Last week, London Floatation Works sent me a discount code for 50% off on the grounds it was my birthday (I must have registered in an idle moment previously) - and since I was due to be in London for work, I figured I should finally give it a try.
What is a floatation tank?
Essentially, it's a capsule roughly the size of a double bed which has been filled with water to about six inches deep. The water is salt rich meaning, like the Dead Sea, you can float without any effort. Further, the capsule when the lid is down is also completely dark and silent.
Open the pod bay door, Hal
In the one I tried, it had a panic button on the right hand side inside the tank and another to turn the lights on the left hand side. A water sprayer was also available because it turns out the one thing you really don't want to do is rub your eyes with a hand covered in very salty water. I didn't try it - but I imagine it would be very bad. By the way, unlike the cryosleep chambers in Alien which the floatation tank resembles and the promotion literature - you float naked. To protect the innocent, I will spare you any pictures of my ageing birthday suit.
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| You go naked. Something about the field generated by a living organism |
So what's floating like?
I admit my first thoughts as I closed the lid was " What on earth have I done?" as mild claustrophobic panic began to well up inside me - I was willingly enclosing myself in a dark, muggy space where no-one could hear me scream...
A deep breath or so later and I was OK. My pod plays music for the first and last ten minutes of your one hour float. It's the vaguely atonal techno-hippy sounding stuff you might expect.
Then there's another trust exercise you have to play with the pod which is allowing yourself to float without having to work for it. This, and pardon the cliche, I took to like a duck to water.
Temperature wise, it was just slightly the wrong side of perfectly comfortable throughout - and that was mostly down to the air temperature combined with humidity. Occasionally, I'd lower a limb to cover it in slightly cooler water.
Sound wise, all you can hear is your breathing and then your heart beat appears. Personally, I found my heart beat difficult to tune out and it became annoying. I ended up discarding the supplied ear plugs in a semi-futile attempt to reduce its volume.
Then I became aware of a dull ache in my shoulders and neck. The one in my shoulders slowly disappeared, but the neck one remained. This is apparently normal as floating is unlike lying on a bed or any other everyday activity. Supposedly, it will disappear in follow up sessions if you do them. Another factor might be that it is actually impossible to work out where your head is in relation to your body. Is it titling back or forward? I couldn't tell.
There were a few periods - how long I couldn't guess - where I experienced something of what I'd hoped for - a marvellous sense of an empty mind (meditation induced) combined with partial bodily disassociation (I lost awareness of some of my limbs and their position in relation to the rest of my body).
Getting out only added to the sci-fi experience as the salty water is almost syrupy in consistency leaving your skin feeling like it had been a little slimed.
After thought
As suggested by the post-float literature, I did sleep pretty well the following night - and dinner at a friend's that evening tasted absolutely amazing. Quite often by the time I get to evening my taste buds have been jaded by the day. This time, the effect was something like eating something after my daily 14-16 hour intermittent fast - but lasted the entire meal rather than the first few bites.
It may, however, just been her great cooking!
Like early bouts of mediation, I'd say it has potential - and maybe, just maybe, I might give it another go to find out.
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