The Method of Mahaon · A Greek Mind Body & Soul Detox
At Epidaurus they purified the body so the dream could speak.
Twenty-eight days, one whole turn of the moon. You empty the body out, then build it back in the order the Greeks set down. Three days at home, fourteen held in the hills above Chiang Mai, eleven you carry home yourself. Todd Peyton runs it in residence, from the method and the manuscripts of Eleftherios “Mahaon” Makridopoulos.
Opens on the full moon, closes as it goes dark
Insda Wellness Resort, Hang Dong, Chiang Mai
Up to 20 in group
28 days total, 10 or 14 residential
See the next immersionHeld at Insda Wellness Resort, in the hills above Chiang Mai. Dates, rooms and prices are on that page.
Insda, above Hang DongYour roomThe materia medica
The method, the manuscripts and the materia medica are Mahaon's. Henosis is the partner that hosts it: the standard the practitioners are held to, the people, the venue and the booking. It does not own the method and does not teach it.
Retreat Highlights
A full Asclepian detox, start to finish.
Complete 28-day detox protocol from the Epidaurus tradition, run in sequence and supervised throughout
Four-day parasite cleanse on cold-pressed apple juice and raw pumpkin seed
Three-day drought with the colon cleansing protocol, closely monitored
Staged revival and refeed over five days, breaking on the full moon
Transformation phase carried home with you for the final eleven days
All herbs, tinctures and teas suppliedplus your full protocol pack and your take-home kit
Cold-pressed juice prepared fresh on site every day of the cleanse
Contrast sauna and cold plungebrought in for the programme and scheduled around the protocol, not bolted on
Daily kundalini yoga and pranayama breathwork, themed to each day of the method
Dream analysis circles on alternating afternoons, when the material is richest
Nine sacred marriagesthe ceremonies the method is built on. One each morning: a pairing from Greek myth, a meditation, a ritual and a kundalini set, done together as a group
Clinical screening and daily medical monitoring on site, small group capped at twenty
You did not come here to be optimised.
This is an old and demanding protocol, run properly, with people who know it, in a room you cannot leave, and a long way from a spa week with a green juice. Most people who read this page should not come. The ones who should will already know.
About this Retreat
Twenty-eight days. Fourteen of them held.
The Asklepieion at Epidaurus was where Western medicine began. People travelled there to be purified, and then to sleep in the abaton so that the god could reach them in a dream. The dream was the diagnosis.
Todd Peyton leads the method here. This is the first time it has been convened as a residential programme, in one place, with a group moving through it together.
The middle two weeks ask the most of the body, and they are easier when the food is already prepared and timed to the phase you are in, when the day has a shape you did not have to build, and when somebody is keeping an eye on how you are actually doing rather than how you say you are. The group matters too, probably more than the rest of it. Doing day six alongside eleven other people on day six is a different experience from doing it alone in your own kitchen.
So the arc stays twenty-eight days, with nothing compressed and nothing cut. You start at home, you fly in for the fourteen days that need holding, and you carry the last stretch home yourself.
3Three days · at home
Preparation
Your materials arrive, the taper begins, and you start recording your dreams. You fly on the Saturday, already inside the method.
14Full moon to new moon · in residence or ten days, leaving early
Residential
All nine sacred marriages, one a day, alongside the full physical protocol. This is the part that cannot be done alone at home, and the reason the retreat exists.
11Eleven days · at home
Integration
Carrying the protocol out with you. A group session online on 2 December, and a closing on the ninth that ends the arc in the dark of the moon.
The residential fortnight opens on a full moon and closes as the moon goes dark. The body empties while the moon empties, which is not decoration: it is what fixes where each stage falls. Every cohort is set backwards from that, which is why the dates move each time and why they live on the immersion page rather than here.
The Valley
Hills, teak, and air that turns cold at night.
Insda sits on the Hang Dong to Samoeng road, twenty-three kilometres out of Chiang Mai and far enough into the hills that your phone stops mattering. Rice terraces below, forest above, and a long valley that fills with mist most mornings in late November.
You will not see much of the province and that is the point. The days are long, the drought week asks you to stay still, and this is not a holiday with a protocol attached. But the hills are there, the walking is good, and the cold nights do more for the sleep than anything we could give you.
Insda the valley
Insda the deck
Insda the lodge
Insda the pool
The Protocol
Five phases, in the order the tradition sets.
Phase One
Preparation
Chlorella, zeolite and the tea protocol, with a taper off caffeine, alcohol, processed food and animal protein. Begins at home, three days before you fly.
Phase Two
Parasite Cleanse
Apples, raw pumpkin seeds and cold-pressed juice, and the first real narrowing. Practice stays full and the days are long and quiet.
Phase Three
Drought
The most demanding stretch of the fourteen days. Intake reduces, activity reduces, and the programme is built to empty out into rest and stillness under close supervision.
Phase Four
Revival
Flaxseed, prunes, raisins, almonds, juices, tinctures and herbs. Food returns slowly and in a set order, breaking on the full moon. Practice and contrast therapy rebuild alongside it.
Phase Five
Transformation
Steamed vegetables return. The strongest practice of the retreat sits here. You leave mid-phase and carry it home for the final eleven days.
Schedule · the fourteen days
Nine sacred marriages, one each morning.
A sacred marriage is a morning ceremony built on a pairing from Greek myth, one for each of the first nine days. Metis and Athena, Themis and the Horas, and so on down to Hera. Each carries a kundalini theme, a meditation and a ritual. Underneath, the physical protocol runs on its own timeline. The moon beside each day is the moon overhead that night, calculated rather than decorative.
The Daily Rhythm
What a day actually looks like.
On waking
Dream capture, written before you speak to anyone. Restriction tends to make dreams vivid and easy to recall, which is why the afternoon circles have something to work with by day three.
Morning
Kundalini yoga and pranayama, themed to the day's marriage, with the intensity moving as the phase moves.
Mid-morning
The sacred marriage. Greek meditation, ritual, dialogue and closure.
Midday
Rest, or juice and preparation, depending where you are in the protocol.
Afternoon
Alternating between contrast hot and cold exposure, and the dream analysis circle, where the group does the work and nobody interprets your dream at you.
Evening
Everyone together. A shared table where the phase allows it, a sharing circle where it does not. This is the part people write to us about afterwards.
The Materia Medica · Mahaon, Greece
Cut on the full moon, because the text says so.
Nobody orders the herbs, tinctures and teas in your kit from a supplier. Mahaon grow and gather them in Greece, working from translated manuscripts, and harvest on the full moon because that is what the instructions specify.
Whether the moon changes the chemistry, we have no idea and would not claim to. The instruction in the text is explicit, Mahaon follow it, and nobody along the way has taken it upon themselves to decide which parts of the method were the important ones. That is most of why the kit comes from Greece rather than a health food shop.
Which produces a symmetry worth knowing about before you get there. The plants in your kit were cut under a full moon, and you arrive under one.
Manuscript a page of the text
The manuscript
Harvest hands, plants, night
The harvest
Preparations jars, bottles, dried herb
The preparations
The land Greek growing ground
Greece
Grown in Greece
Harvested on the full moon
Prepared to the manuscripts
Tinctures, teas and capsules
Already in country
Included in your fee
The Team
Who is behind it.
TP
Protocol Lead · Chiang Mai
Todd B. Peyton, MA, LPC
Master’s in Archetypal Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute, and a licensed professional counsellor. Jungian depth psychology, Asclepian holistic therapy, Chinese medicine, Vipassana, Kundalini Yoga instruction, and seven ordinations at Kyaitisaung Monastery in Myanmar. Based in Chiang Mai since 2009. Leads all nine sacred marriages, the kundalini and pranayama, the Greek meditation and ritual, and the dream analysis circles.
Doctor of Philosophy in Depth Psychology with emphasis in Jungian and Archetypal Studies. Medical oversight for the programme. Reviews every application, runs the pre-arrival screening, and monitors participants daily through the cleanse and drought phases. Nobody enters the protocol without her sign-off.
Built the programme and the infrastructure behind it, from the venue and the kitchen through to the system you booked on. On site for the full fourteen days. Host of the Already Naked podcast.
The Method of Mahaon is theirs. They grow, gather and prepare the herbs, tinctures and teas of the Asclepian materia medica, working from the translated manuscripts they hold, and harvest on the full moon because the instructions specify it. That is why the protocol comes out of Greece and not off a shelf.
Venue & Accommodation
Insda Wellness Resort, Chiang Mai.
Fourteen nights from Sunday 15 November to the morning of Sunday 29 November, or ten nights to the morning of Wednesday 25 November.
Come in on the evening of Saturday the 14th if you can. Sleeping in the hills before you begin is the better start, and we can hold your room for the extra night at cost. Arriving on the morning of Sunday the 15th works too, and plenty of people will.
Twenty-nine teak rooms, gardens, a pool and a long open hall where the circles are held. Late November in the hills is the best month of the year here: dry days in the low thirties, nights that drop to fifteen, and mist in the valley most mornings. You are met at the airport and driven in, and you do not leave until it is done.
Insda the hall
The hall
Insda a room
Where you sleep
Insda the terrace
The terrace
Insda the grounds
The grounds
Private rooms
Open teak hall
Outdoor pool
Gardens and trails
Dedicated kitchen
Cold-press juicing
Free wifi
Towels & linen
Housekeeping
Quiet grounds
Getting Here
By air
Fly to Chiang Mai (CNX). Direct from Bangkok every hour, and direct from Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Taipei and Seoul.
From the airport
Forty minutes to the resort, south-west out of the city and up into the hills. We meet you in arrivals and drive you in, both ways, included.
The road
The Hang Dong to Samoeng road, twenty-three kilometres out. Close enough that a hospital is half an hour away, far enough that nothing reaches you.
Arrive by
Evening of Saturday 14 November if you can, or the morning of Sunday 15 November at the latest. Fly out from the 29th on the fourteen-day option, the 25th on the ten-day.
Meals
The food is the protocol.
Everything you eat across the fourteen days is set by the phase you are in, prepared for you, and served to the group. There is no menu and nothing to choose from.
It moves from apples, raw pumpkin seeds and cold-pressed juice, through the drought, into a staged revival of flaxseed, prunes, raisins, almonds, olive oil, lemon, pineapple and sprouts, and finally into steamed vegetables, all of it plant based and whole, with nothing refined.
VeganGluten freeNo refined sugarOrganic where availableCold-pressed juice dailyHerbal teas
Allergies and intolerances are handled at screening. Preferences are harder, because the order the food arrives in is the method rather than a serving suggestion. If you cannot eat what a phase requires, say so on the application and we will tell you straight whether this works for you.
Juice one glass, dark ground square 1400px
Food apples, or steamed veg, plain square 1400px
Valley band · 2400 x 1000
What's Included
What the fee covers.
Included
Fourteen nights at Insda to the 29th, or ten nights to the 25th, in the room you chose
All food, cold-pressed juice and herbal teas across the fourteen days
All nine sacred marriages, meditations and rituals
Daily kundalini yoga and pranayama
Dream analysis circles
Contrast sauna and ice bath, brought in for the programme
Your full protocol pack: herbs, tinctures, teas and supplies
Pre-arrival preparation materials, posted to reach you before the taper begins
Medical screening and daily clinical monitoring on site
Take-home kit and written protocol for the final eleven days
An online group session during the integration weeks, and a closing session that ends the arc
Chiang Mai airport transfers, both ways
Not included
Flights to Chiang Mai
Travel and medical insurance, which is a condition of attending
Anything you buy outside the programme
Take-home supplies beyond the kit, available to purchase before you leave
The optional extra night of 14 November, offered at cost
Before You Apply
This is a medically screened programme.
The protocol involves extended dietary restriction, cleansing practices, intense breathwork and cold exposure. That combination is hard on the body and it does not suit everyone.
Every application is reviewed by Lorraine Levy before a place is offered. You will be asked about cardiac, kidney and metabolic history, pregnancy, any history of disordered eating, current psychiatric care, and all medications you take. Some people will be declined, and some will be asked to bring bloodwork before we can decide.
Say the true thing on the form. If you are on medication, keep taking it and tell us what it is. If something goes wrong during the fourteen days, tell us the same day, and we will adjust the protocol around you.
This programme is not medical treatment and does not replace care from your own doctor. It is not offered as a treatment for any disease or condition.
Where it is held
The method is Mahaon's. The fortnight is ours to hold.
Everything above is the protocol itself, and it does not change between cohorts. What changes is where it is held, when the moon puts it, which room you sleep in and what it costs. Those live on the immersion page, because a method and a booking are two different things and running them together is how one of them ends up wrong.
