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Taking time out for yourself is a surprisingly hard thing to do. Even if you manage to avoid Netflix, work emails, children if you have them, and news of an impending World War 3, how do you actually take time out from the noise in your own head? It’s a hell of a leap to try suddenly meditating without it being half-baked and worthless. Like, what do you do? Personally I’m not paying mega-bucks to do celebrity-endorsed Transcendental Meditation – even though surely it will make me a celebrity too!! – but without any instruction how do you actually meditate? Cross your legs, make up your own mantra (“I feel ridiculous, I feel ridiculous…”), attempt to levitate like Luke Skywalker?

Maybe meditating is not the actual thing. Maybe beauty treatments are a better way. Sorry, this is a men’s mag, we’re not supposed to call them beauty treatments…er, grooming treatments. Hardcore grooming treatments. There, that’s better. The reason I find myself using this route into meditation, I suppose, is that there’s a dual purpose going on. I’m lying down, eyes closed, waiting for a face mask to do its work on my skin – so I have to lie here doing nothing. Weird that I need such mental triggers to get me over the meditation hump but there it is. Call it residual old school male embarrassment. I’m not proud of it, but it’s there nonetheless.

Anyway, it’s where I found myself when trying out Lab Series’ Oil Control Clay Cleanser + Mask. In the post-xmas slump, where I’d drunk myself into oblivion every night for a week, played Yu-Gi-Oh cards with my children every day without once understanding any element of the game, and was beginning to look like one of Dracula’s brides, flies and all.

But then there was excuse to lie down in a room all by myself, a treatment, a time out, and boy was it great. Eyes closed, your mind free to wander, I got some tunes on and let it all go.

But what to play? When entering a pseudo-meditative state, what do you play? Whale music? Clannad? Enya? I just couldn’t do it. Instead I found motorik psychedelia an excellent alternative. Rhythms which are hypnotic but without a hint of self-indulgence. You get your meditation needs taken care of without resorting to nauseating clichés.

My mind was duly massaged, plus my skin was cleaner and more purified than it had been in months, when it’s been so oily it resembled the turkey mid-way through a basting. Plus I got to listen to my own tunes for a change instead of the Frozen 2 soundtrack or the karaoke tune my daughter has made up entitled, ‘Daddy, you’re a big poo man.’ What a win-win-win.

Go here to buy the Lab Series Oil Control Clay Cleanser + Mask. And here is the playlist of your pseudo-meditation dreams:

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