Cameron Alborzian has a long and lucrative career as a model behind him. He describes Karl Lagerfeld and John Galliano as old friends and has appeared in Madonna’s videos (another longtime chum). These days, however, Alborzian, right, is an ayurvedic therapist. Like Christy Turlington, he gave himself over to the yoga side, and, after years of training around the world, he is now a fully qualified and devoted teacher of eastern philosophies and traditional medicine. He doesn’t care to discuss appearances. But if being a heavenly bodied Adonis helps his aim to spread love, health, harmony and happiness to the strung-out work’n’playaholics of the western world, then so be it. He lives and works in Madrid – where he is a regular fixture on television – as well as London, Los Angeles, New York and Paris and in India. Most of his clients are wealthy financiers and, as he coyly puts it, “people in the entertainment industry”.

So what is this beautiful man doing knocking on my door at nine on a Saturday morning? (More to the point, why am I stumbling out of bed to answer it looking like a morning-after-the-election-night-before Cherie Blair?) Alborzian is moving in. He is one of a small but growing number of wellbeing professionals who prefer to work with clients in their home for several days at a time – a health guru in residence.

“I guide a person through mental and physical issues or health problems that stand in the way of their wellbeing,” Alborzian says. “I simply guide them back to clarity and joy.” For this, he charges between £350 and £500 an hour, not including travel expenses. And if clients’ homes aren’t big enough, they can put him up in a hotel.

Clearly, my scruffy one-bed flat wasn’t going to work. We decamped to a suite at the Metropolitan hotel in London for the weekend, somewhat grudgingly on my part, as all I wanted to do was spend it on the sofa. I was in the middle of filming a programme about extreme dieting and I was distracted and agitated with hunger.

Alborzian advises eating only once or twice a day and believes that the mind benefits from fasting. (“Eating too much and too often places the body under a lot of stress. When you fast in the right way, you give the body and mind an opportunity to go through a spiritual experience.”) He told me that eating properly could solve all my problems – and the world’s, for that matter. Over the weekend, I barely thought about eating and began to realise how much we fill ourselves up with food as a substitute for love and attention.

Alborzian’s ability as a therapist is not in question. The two ayurvedic massages he gave me sent me into deep, rejuvenating and coma-like sleep. Sinus irrigation, part of the ayurvedic tradition of cleansing every orifice (which has been medically endorsed for its health benefits), was pretty disconcerting, with me hoicking up mucus under his earnest, caring gaze.

Had we spent a week together, he might have cleaned other orifices as well. I tried to imagine receiving an enema from Alborzian – he does them, ayurveda-style, with small quantities of medicinal oils, not water, which he says is too drying for the bowel – and I came to the conclusion that I could do it. He has both the necessary professional reserve and spiritual openness to allow you to distance yourself from the intimacy and oddness of the experience.

Yet, at heart, love and attention are largely what the live-in guru is about. For four hours a day, we talked about life, my problems and those of the western world. And we talked about love; he looked me in the eye and told me gently that he thought I had given up on the stuff, but that this was likely to be a temporary thing. I felt relieved that at last someone had said it out loud.

It was an intense experience. As a journalist, you often get to do things that are normally reserved for the rich, and while they feel incredible at the time, they are quickly forgotten. Months on, I still feel Alborzian’s steadying influence and take his advice pretty seriously. He has got me going to bed and getting up a lot earlier. I may be a little more boring, but I am considerably happier.

That is down to his skill as a therapist and his inner calm, but also to the intimate space in which the work took place. Moving in a specialist is not as cranky as it sounds. I had all sorts of anxieties (the intimacy, the relentlessness, the intensity), and when he asked me to wear Gandhi-style bandage-like cloths for treatments, I felt pretty stupid. But when it comes to taking on board big new life ideas, it makes for a more close-to-normal-life experience than decamping to a retreat in Brazil, Ibiza or even Devon.

Jem Friar, a detox coach who frequently moves in with clients for £300 a day, agrees. “Living with a client makes what you are doing more relevant to that person’s life. I’ve worked at detox spas and retreats, and people really struggle to reenter normal life,” he says. “Being in a tropical paradise doesn’t bring any reality. I can go shopping with clients, I can detox their homes as well as their bodies, and we can talk about very personal habits and issues.”

Friar works with celebrities (the singer Skin is the only one he will mention), the rich, the time-deprived and – surprisingly, yet logically – with farmers. “It’s hard to take time off when 1,500 sheep rely on you.” Home improvement is perhaps less enjoyable than a five-star retreat, but what you learn is permanently inked on your lifestyle, rather than what you bring back from a holiday, which fades like a henna tattoo.

The retreat market is booming – we can’t get enough of our self-improvement holidays – but the big downside of jetting off to find yourself is that you lose yourself once you come back home. “The group dynamic can be very distracting,” Friar says, “as can a rigid schedule. A one-on-one scenario provides great flexibility. Spouses can either join in, or just commit to not frying bacon for a week.”

Wealthy Americans have been doing the live-in health-guru trip for a while. Over here, it is still considered freaky, until you do it, and then it feels natural and effective. The fitness expert Cornel Chin calls himself a “trainer on retainer”, and has lived with, among others, Leonardo DiCaprio for three weeks. He moves in with clients for a minimum of five days – and £2,000. “If you can make changes at home, you can take them everywhere,” he says. “Being with clients 24/7 is the best way to make those changes permanent. It makes people realise fitness is something you pursue and hone constantly, not just at the gym.”

Obviously, if you want to pursue this route, then you’d better make sure you like and trust your live-in guru. There have been well-publicised cases of abuse of therapist-client trust, which is why most live-in gurus work on a personal-recommendation basis. And trust issues cut both ways. Chin tells of a proposition from one client to “work” on her while she was on holiday, and Alborzian’s looks and fame could lay him open to the worst kind of predatory client.

What is certain is that our lives have made us needy, hectic and not a little short of love. The irony is that we will only have to work harder to pay for the latest form of love and attention on demand.

Cameron Alborzian; www.camerongoodhealth.com. Jem Friar; www.personaldetoxcoach.com. Cornel Chin; www.cmcfit.co.uk

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