Jemima Kelly steps inside the $75,000 Harmonic Egg

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

In a large, softly lit room on the second floor of an unremarkable shared London office building lies a giant egg. But this isn’t just any giant egg. This is a Harmonic Egg. I am going to be stepping inside it and, through its magical eggy means, I am assured that it is going to offer all manner of spiritual, physical and emotional healing.

I have been adventuring through the world of alternative wellness for more than a year now, but it is time to dial up the woo-woo. So here I am, staring at an egg that looks more like a spaceship in an ’80s sci-fi movie. The aesthetic is distinctly retro-futuristic: an alien-green light emanates from it and the words “HARMONIC EGG” are emblazoned across the bottom of a huge slide-out door. I am about to undergo “Harmonic Egg Therapy”. 

The Harmonic Egg was created in 2017 by Gail Lynn, a 55-year-old former automotive executive and Hollywood producer from Michigan. It provides a combination of sound, vibration and light therapy – all of which fall under the somewhat alternative umbrella of energy therapy – to calm the nervous system. Despite no evidence for it beyond “thousands of testimonials”, the Harmonic Egg has been quite the success, helping turn Lynn into a self-made millionaire. There are now some 250 Harmonic Eggs across the world in five continents, which are currently sold for $75,000 a pop – when bought as part of the highest “Harmonic Egg tier plan” option – with the price set to increase. Owners of these eggs are known as “guardians” and are trained to facilitate therapy sessions with paying clients.

Before I enter the egg, I sit down for a consultation with its guardian Bea Badinska, a very nice “holistic practitioner” from former Czechoslovakia who stumped up the money for it from her own savings (she has a second job as a project manager). She asks about my current emotional state (I’m “overwhelmed”, quite a familiar feeling for me), reads my energy and tells me what this is all about. 

‘I’ve been doing this for probably 3,000 years,’ says Lynn, with no hint of irony

The Harmonic Egg, Badinska explains, is “a science-slash-spiritual device”. A 40-minute musical track will provide me with sound healing, chosen for me from more than 60 other tracks that focus on various emotional, mental and physical ailments, from anxiety to urinary tract infections, no less. It will be played out of two speakers on either side of the egg’s 11.5ft-long, 9ft-wide and 7ft-tall chamber, and through a sub-woofer below me, adding a “vibrational healing” element to this multi-frequential egg-chamber. 

I am also going to be receiving light therapy via coloured lights that are chosen based on what kind of physical, emotional and spiritual support I need. Today I am having purple to help with the overwhelm, and green for “anchoring love and compassion and opening the heart”. 

The egg’s shape, meanwhile, has been built around the concept of “sacred geometry” – it is in fact a 12-sided polyhedron that, Badinska explains, also incorporates the golden ratio (a mathematical concept dating back to Ancient Greece), “platonic solids” and the Fibonacci sequence. I nod along not really knowing what any of this means, but am looking forward to getting into the chamber and hoping to doze off for a bit – I’m really rather underslept. 

I’m in luck. I step into the walnut interior and am tucked into a wonderfully comfortable reclining chair with my legs raised above my heart (recommended, apparently). I am given a silk eye mask (I’m told the light healing happens just as well with my eyes closed) and the slide-out door is pushed shut before the music starts. It’s the kind of rather generic-sounding relaxation track I’ve heard before – lots of bassy synths, a piano, water dropping and other sounds – but I don’t have the chance to listen to much of it because quite soon I am happily asleep. (Badinska tells me afterwards that I am in fact just in a “deep meditative state”; the difference is not obvious to me.) 

After 40 minutes, the music stops and there follows a 10-minute period of silence in which I am meant to be readjusting, through which I also snooze. Then a little bell is rung, Badinska pulls the door open and I emerge feeling very relaxed and a little groggy, before being given some electrolytes to drink. Apparently I have been going through a “physical, mental and emotional detox” and the electrolytes help to “drive the toxins out of the body”. I glug them down obediently. 

After my session, I call up the Harmonic Egg’s inventor Gail Lynn, who tells me that she has no background as a healer, but that the idea came to her through her recurring dreams of people sitting inside a giant egg. So she set about creating one with the help of various experts including “quantum physics people”, sound engineers and pendulum dowsers. She believes she is a “vessel” for the harmonic egg, and that the process has been divinely guided. “I’ve been doing this for probably 3,000 years,” says Lynn, with no hint of irony. “I was made for this. My astrological chart says that I am a shaman, a healer, an intuitive, an ascended master.” 

David Robert Grimes, public health scientist and author of The Irrational Ape, isn’t convinced by any of it, telling me that “vibrational healing isn’t a thing – there is no medical evidence for it”. He is particularly concerned by the separate Harmonic Egg Testimonials website, featuring categories such as “Alzheimer’s”, “illness and disease” and, yes, “pet health” (the pet doesn’t go into the egg; a picture of them does). “I don’t want to yuck someone’s yum, and if people find it relaxing that’s fine, but where you get into suspect territory is when you start using testimonials to make medical claims – that’s where patient exploitation comes in.” 

A session with Badinska costs £120 – less if you buy a bundle of three or six sessions, which she recommends in order to see a real “energetic shift”. I have three consecutive weekly sessions, and I must say I find it intensely enjoyable and deeply relaxing. I accidentally leave my fitness tracker on during one of the sessions and my heart rate drops five beats lower per minute than its lowest in the previous 24 hours. 

But while Badinska tells me of all kinds of client wonder-stories – such as the improvement of a 12-year-long UTI and the easing of Parkinson’s symptoms – I’m not sure I notice the energetic shift I am meant to be experiencing. The whole thing certainly feels quite therapeutic. But would I recommend it? Well look, if you have £100 or so to spend and happen to be based in south-west London (or Suffolk or Newcastle, where Britain’s other two Harmonic Egg “guardians” are based), I wouldn’t discourage it. Just maybe don’t expect anything too, er, egg-xistential.