Wellness couldn’t get weirder and then came the gong bath

Ever heard of a “gong bath”? No, me neither – and if you’d asked me what it was before I’d been to one, I probably would’ve guessed it at least had something to do with water.

- VICTORIA RICHARDS

But it doesn’t, not unless you count the fact that the human body is mostly made of water, the very nice instructor taking our session told us, and that means the vibrations from the gongs can do “magical things”.

O...kay. Still, being cynical isn’t big or clever, Victoria, or at least that’s what my parents used to tell me when I was 15 and they’d called me downstairs for a family meeting about my “attitude” (“what attitude?! Oh, and by the way I hate you and I wish I’d never been born!”). Whoops - it seems I've slipped into a past life regression, which is conveniently available alongside the gong bath.

That’s right: gong baths, so I was told, have the power to make you see colours (with your eyes closed) and even transport you to past lives. They can bring on heightened emotion - tears, laughter, even anger - or teleport you into reflective moments of extreme sadness, which (I’ll be honest) didn’t feel like a very fun activity to be doing for my birthday.

Nevertheless, determined not to dismiss the woo-woo out of hand, I said an emphatic “yes, please” when my friend Dayna - who’s known me for 34 years and remembers the time at school when I told everyone I was a real witch, because I’d watched The Craft too many times and used to draft my little brother and his friends in for home-based levitation sessions (and it scared them silly, which was secretly the point) - told me she’d booked us a gong bath for my birthday. Specifically: one to promote deep connection and relaxation.