It’s 3 o’clock on a Friday and I am lying on my back in a plywood-clad room in Shepherd’s Bush. At my side kneels an avuncular Australian by the name of Duran Mack. He is applying slow but steady pressure to various points around my diaphragm. He pushes harder into my stomach. It is nearing unbearable at times. “Is that too much?,” he asks. “No it’s fine,” I lie.
It is, on the whole though, extremely relaxing, slightly soperific, and part of an increasingly popular treatment for stress in the capital. As a city we certainly need any help we can get. According to the London Mayor’s office 914,300 people of working age feel the effects of anxiety and depression every day. It is a state familiar to anyone who takes the Central line at rush hour or who maps out their days by the endless round of deadening meetings that come, free of charge, with our overbearing bosses.
