Being the bad, bad friend I am, I failed to get my dear friend a card and a gift for her birthday, on her birthday. So, we went out tonight to float tank. Impossibly excited beforehand, the evening proved to be very interesting for all three of us. Three very different experiences.We got there, chose our music and our after float drinks. Turn off our phones and we go in there and have to shower, washing our hair, before we go in to our own pods (each pod is in its own lockable room). Tried to get the earplugs in but they did not want to stay in so I went for it and went in sans-plugs.
Get in there and lay down, and am suddenly floating. There is four times more salt in the pod there is in the Dead Sea. Itchy eye, and then BAM, all that salt in my eye. OK, so work with it and see if I can last it out but no, I need to wash it out. But the light in the pod has gone our, and the light in the room has gone out. Suddenly I am in pitch darkness. Panic to find the pod light, find it and turn it on only to open the pod and the light outside in the room to automatically come on. I grab the flannel and use that to keep the water from splashing in my eye.
With the humidity of the pod and the light off, it becomes very claustrophobic in there. The music, when you leave your head underwater is just a white noise. It's like when someone tries to talk to you with your ears full of water. It's just Charlie Brown's teacher "blah, blah, blah". It became more distracting than anything. Turn the music off and turn the light off. Not a good idea. Oh, flannel. I leave the light on and put the flannel over my eyes. It's funny, closed eyes and the flannel over them, it's dark, but knowing the light is on takes away the anxiety.
With 20 minutes to go, I braved up and turned the light off.
So, the float itself, the head space: It was hard to turn off, but thoughts would come through and leave again. It got so quiet that I could hear my heart beat. While you're in there, you don't feel as if you have turned off enough, but it's surprising. There was a feeling of absolute weightlessness. You don't even feel the water on your body. You feel, see, and hear nothing. You come back to yourself and it feels like when you're in bed and you've been in one position for too long and need to turn over, so you strength and bend a little, but with the lack of light or sensation, you find you've suddenly floated into the wall. The tiniest hit against one wall has you floating back into the other side of the pod and you're head has hit the other side. The lights came on and the lady-voice inside the pod told me that I was done and it was time to get out.
Open the pod and stand up, and suddenly you're very heavy. Your legs shake and your head is woozy and you have to hold on to the side of the pod while you get used to using your legs again.
A nice hot shower, and it takes a while to get rid of the build up of salt all over the body.
Back of the building is the zen room, full of bean bags where we all met up and relaxed and exchanged our stories. I will definitely do this again. Would I recommend it? Most definitely. The feeling of calm that you have when you come out is wonderful, and you sleep so well, it feels like you have been cradled in a cloud and sleep is all you want to do. You sleep and feel so damned refreshed afterwards./
