My halotherapy journey (or should I call it an obsession? I’ve been three weeks in a row) started with a text. “Btw, have you heard of the Earlsfield Salt Cave?” came the ping from my friend a few weeks ago, followed by a link to a Groupon voucher which offered two hour-long salt therapy sessions for £20. 

She’d tried it a couple of times on the recommendation of a GP friend, hoping that sitting in a room which uses dry salt aerosol technology to mimic the environment of a natural salt cave (and has a temperature between 22 and 25°C) would help with her tricky-to-kick bronchitis. “If nothing else, it’s a chance to sit down for an hour,” she messaged. “Plus, it might be good for the skin.”

I was congested, stressed and mid-breakout, so it didn’t take much convincing. I’m not sure what I was expecting… but it wasn’t to walk into a room with salt walls and flooring, deck chairs scattered around, relaxing music playing. You could burrow under a blanket, browse a magazine, blow your nose into tissues provided at each seat (sitting in that room will make your nose run).