28 Oct 2026
Hillary Childs takes the plunge for a relaxing float at St Albans’ new wellness venue…
How often do you get time to yourself and properly relax? For me, there’s barely enough time to breathe between the various demands on my time, let alone actually escape from the daily routine to have a bit of a personal pamper.
So when I found myself spending an hour floating in a warm salt bath, calming music pumping from concealed speakers, in almost complete darkness apart from low blue lighting, what else is there to do but fall asleep?
I’m at Being, St Albans’ first float therapy and infrared sauna centre, which has taken over the lowest part of Francis Bacon House on the Jubilee Square development, and promises a totally different experience to anything else found in the city.
Its treatments are focused on supporting overall wellbeing, leaving you feeling relaxed, refreshed, and revitalised, and in today’s stress-fuelled society, who doesn’t need a bit of that?
It took a while to get my session booked as they have a very strict policy around hair dye and I have very pink hair! If the dye gets into the water, it costs them over £1,000 to filter and clean the pool, so they, quite rightly, won’t let you use the pools until there is no colour coming out and sent me home to wash my hair daily to prepare!
I started off my experience with a session in the infrared sauna. This is completely private so swimwear is entirely optional, but I needed photos taken so kept mine on! There’s a Bluetooth sound system you can link your phone up to (I was trying to find something calming, but settled on RØRY, which tells you a lot about my musical taste) and a little cupboard you can then put it in so it doesn’t get hot, with a personal alarm in case something happens and you want someone to come and get you.
Unlike a conventional sauna, it’s not a case of sweating everything out. It’s a very different heat which works with your muscles and feels much more like being somewhere hot on holiday. I just lay back and imagined I was on a beach somewhere or by a pool – without children – and it took a lot of restraint not to start singing along at the top of my voice.
You get 45 minutes for a session, there’s a private shower for before and after and a dressing gown and towels are all provided. Afterwards I had a glass of water and chilled out for a bit, taking advantage of the very welcoming surroundings and friendly and attentive staff.
Then it was time to head into one of the two floating pools they have on site. Unlike flotation tanks, where you’re effectively shut into some sort of pod – something I would have found very claustrophobic – these are open spaces about the size of a double bed.
They’re not deep – although you can have a headrest if you want your head propped up – very warm, and filled with Epsom salts, which allow the body to float freely. Ear plugs are provided and advised, to stop the salt water getting into your ears, and you have a choice of low lighting or complete blackness (I chose the tranquil blue lights), with calming music playing at the start and end of the session.
It really was one of the weirdest sensations I’ve ever experienced. You just lie back and the water holds you up like some sort of human cork. The water completely takes the weight off your muscles and joints, and initially I was a bit tense because it is so unusual, but after a few minutes I relaxed into it.
I used to do a lot of yoga, so I used a meditation technique I learned in my classes called Yoga Nidra, where you recognise different parts of the body and relax them one at a time, starting with my toes and working up my legs…
I found myself gently bobbing around a bit, with no real concept of where I was in the water, and I thought, this is incredibly relaxing, but there’s no way I’m going to last an hour in here…
And then I woke up. The music was playing again and I’d been in there all that time. It was amazing, I felt the most relaxed I’d been in a long, long while, and I really don’t relax very easily.
It genuinely takes you away from everything because there’s nothing to focus on and you just drift off, the only sounds are your breathing and the lapping of the water on your skin, so eventually you just let yourself go…
They provide full shower facilities for afterwards, including body wash, shampoo and conditioner, because it’s important to get the salt off and rinse your stuff properly and they also have a hair drying station with moisturiser etc. Apparently someone once left their swimming trunks behind by mistake and the next day they were rock solid because of the salt, so cleaning is essential.
I left feeling better than I had done in an absolute age, and this is definitely something I could do on a regular basis to relax and reset.
Being offers a variety of different packages, and you can even go along with your other half, although I think I got more out of it through the lack of any distraction, and bumping into my partner every few minutes would be like being at home!
They’re currently offering 20 per cent off your first online booking, and you can find out more on their website
