which I consider good in itself. But it’s also something more interesting: an apprenticeship in dealing with something far bigger and far stronger than me. The ocean cannot be argued with. To be effective in it I have to develop observation and sensitivity — to pick precisely the moment to act, so as to use the direction the ocean is already giving; and to pick the moment to do nothing, to rest, to let pass the waves and currents that don’t lead where I want to go. Misread it and you pay in strength, or worse. Read it and follow it strictly, and it carries you. If that sounds like the way I’ve written about situations and seeds — yes. The ocean is where that skill gets trained into the body.

Yoga. The best of it is considered to be in Ubud; the strong schools are in India, but India is simply not my country. There are good classes in Canggu too. Most of the time, though, I practice right on my veranda in the penthouse, and go to a group class only occasionally — when I feel the solo practice is missing something, will or momentum. A room full of practitioners tops that up, and then I go back to the veranda.

And one more bodily element, small but non-negotiable, that I picked up here: for a long time now, every single day of mine begins with jamu — the traditional Balinese healing drink. Turmeric, ginger, a little black pepper; I add apple cider vinegar and honey, stir it all into warm water, and drink a big cup of it first thing every morning. It’s also my small daily point of contact with Balinese culture — that, and the incense sticks that burn here constantly. I’ve learned to light them myself, and that faint, pleasant smoke is now part of my day.