tank - Blogs - Depth Psychology Alliance2024-03-28T18:58:04Zhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/feed/tag/tankLeave gravity behindhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/5433794-BlogPost-592832012-03-19T10:00:00.000Z2012-03-19T10:00:00.000ZChristie Gardnerhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/ChristieGardner<div><p><a href="http://tinyurl.com/6s4hfjp" target="_blank">http://tinyurl.com/6s4hfjp</a></p><p></p><p>After the door closes, it’s not the darkness, but the quiet that strikes me—that and the fact that I’m totally naked, floating on a bed of Epsom salt in a contraption that looks like what would emerge if my bathtub impregnated my washing machine.</p><p>I’d rather be in a slope-side hot tub—that’s my idea of relaxation. Instead, I’m in a windowless, seven-and-a-half by four-foot, fiberglass sensory deprivation tank. As such, I’m part of one of the newest trends in wellness and relaxation, dubbed “floating” by its proponents.</p><p>It takes a minute to get accustomed to the darkness and the absence of sound. But I’m assured that if I stick with it, I’ll experience a state of meditative relaxation that’s virtually unattainable in everyday life—what floaters refer to as the “theta” state when the creative “left” brain takes over.</p><p>After a few moments of gently bouncing off the walls of the fiberglass tank, I’m still mentally balancing my checkbook and wondering what I had for lunch yesterday. I guess this relaxation thing takes practice.</p><p>Like most folks, I learned about sensory deprivation tanks from the old school psychedelic thriller <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080360/" target="_blank"><em>Altered States</em></a>. While that story about a Harvard professor’s chilling drug-enhanced extrasensory exploration was pure fantasy, the growing popularity of sensory deprivation tanks is a firm reality.</p><p><a href="http://www.floattank.com/" target="_blank">Float tanks</a> are nothing new, but the cottage industry has enjoyed a quiet resurgence as... <a href="http://tinyurl.com/6s4hfjp" target="_blank">Read more</a></p></div>