Joe Rogan on Sensory Deprivation Tanks
I had investigated floating a bit thanks to a blog post from Brad Feld and the fact that I have a little hippie streak in me. With an ever decreasing number of places where people can get a minute of absolutely silence (much less an hour), this sounded immensely appealing.
With a fairly stressful job and training life, I like the idea of being able to be almost completely void of external stimuli for an hour and float in six hundred pounds of epsom salt. In addition to keeping you afloat you're also absorbing magnesium through your skin the entire session via the epsom salt. Magnesium deficiency can be problematic for everyone, but more so for people who don't consume enough leafy greens (so EVERYONE) and/or athletes and active people. Magnesium is also incredibly helpful for getting to sleep; epsom salt baths before bed are very helpful for people with sleep problems and many pre-bed sleep supplements contain a massive dose of magnesium and zinc.
I went to Cloud Nine Float Center in Boulder for my initial float. The owner took great care to walk me through anything and everything about the tank, getting in, getting out, operating the controls, etc. Danny couldn't have been more helpful and gave great explanations and details. I must note, speaking as someone with some history of claustrophobia, that never once did I feel claustrophobic during the entire experience.
I have to think the experience is fairly personal, but I'll give you the gist of what I felt. I shut the lid, flipped off the light and let my head do whatever it wanted to do. I opened my eyes. I closed my eyes. I bumped into the sides of the tank floating around. I've talked to folks who have something specific to think about or work on while floating. I went the opposite direction. No agenda, no pressing thoughts; I just floated to float. I didn't have any psychedelic experiences or hallucinate, although I definitely saw some colors and things like that. Think of it as getting a baseline experience. Now I have a "control" experience that I can use for future reference.
After a little while I couldn't tell what parts of my body were under water and which parts were exposed. This is by design: the air and water inside the tank are at skin temperature so you start feeling like you're suspended in nothing rather than floating in water. You can also choose music/nature sounds or bring music on a phone/iPod for them to pipe into the tank while you're floating. I went the quiet route and this is something I want to continue for awhile.
The hour went by pretty quickly and some light music started playing when there were two minutes remaining in my session. I got out, showered off the salts, got dressed and walked out. Very few times before have I felt such a sense of calm and bliss. I stopped by for a small dinner with my mom, went home and had a excellent night of sleep. As I write this (two days later) I still have a tremendous sense of calmness. It felt a bit like a chore to get geared up for training on Saturday morning, although I still managed a new post-back injury PR clean.
I'm going to play around a bit with the timing on these floats. I want to try one on a Saturday night, when I have two full days before my next training session and a full Sunday free from external obligations. Much like zazen, this is definitely becoming a fixture in my life.
