That quote comes from Australian senator Richard Jones. I’ve never met the senator and I’ve never been to Heaven, but I have to agree with his statement.
After 100s of personal float sessions and after surveying 100s of people after their float session, I think the floatation tank is one of the most underestimated tools available for combatting stress, fatigue and many types of pain, as well as facilitating deep relaxation. Also, thanks to the burst of endorphins your brain releases when you’re floating weightless, it feels wonderful in a way that can’t be explained. This isn’t wonderful like how a massage is wonderful, or a foot rub. Floating is in a category all its own.
If you’ve ever seen a floatation tank, especially the ones that come out of the US, you’ll probably agree that it isn’t glamorous. Having previously been the co-owner of a floatation center, I was able to get hundreds of people’s first impressions of the tank. Several people tried to pre-judge the value of floating based on the outward appearance of the float tank. This is as futile an exercise as judging the effectiveness of a medication (or for that matter, a doctor) by its outward appearance. A float tank is kind of like a spaceship. It doesn’t matter what it looks like, what matters is where it takes you.
Now I don’t want to encourage any misconceptions with my spaceship comparison. If you saw the hilarious Simpsons episode when Homer and Lisa had an adventure while floating in a sensory deprivation tank, you may think that only New Agey types are into floating. Nothing could be further from the truth. During my short stint with the floatation center, I saw about 800 people come through, mostly suburbanites with stressful jobs and chronic pain. You can read a small sample of their comments on the float tank experience here.
My goal here is to help turn people on to something they may have heard about, but had no idea how beneficial it was for common problems. In the spring of 2001, I was nearly paralyzed with sciatic pain due to a pinched nerve in my lower back. This was a situation that had been getting progressively worse for 6 years. Pain meds weren’t working and I really wanted to avoid getting a cortisone injection or undergoing back surgery. I went to a chiropractor who put me in more pain and told me to come back in two days. Needless to say, I never went back.
Then I remembered an old ad I’d read in the newspaper about a floatation center in Chicago and decided to give it a try. I came in walking like a frozen zombie, with every movement causing so much pain as to take my breath away. Within 45 minutes in the float tank, I was pain-free.
If you’ve ever experienced severe pain, especially for an extended period of time, then you can relate to the gratitude I felt toward this thing that had given me my life back. I hadn’t slept in almost a week because of the pain. I had used up my sick days at work and was eating up vacation days while bedridden, barely able to feed myself. I had to float several more hours in order to be pain-free outside of the float tank, but the healing process was exponentially faster than the bed rest I’d been doing the previous week. Six years of progressively worsening sciatic pain had been interrupted. Now I just float every few months for maintenance, but I float more often for relaxation.
Knowing that there are tons of people out there dealing with stress, fatigue and pain compels me to do my part in getting the word out about this odd-looking contraption that has greatly improved my quality of life.
Categories: Floatation Tank
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