alone with yourself: floating

A few days ago I finally had my appointment at a research lab in my capital city. I decided to try the „floating experience“ for myself quite some time ago and now it was finally the day.

The following article will shed some light on a typical „first time“ floating experience. 

What is floating, where did it come from and why even do it?

Floating means floating in a tank of saturated salt-water that’s being kept at body temperature. The tank is sound- and lightproof and while you’re in there you completely lose orientation, your feeling for the passing of time and more or less „detach“ from the real world. 

Sounds spooky? Not necessarily. Floating was originally used as „sensory deprevation tanks“ during the CIA MK-Ultra experiments and also as torture method. There’s lots of declassified information on this once conspiracy theory proofing that it is shocking reality. The goal of MK-Ultra was mind control and enhancement of mental abilities. For that purpose probants were injected with LSD and put into such tanks for hours - with really weird consequences. Some lost their mind and went crazy, others had horror-trips but recovered afterwards. 

To what conclusion the CIA came after these experiments, no one but them knows. But they found out about a very simple principle. If you remove all outside-stimuli like touch, sight, sound, etc. the brain, which is constantly trying to make sense of what’s being thrown at it, has no other way than to turn „inward“ to find information to process.

This is the key principle of floating. Nowadays done without LSD it’s very relaxing and deep-thinking experience that can lead to a meditation-like state and insights into your own consciousness.

Still in times like these, where we are bombarded with information left and right and everything and everyone demands our attention, the benefits of unplugging from time to time are proven to result in a more stable personality, stress-resistance and other mental-health benefits. Some people even report having „otherworldy“ exeriences and „out of body“ travels through space and time. 

This is the reason why I personally wanted to try it. To find information about my own personality deep within me, maybe even detach from my body but mainly to just be alone. And Aliens!Alone with myself, as I am that type of person who can’t stand loud and busy environments, a floating tank seemed like the perfect surroundings for my deep-thinking.

Obviously changing your setting of mind from „daily routine-oh-my-god-everyone-leave-me-alone“ to „nothing“ is not easy and takes some practice and getting used to - so to keep expectations in order, here’s my report on my experiences. 

My first floating experience

I was happy and excited when I finally got my appointment. Too bad that it was a rather long drive through my capital city - which is roughly 60 km away from me, quite a distance, especially on busy days.

I hate driving through the city, so I began my travel with some extra-time in mind, early enough to circumvent the effects of potential traffic jams or if Siri fucks up and leads me into a pond or something like that. 

I chose this particular institute because it’s exactly that: an institute for researching the effects of floating. This brings several advantages compared to going floating in some of those „health parlors“ where they more or less sell it to you as some wellness-bullshit. Well at it’s essence it might even be that, but I rather trust the scientists than some minimal-wage-guy. No offense. The other advantage is price: at just 39 euro for one and a half hour including briefing and showing me around it’s a steal. Since it’s for research they cannot charge more to make a profit. Good stuff.

I arrived 5 minutes early at the institute and was let in by a guy that looked totally like you would imagine someone researching floating. A chill and deeply relaxed student-kinda-guy with messy curly hair, thick glasses, a wooly vest, jeans, chucks and a bright smile on his face. In 40 years this guy will look like Doc Brown for sure.

I was greeted with unexpected friendliness and he seemed to be totally „in the zone“ about floating. He showed me their tank and explained to me how everything works. Then basically you’re left alone, you can even lock yourself in, to get naked, have a shower, set yourself an alarm clock (he even told me that if it’s 90 minutes or 120 he doesn’t care, I could float as long as  I want) and get into the tank. Good - so 100 minutes it was. 

Naked and freshly showered I descended into the tank after setting my Casio to the appropiate alarm (but leaving it outside due to the saltwater). The water was very warm and felt a bit „slimy“ due to the high content of salt. I eased myself down and finally closed the lid. The air inside the tank had the same temperature as the water and my body. It was immediately comfortable. 

Silence. Darkness. At first I was very well aware were I was and what I was doing. The first 20 minutes or so I felt the water’s wave move me around in the tank, sometimes I touched the floor of it with my butt (it’s only about 37 cms deep) or the sides of the tank with my toes, gently pushing me into position again. After a while I found a comfortable position (with my arms laid backwards) and the water was still enough so I didn’t make any contact with anything anymore. 

I tried to close my eyes and concentrate on nothing. That didn’t work. When you concentrate on nothing, you concentrate on something. So I decided to open my eyes - which makes no difference as it is pitch black anyways - and just concentrate on my breathing, this being a viable meditation-technique, and just „float into space“. 

For a while, nothing happened except my muscles and bones relaxing. Because everything was floating so effortlessly all my muscles and bones - literally raped by my daily working routine and sitting hours on end - somehow slowly snapped into place in the original state they’re intended to be in. A very interesting, relaxing procedure. You even hear all that stuff happening. Speaking of hearing… after a while you’re so sensitive to sound you even hear all your bodily functions. Bubbling in your belly, your heartbeat becomes really loud, especially when you have your ears submerged in the water (like I did). At some point I was even able to hear my blood flow.

This shows how much garbage-background-noise our brain is filtering out the whole day when our hearing-organs would be capable of so much more. 

At this point - I have no recollection how long I’ve been in the tank already, but I’d guess about 40 minutes - things started to appear. You know that colourful dots you see when you close your eyes? Those started to shape into vague images. Pictures, faces. It was not frightening at all nor was it a very strong effect, I’m far from perceiving it as „visions“ - it’s just mental images, the brain doing it’s work, trying to work with any information it can gather and since that’s not much when you’re in a floating tank, it will work with those little dots when you’re in complete darkness (which, btw, is space-radiation hitting your retina).

I could feel how layer after layer I was drifting deeper into my conciousness, I was thinking about events in my past, distance past like kindergarden even, and everything was effortless and seemingly random… not guided, just popping into my head. I let it be, just listening and focusing on my breathing the whole time. I might even have drifted off into sleep at some point, but I cannot say for sure. You really DO lose orientation and the sense of time. 

Unfortunately I was not able to go any „deeper“ into the experience, like the nice guy from the institute told me, it takes some floating sessions to „tune“ your mind onto this new sensation and let go completely, especially if you’re such a busy, heavy minded person as I am.

My alarm clock beeped like in a distant tunnel and I knew I had to get out. I was a little bit disappointed that I wasn’t experiencing some space-time-travel with aliens or found the meaning of life, the location of Atlantis or some sort of god in this tank. 

That was until I tried to get out and a few hours later when my brain processed the floating-experience as a whole. But I’ll come to that.

I tried to sit up and reach for the latch to open the hatch. I couldn’t. All my muscles were so depply relaxed and I haven’t moved an inch for all that time, it took several seconds to muster the force I needed to raise my arm. And god was my arm heavy. And the rest of me. Oh god, gravity had me back again. You’re completely relaxed, chill and comfortable and now you’re faced with reality again. On shaky legs I slowly climbed out of the tank. 

Cleverly I had switched off the lights in the surrounding room prior to entering the tank and the sun was already gone, so the shock on my eyes from coming out of complete darkness into the light wasn’t that bad. But I felt heavy. And cold. I could barely walk and I wanted to avoid any movement. It was trance-like. A „floaty“ unsecure walk to the shower.

I had a nice warm shower and my mind didn’t even think about what was actually happening in this moment, my mind was just relaxed and „empty“ in a way. It was a wonderful feeling, I hardly ever was that much relaxed in my whole life. All my worries and fears - gone. I was just in the moment, feeling the warm water like I never felt warm water before. I got into a bath-robe and used the „chillout-chair“ they’ve conveniently placed in the corner to let myself rest. 

„You gotta take a few minutes to let your mind and body understand reality again before you leave!“ he said. He was right. Even though I wasn’t able to delve as deep into my own mind as I wanted to, I could still feel very real benefits. Changes. 

All my senses worked 130%. I could smell things in the room (like the wooden furniture) that I couldn’t before. My skin was very sensible to touch and it seems like the little colour this room had, was brighter. More vivid. 

After about 10 minutes thinking about what happened in the past 100 minutes, I tried to get into my shoes and out of the institute to drive home (a 2 hour drive through the capital, at night, brilliant). Tying my shoelaces was a challenge, getting back up after I finally managed to do it even more so. 

I exited the room, went over the staircase leading to the ground floor, having real trouble „aiming“ my steps onto the stairs and walked out of the building. 

There I was, standing in the capital and it already has gotten dark. Lights from cars and traffic-signals and ads were unbelievably bright. The fresh night-air, even in the city, was breeze-like and swept through my mind. My thoughts started to race as I walked back to my car. I felt relaxed. Happy. Like all that shit in the world didn’t happen. Or at least not for me. 

I was back in the car in a few minutes and robotlike, without even thinking, set up my iPhone with Siri to guide me home. Kinda like on auto-pilot I somehow managed to get onto the highway and close the distance from the capital to my home with relative ease. 

While driving I was calling my girlfriend (with headset of course, safety first) and told her about my then still fresh experience. Hearing her voice was different too, like I could hear more nuances to her voice. A nice experience.

I was still thinking about the floating experience days afterwards and I could clearly see that with some practice and some more floating-sessions there’s much more up ahead to be explored. Unplugging in the best sense indeed. I will definitely go floating again soon and again share my experiences. 

Let me finish with a few tips:

- if possible find a floating institute instead of some spa- have a good shower beforehand- leave your worries at home as good as possible- don’t expect alien spaceships and time travel, expect nothing- switch off the light in the tank-room, close curtains- move as little as possible when in the tank- concentrate on your breath- let the water carry you, try not to fight it- never ever touch your eyes (salt water!)- afterwards don’t talk immediately to someone. be alone.- let it „sink in“- have a good shower afterwards, salt’s everywhere. - clean your ears really well

 

I hope you enjoyed my personal insight into my first floating experience and maybe got the interest or the courage to try it for yourself. The only thing expecting you in that tank besides comfort and silence is YOU. So you should go and meet yourself! It’s a worthwile experience.