
Image: Souler Float
Imagine an hour with no sensory input. None. No sound. No light. No smell. No touch.
You’re floating in 10” of body temperature water loaded with 1000 lbs of epsom salts. Your body is weightless and your mind has no distraction.
That’s the “new” world of isolation pods. They used to be called sensory deprivation chambers, but that was back when they looked like something out of a B rated Frankenstein movie. Hmm. Was there ever an A rated Frankenstein movie?
And the whole “deprivation” concept wasn’t very attractive sounding. Who wants to be deprived?
Things have changed though and now the pods are way cool futuristic things with lots of room and piped in music and soft lighting to get you in the mood.
Then the lights go off and the music stops and there is nothing while you’re floating on body temperature water that has 10 times the salinity of the Great Salt Lake!
Your body starts to relax muscles it never knew it was holding. You might even fall sound asleep, but most often you won’t because our bodies have a sort of “sensoristat” and having no sensory input kind of puts it on alert.
So you lie there with nothing to feel, hear, or see. Eventually the brain waves start to slow down and you find yourself in a very calm and meditative state somewhere between awake and asleep. You get in the “zone”.
The next thing you know the music starts back up to let you know that your hour long float is coming to an end. It always takes me by surprise. What? That was already an hour? It can’t be, but it is.
When you get out you’re sort of still floating on a cloud and that feeling stays with you. And your body feels loose and supple. If you have pain, it’s far less or has gone away entirely.
If you have worries, they seem less urgent and more easily handled.
It’s said that the experience of floating like this can get your mind to those calm places that yogis spend a lifetime of meditation to achieve. The elusive Theta brain wave state that is the source of enlightenment, or at the very least the source of a very calming and energizing state of being. For many people it’s the most relaxing thing they’ve ever done. For others it’s the only way to relieve the chronic pain.
Here on the Space Coast we are extremely fortunate to have a float center called Souler Float It’s the sort of resource you might expect to find in the hipper big cities like San Francisco or Seattle or even Orlando, but here it is in our backyard. Lucky us!
And lucky us that the folks at Souler Float are friends of the Bungalow and offer our guests a special discount to give floating a try.
So if you have any chronic pains or could use a respite from the ever present bombardment of present day life on this planet, check out their website and let us know that you’d like to schedule a float while you’re here at the beach. You may just find a great new way to totally relax, other than lounging on the beach in front of the Bungalow.
That’s pretty relaxing too. 🙂
See you at the beach!
Rob
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