My Experience Doing Hyperbaric Chamber Therapy

Ever wondered what it’s like to try hyperbaric chamber therapy? Well, after seeing one of these chambers at the home of a former client of mine (who happened to be a professional athlete), my interest was immediately piqued, and ever since then, I’ve always been super curious to hop in one and feel the benefits myself. Cut to…  a few months ago, another client of mine turned one of the rooms of the house I sold her into a total wellness center and then invited me over to try hers for a little holiday pre-tox! This was my experience… 

Firstly, if you don’t know what a hyperbaric chamber is, per the Mayo Clinic:

“It involves breathing pure oxygen in a pressurized environment. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is a well-established treatment for decompression sickness, a potential risk of scuba diving. Other conditions treated with hyperbaric oxygen therapy include:

• Serious infections
• Bubbles of air in blood vessels
• Wounds that may not heal because of diabetes or radiation injury

In a hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber, the air pressure is increased 2 to 3 times higher than normal air pressure. Under these conditions, your lungs can gather much more oxygen than would be possible breathing pure oxygen at normal air pressure. This extra oxygen helps fight bacteria. It also triggers the release of substances called growth factors and stem cells, which promote healing.” 

If you didn’t take much from that, just remember this one word—HEALING. I had heard about people going into these chambers after having various types of surgeries as it mainly promotes healing of the cells, tissues, etc. So it makes sense that my other athlete client would have one of these as well. It must be doing something great…right??

So, this is how it works. You go into the chamber with clothes on and then you zip yourself inside of it and wait for the pressure to reach a certain level before it officially starts. My client had me download an app that she uses often, called “Mastry” because she said that doing breath work while in the chamber compounds the effects of the increased oxygen in a great way.

Side note—I personally did not feel at all claustrophobic in the chamber because it’s super roomy and airy, but I showed my sister a photo of me in it and she thought it looked extremely claustrophobic lol. So do what you will with that information if you’re trying to decide if you want to try.

When the pressure reached the right level, I laid down on the floor of the chamber with my head on a pillow. There’s a contraption that you wear like a headpiece and it has a little microphone-looking thing coming out of it which goes near your mouth and it pumps out additional oxygen right there as well so that you’re getting even more of the benefits. 

Personally, I loved doing the hyperbaric chamber while listening to the 20-minute breathing meditation on the Mastry app. The way the app instructs you to breathe seems very similar to the Wim Hoff method, which you should definitely look up if you don’t know what that is. If you’ve ever tried it before, it can actually take a lot out of you. The breathing is intensely rapid and deep and you can even start to get lightheaded with your entire body tingling. I would have thought I had accidentally inhaled drugs in there or something had I not known this was a side effect of the rapid inhales and exhales. And doing it in the oxygen chamber while listening to trance-y music on the app definitely amplifies this euphoric, drug-adjacent feeling, haha.

Yes, at first it does feel weird to be slightly lightheaded and tingly, but if you surrender to the meditation and really lean in, you get into this meditative state and it feels INCREDIBLE. I felt so healthy and it’s almost like you can feel your lungs working at full capacity, and that your whole body feels full of oxygen, with all of your cells marching in the right direction. 

After the 20-minute meditation, I was not about to continue that specific breathwork for the remaining 40 minutes in the chamber (otherwise I might possibly pass out),  so I instead listened to some more calming meditations while breathing at a normal pace.

Doing this hyperbaric chamber therapy really reminded me that I need to get back into a more formative morning routine again and how good it feels to be “in the zone” in terms of your health. Like you know when you have those periods of time in your life where you’re eating super clean (and I don’t mean dieting/restricting but good, whole foods), exercising, hydrating, sleeping well, and doing all of the damn things? And you just feel amazing and it inspires you to stay on that track for as long as possible until you inevitably fall off the wagon? Well, that’s the feeling I’m talking about. Feeling connected to your body again. 

Anywho, emerging from the chamber one hour later, I felt like I just came out of the womb—rejuvenated, invigorated, and like I was ready to run a damn marathon. It was incredible and if it didn’t cost an arm and a leg, I’d buy one for myself. But until then, I’ve found that there are certain health and wellness-type places that do offer hyperbaric chamber therapy, so you should definitely look it up to see if there’s a local place in your neighborhood where you can try it out for yourself.  

We ended with a 45-minute sauna session to flush the lymphatic system of toxins, and then my client jumped into her FREEZING cold pool as her “cold plunge”. I will report that I did not partake in the cold plunge because I was, well, too fucking cold. But either way, after my morning of healing I was pre-toxed and ready to rumble.

What are some cool wellness concepts/trends you’ve tried and loved? I’d love to try more and report back to you all!

xx Farrah