The first step for all aquanauts begins with the musculature around the neck. The first floats will teach the neophyte about the chronic lock on the muscles she has in this area. Occasional glimpses of the similar issue below the waist will surface but will not be addressed until issues with the head-neck area get in order.

Like the layers of an onion, we peel away physical then mental tension to arrive at the ever-perfect unconditioned awareness that is our essential nature.

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The heating element on the bottom will burn your booty… I need more water and salt. My butt was dragging the bottom. I had to turn down the heating element to keep from frying my behind.

The early essence of floating is unwinding. Removing locked muscle patterns. Un-necessary tension.

How nice to have a teacher. A perfect teacher. A teacher who never fails anyone. Who is always there should you simply get in the water.

Now time to run the filter system… let’s hope this works!

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Pumping saltwater from a container up to the 2nd floor of my townhouse worked just fine. But when I tried to use the same hose to pump the water “downhill” it would not work… and it confused me because it was an easier pumping job.

So I went to Home Depot and bought a bunch of clear hose so I could see where things were going wrong… when experienced people tell you to secure the join points, LISTEN. I simply attached the hose sections together without clamping them and made a spectacle of myself in front of all of my already-suspicious neighbors! Good thing everything is above board and cleared with the rental office.

So anyway, I pumped using the clear hose from the house back to the container and it worked just fine. But then the next day I tried to pump from container to tank and it failed again… but this time I could see clearly. What had happened is that epsom salt had formed cakes near each joint. So I had to remove each clamp and slap the hose on cement to shatter the salt rocks. Then everything worked well and the tank filled…

Of course there’s one more thing that happened..

The water drained out of the tank faster than the salt in the tank, leaving me with 2-4 inches of salt at the bottom of the tank. So, I had a mover take the vat of salt and tilt it towards my front door so I could scoop it out and put it in the tank.

Now, I did a bit of scooping, but it was getting late and I didnt want to irk my neighbors. Now, I awake and the water and salt is frozen solid.

So, when the water thaws, I’m still worried that the salt will be in rocks and I will need to “de-cake” it somehow… suggestions?

But really, everything is OK according to the saltwater concentration meter.

All in all

All in all, I am very happy to have a basic tank with easily-replaceable parts. And doing this myself was educational… aggravating, but educational. I’m very lucky to have a high quality moving service right around the corner from my house. He was able to come over at a moment’s notice on several occassions and make snap moving jobs for me.

What now?

Well, right now the tank is warming up. It started at 42 degrees once it was filled. Now, it is up into the 70s 9 hours later. I have found a powerful portable furnace with a great return policy that tells me they know this sucker will put out some heat.

I want this heater for a few reasons:

• water will be forced to equilibrate with room temp. And that heater will force the room temperature to 94 easily
• I’m thinking of just getting a big bathtub and enclosing it in a light and heat tight room. Then just using a powerful heater to being the water temperature to 94. And then just use bleach on the whole setup to keep away the mold problem that Frank mentioned.

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I keep thinking up these k00L domain names for a Flotation Tank center. Aquanaut is a play on psychonaut and astronaut.

The inner voyager who uses water is of course an aquanaut!

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Why waste time, and effort on strenuous yoga postures and long meditation intensives when you come climb into my tank, kick back and enter the highest goal of the Yoga Sutras immediately.

You want samadhi? It’s yours.

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getting out of a float tank is always uncomfortable. it is colder outside than it was in the tank. I had the perfect setup here at my apartment. I had the upstairs room heated to 95 degrees and coming out into nice toasty warm room… but the landlady said nothing that heavy with water on the 2nd floor… they got tipped off when they saw the long hose from the truck to the house…

so now I have to move my beautiful tank to the 1st floor and step out into cold air when I leave the tank… and that is good practice for getting rid of the engrams I have associated with the birth process — out of the warm wet environment and whipped into cold and dry!

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One major issue I am wrestling with is how much of my personal perspective in floating belongs in this site. I was going to get a domain named “infinitity of universes” based on my love for Ken Ogger‘s research in Freezone Scientology and name this site the Infinity of Universes Meditation Tank Center.

But then I would make people edgy who are only interested in floating purely for health reasons.

A serious business remains neutral and sucks in as many people as possible. But I’m a computer programmer by trade, not a floatation tank businessman.

But borderlines are what floatation is all about. The water is the same as your skin, so the sense of separation from surroundings diminishes. And really, how different am I from you? I entered these words on this page and there was a bit of a time lag before you got them but we are now connected… there are fewer borderlines between us.

So I sit here and waver. One minute, I want to move my ambient music stuff over to my other website. Another minute, I feel that being personal is extremely important… how else to make the psychonaut feel at home at my place?

And so in the last 24 hours I have ruminated over the following domain names:

• floating-psychonaut-airlines
• transgalatic-flotation (floatation? flotation? argh!)
• infinity-of-universes (infinityofuniverses) – hard to type
• samadhi-chamber
• floating-through-space

There are actually even more than that, but why go on?
And of course, I get a million what-ifs with each of these domain names… why airlines instead of cruises, blah blah blah.

In the end, the title of Sailor Bob Adamson’s book sums it up: “what’s wrong with right now unless you start thinking about it”

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Here I store various things I wrote up, but no longer need, but fear that I might later and dont feel like typing up again:

Why are we called Infinity of Universes?

Some people approach floating from an earthly perspective – physiology, anatomy, etc, etc. Me personally, I’ve always been an explorer and floating got me out of mental theorizing about deep inner and outer space and gave me direct experience.

That being said, I’ve always needed intellectual teaching to explain my beyond the veil journeys. I’ve looked through many spiritual paths and within spiritual paths looked at the various splinter groups. It seems that Ken Ogger has the right mix of theory and practice to complement floating. And it was Ken Ogger who said these words:

“The Dance of Creation” – At the highest levels, the self-aware life statics participate in a dance of infinite creation. Here, everything that can be conceived of is created, exchanged, and experienced. Here we have an infinity of universes in constant flux, varying even in the number of dimensions used by each universe. At this level, the individual is himself near infinite, create and experiencing multiple universes simultaneously and projecting an infinity of personalities, and yet the individual is still the individual and separate and distinct from the other individuals who also participate in the dance of creation. And the flux between these individuals is the dance and is the infinity of creation.

yet more garbage

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I had just finished listening to Biosphere when I put on some Bluedark. It sounded just the same – moody, swirling aquatic dark ambient.

Do yourself a favor and check it out today.

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Before I go off and start talking about how great floating is in a willy-nilly fashion, I think it is best to break down the benefits along several axes:

HEALTH

Physical

Water

Water alone is a powerful solvent. It can dissolves mountains… given enough time. And that is the key. If you spend 15 minutes in a shower and expect water to be able to dissolve impurities, well, I would disagree. When you float, you finally give your body enough water for long enough for it to be able to do something.

Epsom Salt

The discussion on the benefits of Epsom Salt alone will require numerous posts.

• forget your Cal-Mag blend, Epsom Salt is made from dolomite rock, which contains both!
• it activates the kidneys
• Most importantly it draws toxins out through the skin
• it contains sulfate which has a host of benefits
• it softens the skin
• it gets rid of gallstones
• visit the Epsom Salt Council page and the Magnesium Water page for more details

Extended Awake Hours Laying Down

• no mental work to maintain upright position
• less effort to pump blood
• easier to breathe (stomach and diaphragm free to move)

Mental / Neural

Endorphin release – the Flotation REST environment leads to increased release of endorphins, thereby automatically reducing stress.

CONSCIOUSNESS

Inner Space Versus Outer Space

Outer space, supposedly the final frontier. Voyages in outer space require movement in a vehicle. The vehicle might be a car, spaceship, or a human body. Inner space is an altogether different journey. While the keywords of the outer journey are motion and sensory engagement. The keywords of the inner journey are stillness and sensory deprivation. The inner journey is territory unavailable to most, including myself. I spent 20 years of spiritual search doing nothing but failing to find the inner path… then floating gave it to me in 1 hour with no effort whatsoever.

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