I’m lying on a massage bed in a dimly lit treatment room in Mayfair, breathing so hard I think I might pass out. Rob Rea, one of London’s most sought-after breathwork practitioners, is guiding me through holotropic breathwork – a technique developed in the 1970s at Esalen, in California, by Christina and Stanislav Grof, pioneers in LSD research, as a drug-free way to access altered states of consciousness.
“Just keep going,” Rea encourages, as I start to wonder what exactly the…

