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Water works - floatation therapy tried and tested

Lose the stress with an hour in a space-age floatation tank

It's not very often that I feel as light as a feather, but my float made me feel positively weightless! Welcome to the world of floating. Just one hour in the purpose designed, space-age-looking tank introduces you to the wonders of an all over sensory experience. Filled with just 30cm of body temperature salt water, all the senses - sound, sight and gravity - are suspended for the duration of the float.

Floatation REST (Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy) was developed in America in the 1950s and boasts a number of benefits. It helps to reduce blood pressure, ease back pain and stress and improve creative powers. Plus its said to strengthen the immune system and reset the body's hormonal and metabolic balances. Floatation therapy is particularly popular with pregnant women as it relieves back pain and strain. Floating enables all the muscles in the body to stop working and relax which in turn reduces the activity in the logical left side of the brain and increases the creative right side, letting the individual experience the 'dream state' similar to when you're just falling asleep at night.

The combination of a heavy week of parties, shopping and office stress had left me feeling a bit worse for wear and in need of some serious inner rebalance. On arrival to Floatworks, near the fashionable Borough Market in London, the cool, calm atmosphere was in stark contrast to the mania of the outside world - and my own heaving hangover.

I was slightly apprehensive about the having a float. The idea of a tank felt a bit scary, but you're in total control of the experience - and can open the door and turn on the lights whenever you want. The tanks contain 700lbs of Epsom Salts, which have the combined benefit of helping the body to detoxify and enabling the body to float.

Each floater has their own room, which is dominated by the space-aged looking clam-shaped floatation tank. With the sounds muffled by the earplugs they supply, I felt a bit vulnerable as I lowered my naked body into the silky looking water. What if I got freaked out? Imagine if I got trapped in the tank? Would I come out prune-like, shrivelled by an hour in salt water?

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