“The orgasms – since they rejuvenated my vagina with a laser – are something else”: This is what it's actually like inside a sexual health retreat

Before going to SHA, I had avoided catching sight of myself fully naked for some time, and when I did, the mirror seemed to be showing me the body of someone else, someone who had done that thing they used to warn you about: letting yourself go. So I had moved away from the mirror and got on with the business of forgetting. In my late 40s, I had stronger opinions and less tolerance for nonsense than ever before, and yet somehow my body hadn’t come with me on this journey to clarity. I am not sure where I had left it, but I had left it somewhere.

To arrive at SHA, the wellness retreat near Alicante that has recently launched a sexual health unit as part of its programmes, is to be starkly reminded of all you have tried to forget. Everything that has spent a moment on your lips and a lifetime on your hips. All the emotions buried in your caesarean scar. All the deep breaths you haven’t been taking and the conversations you didn’t want to have. In many ways, it curates a soft landing for them, as the place is so peaceful, so beautiful and so dull. But the new unit, headed by clinical psychologist Cinthya Molina, makes sure that all those corners of your life are delved into by professionals.

The wellness clinic, built in 2008, sits atop a village on Altea Bay, with every meal taken in a dining room where glass walls reveal the rugged mountain view on one side and the Mediterranean on the other. Every angle offers the perfect shot for an influencer's selfie, though people were much more middle-aged during my stay, with any celebs remaining out of sight. (You can book a private apartment with your own kitchen if the luxury suites are not enough.) One guest told me she was there because Pink, her favourite popstar, had raved about the place, while another had met Monica Belluci on a previous stay. In fact, the whole venue looks like a place where Instagrammers and the L’Oréal “Here comes the science” adverts meet global espionage. All the written bumf is available in Spanish, English, French, German, Arabic and Russian.

This is not the sort of retreat you come on to sit in a loving circle and speak of the maiden and crone; to step into your goddess wisdom, to rejoice in every wrinkle that you have earned on this earth. No, this is a place to be told that your belly is big, your vagina is dry and you might want to try something called Ultherapy for those saggy jowls. The food is a series of small, mushy, vegetative paint spills, entirely unidentifiable even after the waiter has painstakingly talked you through every ingredient. And I say this as someone who grew up vegetarian by choice.

So I spent my first four days at SHA in a state of bemusement and resentment, my body perhaps going into some kind of detox, or perhaps it was just the loneliness of being told, on day one, after I was weighed and measured: “You are too fat. Is this the heaviest you have ever been?” I cried my way through a Zoom meeting with London colleagues who were confused as to why I seemed to be in rehab. The usual me could think of more tried and tested ways to kick-start my sex drive a lot more rapidly than going for yet more acupuncture or being wrapped in seaweed under strange disco lights.

So why, several weeks after coming home from the treatment, do I look upon SHA as the place that changed my life?

Was it Stockholm syndrome, when it all suddenly clicked around day five? Or was it the words of Dr Vicente Mera, when he said, in my consultation with him: “I do not want to be mediocre in my health!”? And I looked at his glowing 65-year-old face, this man who was named Best Anti-Ageing Doctor in Europe at the European Awards in Medicine, and thought, You know what mate? Neither do I.

And so I’m not, not any more. I brought the diet home with me and now start every day with miso soup and vegetable mush. I haven’t touched alcohol or caffeine and have barely tasted wheat and dairy; all those boring health resolutions that I had failed on before are working after SHA. I did one week at the wellness clinic, have been home for two more, and have lost three quarters of a stone in that time. All without any more exercise than usual. Annoyingly, delightfully, it works.

More excitingly, I just bought some cowboy boots for the first time in years. They look bloody great. I’ve tied a red ribbon around my ponytail. My hair is getting softer. My daughter is talking excitedly about “Mummy’s glow-up”. Last night, I sat across a dinner table from someone who stared at my skin and said: “You look 30. Why do you look 30?” I’m 47, so that was nice.

The orgasms – let me tell you, since they rejuvenated my vagina with a laser – are something else. I know! It does sound ghastly, but it took mere minutes and I couldn’t feel it, beyond the initial unpleasantness of something like an ultrasound wand going up my privates. I also had the Emsella treatment, which involves sitting on a chair fully clothed while something electromagnetic seems to shoot into your genitals, turning your vulva into a game of Space Invaders. Quite fun. (Both procedures are to strengthen the pelvic floor and can help with incontinence). I only did them to report back for this article, and now I feel a bit sad that I wouldn’t have known the result otherwise.

Other pelvic floor treatments, which I didn't have, include Enfemme, a radiofrequency procedure for vaginal laxity; and High Intensity Inductive Therapy, which uses magnetic fields to stimulate a tissue-regenerative effect. Men can get hi-tech treatments for erectile dysfunction. There’s an in-house gynaecologist, something we British women are sorely in need of. “Ugh, the Brits,” said Dr Barbara Dalbos, when I admitted to having only seen one when I lived in LA, never in my home country. “Your gynae should be a best friend who you tell everything to once a year,” she said, before telling me a few things about my own genitals that I could have done with knowing a long time ago. At first she terrified me, with her glamour and her stare, but a few minutes later, when I said I was nervous about a procedure and that I was going to sing, she replied: “I will sing with you.” I loved her then. I talked to three separate doctors about my hormones and the coming menopause. It was fascinating.

The joy of being able to fit all of these appointments into one week (or just a few days if you prefer to stay a shorter time) definitely beats ringing around Harley Street trying to get booked in. Everyone is there. I found the osteopath particularly enlightening for realising that my C-section, 12 years ago, had messed up my midriff in ways I had never understood. I had a full blood panel, including hormones, done. Though I had to ask a lot of questions to find out they had an IV serum drip to increase libido, only it was described euphemistically on the menu as Vitality Support “so as not to offend people from certain cultures”.

SHA is partly about science and Western medicine, partly about ancient Eastern beliefs of ying and yang, and partly, in the aesthetic wing, about tightening your face like a supermodel. All the practitioners wear identical white lab coats, so you’re never quite sure when you're being told something scientifically rigorous, something from a belief system, or when you’re simply being judged. But this is chatty Spain, not an austere Austrian clinic, so the judgements do seem to have helped me. A lot. I’d go back in a laser-rejuvenated, sexually invigorated heartbeat.

Healing Holidays (healingholidays.com/condenast; 020 7843 3592) can arrange a 4-night Rebalance & Energise programme from £2,849 per person sharing, including transfers, full board accommodation and inclusions of the programme.