Sensory Deprivation Float

This is what I imagined the experience would be, but it turned out to be a lot less claustrophobic and peaceful.  Newport Float floats you in a tub in a closet so you have about 7' of space to bounce pinball toe-to-head in and if you panic, you can stand all the way up without bumping your head.

I came across float therapy reading Tools of Titans.   Ferriss lists something like surviving three 90-minute floats as prerequisite before dosing with psychotropics.  Zoinks.  I was more interested in this as a way to jump start a mindfulness/meditation habit.  The past week, I've been trying to get in 20 minutes of sitting quietly/day using the super basic secular instructions Leo outlines here (Ironically, Leo does 35 minutes of BS'ing about a "no bullshit" approach.  The core points are covered from 13:30 - 19:00, so watch that section and take 20 mins to apply it before deciding if you want to watch the video in its entirety).  Coming off the half ironman, I was also somewhat persuaded on soaking in epsom salt helping absorb magnesium and addressing muscle soreness and other helpful effects, even though there isn't scientific evidence to validate your body is doing any sort of absorption.  Anyhow, my 20 min meditation practice went OK for the first 5 days, then the wheels fell off the bus on the weekend where I was coughing, congested, and so full of self-pity I didn't even bother to build a "To-doodle" (a sort of coloring book inspired daily task list I'm prototyping and may blog about more in the future).  So I decided to reboot with a novel and more challenging mindfulness adventure on what would be day 8... Plus Newport Float was running a deal on $35 morning/late night floats and this was the first available opening.

It turned out to be pretty relaxing.  Not unlike the weightlessness of scuba diving where you can become hyper aware of your breathing, your heart beat, even your stomach growling.  I liked being forcibly locked away from the buzzes of my phone for a designated amount of time.  I liked that the FAQ suggested you could use the time to meditate, sleep, or think creatively.  Since my mind likes to chew on creating and reflecting on curiosity-inspired lists (i.e. 10 things in the world I believe are scarce and how might someone conclude the opposite, they're abundant).  I think I cribbed this anxiety-management habit from Scott Adams' book, but don't quote me on that.  The main point is that this "creative thinking" is antithetical to traditional meditation "note the thought, but don't get drawn up in its story, let it pass like a cloud" approach.

/Tangents about reflections I had in the tank...

So my first line of thinking was on this floating facility's business model and the feasibility of copying it.  I was impressed that Ron the proprietor immediately answered an email I sent about floating with a head cold late last night and wondered how much of his customer service he personally handles and how much he can outsource.  I didn't like the prospect of being chronically "on call."  I did like the prospect of minor customer interaction, set a timer, do my own thing for an hour and a half and right when I'd be at a good point to take a mental break, I wake the customers up and pocket $35-$60 each for their service of keeping me focused on whatever desk project I wanted to focus on.  Suppose in broad strokes, he profits an average of $35/2 hours (90 min sessions with 30 mins of pre-post showering) and he does 40 hours of that a week, over a year each tank might make him $35K in a year with 4 weeks of holiday.  He has 4 tanks, but I get that his cost structure ($50K for ozone cleaning system alone) probably means his margin is a bit tighter.  Right, satisfied that a diversified SteamStead in a gentrified area might benefit from having a deco chamber or two, I move on.

Another line of thinking was marveling at how much ego I had attached to making it the full 90 minutes on this, my first session, despite my head cold.  How I wanted some hypothetical audience to marvel that when benchmarked against other newbies, few of them make it for that long.  All sorts of strategies I had in order to hang in there for that long (counting breaths/heart beats to approximate minutes, evaluating  the pruneyness of my fingers), even if doing so turned out to be torture for hungry-full-bladdered-me whose needs I was ostensibly giving my unwavering attention to by doing this exercise.  It's weird how competitive we can get and the tension that can create.

The main theme my creative thinking kept circling back to ended up being on concluding that we reap what we sew.  I had started by asking myself what the nature of ADHD was, if it was increasing, how that might be adaptive in the grand scheme of evolutionary pressures we face.  I came out of the reverie concluding that if we are preferentially breeding plants/livestock to mature earlier, to be burlier (fat or muscle), to look prettier on the shelf, why are we surprised about the hormonal/obesity/vanity issues within our own species?  Why are we surprised about the disregard we have for our elders?  It is challenging to figure out how long a commercial hen's hypothetical natural life could be, let alone throw a birthday party for them when they get there, why would the arc of a human lifespan be that different.   If we look for cheap, commodities from afar it seems inconsistent to resent our employers from sourcing employees globally, warehousing them similarly, and swapping them out when they reach their planned obsolescence.

/End tangents

Leaving the facility and strolling to a coffee joint a couple blocks away (7 leaves-- they make a sweet delicately authentic mint thing they call Sereno which I liked more than my Kean Grasshopper go-to), things seemed a lot more bright vibrant.  Not dissimilar from that stayed up all night tired but relaxed feeling coming out of burning man adventures... which might have included psychotropics.  This was the point of view it seems like good photographers should have, to see the beauty everywhere that we miss when relentlessly caught up in trains of thought.  A guy in a wheelchair by the 7 eleven asked if I was "In Treatment," determined I was "A Normie," and warned me to "be careful in this neighborhood" and I got the jolting tutorial in what Fear felt like physically (one of my creative prompts was to better understand how basic emotions manifest physically to me in hopes of better acknowledging them rather than suppressing them and wondering why their influence pops up surprisingly in less constructive areas).  That this might not be the most gentrified of areas to loiter waiting for a ride or bike to if indisposed.

At any rate, going to a float facility is a little bit too much of a transportation hassle and cash drain for me to make a habit of, but I hope the "bootcamp" effects will persist in my own daily meditation practice and I might welcome some future visits as a less consumerist gift idea for myself or to share with others that are similarly open to the experience.