Peeled eyeballs and isolation tanks: singer Grimes reveals her extreme wellness routine

Musician and visual artist Grimes – who is in a relationship with Tesla CEO Elon Musk – has revealed the eye-watering details of what she claims is her extreme wellness regime.

In an Instagram post related to her campaign with adidas x Stella McCartney, Grimes (real name Claire Boucher) states that she has “eliminated all blue light from my vision through an experimental surgery that removes the top film of my eyeball”, among a number of strange rituals (more on which shortly).

She claims that the surgery “replaces it with an orange ultra-flex polymer that my friend and I made in the lab this past winter as a means to cure seasonal depression”.

But don’t try this at home, folks. The procedure may sound hard to believe, and that’s because it is. As one cynical commentee posted: “This is either a hilarious, sarcastic p***take or you’re the most deluded person in existence.”

Opthamologists have also voiced concerns. Dr Morris Waxler, a former FDA research scientist, said it is an “unnecessary and a terrible idea”. He added: “Goggles, medications, and time scheduling of exposure to sunlight should be sufficient to treat seasonal depression. Why would any ethical surgeon perform any such surgery is beyond me? I hope this is someone's bad joke.”

Indeed, Grimes is known for her rogue sense of humour: she and Musk met via Twitter when they exchanged obscure puns relating to Roko’s basilisk thought experiment, which explores the risks of developing artificial intelligence. “I got shinigami eyes,” she joked on Twitter yesterday.

As well as describing the eyeball surgery, Grimes also claims that as part of her “360 approach” she “maintains a healthy cellular routine” via a complicated list of supplements.

“From that point I spend 2-4 hours in my deprivation tank, this allows me to “astro-glide” to other dimensions – past, present, and future.” For the uninitiated, a deprivation tank is a dark, soundproof tank that is filled with water, used for a restricted environmental stimulation therapy (REST). It is not dissimilar to flotation tanks, which are now popular here in the UK. However, astro-gliding is not a term you'll find in the marketing gumpf.

In terms of fitness and exercise, Grimes says that she is a devotee of sword fighting. “In the afternoons I do a 1-2 hour sword fighting session with my trainer, James Lew, we go over the fundamentals that work the obliques, core stabilizes, and triceps as well as a few tricks. To wind down from this I spend 30-45 minutes on an inclined hike at roughly 4-4.5 miles per hour, arguably the most efficient workout.”

In fairness, stranger things happen than this in the world of fitness: The Silver Sabres Combat Academy here in the UK, for example, offers Star Wars-style lightsaber duelling.

Grimes claims she follows her fencing session with a 45 minute stretching in a bid to meet her “neuroplastic goals”, and has kitted out her studio with infra-red light, which is said to improve physical performance and enhance muscle recovery. Her regimen also includes a 20-25 minute “screaming session” (some say that screaming releases stress and allows us to access the primal brain) while she “slow boils the honey tea that maximises vocal proficiency.” Finally, after all that, she says she goes to bed with a humidifier on.

So, is the post a satire of Instagram devotees of “extreme” wellness, such as Mark Wahlberg – or is it an unscrupulous PR stunt to promote an Adidas campaign, which just so happens to feature “otherworldly” imagery? Or could it be that Grimes really does undergo this bizarre training regimen?

We’ll leave you to decide.

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