A typical day:
6am yoga client. 7:15 am nap. Then a 10 am cancellation.
Then it was pretty much time for my trip to Zazen –– a sensory deprivation floatation tank place.
I’d done this once before YEARS ago –– like during college –– but the opportunity to try it again had never quite presented itself until Groupon had an awesome special last week.
I’ve never been a big fan of the movie ALTERED STATES –– I agree with my favorite critic Pauline Kael that it’s an “aggressively silly picture” that “isn’t really enjoyable” –– but I do love floating.
The Epsom salt solution is thick enough that you really do float gravity free. Even though there’s really like 4 inches on either side of you, there’s a feeling that you’re floating in infinite space.
They give you ear plugs even though it’s already super-quiet, and you can turn off the little blue nightlight and be in total darkness.
I stayed in the full hour, not really even drifting off to sleep but just … floating …
I think this experience was much deeper in that I’m a much more experienced meditator (and breather) than I was at 19.
FYI, Unlike William Hurt, I did not devolve into a Cro-Magnon man or have trippy flashback visions particularly, but there were tons of vivid images and a profound sense of serenity towards the end.
And of course, I was immediately jostled afterward when it was revealed that the shower-off area holds only one person at a time and I had to wait a few minutes to de-saltify myself (couldn’t they have let me soak a little longer …?)
However, it was in fact particularly easy to return to serenity –– much more so than usual –– and perhaps the best news is because I made the reservation for their new facility but they had to bump me to their old, I get another soak for free.
All of this will come in quite handy in that I got a draft of the submissions possibility list from my agent for the novel –- and some potential awesome unconfirmed news from my producer she’s trying to clarify/nail down –– and SERENITY (space pod floating or otherwise) is definitely going to be my watchword, startling like … immediately.
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