So this is part two of the great float tank experiment.
The other video that I made, I made just after I had been weight training and I was getting ready to head off down to the float tank center and try my first float tank.
And I wasn’t sure what to expect, I was pretty excited. I spent a long time feeling a bit frightened, but when I got there I was really keen to get into the pod.
So I parked the car just as a huge storm broke out and I was a little lost. I think I was so anxious I couldn’t find the place, and I eventually found it, but I was running a bit late.
I went in and got given the details of how to do what I was doing and what to do.
And the lady left me and I had a shower, and I climbed into the tank, and I put my ear plugs in, and I used neck pillow because I thought that because I’ve had a lot of neck issues I tend to carry all of my stress in my neck and my shoulders.
So started with that thinking that, that was going to be assistive, but it actually put my neck at a pretty weird angle to the rest of my body when I was floating.
THE FIRST FIVE MINUTES
So for the first five minutes there was music playing, and there was still a bit of light, there was this blue light, and I was becoming accustomed to the sensation, and my mind was agitated, it was a little bit kind of, “Oh, is this all there is,” because I hadn’t yet adapted to what was happening around me.
But I just focused on my breathing and I had another little anxiety spike where I was thinking because she’d asked me whether I wanted the music the whole way through or whether I wanted it for the first 10 minutes, and then the last five minutes.
And I said the first 10 and the last five. So I got to the point where the music was still going and I was thinking,
“Well, what’s happened, has she decided to give me the other program and I’m going to have the music the whole way through,” because I don’t want that.
I could feel myself starting to get wound up at exactly the same time that the music disappeared, and then all of a sudden I was there in the dark with no sound.
Sound of my breath and the sound of my heart beating, and I was totally weightless, I couldn’t tell where the water ended and the air began and it was a really amazing sensation.
I’ve never felt like that before having all of that.
PARTS OF MY BODY
I could feel the parts of my body that was holding pain, and they weren’t painful, but there was definitely a sensation I could feel which parts of me carry that imprint of pain in them.
So I can’t really measure it in terms of how long it took.
I would say that my mind was a bit all over the shop for a while, and then it started calming down and all of these memories of situations and circumstances that I was remembering for the first time started coming up and just disappearing.
I felt like I was asleep and I was dreaming, but I wasn’t actually asleep, it was quiet not like anything else I’ve ever felt before.
And by the time it finished, I was just so completely relaxed. And I don’t know if you can see it on my face or the way I’m communicating, but it’s ongoing.
I came home, I went and picked my daughter up and I felt very kind of like I was still floating like I was on another planet.
The traffic was a little scary, but I got us home and then I got hit with this very deep tiredness and I lay down and closed my eyes. Again, I don’t think I slept I was just in that relaxed space.
And then we had dinner and got everything ready and I was feeling tired, I’d been reading and I was ready to go to sleep.
And I went to go to sleep and I was still so relaxed. I wasn’t like able to fall asleep from exhaustion, I don’t remember falling asleep.
I obviously did and I had an incredibly deep sleep, I don’t remember dreaming at all last night, but I still today I’m feeling this level of calm and peacefulness in my body that I don’t really remember ever having experienced before.
Maybe with the use of certain drugs, but even then not, because I was still, my monkey mind was still kind of acting out.
So I would recommend a float, especially if you are still experiencing a lot of trauma spikes, because it automatically starts your parasympathetic system up and going, which alleviates all of that, flight, fight, freeze, phone that’s going on.
BACK TO BASELINE
It minimizes all of those symptoms and re-aligns you from a really, really calm baseline.
Now this feels like a really inept wrap up. It’s hard to find the words to describe the sensation that I’m experiencing right now, it’s really unusual.
I didn’t realize that so much of the energy that I function on every day is nervous energy, it’s anxiety, and going into a space where all of that sensory disruption, that sensory triggering is not available to you and falling into this space of it being so dark with your eyes open or closed so incredibly dark, you just feel like a space man, like you just floating out in space.
And I kept imagining myself as this baby pre-birth, just kind of flipping around in the womb, just there floating with all of this endless possibility and hope, like with all of the knowledge of how complicated life is, but this idea of being born without that anxiety.
I don’t know if that makes sense or not, but I would say that that’s definitely a sensation that I’m experiencing today as if I’d been reborn.
Like I feel like a different person after that float than the person before the float.
So that’s it for me.
I would say if you are suffering a lot of sadness and a lot of anxiety, you’re grieving the pain of abandonment and of loss, try a sensory deprivation tank, try a float tank.
Your aloneness in that space is instead of feeling like something painful is actually profoundly affirming, it’s a big reminder of your state of oneness and state of separation at the same time.
So that’s it from me, thanks for your time and attention and I look forward to speaking with you soon.
Bye.
