Flotation
I floated in the REST Lab sensory deprivation tank yesterday. It was a truly amazing experience and I consider myself to be very lucky to have been able to take part. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the tank (or who haven’t seen Altered States), a sensory deprivation tank is a 7 foot by 4 foot enclosed capsule that is full of water that has been saturated with epsom salt. Basically, you float on top of the water in total darkness, while the environment is kept at a very humid 98 degrees. Due to the fact that your ears usually sink below the water, all you can hear is your heart beating. The womb-like nature of the tank is very relaxing; however, what’s more exciting are the radically altered perceptions of space and the visual hallucinations.
Most of the time in the tank, I was just relaxing and enjoying the total quiet and comfort of being quasi-weightless (I’ve since read that drinking coffee before a tank float can mess up your ability to have more far-out experiences, so I’ll try that next time). I didn’t really start to relax until the end of the float, and that’s when things got really cool. Due to it being completely dark, you lose track of your surroundings but in really unusual ways. Despite “knowing” that I was in a 7 by 4 chamber, the tank felt at least three to four times that size (sometimes, it felt rather infinite). At one point, I decided to test this, so I put my feet on one wall of the tank and my hands on the opposite. Rather than reaching the conclusion that “ah ha! the tank is shorter than my body,” I started to experience my body elongating and stretching (in a pleasantly weird way) to meet what my brain was telling me must have been the dimensions of the tank.
