I did my second float session yesterday. This time there was a guy working the front desk. He was talking to a couple who just wrapped up their first float. He was telling them that after all the Epsom salts soaked into their body, they’ll start to notice less muscle pain, and for the next three days they won’t get mad at things they normally get mad at. It’s that kind of talk that drives me nuts, as a scientist and a hater, and I desperately hoped the guy wasn’t going to talk to me at all. Thankfully, he only told me when my room was ready. I was PUMPED:
About these rooms, and the overall floating procedure, since a couple of people asked me about it. The room itself consists of a shower, a little staging area with towels, ear plugs, vaseline (for keeping salt out of any open wounds), a robe, a bench, and the floating pod. The pre-float procedure is to 1) go to the bathroom, 2) put in your earplugs, 3) take a shower, and then 4) get into the pod. The pod I float in (the cheapest pod, which is my style, I tell people it feels “more real”), has four buttons inside. One button closes/opens the pod, one button is a room-intensity light, one button is for tiny lights on the ceiling, and the third button is the emergency button. There’s also a floating pillow if you choose to use it (I got shoulder pain the first time and the floating pillow alleviated it), and a spray bottle in case you get salt water in your eyes. The water in the pod is less than a foot deep, I think, and it’s high salt concentration so it takes no effort to float. It’s also kept at 98.6 degrees, body temperature, and that’s important to know for this recap.
Last time I went into one of these I talked the whole time. It made the pod seem less dark. This time I decided to remain silent and see if my subconscious took me to any wild places. After about thirty minutes I started to notice that I simply didn’t feel my body. Like, I knew I had a body but it felt like it didn’t have any edges. This was probably a result of the water being body temperature and it’s hard to explain except to say I felt like goo. I actually wiggled my hips a bit and I couldn’t even tell if I was moving. I sent the message to my hips to move and I think I was moving but it didn’t feel like I was moving. If I moved my legs, however, it felt like something. After trying my moving exercises I went back to lying still and breathing.
At some point, I fell asleep. I woke up panicked because I thought I stopped breathing. The panic increased when I started to realize that I couldn’t tell if my eyes were opened or closed. In a way, I thought I was dying. I got control of my breath and relaxed again but, in my panic, I got salt water in my eyes and it started to sting. I knew what to do, I had to grab the water bottle that was on my right and spray my face. Except the bottle wasn’t there. So I reached for the starlight button and that wasn’t there, either.
I started to panic, again. I reached around in all directions and finally found the water bottle about 90 degrees from where it should have been. Turned out my little movement experiments did, indeed, result in my body shifting quite a bit. I got the water bottle off of the hook, sprayed the salt out of my face, and set myself to relax again for the last ten minutes of my float. My mind kept wondering if this is what it would be like to be buried alive and I decided that, no, there would be some key differences. There wouldn’t be a panic button, for one, or the option to turn on lights. There wouldn’t be air, either. I also wouldn’t be peacefully floating in body-temperature water, naked.
HAVING SAID THAT…maybe if I keep doing these sessions I’d be better prepared for if I ever get buried alive. At least better prepared than most folks.
I prepaid for three sessions, in total, so I got two more to go. Let’s see what happens next!