float in a sensory deprivation tank

Just went on my first float. It was a fantastic experience. I would say I probably spent the first 10 minutes just thinking about my neck, which was very tense and uncomfortable until I relaxed a bit. I found that if I ever bumped into the side even the slightest movement would move me away from the wall and it felt like i was sliding very fast across a void. Very neat. I’m pretty sure I feel asleep a few times and I felt pretty relaxed afterwards. I definitely want to do it again.

This past weekend, my partner and I floated for the first time at the Driftaway Floatation Spa in Burlington MA – http://www.driftawayspas.com

Below I offer some advice for first-time floaters, a report on the spa and the experience of floating and a few of my observations.

General Advice

• For your first float,
  
  • Learn how to relax as much as you can before you float. Especially your neck, shoulders, arms, hands, hips, legs and feet. You’ll be surprised how hard it is to do and how much farther you can go without gravity.
  • Cover anything sensitive in petrolatum. Even those things you just think might be problematic. You’ll thank me.
  • Quickly learn how to manage your position in the tank. For me, this was by far the greatest waste of time in the tank.
  • Shed your expectations. Yes, Altered States was an entertaining fiction but what most people forget is: it wasn’t the tank alone that turned Prof. Eddie Jessup into a wild arboreal proto-human lusting for flesh from the permanent collection of the Bronx Zoo. He was completely baked on a magical potion of mushrooms, roots, human blood, and god knows what else when he became a swirling, flashing, pearlescent cosmic fog. So unless you have friends in Mexico, your results will certainly vary.

• For subsequent floats,
  
  • Go for longer than 50 minutes. I suspect I was just getting there when the session ended.
  • Read Hutchison’s “The Book of Floating” Be sure to read all of his “explanations” why floating does what it does to learn why all of them are correct and why none of them are. Like most things, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
  • If appropriate, choose a goal. While floating is a great tool for general relaxation and can really help manage stress, it also frees your mind in other interesting ways. See final comments below.

• My partner and I are highly intelligent, analytical individuals, constantly questioning and accepting little without direct evidence.

• Neither of us are particularly spiritual and find much of the rhetoric of religion and the “new age” unpalatable.

• We both are very creative and possess strong and well-developed imaginations.

• I have a very active, constant and unquenchable “internal dialog”. (I often find myself repeating a line from a song in my head until I go to bed and waking up the next day with the same line still repeating.)

• I was diagnosed with ADD several years ago, for which I take a hefty dose of amphetamine each day.

• I often find it difficult to fall asleep, wake up several times each night, and rarely feel “refreshed” or energized upon waking.

• For these reasons and others, I’ve found little satisfaction in mediation and other forms of contemplation, relaxation or stress relief.

• I’ve studied the available literature on sensory isolation from Lilly and others on and off for almost thirty-years, hoping to experience a session in a tank but never having the opportunity.

• So, I went into my first float with a palpable excitement, but with little expectation of accomplishing anything.

• The available literature indicates that each “float” is a very personal experience and can be different both for each individual and in contrast to other floats by the same person. Recent evidence suggests those expecting to feel or experience something “profound” in their first session, find the experience wholly unsatisfying and rarely ever go for another session.

• I actively sought to enter my first float with few preconceptions other than to experience it for what it was

• I also had a low-level headache.

• For these reasons, my experience might be somewhat atypical.

• Driftaway Floatation Spa is a nice, clean and very professional facility.

• It’s usually only open Fridays and on the weekends, though I understand they will open for the odd weekday evening as requested.

• Having only called Wednesday to set up the appointment, we were lucky to be able to book sessions for 2:30PM on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

• We arrived fifteen minutes early and the spa was empty save for a quiet and very agreeable employee who guided through the required form and gave us a short tour of the facility.

• A session lasts an hour with the actual float consuming 50 minutes.

• The spa contains three flotation rooms, but one had a problem with the filtration pump, so only two were working at the time of our visit.

• Each flotation room can be locked from the inside for privacy and has a dressing area and a shower. The dressing area has a chair, table and clothes-hooks on the wall. There is also a large (4’ by 4’) knee-high door with a block handle in the back wall. The door has no other hardware apart from hinges and is well balanced to close tightly.

• Showers are required before and after a float.

• The spa provides shower gel, shampoo, silicon-putty-style ear-plugs, and a nice selection of surprisingly plush towels.

• A jar of water-proof jelly is also provided to protect any sensitive areas of the body from the salt water. (I had to exit the tank in the first minute as I found a small pimple on my back stung annoyingly. The jelly worked perfectly.)

• Calling the chamber a “tank” really doesn’t do it justice since, rather than the dramatic contraptions of the famous movie, it’s really a spacious 4’ wide by 8’ long by 8’ high space with soft indirect lighting and covered in calming blue tile.

• Once inside, the tank holds 10 inches of water that have been super-saturated with 800 lbs of magnesium sulfate (Epsom Salts) and heated to near body temperature. The air is also heated.

• There are four large press-button controls on the back wall to control the lights, music and to raise or lower the volume.

• I undressed, showered, inserted the ear-plugs, opened the door and entered the tank.

• I left the sound off. The music was your standard new-age fare.

• When I doused the lights, the light in the dressing/shower area went out as well so there was no leakage from outside the chamber.

• I was in complete darkness. It’s rare we experience such a total absence of light and while I feared I might feel claustrophobic, I was completely at ease.

• I was surprised to find I could detect no smell from the salt.

• At times, I thought I could vaguely make out noises coming from the room next door so the space might not have been completely sound-proofed.

• With no light or sound, I lay back with my arms at my sides and head back and allowed my body to float on the salt water. For anyone who hasn’t visited the Dead Sea, this is an interesting experience since you can float comfortably with no effort whatsoever, due to the heavy concentration of salt in the water.

• It took some time to relax my neck – due in part to my headache – and while the spa provides a small floating pillow for this purpose, I wanted as authentic an experience as possible and so didn’t use it.

• I was sure I had relaxed my neck as much as possible as the water came up to the periphery of my ears but quickly realized my neck still held a lot of tension so I visualized relaxing my muscles to find the most relaxed posture.

• After a while I felt the tension abate, discovering another unexpected level of relaxation, and my head tilted significantly further backwards to a point where the water now covered my ears and came over my head to an inch or two above my eyebrows.

• This quickly became very comfortable and seemed entirely natural. (Until you experience it, take my word for it you experience no concerns about drowning whatsoever.

• The only issue you might have is if you follow the natural impulse to rub your eyes with your (recently immersed in concentrated salt solution) hand.

• The tank has a towel bar and spa provides a small towel to take into the tank with you for this purpose.)

• After a short while enjoying the calm and quiet dark, I realized I had no idea how much time had passed since I entered the tank; it might have been as little as five or as much as fifty minutes. Because of this, references to time from this point on are really only guesses.

• About ten minutes or so into the float, I found I had been unconsciously restraining my arms and legs within angles to my body I thought were completely relaxed but were not, so I again visualized relaxing my shoulders, arms, hips and legs to release this last restriction until my extremities spread out significantly wider than I thought they would. Though I have no visual evidence, I felt I was close to – if not completely – spread-eagled on top of the water.

• Within a few minutes, I found I could easily forget about my extremities and soon became unaware of them.

• I never completely lost my “body sense” as I was very conscious of where the interface of air and water touched my skin. Several times, I felt the air might have been a touch too cold to achieve the “out of body” feeling others report.

• Throughout the float, I found myself frequently bumping into the left or right walls of the tank.

• After a bit of this, I found I could push off the wall using very little pressure from the little finger of either hand; this was important as any other use of the muscles in my hands or arms would further perturb the water and send me racing towards the other wall. Stilling your muscles as much as possible is critical.

• I recall coughing once after which it took quite some time for the water to settle again.

• It took a few tries but I soon found the absolute least pressure required to give my body the least momentum across the water. After this, I hit the walls with far less frequency.

• I bumped my head and feet into their respective barriers only once during the float, after which I measured my position and moved to the middle of the long axis of the tank.

• Around the same time, I became acutely aware of my heartbeat and digestive processes, though I hadn’t eaten since the morning. This stage lasted for several minutes until I apparently lost interest and relegated these sounds or feelings to the background.

• As much as I endeavored to keep my eyes open, I kept finding I had shut them without knowing. After a while, I gave up trying.

• At this point, I’m sure I fell asleep because I had a very short but vivid dream though I do not remember its content.

• At the end of the float, the lights came up automatically and after I had a minute or two to acclimate again to my environment, the filtration pumps came on. This was definitely time to leave the tank.

• After showering and dressing, my partner and I spent a few minutes sipping tea and comparing notes in the lounge area; this “cooling down” period is required by the spa.

Afterwards

• We both felt slightly buzzed after the float, likely due to the decrease in levels of several hormones that floating reputedly causes. (Cortisol and Corticotropin to name two.)

• Rather than feeling logy or somnambulant, the buzz was energetic with an excited, anticipatory feeling in the skin that lasted throughout most of that evening.

• That night I slept well and awoke feeling more refreshed than usual.

• I also experienced a sense mental and emotional clarity as well as a sense of deep physical relaxation.

• My experience was very positive.

• My only regret is that the float was over before I could really experience the full effects of sensory isolation.

• I feel I could have accomplished far more if the float had lasted twice as long.

• I can easily appreciate how floating for six to eight hours at a time might produce some of the more interesting and profound experiences reported by others.

• The level of relaxation I felt was akin to that experienced after a robust massage. The literature says that one hour of floating produces relaxation akin to three or four hours of deep sleep and I cannot disagree here.

• To my surprise, I found neither my ADD nor the medication I take for it appeared to interfere with my float at all.

• While the spa does not allow other forms of “consciousness alteration” when floating, I’d like to explore how tetrahydrocannabanol or thujone might affect the experience, but only after I’ve had a more prolonged experience without them.

• I am left with the same feeling others report of being at the border of a new, undiscovered country and am anxious to begin charting those lands “beyond the fields we know.”

• I plan on returning regularly and have begun researching what is needed to build my own tank.

Final Comments

From what I’ve read and now experienced, here’s my personal take on “Floating”…

Consider how much energy or “processing power” your brain must expend to manage the body’s multitude of immensely complicated systems like sight, hearing, balance against gravity, body position, temperature regulation, etc. Not only must it manage and regulate these systems, it has to process the information they produce and distribute it to other internal systems so they can do their jobs.

I believe that, by reducing this load on your brain even a little, floating frees it to do other things such as:

• helping you solve problems
• enhancing your natural creativity
• giving you better perspective on apparently intractable issues
• allowing you to explore your private sea – the various parts of the “you” that looks out of your eyes at me
• and for some, speeding up the process of achieving that state of “no self” (satori, bliss) that is the goal of meditation and so prized by mystics.

If you’re ready for a wild ride, read Lilly’s “The Deep Self” and then, if that’s not enough to set your brain on fire, read the real “red pill”… Lilly’s “Programming the Human BioComputer”

I consider this book to be a very important work in our understanding of consciousness, not because I think it’s “the” answer, but because I think it’s an excellent description of “an” answer ,and while I cannot accept everything Lilly proposes in it, I do think reading it has helped me greatly to appreciate how science, religion, magic, luck, and other our other attempts to explain The Big “Why?” are all useful metaphors we can use to grapple with and become comfortable with our own personal interpretations of “reality”.

This was a REALLY long time ago, but it really was quite extraordinary. I may have even fallen asleep in it once or twice. But my mind kind of ran free, and I would come out very relaxed. Worth trying …

I went to Driftaway Floatation Spas about a half hour from Boston. Very nice place..I guess they do a European style spa, and float centers are more common over there.

I only wish they weren’t as expensive, and it wasn’t so far from me, I’d probably invest in going once a month if I could! It was very peaceful, perfect for meditation, muscle relaxation, and just general comfort.

I expected it to be different than it was, but I understand the results are always different. I definitely want to try again since I know what it’s all about now.

The first 5 minutes or so, I worked on making my neck comfortable. I guess I must have been holding it up without knowing. Finally I tilted it pretty far back, and it was fully supported by the epsom water. Then, I had to situate myself in the actual tank for another 5 minutes, and a few times during the float. I was pretty sprawled out, and the tank, though it was big, isn’t THAT big, so I touched the sides a few times which distracted me from the experience.

A few times I was able to really “Drift away” though, and it felt like my body was going to fall asleep. Interesting experience, and I will do it again!

I told a friend of mine about floating awhile ago, and how I was going on my trip to Alaska. I guess it got him interested, because now he really wants to try it. We’ll be going to Mass in a little under two weeks, and so he had me search for a float place. I found one, and they give a discount for bringing a friend! I figured it’d be perfect, so we’re going to float in a few Sundays!

The website for the Alaska float center is down, so a part of me feels it may not be in business anymore..I was going to call closer to my arrival day to see if the guy was still open. If so, I’ll just float twice this year! If not, I’m at least covering myself by going anyway.

I’ll write about my experience when I get back from it. :)

I can’t even find a float center that’s still open. I’ve tried emailing two people. One bounced back to me, the other never responded. I made 3 phone calls, all numbers were disconnected. Geez! It’s really too bad. I’m going to check a few more places in Massachusetts, though I’ve already seen somewhere that one of them has shut down. If that doesn’t work, I may just make an appointment on my vacation while in Alaska. Heck, I want to mark this one done, I thought it’d be cool and easy to do!

If anyone knows of any float centers in Maine/New Hampshire/Mass that ARE still open, please let me know!

I found a place in my city which offers floating, so I emailed to ask for more information. With any luck, this goal will be complete in the next few months. Looking forward to it. :)

For anyone looking for a place to float check this list.

http://www.floatation.com/wheretofloat.html

There are places all over the world.

Floatation is amazing, close out the world and float weightless.
Nothing on this earth is like it.
Give it a try there are centers around the world to float at.