Floating
About two weeks ago, I spent 90 minutes in a sensory deprivation chamber. The chamber itself is something like a large bathtub, filled with skin-temperature water so highly salinated that you float on top of it effortlessly. You avoid getting water in your ears by putting in earplugs, which have the eerie side-effect of shutting out practically all sound except for your own heartbeat and breathing.
I signed up for the float session on a whim, but I can't say what I thought I'd get out of it. Relaxation? A boost in creativity? Attaining enlightenment? I flirted briefly with all of these. The float center's website boasts about a wide range of ailments from which that floating provides relief, from depression and anxiety to gastric ulcers and irritable bowel syndrome.
Anxiety relief. Beneath the faint hope of some kind of spiritual awakening or deep concentration state, I suppose that my secret desire was to ease my omnipresent anxiety. Those of you with anxious dispositions know what a respite it is to feel like a normal person for even the briefest amount of time. (Morrissey sang it well: "I could have been wild and I could have been free/But nature played this trick on me.") You'll know well those vague fears that force you to flee the body and live in your mind, observing your surroundings from behind a veil of clinical detachment, alienating you from everything Other. What is life actually like without that?
Of course, I wasn't conscious of any of this when I got into the chamber beyond a mild intention to meditate for the duration and see what happens. Without all of the typical distractions I might face while meditating in my apartment—water going through the pipes, those annoying geese in the river, the downstairs couple's short but furious fuck sessions—I might be able to approach something like the deep jhanic states that yogis spend months cultivating in exotic forest temples. Maybe that's too much to expect from an hour and a half in a miniature pool, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't hoping for even the tiniest breath of salvation.
Once in the tank, however, I quickly abandoned my plans. The thickly-humid air made it somewhat difficult to breathe normally, so following my breath the way I would on my cushion at home felt tedious. More importantly, meditating seemed so... boring. (Non-meditators will nod in agreement here; regular meditators, please don't shun me too hard for this blasphemy.)
Floating around in a silent, pitch-black water tank, it turns out, is damn fun! This shouldn't have surprised me. People go swimming all the time, and since I haven't done so in quite a long time, why wouldn't I be amused by it? The sensory deprivation also heightens your senses and makes you aware of more subtle sensations. Gently pushing myself from one end of the tank to the other, for example, created a pleasant cooling effect across the whole backside of my body like a cool breeze on a summer day (the temperature in the tank is maintained at around 93 degrees). The enigmatic sensation of tiny, unseen waves lapping against my face—generated by my hands, which were resting palm-up above my head—enraptured me far more than I would have believed.
What I really discovered in the float tank—or rather, rediscovered—was the joy of the body, the exploratory instinct of the child who wonders at the bending of his limbs and the gyrations of his torso. I flailed my arms and legs in every direction that I could. I contorted my body into arcane configurations just to see how it would feel. I experimented with pushing off each wall of the tank with varying degrees of effort, seeing how long it would take me to drift to the other side, and finally ceased responding entirely, just letting myself bump around however the waves carried me. Sometimes I would bump so lightly into the edge of the tank that I couldn't tell when my body left contact with it, or I'd feel as though I were spinning wildly about only to realize that I was actually completely still. I played with every boundary and motion available to me. Far from meditating, play felt like the only natural response to this situation. I feel like I'm six years old again, I heard myself saying out loud.
Having no concept of time, I simply played and played until a small white light appeared above my face letting me know that my allotted time was up. The light was jarring enough to snap me out of this regressive state instantly, like an irritating alarm clock stealing you out of a dream. I immediately got out of the tank, washed off the salt water, and went back to reality.
Walking out of the float center and into the drab, empty parking lot of the industrial park where the center is located, I wasn't sure what to make of the experience at first. Well, that happened, my mind shrugged. Was I supposed to feel any different? As I started to drive home, however, that strange thought returned to me. I really did feel six years old again—still.
What a strange feeling! Having just completely relaxed my entire body, I noticed how remarkably limber I felt, how at home I was in my own body. That ease of being soon gave way to unrestrained giddiness. I grinned and giggled madly as I wove through the light evening traffic of the freeway. Tempted to call a friend and gush about the experience, I thought better of it, worried both that they would think me insane and that I would run myself off the road. Remember, I was a six year old driving a car.
The initial punchiness I felt wore off in about an hour, but I carried a deep sense of peace with me into the next day. That baseline anxiety I mentioned earlier, the one that always operates at a low hum in the background of my life like a hotel soda machine, was almost completely gone. Even in the midst of some emotionally-charged moments at work, I retained my unflappable, Zen-like demeanor. For once, I could move through the world with the veil lifted, fully inhabiting my own body.
In the days to follow, the afterglow slowly waned as the familiar inhibitions crept back in. I doubted myself and overthought my every move. Pettiness and bitterness, though never overly pervasive in my day-to-day life, made guest appearances. And of course, I became disappointed in my descent back to normalcy, though I knew logically that it had to happen. Once again, I had to make a continuous effort to keep myself together.
Then, a few days later, something happened. I had a real downer of a day, never quite feeling myself. I was angry and held fast to that anger, which felt righteous at the time, but nonetheless I talked myself through the situation and convinced myself to let go of it. And when I finally let go, I smiled. I let out the same childlike laughter, through the same cheesily-grinning mouth, that I had experienced right after my float. And I found in that moment a recapitulation of that carefree peacefulness. I knew that I had kept a piece of that clarity within me, and I knew how I could access it again.
