Isolation / Sensory Deprivation Tanks - Is it all hype?

Some of you may be asking yourselves what in the world are Isolation / Sensory Deprivation Tanks? After all, they have not been a highly promoted in main stream media. One of its best, and few, promoters is actually Joe Rogan. That is how I first became aware of their existence (I must admit I love watching Joe Rogan). I saw how much Joe enjoyed talking about his experiences with the Isolation tanks (taking a mental note that he loved them enough to have one at home). As he spoke of his journeys in the tank and what he experienced. My curiosity eventually got the best of me!

What better time to try something new than when you have tried everything else and something that is new and exciting has appeared on your radar? In order to fully explain my journey with Isolation tanks I have to explain a bit of why I decided to try Isolation tanks (curiosity aside):

To say September-December 2012 were the worst months of my life doesn't even touch the surface of the grief that I allowed to overcome me during that time. My mom had been relatively healthy my entire life. She rarely ever got sick, I can't recall her ever breaking or spraining anything, and she was not taking a million pills a day.

September of 2012 she began to feel back pain, and was taken to a doctor's office. They didn't see anything out of the ordinary so they sent her home. We assumed her mattress could have been the issue and explored how we would go about buying her a new mattress. Life had other plans...

Before we knew it, she was hospitalized for ischemic colitis, which was explained to me and my family as the equivalent of a heart attack in her stomach. We were floored with the events that were unfolding before us. Emotionally, financially and spiritually unprepared for the situation we were experiencing and utterly sad that our mom who had been such a great soul was going through so much pain. I felt like the floor disappeared beneath me and I was free falling into a world where my support system and the person who I had to thank for everything I am could be gone any minute! And boy were those seconds, minutes, and days important. Nothing could have prepared me for what I was experiencing.

I initially thought I was flying home to see her and that she would be okay. I had convinced myself that my family was exaggerating about the state of her health, but that was unfortunately not the case this time.

Before we knew it we were at a hospice and had not a clue of what it meant to be at a hospice. Perhaps we were only emotionally prepared to be naive about what was going on around us at that point in time... Hospice was a very sad place and we became aware that if she was going to get better it would not be in that environment. We made the arrangements and brought mom to her home.

I tried helping my mom with everything I could possibly think of to help treat the symptoms of her diagnosis. I brought super-foods for nutrition, reiki to energize her spirit, iridology and acupuncture helped ease her pain and stop her bleeding, healing stones, smudging, prayer, hope, love... I would have given anything to save her and I can honestly say that I tried everything that could have occurred to me given the knowledge I had at the time.

She miraculously began to feel better right before I left to go back home. She even made it out of the bed and into the wheel chair the day before I left. Her Alzheimer also seemed to have improved, allowing her words to (for the first time in a while) make sense again. This gave me hope!

The day I left my mom to go back home was one of the hardest days of my life. It took every bit of strength I had to not fall apart crying in front of my mom. As I approached her and kissed her, as I had so many other times, she knew I was going to the airport and so she reached for the corner of the bed to get out of bed. That is when it happened, she realized she could not move and she couldn't come to the airport with me. That moment I saw something I had never once seen in her eyes before... defeat. I felt our hearts both shatter a bit that exact moment. Being who we were we tried to concentrate on our love and the hope that I would be back soon and we would be celebrating her birthday (which I never missed).

A week later I received a call from my family, my mom had now been found to have a block to one of her main arteries going to her heart. Something the first hospital that saw her should have seen and addressed. Her operation was successful and she was doing well. Unfortunately, as great as our medical system can be for ER purposes they are often not very good at alienating contaminants and my mom contracted an infection while she was at the hospital.

Approximately a week later, my conversation with my family had a darker tune. My family needed me to locate a funeral home and a cemetery as they already had as much as they could handle on their plates. That is the moment I realized that I needed to be what my mom had always been for our family a source of strength and love, and I could not allow myself to breakdown because everyone around me was already at that point. The pillar of strength I had to become also meant keeping a lot of my emotions bottled up inside. If you are the type of person that simply cannot freak out when others around you are breaking down you know exactly what I am referring to.

I located a funeral home and cemetery and sent the information over to my family. While on the computer I just could not help myself and began to look at every picture and video of my mom that I had. I needed to feel her with me! I needed to imagine that I was there, by her side, through the darkest times. Watching her healthy, happy and ever so loving broke my heart more, but it allowed me to feel her close to me again and I needed that.

We were forced to choose between keeping her alive with machines at the hospital, which my family and I knew would not have made her happy, or to let her go. It wasn't fair to force her to live that kind of life because we could not say goodbye. So we made the tough call. As the last few hours of her life were near, my sister called me so that I could say my last goodbyes. I spoke to her from my clear (clearer than ever before)... I told her that she was the best mom I could have asked for, that I loved her with all my heart, that I could not be more grateful for her, that her love and support made me who I am today, that she would forever live in my heart... I took my time saying goodbye. After all she was my sunshine, my light in the dark, and the one person who always put me first.

Some hours passed and I received another call from my sister. My mom was gone but not without a fight, she even had the nurses thinking she was going to make it. Prior to taking her off the machines the nurses prepared my family to loose my mom the instant the machines were turned off. Instead she was alive for three hours!

Imagine that you dove into a fishing hole at a frozen lake and inevitably you were lost and though you were trying to find the entrance you just could not find it... and that is when I began drowning in grief. Friends and family tried to help but I had sunk so deep into my grief and despair and that only I could find my way out.

Four years after I lost my mom, and after I trying mediation, yoga, martial arts, writing, acupuncture, and talking to heal my grief...I felt a small sense of defeat (and that is not like me). I was feeling as though I had exhausted my options, but that was not the case!

While on a short trip to visit my family, after my acupuncture session and various (for what felt like the millionth time) chats about how I needed to let go of my grief followed by my reminding everyone that the way I was feeling did not feel like a choice I made, I remembered about Joe Rogan and Isolation tanks. I went online and found the closest location where I could go float and I booked my appointment. I would go alone first thing in the morning and experience first hand what I had been so curious about. At this point, it couldn't hurt to try anything else, right?

I did my homework and tried to gather as many tips as I could about floating before hand. One of the best tips that I came across was that you should pick a song wisely before you go into the tank because that song may be stuck in your head when you go in (I picked "Let it Be" by The Beatles, felt appropriate). When I arrived for my appointment I was greeted by a very friendly person, who insisted that sometimes people who are masters at meditation may not be able to get as much of a float as those who go in it without expectations because of their preconceived notions of what letting go felt like. I decided that letting go of my expectations may be the best approach after all and that is exactly what I did.

The answer to some of the questions you may have about floating:

1. They do provide ear plus;
2. Air is usually pumped into the tank;
3. Go to the bathroom before hand, you won't want to need to pee in the middle of your float;
4. You shower before and after the float;
5. You don't have to wear clothes in the tank (if you are more comfortable wearing clothes you can wear a bathing suit);
6. You don't have to be under the influence of anything to have a good experience and learn from your float;
7. You have full control of the door to the tank and can open it at any time; and
8. Perhaps the most important tip is to let go of any expectations you may have had.

I was a bit worried about my claustrophobia being a problem, but I decided that if there was ever a time to cheer myself on this was it. After telling myself "I can do this" at least a hand full of times I climbed into the float tank they called the coffin. I closed the door behind me and eased unto the water. I laid still in complete darkness and complete silence. All my senses absolutely suppressed, nothing to see, feel, smell, taste, or hear.

At first I decided that I would keep my eyes closed, easing into the idea that I was in a box and the door was closed. I began to open my eyes and just as I had been told may happen the darkness began to have color. I was reminded of my experience sky diving and saw lights that seemed like birds flying through the sky and all the sudden my journey inwards began.

My first thoughts while inside the tank was actually a flashback. Until the day I went floating, my youngest memory of my childhood was my first birthday party. While in the Isolation tank, however, I had flash backs of being in the womb. I felt the comfort of not having any worries, preconceived notions, stresses, fears, nothing to look forward to and nothing to avoid. There was just that moment, just being there was enough...and it was so comforting to just exist in the moment.

For the first time in quite some time I understood that I had been torturing myself for far too long. Mom would have never wanted me to be so miserable, so filled with grief that I could no longer enjoy the things I loved and spending time with the people I love (specially those close to my heart - my husband and my family). Even the people I loved reminded me of my loss and it was not fair to anyone, including me. It was a destructive cycle that needed to stop. It was then that I realized that mom was still my light. She had changed in form of existence but she was not completely gone, she remained in my memories, in the things I did, in the bond and the love my family shared she would never cease to exist. Just like that four years of torture ended and it truly felt like I got my life back.

One by one I went through every single worry, stress and goal that I had in mind and I was able to self reflect. I made decisions as to what was good for me and should remain in my life, and what was bad for me and no longer served a purpose. I also began to realize what areas in my life and past traumas still needed to heal.

My spiritual and emotional well being were not the only things to benefit from my experience with an Isolation tank. My body aches were also significantly reduced, and in some areas gone. I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia in 2012 after about 14 years of being misdiagnosed. The pain and inflammation caused by this diagnosis, more specifically the Epstein-Barr Virus, are not often relived by a whole lot. However, the Isolation tank relieved my pain and the relief lasted for about a week.

You may be asking yourself, how can floating help with body pain? The Isolation tanks are filled with approximately 1,000 lbs of Epsom salt. Epsom salt is known to have anti-inflammatory properties and is commonly used to treat muscle aches and sore muscles, perhaps due to its chemical composition including magnesium (a natural mineral many of us may be lacking in our diets). In addition to magnesium treating sore muscles, magnesium is also a great stress reliever that promotes a state of calmness and relaxation. In the Isolation tanks the Epsom salt is in very high concentration increasing the efficiency and overall effect of the healing properties of Epsom salt.

As your body floats, and becomes weightless, you also stop fighting gravity allowing every bit of your body to fall back into its rightful place and relieving the pressure that once existed. When I first laid back in the tank I let my instincts take over and I let myself lay down slowly, vertebrae by vertebrae. I allowed every single inch of my spine the moment to adjust and settle, it was well worth the extra minute.

No amount of meditation, qi gong, tai chi, yoga, nor any other coping skill that I had attempted came close to what I was able to achieve in the ninety minutes I was in that float session. It was total bliss. I came out of that tank the happiest I had been in a while, my grief was no longer haunting me, I had a better grasp about what areas in my life I still needed to work on, I got past my claustrophobia, and everything seemed a little brighter. While driving in the car I no longer needed the background noise of music in the radio, and for once in my life I enjoyed silence.

In fact, I was so calm that at my next acupuncture appointment my acupuncturist saw that my blood pressure had significantly dropped and she also noticed that I was even speaking slower. She inquired about what I did different, as there were only a couple of days between my appointments, and upon explaining that I had gone floating she was astonished by the differences in my attitude, communication skills, blood pressure, and ability to finally let go of grief that had been haunting me for four years!

Since then I have gone floating twice more and each time I understand more about myself. I allow myself the understanding attitude and support that I so easily grant others around me . The world seems a little brighter every float session, and that alone is worth the time.

Like everything else that may be worth it, it may not be the easiest thing to get yourself to go into a box filled with water and salt to lay down for at least an hour with your senses completely depraved. However, once you take the time and allow the Isolation tank to surprise you, your journey just might be well worth the effort. There, you may find the peace you are seeking, release of emotions that no longer serve you, the ability to let go and/or achieve much needed self reflection. However much you surrender will determine your benefit. As always your options are endless. Your journey may be different than mine but I do wish you the journey!