KATE Bush used one for inspiration for her latest tour, John Lennon said it helped him kick heroin and Kirk Douglas claims it is the secret to his 60-year marriage.

Not just the preserve of celebrities, now “adult-wombs”, used for meditation and inspiration, have come to Brighton and Hove.

A new spa offers people the chance to be deprived of their senses and float in a large bath for an hour.

In a basement off Hove’s Third Avenue there is a sanctuary where burly builders claim to have reconnected with their mothers while in the womb and sufferers of crippling health conditions have found pain relief.

The FloatSpa’s evangelical managing director Camille Pierson turned to floating to cope with post-traumatic stress disorder after her baby became ill last year. Camille gave up a marketing career to convert others to floating.

She said: “ I wanted to give others what I had found – the most perfect treatment.

“After I found floating I was able to take a whole new perspective on life, think more positively, I was able to look inside and find the things that bothered me and learn how to change them. The result is I am happier than ever.”

The former hotel function room has been converted to house two of flotation tanks – each of which is filled with 1000lb of salt in water which users are closed inside in the dark to block out the outside world for a full hour.

The spa has become so popular they have one client who has a float every week.

Camille said one user who suffers from fibromyalgia – a chronic pain condition – left the tank saying she was totally pain free for the first time in years and one of the painters who helped with the renovations came out of the spa saying he had enjoyed an enlightening chat with his mother in the womb.

Since being invented by John Lilly in the 1950s, flotation therapy has been found to combat chronic stress and encourage creativity by creating a sensation of weightlessness and restricting stimulus to the brain.

Floating celebs

KATE Bush spent three days in a flotation tank in preparation for her live shows last year.

The Wuthering Heights singer spent time in a tank to come up with the ideas for the “lost at sea" segment for her residency at the Hammersmith Apollo.

Robin Williams fondly referred to flotation as "caucasian meditation".

John Lennon had a float tank in his house which he used to kick his heroin addiction as he liked the natural high that floating can give.