Should You Float? - 5 take homes from my first float tank experience
I’ve wanted to try it for years. I knew that it would be an experience. There is a challenge element to it, something different, a new environment, how would I react?
After a couple of weeks of doing ice-baths and a long time since I had a hot bath the warm water of the flotation tank was a nice start. I was given the option to leave the door open or close the shutter for almost complete darkness. Looking for the biggest experience I pulled the shutter down and started to decompress.
A few friends who tried it said they didn’t really like it, they just bounced from side to side and couldn’t relax. My first sensation was just to find my balance in very dense water. How much could I let go? How deep would I sink. Slowly I let my head go back with ear plugs in for noise reduction and I was comfortable.
I took what seemed like about 10 minutes just to be. I was comfortable but daily thoughts were rolling around and I didn’t feel like I was as deep as a I could be. I started to use the Wim Hof breathing technique. The air was hot, sticky and dense with magnesium. Still I did a few rounds. Dealing with a bit more panic feeling in the warmth and maybe less oxygen rich environment than I was used to. After a few cycles I was in the zone.
The next 70 minutes or so seemed to go quite quickly, in a state something like sleep although I don’t think I ever slept. Somehow I kept holding my breath or stoping breathing each time I was about to go into delta sleep brain waves. I was just above that state, and felt amazing.
Just before the end I felt like I was back to more normal consciousness but assumed I had another 45 minutes or so left. I’d completely lost touch with time. I started another breathing cycle but was interrupted by a tap on the tank. I finished the cycle and then fought my way back to balance and climbing out of the tank. This is when I realised I had been in a completely different world!
The effort it took to get my muscles working to get out of the tank was about like doing a double body weight deadlift. My system had shut-down completely. I felt amazing, disoriented but great.
I took a shower, wandered out to pay and still for hours after my perception of the world and my body was very different. Relaxed and other worldly. Lovely.
Conclusions:
In the go go world of the 21st century float tanks should be a lot more common than they are.
Incorporating breathing work into the experience could be a way to avoid feeling locked in a box.
90 minutes was just enough, more would have been better. I’m glad I didn’t go for 60 minutes.
I will have one of these at home and in a facility in the near future.
If you own a facility / run a sports team or have a good wad of $$ on your side this is a good path forwards. (The investment is $10-25k depending on brand etc. from my research.)