Heavily Weightless
Earlier today I had the experience of floating for the first time and I don’t mean in the public pool for swimming lessons. No, today I closed myself inside an isolation tank (or sensory deprivation tank, float tank, hyperbolic time chamber, etc.). If your mind is jumping to Eleven from Stranger Things you’re actually in the ballpark.
Daredevil’s sleeping chamber from the 2003 Ben Affleck movie might be a more appropriate example, as it is relatively close to what an actual isolation tank is. In the film when Daredevil goes to sleep he shuts himself inside a closed off space filled with water in which he can float and block outside noise with. A real isolation tank is essentially that; a small, enclosed pitch black space. Earplugs are even provided. These help keep water out of your ears, but a side effect is the shutting out of outside noise. When I was floating I had practically rendered myself both blind and deaf. On top of all that an isolation tank contains body temperature salt water that keeps one suspended without scraping the bottom, essentially taking any sense of touch out of the equation as well.
Though the tank does not lock and you can get up to leave whenever you wish, while inside the tank you are completely shut off from the outside world. It just feels like an entirely different plane in there. The senses are dulled, you are floating in the dark, nothing in there with you other than your thoughts. Like being suspended in a void. It feels what I imagine floating through outer space without a suit feels like.
Being in such a physical state really plays with perspective. Floating in the tank was a feeling unlike any other I had felt before. Without any sort of reference point in the dark I started feeling things in a much different way. Inevitably you move around while in the tank, you are in water afterall, it happens. On several occasions I would gently graze one of the walls. When this happened I pushed off as lightly as I possibly could just to get back to the center of the tank. Doing so brought me physical sensations I was not expecting.
Though I was hardly moving at all, each time I brushed away from the wall I felt as if I was almost flying. It truly felt like I was moving at a crazy speed akin to moving down a river with a rapid current. There was no resistance, nothing to suddenly stop me. So I floated through the water (most likely moving over about an inch or two) feeling like I was gliding through an infinite space.
Your sense of time is also knocked completely out of line. My floating session was fifty minutes long, but it felt like I was inside the tank for so much longer. Multiple times throughout I had the quick thought of, “Time is probably up.” The signal never came, though. When it was finally over I felt like I was waking up from a long dream. That is the best way to describe it; coming back into the world after being shut off, unable to hear or see. Similar to how you might feel after a good night’s sleep when you wake up naturally without the help of an alarm. Coming back in a gentle fashion as you slowly reorient yourself with reality.
Floating is an experience of mental rearrangement. A lot goes with you into the tank and just as much comes back out, but you aren’t carrying the same luggage. I wasn’t exactly stressed going in, but when I came out I had this sense of calmness wrapped around me like a blanket that reached down to my core. Taking time to be alone with your thoughts can be therapeutic. Being alone with literally nothing except your thoughts is something else altogether.
