In the Province of the Mind

Some magnetism draws you closer. Like a leaf in a strong current you're carried onwards, inside the dark, and then suddenly you burst through some invisible membrane and out into deep space — floating feet-first, an infinite night of glimmering stars extending endlessly on all sides. Rolling waves of something like gratitude wash over you. This is roughly where I found myself halfway through my second hour in a flotation tank, and I was thoroughly, helplessly impressed.

I should explain how I got here, because the story of the tank is stranger than the experience of it.

The man who invented the dark

The sensory deprivation tank was the work of John C. Lilly, a neuroscientist with a restless and frankly eccentric mind. Lilly wanted to know what the brain would do if you cut off its supply of input entirely — no light, no sound, no gravity, no temperature gradient. His early designs were the stuff of a fever dream: a constrictive neoprene suit, a full-face rubber mask, the subject submerged vertically into pitch-black water. Unsurprisingly, it was difficult to relax.

Over several incarnations the system was simplified, eventually arriving at something like the tanks we use today — an enclosed bath filled with skin-temperature water made buoyant by a heavy concentration of Epsom salt. Thick walls and a tight lid kept the light and sound out. Suspended weightless, with nowhere to look but inward, Lilly made his discovery: the brain doesn't switch off when you remove its input. Freed from the endless onslaught of stimulation, it does something else entirely.

Not deprivation, but a kind of freedom. The mind, with nothing to react to, finally turns to face itself.

Naturally, I had to try it

When I learned flotation tanks were coming to Auckland, I had to check it out. My first float was disorienting in the best way. The second was the one that undid me. The complete silence and total dark last only a few moments before the mind fills the space — and then the body forgets it's a body, and you're off, drifting through that province of the mind that is always there, just usually drowned out.

The room, afterwards

When the music finally rose to signal the end, I opened the lid to a room that seemed to gleam. I found myself laughing at the sound of the shower water hitting the floor. An apothecary of scented lotions lined the wall and each one — calendula, lime, orange — inspired another giggle. I moisturised my hands and face three times simply because it felt so good.

Back in the lounge, I sat with a cup of tea and attempted, hopelessly, to be a functional person. I shook my head and smiled like an idiot. "We'll have to do this another time," I said. It was several weeks before I returned to the centre — but barely a day went by without the tank entering my mind.

The tank is a window. What you see through it is your own.

That, in the end, is the strange gift of the float. It doesn't give you anything. It takes things away — the light, the sound, the weight — until what's left is just you, surprisingly good company once the noise dies down. If you're in Auckland and curious, come and meet the quiet for yourself. Here's float therapy, and the intro offer if it's your first time.