Are float tanks a genuine way to decrease anxiety or just a new fad?
We sent Rob Hakimian to find out
Picture: © Sara Mendoza Bravo / @saradejuliana
Sensory deprivation tanks are paddling-pool size baths with a lid, filled with highly-salted water, designed for a person to float naked for an hour in total darkness. The hope is to remove you from all senses and induce a hyper-meditative experience and remove you from stress.
My interest in sensory deprivation tanks was piqued in 2012, when I heard California-based podcasters and self-proclaimed ‘psychonauts’ Joe Rogan and Duncan Trussell regularly enthusing about their psychedelic potential. At the time tanks were scarce in the UK, and after unsuccessfully searching for somewhere to float nearby, the notion drifted from my mind.
Now positioned as a meditation-adjacent wellbeing treatment, more tanks have surfaced in UK cities. Last summer a ‘float centre’ called Floatworks opened in the affluent London neighbourhood of Angel, and passing it each day on the bus I was again intrigued.
The UK is facing a mental health crisis. Float tanks provide an option for those who are wanting to combat anxiety but are unprepared to commit to medication or private therapy. The price for an hour of floating (£55) is commensurate with therapy, but there’s no obligation to return, to talk, or even to address your stress at all. You just… float.
Worth a try, I reckoned.
Stepping off the hurry of Essex Road into Floatworks, I was embalmed in an environment that could be summed up as ‘hippy’: shoes were removed, sitar music played, customers curled up in flower-shaped wicker chairs, and I was encouraged to relax with herbal tea until my ‘float guide’ collected me.
Lauren arrived and led me down a corridor lined with images of astral projections to my private room. She spoke with ASMR-inducing softness and I wondered if it was a prerequisite of working there or a blissful result of frequent floating. I hung on her mellifluous tone, barely acknowledging her explanation of what I needed to know as a first timer. Fortunately, it’s pretty simple: strip off, rinse in the shower, climb into the tank, close the lid, drift away.
“See you on the other side,” she intoned, and was gone. I was left alone with the tank: a smooth white mass with a retro-futuristic look of a cryogenic sleep pod from Alien, but also the awkward bulk of a gigantic Croc. I clambered in and settled on the surface, appreciating the body-temperature water, while the salty smell meant I didn’t dwell on how many people had previously been in this liquid.
Lauren had suggested some floating positions: ‘cactus’, where arms bob akimbo beside your head, or the self-explanatory ‘corpse’. Rather than either of these, my body automatically relaxed into what I’ll call the ‘slob’: sprawled as in a plush recliner, the salty water buoyant enough to cradle my limbs.
For the first 10 minutes, light music droned and I was thankful for something that drowned my thoughts. When this tone faded, I felt as if I were on a ship watching the last fragment of land disappear over the horizon. I was alone in a vast expanse – but this ocean was my mind.
Having repeatedly failed at meditating previously, I’d hoped floating in pitch black would induce mental quietude, but my skull remained a roller rink of thoughts. Fragments of a song continued honking and, unable to dismiss it, my brain constructed a chopped-n-screwed remix.
I turned focus to my body. Deep breaths revealed tightness in my chest from forgetting to use my inhaler. Stretching awoke a stress knot at the top of my spine that questioned why I had chosen this over a massage. My eyes couldn’t decide between open or closed, even though the totality of darkness made the difference imperceptible.
I found solace in the low-throbbing regularity of my heartbeat coming clear through the placid water. With this focus, transcendence seemed within grasp – but self-awareness brought me splashing back to saturated reality.
Eventually, briefly, I reached a blissful void outside of time. When music heralded the last five minutes, it felt like existence screaming into my consciousness. Just when I’d found a peaceful place, reality, with its burdens and deadlines, enveloped me again.
“Welcome back,” Lauren said once I’d rinsed, dressed and reappeared in reception. This made me wonder: had I really ‘gone’ anywhere?
I pondered this as I resurfaced on Essex Road, where traffic expunged any “post-float glow”. What I felt was sleepy, like I’d had a relaxing bath before retiring to bed. I couldn’t help but wonder what I’d paid for – and just like that, anxiety was creeping back in again.
Floatworks has branches in Angel and Vauxhall, an hour float is £55
This piece was originally published on Mood, which is now offline.
