The Floatation Tank Experience

Dr. Paul Kiritsis Psychologist | Clinical Redwood City, California

Dr. Paul Kiritsis, PsyD, MScMed, is a licensed medical psychologist practicing in Redwood City, California. He specializes in the diagnosis and multimodal treatment of neuropsychiatric and functional neurological disorders, as well as coordinating care for patients suffering from these ailments. He offers heterogeneous... more

I was initially uncertain about what epiphenomena would unfold within the isolation tank during my hour-long therapeutic session. Would I experience hypnagogic states, hallucinations, and altered states of consciousness? Would I spiral deeper and deeper into a meditative trance, to a dark void from whence it would be impossible to extricate myself when relaxation music from the underwater sound system finally came back on? Would the confined space awaken a closeted claustrophobic self I never knew existed, one that would spur a profound panic attack and consequently a premature termination of the session? It was impossible to say.

The only certainty was that I wanted to float–needed to float. The best defense against psychological wear and tear is any mental activity aimed at stilling the mind and promoting alpha wave brain activity–that is, that relaxed state of consciousness conducive to healing. Meditation, hypnosis, and some fringe phenomena like hypnagogia are all prime examples of alpha-bound consciousness. When we lapse into these states neural oscillations comprised chiefly of the alpha wave variety stimulate the release of feel-good molecules called endorphins which promote well-being, dispel negative mood states like stress, anxiety, and depression, and severely dampen the subjective perception of physical pain. Biding one’s time herein also results in some pretty desirable cognitive gains; one’s attentional selectivity, memory consolidation, creativity, and problem-solving ability all augment for the better. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of these reputable phenomena is the quantifiable alterations they can incite, namely a propensity to improve circulation and blood pressure.

Floatation therapy inspires that same abovementioned state, with the obvious and only incongruity related to the configuration of the immediate environment. It involves immersion in a lightproof and soundproof tank that has been filled with a foot of salt-rich water heated to body temperature. The water is treated with roughly three hundred kilograms (900lbs) of Epsom salts, a powerful inorganic cocktail of magnesium, sulfur, and oxygen. Under these conditions the human body acquires natural buoyancy, eradicating irrational fears that the possibility of drowning might inspire. (You would struggle to drown in a foot of water anyway.) Voluntary acts of plunging and staying on the floor of the tank are rendered futile–your attempt to sink would be as fruitless as an astronaut’s attempt to fall into a moon crater. In any case, there are numerous therapeutic benefits to soaking oneself in and allowing magnesium sulfate to be absorbed through the pores of the skin. It assumes a catalytic role in the regulation of three hundred somatic enzymes, protein synthesis, the flushing of harmful toxins from the body, and the alleviation of psychological stress. All good stuff!

Readily prompted by mental images of floatation therapy as a natural wonder drug, I scoured the internet for accredited venues and found one near my [then] own residence in the northern suburbs of Melbourne. After some deliberation, I opted for a morning float. Getting in early would mean that the recommended abstinence from caffeine would end up being but an evanescent dent in the dietary latitudes of the day (I am addicted to caffeine!). It also meant I could enjoy any psychological and physical benefits for the entire duration of the day without interruptions. In hindsight, it was a mighty good choice! To increase my prospects of being a successful maiden floater, I ensured that all antagonists able to interfere and detract from the prospective mystery and wonder of the experience were actively mitigated. There was no way I was suffering any agonizing stings wrought from the confluence of saltwater solution and open sores because I had purposively avoided the razor for two days prior to the float. In addition, I silently recited a set of positive affirmations about holding my head straight and slightly bent forward, something I’d long anticipated would help in keeping saltwater solution from my eyes. To end with I ingested only a light meal, successfully avoiding both the metabolic demands of digestion and hunger cravings bound to distract from the imperative focus of entering that perfect ruminative state. Looking back, I can say that embracing the instructional literature on floatation without questioning its legitimacy was one of the best decisions I ever made.

On the day, the receptionist at the health center made it a point to impart necessary information to another floater and me. She gave a comprehensive outline of general proceedings; she pinpointed various safety devices along the inner rim of the right-hand side of the floatation tank that can be activated in the case of genuine discomfort or alarm; and she gave a short spiel on the pivotal and fundamental role of personal hygiene. Floaters, she had stipulated, are strongly encouraged to shower before and after entering the tank using the pre-supplied amenities–shampoo, conditioner, and body wash–in the respective dispensers connected to the wall. She then asserted that the disposable earplugs [provided free of change] should be inserted into the ears before showering to decrease the likelihood of moisture and salt solution getting in–choosing to abstain from this activity meant having the added burden of rinsing each of your ears thoroughly for half a minute or so at the conclusion of your float. Once you were ready to go you could flick the light switch off, slip into the floatation tank, and slide the hatch shut to evoke the feeling of complete isolation from external reality. She further instructed that ten minutes of relaxation music would be played through the underwater sound system at the inaugural and terminal stages of the session for the purpose of illuminating time constraints, with the pivotal middle portion marked by signature graveyard silence. Finally, she withdrew from our respective rooms, allowing the unique floatation experience to unfold for both of us in all its awe-inspiring wonder.

I scrutinized the floatation tank for a while, unsure if I should trust the experience without reservations. Suddenly the sound advice offered by the representative reverberated in the recesses of my mind: “Just go in without any expectations, forget your preconceptions, and allow the entire experience to unfold without any cognitive or emotional input.” Easier said than done really; no matter how much we resist, repress, and reject the subjective contents of thought, they will always find a way of rushing back in like menacing clown-headed jack-in-the-boxes. Often trying to keep certain thoughts at bay seemingly encourages them to manifest–it’s all too absurd really! Even more absurd was my unconscious resistance to jumping the fence: should I trust in the process of “letting go” and surrender to the grand numinosity of the boundless experience, or should I resist the fragmentation of my ego and remain earthbound? Do I go all out and sail the vast, desolate oceans wrought by divergent conditions like doldrums and rogue waves, or do I play safe and steer a zigzag course without ever losing sight of the mountainous mainland? Choices, choices, and more choices, I told myself. We grapple with them on a day-to-day basis.

A whole new world opened after slipping inside, one with its own natural laws and properties. I maneuvered left and right, forwards and backward, allowing the nutrient-rich waters to wash over me as if I were a lone barrier reef out in the supernal Coral Sea. I spread my arms and legs out and enjoyed the degrees of transcendent mental freedom offered by the unlikely convergence of imaginative play and physical buoyancy. Little by little the act of bringing forth pleasant images into the darkness from within myself usurped the reigns of self-awareness and demanded liberation from the mundane cycle of everyday social life; from the trepidations which arose from intense pondering of the future; from intellectual and physical tasks waiting to be done; and from acute stresses connected to mental saturation and a genuine inability to maintain a certain standard and quantity of written work. Worries melted away like icebergs drifting into temperate waters from the Antarctic ice sheet, leaving only the aural footprints of heavy breathing.

Before long, my unquiet mind found itself starved of attention, with the only discernible sounds coming from the bifurcated cycle of inhalations and exhalations afforded by respiration, and the only tactile sensations coming from subtle ripples of viscous water breaking against any surface area of dry skin. The internal machinery was gradually slowing down to a near halt. Soon all stimuli competing for mental attention–everything from the slurping salt waters inside and the ambiguous murmurs outside the womb-tomb along with the subliminal awareness of embodiment, time, and space–dissipated from consciousness. This allowed “I” to merge as an uroboric experience divisible from the qualitative aspects of social personality, something distinct but inseparable from the entire person which selects attentional targets purposively.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the sudden feeling of intimate familiarity with the tank’s morphology which possessed me then, the spontaneous perception of an underlying symbolism. Making such a profound connection birthed a deep sense of contentment and delight within me. Appearances would suggest the tank was nothing but an artificial apparatus full of salt-rich water, however, those who aspire to higher cosmic processes of representation would aptly disagree with this one-dimensional assessment. They would see beyond the inert metal patina to the symbolic core, the chamber, the heart, the archetypal vessel. Among other things the floatation tank might be a nurturing womb able to confer the vital force called life, a scallop shell fortifying delicate living flesh from the predatory eye of a would-be invader, and a hidden sanctuary in which the true self unites in holy matrimony with some greater transcendental reality. Remaining true to this natural and rudimentary family of interrelated associations, floating within the tank could also be thought of as an unprecedented return to the origin, a momentary glimpse of the primordial seas from whence all life had sprung forth millions of years ago, and the ritualistic cosmopolitan marvel of baptism all over again. In many ways, floatation is a kind of reunion with the uroboric state preceding birth and by extension with the creatrix, the feminine aspect of the divine.

I can assure you that the experience itself was bittersweet. The act of removing oneself from the world and withdrawing into the space of uroboric awareness lasted barely a microsecond if that. It was ephemeral in the truest sense of the word. We are athwart the bliss and then we are without; we walk through the iron gates guarding the kingdom of heaven only to find ourselves plummeting like purpled fruits back down to the ground of spiritual malnourishment, far from that elusive transcendental state. “All of mortal life is a powerful lesson in the art of falling,” I reminded myself, “and those who resist end up accumulating diabolical tribulations above the average.”

Bittersweet is probably the most accurate description of newborn babies’ inaugural experience of life as they leave the warmth, snugness, and security of the placenta for far less empathic environments. There’s so much disappointment and dysphoria to becoming another small knot in the social synapse, no doubt. From this perspective, spending hundreds of years floating in a state of suspended animation within some cryonic facility in a remote corner of the country whilst scientists figured out a way of bringing you back to life wasn’t such a daunting and negative prospect after all. With a bit of luck, you would emerge from the eternal tunnel of timelessness and lightlessness into a distant epoch to see light and measure time once more, hopefully with the indispensable bits and pieces comprising your unique footprint in the cosmos intact. But in all seriousness though, what is time? Time is a human construct bound to disappear like a mirage when you are physically cocooned and mentally insulated from the rest of the world. It only appears and functions with an embodied self-awareness.

A snippet of relaxation music reverberated through the underwater sound system, snapping me from my retracted, bodiless bliss. The spell of timelessness in inner space was broken! I passed my hands over the smooth contours of my own body, trying to recreate a mental image of what I might look like to another observer with information coming from the sense of touch alone. Sadly, knowledge and memory of my physical self kept sabotaging this endeavor at every opportunity. In the end carnal self-exploration proved to be a much more worthwhile pursuit for the five minutes remaining. Beginning at the jutting protrusions that were my nose and ears I used my left hand to lightly trace an imaginary amble along the depression that was my neck and the twin mounds that were my pectorals, down to the more sensual and forested terrain yonder.

After several minutes had passed, I yanked the lip open and stood up, allowing the watery residue to sluice down my body. My eyes darted about, inspecting the man reflected in the full-length mirror beside the shower. An electric rapture pulsed through me like a powerful orgasm, manifesting on the physical level as a supernal iridescence of the skin. I could not help but feel jovial, inquisitive, and genuinely grateful for being alive. We must remember to honor and celebrate this sentiment in our mental and physical doings and invoke it often for the purpose of reconnecting with our cosmic source. The man in the mirror nodded his approval. Would Aphrodite have felt this spirited and rejuvenated after disembarking from the famed scallop shell that delivered her from the abyssal Pleroma to the shores of Cyprus in the space of a nanosecond? There is plenty of reason to believe so.

I showered, dressed, and stepped outside into the reception area; I was once again ready to face the world.