Sight. Sound. Smell. Touch. Taste. The 5 senses. Once you block them out, what's left? That is the quest, the end goal is to answer that question. In a sensory deprivation tank filled with 1200 lbs of Epsom salt I attempted to answer this question for myself as others have done before me. I climbed in the tank, minimally clothed (touch). I shut the door and pressed the knob - lights out (sight). As soon as I laid back on the water I was floating do to the buoyancy effects of the salt. The air temperature was the same temperature as the water, it was hard to tell the difference once I got comfortable. There was no sound with my earplugs in, no taste in my mouth, and no smell in the air. I was blocked. What happened over the next 90 minutes was a real treat. An induced meditation. A relaxation unlike any I'd experienced before.
From my best recollection I went through 3 phases while in the tank. Although I can't recall the time allocation to each phase I can recall my thoughts and feelings during what seemed to me to be distinctly individual experiences with undefined transitions.
Phase 1 - Adjustment
As I compared accounts with my two roommates who also floated this past weekend with me, we all agreed this was an initial phase. How long is lasted is another story but the recollections about specific feelings are too similar to ignore. When you first lay down, close your eyes, and begin floating on the water, two things begin to occur.
The first one is that you quickly become unaware of your physical position in the water. Because you can't see, hear, smell, touch, or taste anything, your brain's kinesthetic sense begins to fail. You feel like you're continuously spinning and floating through the water, even though your body is making very marginal movements left and right in a tank that's barely big enough for your body alone.
Once you've made the necessary mental adjustments needed to come to terms with your lack of control of this feeling, you actually begin to relax. I can recall laying my head further back, relaxing my arms more and really sinking into the water. Then the second phenomenon begins to occur. You gain a hyper awareness to your breathing. It feels like every breath, in fact, every heart beat, is affecting your position in the water. You get the sensation that with each breath, you physically rise and fall in the water. Even though you're probably rising and falling less than an inch, your brain amplifies this awareness because of the lack of outside stimuli. It may sound freaky and possibly unenjoyable up to this point but it's quite the opposite.
A third and final recollection comes to mind in this phase before I remember being in phase two. What I call the "random meditation" effect. You would be thinking, thinking, thinking, and then all the sudden become aware of the fact that you weren't thinking anything. It's extraordinarily hard to describe but if you've ever meditated, I'd image it's the feeling or rather realization you can obtain from achieving a thought-less state. It was strange but I picked up on it after a few times of it happening. Random moments in time where I'd realize I was thinking nothing, despite recalling my previous thoughts until that indistinguishable moment.
Phase 2 - Lucid Dreaming
Next up, I fell asleep. Or at least a sleep-like state where I was aware of the fact that I had fallen asleep because I was randomly twitching and making bodily movements in the water representative of whatever I was dreaming about. Similar to when you fall asleep in a car and are having vivid dreams, only to be awoken by a stiff leg kick to the seat in front of you, provoking a howling laugh by the other members in the car who'd noticed you dosed off 25 minutes prior. I was in the tank, lucid dreaming. I can't recall the specificity of my dreams but I can recall the thoughts I had about the realization that I was in fact asleep and dreaming. There is nothing much more to report from this phase other than the fact that I was entirely calm, relaxed, and unaware of how much time was passing.
Phase 3 - Subconscious
The final phase, the one that is most representative of what is supposed to happen inside a sensory deprivation tank. Although I didn't realize it until a little while into this phase, I was taking part in what the tank is meant to induce -- whatever is in your subconscious, comes to the surface. It can manifest itself in various ways. For some people, they report minor hallucinations. For others it's a stream of thoughts. For some it's just a sensation that takes them introspectively into that subconscious zone. For me, it was sensations combined with a sort of day dreaming.
I definitely wasn't asleep anymore, but I'd lost most of the notion that I was inside the tank. It was the most full-bodied day dream that I've ever been aware of. And it was entirely about a specific concept, a specific thought that had been consuming me subconsciously in the past few weeks. It manifested itself in this final phase in a very vivid way, allowing me to explore the thought that I'd been consumed with, in the form of a quasi-interactive daydream whereby I was more so observing my conscious brain funnel the subconscious thoughts into a reality I could witness. Basically, I'd been giving a lot of thought to something that had been on my mind lately and had sort of repressed it to my subconscious. Well in this phase, once I'd spend some considerable amount of time losing touch with my senses, I was induced into a meditation of sorts and became fully immersed in the topic, so much so that when the light finally came on in the tank signalling that it had been 90 minutes, I was unaware of how much time had passed, where my body was positioned in the tank or how I'd transitioned into the deep phase I had just been in. But the sensation lingered.
Overall, it was a very neat way to spend a Saturday afternoon, and fairly priced with the groupon. Regardless of your level of desire to meditate or get in touch with your deepest thoughts, at the basic level, this is just a very unique form of relaxation. It was physically therapeutic as well. It wasn't life changing by any means but it was interesting, thought provoking, and mentally stimulating. My favorite things. I'll be back.
From my best recollection I went through 3 phases while in the tank. Although I can't recall the time allocation to each phase I can recall my thoughts and feelings during what seemed to me to be distinctly individual experiences with undefined transitions.
Phase 1 - Adjustment
As I compared accounts with my two roommates who also floated this past weekend with me, we all agreed this was an initial phase. How long is lasted is another story but the recollections about specific feelings are too similar to ignore. When you first lay down, close your eyes, and begin floating on the water, two things begin to occur.
The first one is that you quickly become unaware of your physical position in the water. Because you can't see, hear, smell, touch, or taste anything, your brain's kinesthetic sense begins to fail. You feel like you're continuously spinning and floating through the water, even though your body is making very marginal movements left and right in a tank that's barely big enough for your body alone.
Once you've made the necessary mental adjustments needed to come to terms with your lack of control of this feeling, you actually begin to relax. I can recall laying my head further back, relaxing my arms more and really sinking into the water. Then the second phenomenon begins to occur. You gain a hyper awareness to your breathing. It feels like every breath, in fact, every heart beat, is affecting your position in the water. You get the sensation that with each breath, you physically rise and fall in the water. Even though you're probably rising and falling less than an inch, your brain amplifies this awareness because of the lack of outside stimuli. It may sound freaky and possibly unenjoyable up to this point but it's quite the opposite.
A third and final recollection comes to mind in this phase before I remember being in phase two. What I call the "random meditation" effect. You would be thinking, thinking, thinking, and then all the sudden become aware of the fact that you weren't thinking anything. It's extraordinarily hard to describe but if you've ever meditated, I'd image it's the feeling or rather realization you can obtain from achieving a thought-less state. It was strange but I picked up on it after a few times of it happening. Random moments in time where I'd realize I was thinking nothing, despite recalling my previous thoughts until that indistinguishable moment.
Phase 2 - Lucid Dreaming
Next up, I fell asleep. Or at least a sleep-like state where I was aware of the fact that I had fallen asleep because I was randomly twitching and making bodily movements in the water representative of whatever I was dreaming about. Similar to when you fall asleep in a car and are having vivid dreams, only to be awoken by a stiff leg kick to the seat in front of you, provoking a howling laugh by the other members in the car who'd noticed you dosed off 25 minutes prior. I was in the tank, lucid dreaming. I can't recall the specificity of my dreams but I can recall the thoughts I had about the realization that I was in fact asleep and dreaming. There is nothing much more to report from this phase other than the fact that I was entirely calm, relaxed, and unaware of how much time was passing.
Phase 3 - Subconscious
The final phase, the one that is most representative of what is supposed to happen inside a sensory deprivation tank. Although I didn't realize it until a little while into this phase, I was taking part in what the tank is meant to induce -- whatever is in your subconscious, comes to the surface. It can manifest itself in various ways. For some people, they report minor hallucinations. For others it's a stream of thoughts. For some it's just a sensation that takes them introspectively into that subconscious zone. For me, it was sensations combined with a sort of day dreaming.
I definitely wasn't asleep anymore, but I'd lost most of the notion that I was inside the tank. It was the most full-bodied day dream that I've ever been aware of. And it was entirely about a specific concept, a specific thought that had been consuming me subconsciously in the past few weeks. It manifested itself in this final phase in a very vivid way, allowing me to explore the thought that I'd been consumed with, in the form of a quasi-interactive daydream whereby I was more so observing my conscious brain funnel the subconscious thoughts into a reality I could witness. Basically, I'd been giving a lot of thought to something that had been on my mind lately and had sort of repressed it to my subconscious. Well in this phase, once I'd spend some considerable amount of time losing touch with my senses, I was induced into a meditation of sorts and became fully immersed in the topic, so much so that when the light finally came on in the tank signalling that it had been 90 minutes, I was unaware of how much time had passed, where my body was positioned in the tank or how I'd transitioned into the deep phase I had just been in. But the sensation lingered.
Overall, it was a very neat way to spend a Saturday afternoon, and fairly priced with the groupon. Regardless of your level of desire to meditate or get in touch with your deepest thoughts, at the basic level, this is just a very unique form of relaxation. It was physically therapeutic as well. It wasn't life changing by any means but it was interesting, thought provoking, and mentally stimulating. My favorite things. I'll be back.
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