Had I become one of them? I wondered. All of us (and me too), toting our noise with us wherever we went, staring at little blue screens, slaves to technology. When exactly did “sharing” become less of a selfless act, and more of a narcissistic one? “Watch me do something that you are not doing”. If you are not photographing, “sharing” it, and getting 20 “likes”, did it really happen? This was extreme disconnection from the present moment, and Ekhart Tolle was nowhere in sight.

I’ve known about “sensory deprivation tanks” for at least the last fifteen years, or so I thought. Even though I had heard about many of the touted benefits (deep meditation, accelerated healing and drug-free magical mystery tours), I still secretly wondered, why would I (or anyone else for that matter) want to go and bob naked for 60 minutes or more in a pitch-dark, womb-like pod filled Epsom salt-saturated, warmish water? It sounded just a little alarming.

OUR FIRST FLOAT EXPERIENCES:

Did I mention that I was claustrophobic? I do not like small elevators. Standing in my closet finding clothes makes me anxious, and the first time I heard about the float tank, I said to myself, “Ha! Not EVER gong to do that.” Tight rope walking across the Grand Canyon seemed like it would be a more likely scenario than me getting inside a salt-water filled, completely sound and light-proof, travel case for sensitive marine life samples.

However, I remained cautiously curious. My yogic experiments have at least taught me what it feels like to finally let go of one’s tangled thoughts, if even for a moment. During those rare, fleeting flashes of clarity, bliss, and quantum leaps of understanding, I have always made a pact with myself to find ways to get even more unknotted. I know enough to at least know what seasoned meditators are after; if one can enter a condition of waking dreamlike stillness, it has the power to transform your life and help you go beyond the limited notion of self. It is an extremely liberating state. So, when I found that a float center had opened nearby, I did the courageous thing and booked an appointment for my husband.

Every noise seemed bizarrely loud; my heart thumped like a shaman’s drum, my breathing sounded like Darth Vader, and the music was almost painful as I could hear every note and beat with incredible clarity. Deprived of outer sensory play, my mind raced to “think” about things…anything. Am I hearing a clarinet? Did both my grandmothers have blue eyes? I saw every detail of a red Flexible Flyer sled I had when I was ten. Random images from childhood flashed across my brain with no apparent connective tissue. My neck and shoulders felt very strange and somewhat out-of-joint. I interlaced my hands behind my head as the helpful person at the front desk had advised us. Eventually, the odd sensations and racing thoughts subsided. Layer after layer of high alert tension peeled away like skins off an onion. The space around me suddenly expanded out as if for thousands of miles. Far from claustrophobic, I felt a tremendous sense of freedom, like flying. Even in the blackness I was sure  that I could see shining stars. Euphoria.

DIMENSIONAL TRAVEL:

I was completely stunned by this vivid vision, similar to a lucid dream, but I was not asleep! The sights and sounds were occurring with absolutely NO plant or chemical enhancement. I wanted to follow the thread of this enchanting and beautiful waking dream. I wished to go to shore and look around, but as soon as I tried to cling to it, stay on that plane of existence and deliberately explore, it vanished.

YOUTH IS A RELAXED BRAIN

I can only surmise that the cross-current of external events and mind-chatter takes us further and further from our authentic responses. Our surface, ego-mind begins to take over, making so-called “rational” decisions. Gradually, over the course of our adult lives, our choices get increasingly made based on information from external noise, and not from internal wisdom. When you completely quiet all that babble, even for short spans, you are able to listen to the sound of your own truth. Youth itself might be defined as the state in which your natural mind has not yet been polluted by outside influence. This is not in any way meant to dismiss education, learning and experience: rather to understand the stress placed upon us by faulty assimilation of competing data over a lifetime. Unable to hear our own genuine wisdom, we eventually loose contact with the sureness and courage of our youth. If there are no periods of complete silence, the body/mind will never fully digest the huge meals of information being sent its way. This is more true than ever in the ‘information age’. Consequently, many people suffer from prolonged intellectual and psychological “indigestion”.

No matter what you think you think, the real voice coming out of pure quiet from your core, always knows what is best for you. There are other ways to achieve this state of mind. Sitting meditation, hatha yoga, chanting, drugs and near death experiences, are some of the methods people have employed to profoundly quiet their minds. I tried all the above, except, thankfully, the last and have found that floating is the most effective method to get “there”, with the least amount of downside.

I am still plugged in to my many devices and communication systems. I admit it, I am an information junkie and I love gadgets. These days, as often as possible, I get into a float tank, immersing myself in silence for up to three hours at a time, and I emerge reborn. It is the greatest balancer for this noisy age that I’ve found short of flying to India and trekking to an ashram in the Himalayas.

Since that first hypnogoic vision, I have not experienced dimensional travel, although I fervently hope it happens again. Sometimes the real tank time seems monumentally uneventful. What always happens afterwards, no matter what, is at least a week or more of greatly enhanced clarity, general well-being and good decision-making. No other practice I have ever engaged in (and there have been a plethora of them) has ever given me such consistent and clear results. My advice? Get thee to a float tank!

“We had a Zen master who visited my lab once, and he asked to go in the tank for an hour. Most of his life he had meditated every day for four or five hours or more. And he thought the depth of meditation he reached in the tank was on par with a level he reached maybe once a year in his normal meditation environment—which was not exactly the middle of Times Square. He was amazed.” – Peter Suedfeld PHD

Three Part Series: THE LILLY PATH TO FREEDOM

Part 1 ~ EXPERIENCE

Part 2 ~ JOHN LILLY & THE HISTORY OF FLOATING

Part 3 ~ BENEFITS & TYPES OF FLOAT TANKS

Places To Float:

Highly Recommended:
Float Lab   (310) 208-0000

https://floatlab.com

Floatation.Com lists many places to float worldwide:

http://www.floatation.com/wheretofloat.html