At the Melbourne Convention Centre last weekend, people dressed in black gathered for the Mind Body Spirit Festival. They looked pale and beaten down in their large parkas and comfortable stretch pants. I was among their number.

Inside, the festival was more like a marketplace, where everyone from the psychics to the Scientologists had a booth. On sale were crystals and soy candles, as well as treatments that promise to allay an anxiety or fear: aura readings, energy treatments, past life consultations, spell vials, money mediums.

People shuffled between booths, picking up brochures and elixirs, or queuing up for mysterious and unusual procedures taking place without humiliation in full view of the shuffling crowds.

In the speaker’s corner, a bunch of people lolled, resting their feet and eating giant pretzels but otherwise looking blankly at the speaker as she waved her arms in the air and recited a string of memes, that may look like impressive Zen koans on your Instagram feed but made little sense when expanded into a 20-minute motivational talk.

Are you challenging the status quo? Risk big. With risk comes reward. We get stuck on the sidelines. You don’t have to be Jamie Oliver.

I tune out. Where can I buy pretzels? Are crystals making a comeback?

At one stand, quite a crowd has gathered. They are watching six people who appear to have been hypnotised. Their eyes are closed. Their bodies look soft – knees bent slightly. One woman sways at the waist. She has tears running down the side of her face, into her ears. A man is moving around the swaying bodies and he touches each of them softly in various places. The crying woman falls to her knees. Her head is back, throat exposed.

What is going on? I asked one of his assistants and how much it costs. It’s $150 for a group session and “he tells you the ugly truth,” says his helper.

“That’s why you see people falling. He deletes the negative spiritual feelings around them. He identifies major blocks and removes root causes.”

I do not want to hear the Ugly Truth. I keep walking. There is a curious sight of half a dozen adults lying in beanbags, their heads in the laps of people who are touching their skulls softly as if they are in the fruit aisle, checking for bruises on the avocados.

One of the women having her head touched is moving in a way that appears halfway between a giggling fit and a full body orgasm. The man next to her is having the same but looks as if he’s been gassed. His entire body has gone limp.

It’s $40. That I can afford. I lie on the ground. “Feel yourself expand out to the corners of the centre,” says the worker who sits behind me with my head in his hands.

It is a confusing instruction – aren’t centres round and without corners?

He clarifies: “Expand yourself to the corners of the convention centre.”

“Ah OK yeah, I can do that.”

This guy has his hands resting at my temples. Every few minutes he moves his hands. How boring this must be for him, I think. As for me, I feel a lot of things and nothing. Bored. Blank. Disembodied. Unmotivated to get up off the ground.

When it’s over, I feel completely empty – like someone has vacuumed out my brains. It is not unpleasant. The man half-heartedly tries to sign me up for a course. I give him a false phone number. I wander around some more.

Next I go to a “third eye intuitive reader”. They diagnose what diseases or problems you have in your body through a non-physical scan of your body, ie they look at you and tell you which of your internal organs are diseased. It’s quite the superpower. I sit on a chair opposite her. She closes her eyes and I close my eyes and minutes pass. I have a small but real fear that this woman with a bulging bindi will find something terribly wrong with me – like a tumour! She rouses me gently by touching my hand.

“You have a problem with the right side of your head.”

“I did once, yes.” I’ve got a massive dent on the right side of my head that’s impossible to miss.

“You have a problem on your left side of your torso.”

“What is that? The kidneys?” The lady doesn’t know.

“And you have digestion problems.”

I don’t have any problems on my left side, nor do I have digestion problems. I tell her so.

We sit awkwardly for another few minutes. She’s scanning me again with her intuition but she’s already lost me.

“You have a phobia of snakes?”

“Yes, yes I do.”

I don’t have a phobia of snakes but I don’t want to make her any more insecure about her gifts than she already is.

“You are having many emotional problems at the moment. You are ending a personal relationship.”

“Yes, that is true.” I try to look sad but am smiling.

I do not have emotional problems. I am not ending a relationship.

The woman is pleased. She tries to sign me up to a course where I can heal myself, and then heal others.

But before she can finish her sales pitch, I make my excuses and leave.

• Brigid Delaney is a Guardian writer and columnist