“I was desperately trying to clear all these thoughts out of my head and relax.” Alice, a commercial artist who had had much experience in meditation before her first float, was describing her experience in the tank. “I was meditating, counting breaths, trying everything, but I couldn’t seem to get relaxed, or quiet down my mind. After about forty minutes I thought, Well, I guess I’m just not going to be able to relax this time. Forget it. And as soon as I let go, and stopped trying, it was like everything fell away and there I was—you know, THERE—and I thought to myself, Well, here I am.”
Alice’s experience is quite common and instructive. A major reason for the floatation tank’s extraordinary range of effects is that, while floating, our bodies become more deeply relaxed than is possible in every day life, and this happens effortlessly. But it’s essential to remember that effortless means exactly that—efforts we make in the tank will only hinder our relaxation, and that includes efforts to relax. Alice went into the tank with great expectations, but found that it was only when she reached a point of letting go that she was actually able to relax; that in the tank she could only do things by not doing, create by giving up creative intentions, get someplace by deciding not to go anyplace at all.
It’s a phenomenon humans have been aware of ever since they started paying attention to how their minds worked, but—as seems necessary in this technological age—one that has recently been quantified and demonstrated with sensitive electronic equipment in the labs of scientists studying the methods and effects of biofeedback. They have found the phenomenon so predictable and regular that they’ve incorporated it into training programs as lesson number one and given it a name: The Law of Reversed Effort. Whatever you “try” to do, the result will be just the opposite.
There is a certain trick to letting go but it is quite easy to learn, and once learned it’s not easily forgotten. One of the most momentous discoveries of the biofeedback wave was finding out that a person who has experienced and learned to identify a certain internal state can then control and re-create that internal state at will. The floatation tank is a natural biofeedback tool that works in part by permitting us to become aware of subtle and minute internal changes and states, among them deep relaxation. And for first-time floaters the experience is much like being hooked up to a biofeedback machine for the first time: The harder they try to achieve the desired state, the more it escapes them, until finally they learn—almost by accident—to let go, and the state just happens. Like biofeedback machine users, floaters soon master the trick of letting go. Many speak of having a “body memory” of it, and most learn to let themselves sink into the familiar state of deep relaxation within minutes after getting into the tank.
Brain research now suggests that everything we ever experience is stored away in the brain somewhere and can be instantly recalled if we know the right signal. Clearly the state of deep relaxation is stored away in the mind, so that at any moment we can call it up out of our gray matter and experience it fully again. This is accomplished by giving the body a signal that identifies and locates the specific mind/body configuration, so that the mind can retrieve it from its storage system.
One example of the body’s recall of deep relaxation is my experience on the stalled subway, when my body seemed to remember the blackness, silence, warmth, smell, and total muscular relaxation of the tank. The effect was like a click—one moment tension, then suddenly everything fell into place. Another example of just how real this body memory is, and how it can respond to a signal, was revealed by Arthur, the chess-playing psychologist, who told me that since he began floating he had found that each morning’s warm bath water seemed to put him right back into the serene mood he felt in the tank. “I guess you could say it’s a conditioned reflex,” he said, “but that bath makes me feel like I have everything under control, and what’s amazing is that I carry this feeling with me throughout the day. It’s as if my morning bath were a kind of ‘little float,’ reminding my body of the real float.”
Once you have entered this state of profound relaxation, and learned to reenter it and maintain it effortlessly, you find that it is an ideal state in which to utilize any of a wide range of techniques for behavior or attitude change: self-hypnosis, autosuggestion, visualization, free-flowing imagery, self-healing, prayer, meditation, autogenics exercises, and so on. Controlled studies at several universities in which floaters were compared with people using other deep relaxation and behavior modification techniques, including meditation, autogenics, progressive relaxation, autosuggestion, and guided imagery, have demonstrated that all methods of mental or physical self-regulation or self-control work more powerfully and effectively in the floatation tank than in any other environment.
The essential element common to all such techniques is that the subject must be in a state of deep relaxation. The environment of the tank is unsurpassed for attaining and maintaining relaxation, and virtually everyone who goes into the tank will reach a state of deep relaxation sooner or later.
But beginning or inexperienced floaters should remember that the best strategy to take when going into the tank is no strategy at all. The floaters I’ve talked with agree: For the first few floats don’t set any goals. Says neuroendocrinologist John Turner, who has conducted float research on hundreds of subjects: “We’ve found that novice floaters usually need to float four or five times before they really begin to get in touch.” On the other hand, just about everyone agrees that the first or second float is the most fun, the most mind-boggling. So lie back, allow your subconscious to choose what it wants to deal with, and let your body find its own path to deep relaxation. If you have no expectations, you will never be disappointed.
Ways of Letting Go
Having issued this dictum against effort of any sort, let me immediately contradict myself by saying that there are a number of techniques that floaters have found helpful in reaching states of ultra-deep relaxation. Actually there’s no real contradiction, since my initial point is that deep relaxation is a state most novice floaters will not have tasted before, and since they have no prior experience of it they will not be able to find their way there by means of conscious effort. However, after we’ve become accustomed to the tank environment, have experienced deep relaxation, then it is quite possible to return to that state quickly, either in the tank or outside it when we want to draw on body memory of the floating state. This rapid return to deep relaxation can be facilitated by certain methods or techniques, some of them familiar to initiates of meditation and other self-regulation or mind-control practices. But using these techniques in the tank is different, not only in degree but in quality. For one thing, they are much more effective in the tank, and can carry you more rapidly to a much deeper state than you may have experienced before. Following are some of the techniques that experienced floaters have found particularly effective in the tank.
Breath Awareness. An effective method of freeing the body from the interference of the conscious mind, and of stilling the distracting flow of thoughts, images, and words through the mind, is to focus your attention on your breathing. Since all other senses have been restricted, and ears are submerged, the sounds of your body can take on monumental proportions: Your lungs can become huge bellows, your breath a wind howling through a vast cavern, a manifestation of the basic dualistic pulse of life, forces flowing in/out.
Abdominal Breathing. It’s essential to relax your abdominal muscles, so that when you inhale, your belly expands and rises. Many people believe they’ll look unattractive that way, and so they maintain a constant tension in their bellies, wasting energy and hampering their ability to breathe fully. Instead of breathing by expanding and contracting the diaphragm and belly, they expand and contract the chest and rib cage. This shallow breathing uses only the top part of the lungs, and more important, it is one of the physiological correlates of the tight-or-flight reaction. Thus, by breathing in our chests, we cause our autonomic nervous systems to maintain a constant condition of arousal, adding to the stress to which our systems are subjected.
Nose Breathing. A popular breathing practice among floaters is simply to focus the attention on the breath as it passes in and out of the nose. Feel the air pass into your nostrils as you inhale; focus on the coolness it brings to the tip of your nose between your nostrils. As you exhale, notice the warmth at the same spot. If you wish, count your inhalations, numbering each from one to ten; when you reach ten begin with one again. Should thoughts come into your awareness, don’t resist them but allow them to pass, and then return all attention to your breathing.
Moving Around the Body. This technique effectively combines breathing awareness and rhythm with focused awareness of various parts of the body. With each breath, count a number and direct your total attention to a particular spot in your body; feel as if your entire being is in that spot. On the count of one, place your attention in the center of your forehead. With the second breath, count two and concentrate on your throat. With three, move to your right shoulder. Then, with succeeding counts, move down your right arm (elbow, wrist, each finger) and back up the arm to the throat. Do the same with your left arm. Next move to your chest, abdomen, pelvis, then down your right leg (hip, knee, ankle, each toe), back up the leg, across the pelvis, and down your left leg. Return to your abdomen and move back upward, ending at your forehead again. Depending on your exact route, this should take about sixty breaths. You will find that as your attention moves from place to place, it creates, and is accompanied by, very definite body sensations. In my own experience, each part of the body that I count becomes quite warm and, in my mind’s eye, seems to glow with warm white light as it noticeably releases tension, “melts,” grows “softer” and more relaxed. The entire sequence takes only a few minutes, but by the time you have returned to the center of your forehead you will be deeply relaxed. (This has been adapted from a technique of Swami Rama, and Elmer and Alyce Green.)
Practicing Visualization
Anyone can profit from improving his or her ability to visualize, but those whose mental imagery is weak or undeveloped, the people who really need the most practice, are the ones most likely to avoid it, like non-swimmers who simply stay out of the water. These people especially can find the float tank the ideal environment for visualization practice; while it is improving the vividness of mental imagery, it also eliminates the presence of other people who may inspire feelings of competitiveness or pressure, and, since researchers have found that poor visualizers often combine a low opinion of “daydreaming” with a rigid “dictatorship of the will” (in the words of psychologist Robert Sommer),224 the float tank provides an excuse for daydreaming. There’s nothing else to do in there. A number of strongly verbal people I’ve spoken to who float regularly—lawyers, a salesman, a philosophy professor—take an almost childlike delight in their newfound ability to manipulate mental images in the tank. They think it has given them new awareness of the other people they deal with in life, as well as opening them up to previously untapped energies and ideas.
Body Imagery. What we see in the mind’s eye has a decided influence over our physical and mental states, and an excellent way of practicing visualization is to combine imagery with floating’s intense sensory awareness for the purpose of deepening one’s level of relaxation. For example, the nose-breathing exercise mentioned above can be combined with imagery to increase its power: Visualize the air entering your nostrils as pure white light. As you inhale, follow the flow of white light through your nasal passages, into your lungs, into your abdomen; visualize the light in your belly, pulsing, radiating to every part of your body. Then, as you exhale, see the light flow back out of your body. Focus on your breathing entirely.
Visualization of Light. As, breathing, you see the light pouring into your body, pure, white or golden, bearing oxygen and life energy, radiant, vibrating, glowing, envision its life-enhancing force spreading through your body. Then, as you breathe out, visualize the energy as dark blue, or gray, or brown—it is now filled with waste material, toxins, fatigue, distortions, which it is carrying out of your system. As you continue to inhale energy, exhale waste, visualize your entire body growing brighter, full of glowing vitality, glowing so brightly the entire inside of the tank is filled with dazzling light. Try variations, such as seeing your bones glowing with blinding light, or your blood vessels pulsing with sparkling energy.
Moving Light Around the Body. Another variation of this is to use it with the exercise in which you count as you move from point to point around the body. With each count, as you focus your center of attention on another spot, see that spot glowing warmly, with a golden light. This will enhance the relaxing, centering effect of this exercise.
In the Mind’s Eye. Another way to strengthen your control of imagery (and, as a result, of your body) is consciously to manipulate colors and images not associated with your body. For example, as you float, imagine a box of paints or crayons. See each color. How do these colors affect you? Visualize various shapes: a cube, a sphere, a pyramid. See a bright red sphere against a green backdrop; then change the colors. Try a familiar cartoon figure: See Mickey Mouse, Roadrunner, Pinocchio, Fred Flintstone. Visualize them running, or dancing. Create a scene for them. Watch a figure dancing before you; see it talking to you as if you were a camera recording its performance. What is the figure saying?
Imagine yourself in a familiar scene, perhaps the bedroom you slept in as a child. See it clearly; notice the furniture, objects placed about the room. What does this scene make you feel? Now rearrange it somehow: Put a piano in the room, or a gorilla. Visualize yourself walking around the room, looking at all the furniture from different angles. Introduce someone into the room who was never there—your spouse, your office rival. What do you feel when you combine these images’?
Visualize someone you know well: See the face; notice the texture of the skin, the color of the eyes; see how the face is changed by a smile. Now see that person moving, perhaps dancing or gesturing to you.
Watch as the person speaks to you; see the eyes focused on you and hear the voice. What is being said to you? Pay attention; it is probably something important.
Visualize yourself, your face. Smile at yourself. Observe carefully. Notice everything. What clothes are you wearing? Is there something about you that you don’t like? Now visualize yourself doing something—playing tennis perhaps, or climbing a mountain. What are you doing? See yourself laughing. Now the image is speaking to you. What are you saying to yourself?
Now that you can see yourself, envision yourself very large. You are like Gulliver among the Lilliputians, towering over buildings. Now very small. Like the Incredible Shrinking Man, make yourself as small as a cell, an atom. You might want to enter your own body and move through your system—check up on your kidneys, boat down the alimentary canal.
Practice of these visualization techniques is fun, and will reveal to you in a very direct way exactly what’s on your mind. Often it will surprise you. These visualizations are also the foundation for healing and self-regulatory techniques described in later chapters.