photo by Engin Akyurt
I heard a woman’s voice in my head, “Shelly are you going?” Then suddenly it vanished. I don’t know if I had my eyes open or closed. My heart fluttered, and I could hear and feel the drumming of my heartbeat throughout my entire body. I thought to myself, “that was strange.” My name is not Shelly. Who was that woman’s voice I heard? I let the thought go. The deep drone sound repeated “gush, gush…” I could almost see the red blood entering the chambers of my heart, the valves opening and closing, allowing the blood to flow. The sound gradually went away, and I realized I was alone in absolute darkness, like a night sky in the desert without stars. The blackness felt deep. Then a state of total silence permeated into focus. I stayed in this void of stillness just present in the moment. It felt like minutes. I was later told later I was inside for over an hour. I was floating in total darkness unable to hear the outside world. I had my palms facing up, and I felt a tingling sensation start to arise. Then suddenly, I heard a voice. Something amazing was about to happen.
The feeling of floating in water in complete darkness seems familiar, perhaps it’s because we all did it for 9 months “in utero,” the Latin word for “in the uterus.” We all floated around in our mother’s womb, in a tissue like sack filled with amniotic fluid. This amazing fluid protected and nourished us in utero, for the sometimes bumpy rides during our mother’s daily life. The feeling of floating in an isolation tank recalls this former embryonic dwelling. I can’t remember the experience of being in my mother’s womb, but I can imagine it. Recent discoveries are shedding new light, quite literally of our understanding of the sensory experience in our development in utero and the effects of sensory deprivation in adults.
Float pod – photo courtesy of Float Pod Therapies
An isolation tank is also referred to as a floatation tank, sensory depravation tank and most currently float pod. The reason people go to a float spa varies from relaxation, alternative medicine therapy, meditation, mind exploration, problem solving, super learning and gaining creativity. Invited in 1954 by an American physician John C. Lilly, the isolation tank is gaining back popularity in the United States after a proliferation in metropolitan cities like San Francisco, New York, London and other cities across Europe. Why is this happening? What is our need for sensory depravation? How can it help us and what does the future hold? I needed to experience an isolation tank first hand to find out.
As lay facing upward in shavasana, a yoga pose meaning in Sanskrit “corpse pose”, in the isolation tank I felt a tingling feeling emerge and intensify on my palms and feet. I then heard a familiar male voice come from within, “Okay I am ready, I want to see more. I want to help.” In a blink of an eye, déjà vu! I recalled my dream from the night before. I had woken myself up in the morning repeating, like a mantra, the phrase “I want to help, I want to help,” with my entire body tingling with energy. I woke up from the dream the night before with my body and palms facing up. I found it strange because I typically sleep facing sideways. After my experience in the tank, my gut feeling as to why I was repeating this mantra was revealed. I will explain the meaning and the unfolding of my new adventure.
The original float tank deigned by Dr. Lilly was a simple box-like enclosure with a door. In order for the mind to be deprived of all stimuli for his experiments, a head-mask with a breathing tube was worn. A tight neoprene wet suit was also worn for the prolonged experiments, which lasted hours. The outfitted actor William Hurt can be seen in the Sci-Fi movie Altered States, based on some bits of truth, and tells the story of Dr. Lilly’s extreme experiments gone bad involving indigenous psychedelics. Today, a lot has changed; isolation tanks are primarily used for relaxation at wellness centers and spas. The treatments are typically one hour long. The use of Epsom salts is used to enable floating, and clothing is even optional. I found the experience more natural in the nude, and sensory deprivation, or sometimes referred to as floatation REST (Restricted Environmental Stimulation), was not scary, but instead exhilarating. However, feelings of fear, anxiety and panic can occur in sensory deprivation. I found that when you keep your eyes open and float in a lightless, soundproof enclosure with salt water at skin temperature, you first lose sensation of your body and secondly your mind will drift into thoughts or you will fall asleep if you’re tired. The experience is akin to meditation, and as a practitioner, I just let my thoughts flow by like clouds and stay present in the moment. The sound of your heartbeat can be a biofeedback of your current state of calmness or nervousness, like your breath in meditation. However, instead of opening up your eyes after having them closed and seeing your surroundings after mediating on a cushion, there is complete darkness in a isolation tank. There can be a feeling of displacement in total darkness, and you could be left wondering if you have your eyes open or closed, which can lead to fear. A great quote to remember from Douglas Adams’s, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, “don’t panic.” The exit door to the float pod is nearby although it may seem distant after awakening into darkness, and there are usually buttons nearby to turn on a light or call for assistance.
The tingling in my hands turned into a constant vibration throughout my body that was gaining momentum. Something was happening to my body, or did I even have a body? All I felt was vibrating energy. I could feel the space around me expanding, and a column of white light surrounded me as I ascended up. I was traveling through space at an undefined speed through a tunnel. A strobe of white light surrounded my being as I traveled through space. Then I heard something, a strange and unfamiliar sound. I could not make it out. Boom! Boom! Boom! It shook my being. What is it? I said to myself. All of sudden I was in total darkness and stillness. Then I notice something beautiful, a ring of blue heavenly light above me in the black vastness, a portal? Boom! Boom! Boom! The sound repeated.
I had watched a video the night before that expressed that it’s often rare for float practitioners to experience on their initial float an altered state of perception or hallucinations. I have lucid dreams and out-of-body experiences (OBE), could the experience I had be one of these bizarre states of consciousness? During the last twenty minutes or so of a floatation tank session, there is a transition from the alert beta or alpha brainwave to a theta state, which typically occurs before sleep and again at waking. The theta state in an isolation tank can last a long time without loosing consciousness or going to deep sleep (delta state). The prolonged states of theta can bring a sense of heighted awareness, feeling of expansiveness beyond the body and dream like imagery. Theta is the threshold to your subconscious and through this hypnagogia or experience of the transitional state of wakefulness and sleep, it can explain the unmapped terrain that includes lucid dreaming, hallucinations and OBE’s. Could the theta state explain extrasensory perception, like precognition?
Going back to my déjà vu that I had in the isolation tank. The tingling and vibration intensified thought out my entire body and the voice inside me said “I want to help, I want to help,” then Flash! I was transported to the past by a memory. I had dreamt this experience the night before floating in the tank. However, this time I was ascending up a magical column of light and about to arrive at a portal, for a new dimension. What is the reason for the synchronicity of these two events? What is the message behind this déjà vu ?
Boom! Boom! Boom! “Hello?!” I say as I look at the awesome blue portal of light surrounded by darkness. I’m ready to enter into the portal. “Your time is up,” it was a woman’s voice. “Excuse me?” I say, out load. My voice has become amplified. Is she talking to me? Where am I? What time is up? The word “time” doesn’t even register in my mind. I suddenly rise upward and feel my body as the water touches my skin. I feel like I’ve just been born. I move toward the portal of light and my hands left upward as I push onto a surface, the hydraulic hatch lifts up! Blue light was spilling inside from the room outside. Wow! I said to myself, where was I? I was in a float pod. That was amazing. The experience was transformative and reaffirming. “Yes, I want to help.” As a designer I want to help people by creating environments like the isolation tank that aid in relaxation and healing. The benefits of an isolation tank have been empirically researched for over forty years. However, most people have not tried this form of relaxation because of the fear associated with sensory deprivation, lack of knowledge or accessibility. Recent research indicates relaxing in a weightless state in the silent warmth of a floatation tank activates the body’s own system of healing, and aides long term conditions such as anxiety, stress, depression and fibromyalgia. The interesting fact about the research was that positive effects were still evident four months after floating treatment.
My research with the isolation tank and sensory deprivation will continue. As I leave the float spa center from my session, I happen to recognize the owner sitting down, a young professional in his mid 30’s wearing khakis and a blue short sleeve dress shirt. He looked like he just got back from a business trip in Hawaii. I had seen him on a video promotion the night before. I open the door to leave but something inside made me turn around and I said, “Excuse me are you the owner?” He replies “Yes.” I sit down on the sofa across from him, and we chat for hours, until the sun goes down. We embark on a new adventure, and we say to each other “Let’s design the next generation of float pods”. We laugh later as we discover we have the same birthday. Maybe it’s all meant to be.
