Float report: Or, Kim tries hydrotherapy

I’ve just moved house, to a new city; it’s been a stressy time. Between the administrative challenges (do not put me on hold again!!), the physical labour (please, please, no more boxes…), and the emotion management required by getting to know a whole new group of neighbours, not to mention where the grocery and pet stores, the post office, the local riding groups, the gyms, and the good coffee shops are…

Let’s just say I spent most of September looking like this:

(Image of a male cartoon character with bulging eyes, mouth open, gripping his hair. Stressed out, people!)

Luckily, my new joint – the Hammer, HamOnt, Hamtown, aka Hamilton, ON, the Brooklyn of Toronto – is super cool. My second weekend in town Emma the dog and I attended not one but TWO street festivals, heard some amazing music, ate some excellent food truck delicacies, and wandered the boulevards together. On one of those wanderings we found ourselves checking out booths set up by local businesses. One of those booths represented the Zee Float studio, just a five-minute walk from my new house.

Well, I have to tell you: I beelined for that booth, because I have always wanted to try float therapy. I love massage; I consider it part of my wellness regime (and it’s a huge privilege to have a job that covers part of the cost of semi-regular massage, I know). I love yoga, too, for the way it brings me into my body in a calming way, and encourages me to think about joint health, bone health, flexibility, and quality breathing.

Floating in a warm vat of water laced with Epsom salts has always seemed to me an extension of these kinds of self-care activities.

Yes, I’m mildly claustrophobic, but not so much that I worried about it as I eagerly chatted up the woman at the booth. As she described the facilities at Zee to me (three different kinds of float chambers! Kombucha on tap in the chill-out room!) I got more and more excited. Then she told me about their intro offer: 3 floats over 5 days, so that you can really try the experience fulsomely, and without cost pressure, for a very reasonable CAD$45 total.

Reader, I purchased it.

With both my massage therapist and my favourite yoga teacher back in London, ON, my former city, I reasoned a trio of cheap floats would be a quick way for me to de-stress during a tricky time, plus would give me a chance to see if this is something that will work for my body in the longer term.

So, how did it go, relative to my expectations? Well, it was a bit more complicated than I expected – especially since the point of it all is to relax completely, a task at which I do not excel. That said, by my third float, I knew I’d go back.

Herewith, then: my float report.

I arrived for float #1 a couple of minutes early, knowing there would be orientation. The cheerful and boisterous desk attendant, Hannah, commiserated with me when I said I was a bit nervous, gamely showed me around the whole studio, then carefully explained the entire pre-float procedure to me in my private room (the “Oasis” pod).

(The “Oasis” room at Zee Float: image of a wet room with white walls and a shower in one corner, a wood bench with towels, and a flotation tank with a door opening upward. Picture a shuttle launch from Star Trek.)

The space in which the pod (IE: the float chamber itself) is located is a wet room, with a shower on one side, a bench with pre-float prep items and hooks for personal belongings on the other. The room was bathed in a soft purple light, and looked quite inviting. However, I was nervous to realize that the float pod in the middle of the room looked, from the outside, a bit like a coffin – or perhaps more like one of those little launches that shoot off the back of the Starship Enterprise when crew members go exploring. Either way, it appeared to be pretty small. Hannah assured me, though, that the space inside was larger than a single bed, that the door to the pod did not lock, and that I could keep it open if I wished to feel more secure. The lights in the room, motion-controlled, would eventually turn off, and it would be as dark as I needed inside the pod, even with the chamber door ajar.

I prepped for the float as suggested: I went to the toilet, took a warm (but not hot) shower, covered my cuts with vaseline, inserted the earplugs provided, and got in. Instantly, I realized I hadn’t used the vaseline thoroughly enough; a cut on my arm, and the chafing in my groin (from my bike ride earlier in the day) both stung as my skin hit the salt water. I got out, splashing about as I did… and of course I then got salt in my eyes. Cue another quick shower, more vaseline, and a bit of talking to myself. Calm down! I shouted helpfully. You will be fine! YOU WILL RELAX!

Back in the space launch, I worked on breathing slowly. I turned on the light-up rubber duck to help me feel less panicked in the warm darkness. The glow-duck, however, reminded me how small the chamber was… which, in turn, initiated the following internal monologue:

Gosh this is tight. I bet there’s not a lot of oxygen in here!

Shut up, self. Obviously nobody has asphyxiated in here or they would not be allowed to run the business.

But seriously. How much air can there be?

There’s plenty of air. THERE IS PLENTY OF AIR!

…are we sure, though? Especially if I’m breathing… more and more… rapidly…

I shot out of the thing once more. More splashing. More salt in eyes. This time I used the clear water in the bottle attached to the pod door to rinse my eyes (a third shower, I reasoned, would be both decadent and slightly beyond the pale), and I talked myself down to normal breathing patterns once more.

At this point, I spied the head and shoulder rest Hannah had told me about earlier: it’s a little foam ring that you can use as added support if you’re having trouble getting comfortable in the float chamber. I reasoned it couldn’t hurt, grabbed it, and got back in, determined to make it through the hour.

To my own surprise, the head rest made a big difference. I felt held in the water more fully; I felt my body begin to untangle. I also left the pod door open this time, in order to stop myself from freaking out about the oxygen content. As Hannah promised, the lights in the room went out, and the glow from the duck grew more and more comforting. I drifted, letting my thoughts come and go past me, the way we’re often encouraged to do during Sivasana. I observed how my body was moving. I felt the salt drying on my skin, tasted it on my lips.

I was sad when the music came in, and it was time to get out.

Float #2 went a good deal less well. This was entirely my own fault, because I was hungover. (There is a post in there, about how I use alcohol as a quick route to relaxation far too often these days; look for that post in the next couple of months.)

I was in a different space this time around, the “Pro Float Cabin”, which is at once much larger (no oxygen panic issues this time) and, as a result, a bit cavernous and eerie inside. The male attendant, knowing I’d floated just a couple of days before, didn’t orient me; he simply left me to get on with it. I followed the procedure again, and again I got in – not less trepidatious, but, given the ache in my head, differently so.

I recall the evening before joking how I would test floating’s effect on a hangover; in the cool, dim light of the cabin that seemed a cruel joke on me. I had trouble getting comfortable because the sensation of my body in the water was making me nauseated; I berated myself for letting myself get tipsy the evening prior, and then my heart started to race. Once again, overwhelmed by anxious self-talk, I climbed out of the cabin.

Over the course of this float, due in part to the building nausea and in part to my utter lack of enthusiasm for the enterprise, I got out probably three times, and I took three showers. I found sitting on the wet room floor, outside the float chamber space, easier on my head. I waited and waited for the float to be over – but the music never came in, and the light in the cabin never came on.

Instead what happened was: the pump in the float chamber turned on! It was loud and decidedly not relaxing. Panicked that I’d done something wrong by getting out too many times, I climbed back into the cabin. I sat morosely in the churning water, with the glowing duck swirling past me, judging me.

Eventually I decided I was done; I was getting nothing from the float except more anxious and angry with myself. I dried myself, dressed, and emerged – only to discover that my float had ended when the pump had come on, almost a half hour earlier! I explained that the music hadn’t faded in and I’d had no idea; the attendant and I had a laugh over it, but of course deep down I was utterly ashamed of myself. I’d ruined my own self-care experience with an ill-judged experience of self-harm.

So, of course, I was determined to make float #3 better – and it was. It was blissful, actually. I was in the cabin again, and this time I knew exactly what to expect, what to do and what not to do. I took a proper pre-float shower, vaselined up, grabbed the head rest and the glow duck (bless the duck – I’ve decided to name it Seymour) and climbed in.

I didn’t chill out instantly, but I did chill out pretty fast, relatively speaking, as I was much more secure in my surroundings than ever before. After about 20 minutes I stopped wondering what time it was; at that point, I realized that the size of the float cabin (about twice as big and three times as tall as the pods) meant my arms could move freely, both above and below my body. So I let them float above my head and I started to starfish.

This motion, I realized, mimicked the freedom with which I sleep. (I’m a side-sleeper/flail-abouter.) As my arms traveled over my head my legs opened and closed on their own, too; I started to lose track of where the water began. I gazed up at the blue glow on the chamber ceiling and thought it might be getting on time for the float to end; then I let that thought pass by me, knowing it was really quite lovely just being in the moment, where I was.

(Image of a larger float chamber with a side door, not unlike the Pro Float Cabin at Zee Studios, where I floated. The chamber is bathed in blue light, and there are two lights under the water line, and specks of light on the ceiling.)

***

So, what did I learn?

First, floating in the evening was far nicer than the morning float, and not just because of the hangover. Evening means relaxation can be followed by sleep, which is far preferable to the other thing. At least for me.

Second, I learned that judging myself is antithetical to the float experience, and, because I judge myself in my head constantly, challenging myself to let the judgements pass while I’m in the float chamber is a key part of the experience for me. In the cabin, after a while, it became easy; moving past judgement got simpler as my body got more and more comfortable moving in the water. I had to give up some control and let it happen; that’s hard for me but worthwhile.

Finally, floating requires some trust. Yes, the water is clean and the air is ample. No, you will not be forgotten and thus left trapped in the chamber forever. The space is safe; the staff are professional and there is a lock on the wet room door, so you can be secure in your body as you float. Others have prepared a space where you can be vulnerable in your body and let go; being prepared to trust in the integrity of their actions and intentions is a big part of feeling safe enough to relax.

So I’ll go back, for sure. Having completed the initiation immersion I’ve earned a free float, so why not? But more than that, I suspect I can only learn more about myself, and learn to curb some of my least healthy habits, by choosing to float from time to time.