What Is Floatation Therapy? 5 Reasons To Try Floating + All About My First Experience

The day before I took my GRE exam, I was coming off a week that can only be described as… intense. I had just finished my project at work and being in between roles (I work full time in consulting if you’re new around here!), I decided to take a week off to devote all my time to studying leading up to the big day. At this point, I had been studying for about six weeks, on average probably 20 hours a week, before and after my full time job, and in extended, unpleasant periods of time over the weekends. It demanded all of my attention, and was just this really unsettling period of time where I was working my ass off, with absolutely no guarantee of how I would perform, whether all my hard work would pay off. And all week, as I grew just days away from taking it, the fear of the unknown was freaking me ouuuuut. Which was very not ideal, as taking the GRE is a huge mental game.

The afternoon before my test, after deciding I was done studying and had done everything I could possibly do, my mom had the idea to call Oto Float, a float therapy studio in our neighborhood, to see if they could fit me in for a last minute appointment. She had heard that a lot of professional athletes will float before big games so they can be relaxed, focused, and in their best mental headspace. Exactly what I needed.

As fate would have it, they had a last minute cancellation and were able to get me in at 7 pm. I arrived in a comfy pair of sweats, my mind racing with test anxiety as I involuntarily kept quizzing myself on the 200+ new vocabulary words and math formulas I had shoved into my brain. I felt an instant wave of calmness wash over me as soon as I stepped foot in the door. Of course, every studio will be different, BUT, I can’t imagine it getting much better than Oto Float (located in Wilmette, IL in case any of you Chi town ladies want to check it out). The reception area felt like a high class spa; a diffuser filled the room with a relaxing scent, chimes played softly in the background, and the entire room was devoid of harsh, bright light. The owner is a former ballerina who fell in love with floating for injury prevention and muscle recovery when she was still dancing, eventually going on to earn her PhD in Medical Sociology and teaching at the University of Michigan.

Before I was taken to my suite, she gave me the run down on what exactly floatation therapy is, as well as some of the greatest benefits one can expect from floating:

What Is Floatation Therapy?

Floatation therapy is a preventative and therapeutic health care practice that consists of entering a small pod (at Oto, they look like a small jacuzzi with a lid), filled with a shallow, highly concentrated magnesium sulfate (Epsom salt) solution, which causes your entire body to float on the surface. Another term for Floatation Therapy is sensory deprivation therapy, as incoming stimuli to light, sound, and the sensation of gravity are greatly reduced when you are floating in the pod. Ideally, during your session you will try and free your mind, seek inner quietness, and reach a heightened state of relaxation and meditation where it’s not totally clear if you’re awake or asleep. Which, is totally the point. When we fall asleep, there is a period of a few minutes where we exist somewhere between the points of consciousness and sleep, and this is a time where our brains have the greatest capability for creativity and innovation. Floating extends this period of time for the duration of the session, making your relaxation session both productive and purposeful.

Floatation therapy reduces the activity of the sympathetic nervous system (the fight-or-flight response) and activates the parasympathetic nervous system (the rest-and-recover response), counteracting the effects of chronic stress, and providing an ideal environment for your body’s own immune and repair systems to function optimally. The unique conditions of the floatation therapy environment, including the reduction of external stimuli and reduced pressure on the musculoskeletal system, have been shown to bring about positive physiological, psychological, behavioral, and neurocognitive changes to the human mind and body.

Why Try Floatation Therapy?

There are SO many studied benefits of floatation therapy (I will touch on my personal experience below), but there are some of the big ones you can expect from this practice:

1) Reduce Your Stress & Improve Your Mood

2) Get Better Sleep

2) Improve Athletic & Cognitive Performance

3) Reduce Muscle & Joint Pain

4) Increase Creativity & Innovation

5) Quiet Your Mind (And Practice Going “Screen-Less”)

All About My Experience

After learning a bit about the benefits of floatation therapy and what I should expect, I was walked down a long hallway and brought to my floating suite. Inside the private room was a separate changing room fully equipped with a water bottle, tissues, makeup remover wipes, moisturizer, wax earbuds, a robe, a T3 micro blow dryer… The owner said she stoked it with all the things she likes to have post-float! I was instructed to take a quick rinse in the shower, towel off my face, and then very carefully (the Epsom salt solution makes the floors slippers) get into the pod.

At this point you might be wondering if I was nervous about going in, if it was super claustrophobic inside, if I closed the lid… SO. First of all, there are options my friends. If the thought of closing the lid and lying in total darkness in a confined space is your worst nightmare, you can 100% keep the lid open. You can also keep the lights on too; the experience is supposed to be tailored to you.

I chose to go all in to really reap the benefits. Lights off, lid closed. Once I carefully go inside, I shut the lid behind me, sitting about knee deep in water (which is set to the body’s temperature, so you’re never hot or cold). In the corner of the pod, there is a little ledge which contains two different kinds of pillows (some people like extra support for their head or back, I didn’t use one), a spray bottle of regular water in case you get some salt in your eyes, a little hand towel, and a waterproof remote that controls the brightness of the lights as well as the volume of the sound.

I chose to do a guided meditation, designed by researchers with the goal of performance and mental clarity in mind. It lasted about 30 min, and I lay in silence for the remaining 30. I don’t have a ton of experience with meditation, but I was very pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed it. This one had a lot of repeating positive affirmations— which were equally trance-like as well as extremely motivating. I don’t remember exactly when the voice stopped speaking, so I must have dozed off at some point. By the time I heard a very faint gong slowly ringing, I just felt so… calm. Grounded. I felt really, really, really good. I was in a very deeply relaxed state, so I took my time getting out of my pod before taking a full shower (they had nice shampoo, conditioner, and body wash on hand!) .

After my shower, I headed back into my little changing room, put my sweats back on, and drank some water. I seriously felt like I was still in a dream. My body felt weightless, my skin was glowing (an added bonus of floating are that the Epsom are fantastic for your skin), and my mind and heart were totally at peace.

In addition to having one of the best sleeps of my life, and getting to spend the night before my GRE in a relaxed and positive mental space… I ended up getting my highest score I’ve ever gotten on my exam the next day. Unexpectedly good. Like, I was literally in shock seeing my scores flash on the screen as soon as I finished. So, obviously impossible to say floating the night before had a direct effect on this, BUT, I was told it would help me perform better and it most certainly did.

Another unexpected takeaway: I also had been going through some weirdness in my personal life that week. There’s this girl I’ve never met but is high key obsessed with talking shit about me. This girl had cornered my best friend at a party and basically used it as an opportunity to be next level psychotic. Hearing about it a few days later rattled me a bit; I’m very much of the mentality that if you have something to say, say it to my face, so yeah, I was pissed. And I hated holding onto that kind of energy during such an important week. One of the portions in my guided meditation talked about how we can’t control others, we can only control our own reactions. Which, easier said than done. But, going through my floatation with the guided meditation really made me feel it. In fact, I actually haven’t cared or thought about it since. Like I said, I left that room feeling lighter, grounded, and just full of good vibes.