I wouldn’t describe myself as claustrophobic. But the idea of lying in a dark, soundproof tank filled with water and 450 kilograms of Epsom salt doesn’t particularly appeal.
Nonetheless, here I am in the back of a shopping mall, alone with a glowing egg that looks like it might digest my naked human form and return me to the primordial soup. (And no, that’s not me in the picture above.)
This is a floating tank. And I am about to spend 45 minutes lying inside it. The folks at AWA Health claim that doing so can reduce the following: stress, cortisol levels, blood pressure and the occurrence of migraines and insomnia.
Make what you want of such lofty claims. The purported benefits of sensory deprivation are poorly evidenced and have little support from scientists. But given that AWA also says that its floating tanks benefit from “zero-gravity” (as opposed to, um, the laws of buoyancy), they’re probably not looking to win over the scientific community.
Anyway, it’s trendy now. Athletes, celebrities and other advocates of new-age living have embraced the healing power of incredibly salty baths. If you Google ‘floating therapy’ you’ll find the LA Times article ‘7 Reasons Why You're About to Fall in Love With Floating.’ California? Health trend? Numbered listicle? You had me at “take off your clothes and lie silently in a dark womb-pod.”
This has all undergone a makeover since the 1950s, when such tanks were used in psychological testing. ‘Sensory deprivation’ is now called ‘floating therapy.’ And ‘isolation tanks’ have become ‘floating tanks.’ Much more appealing.
Fittingly, my private room is lowly-lit and filled with the soothing sound of wind-chimes. The egg sits in the middle, pulsating in warm tones of red and purple. I lower myself into its lukewarm waters, pull the lid shut and, once comfortable, hit the lights.
Some people sleep, I’m told. Some meditate or enter a trance-like state. Others just enjoy the feeling of weightlessness. But I’m more of a can-only-sleep-in-a-bed kind of guy, a finds-meditation-boring kind of guy. In other words, I am the opposite of mindful (so, mindless?).
A recent study into journalists’ mental resilience found that we score badly on a behavior described as “silencing the mind.” Broadly, this means that we’re easily distracted by our thoughts – we worry about the future, we regret the past.
Just lie back and relax, I tell myself. Pretend you’re in space, I tell myself. A chance to escape the rigors of producing a magazine, I tell myself.
The AWA staff recommended that I count backwards from 100. I give it a shot, but by the low 80s my inner voice is crying for attention. Why is my Chinese still so bad? Why am I still hungry? What if I’ve led a morally ambiguous existence, and this is my eternal purgatory, forever floating between heaven and hell while trying to avoid getting salt in my eyes? Can you drown in the Dead Sea?
It is a trance of some description. A cacophonous trance of distracting thoughts and existential dread.
But what’s this? My inner narrator has actually talked itself to sleep, and the 45 minutes are over much sooner than I’d expected. Now I just have to work out whether that’s a good thing or not.
See a listing for AWA Health
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