We Tried It: Flotation Therapy at Float Boston

Illustration by Eric Palma

As I stood, clad only in silicone earplugs, one thought coursed through my brain: Why am I willingly climbing into a waterlogged coffin?

I swallowed my anxiety and tugged at the door. I stepped inside. I confirmed, thrice, that I could open the door from inside. Then I readied myself for transcendence.

This is flotation therapy, also known as sensory-deprivation therapy. It involves enclosing yourself in a small tank (see also: waterlogged coffin) and lying in a shallow pool of tepid water saturated with almost half a ton of Epsom salts. These days, people float to experience total relaxation; vibrant, creative thought; and, sometimes, hallucinations. More-extreme sensory deprivation has also been used as a torture technique. Fun!

Somerville’s Float Boston, one of several places in the area offering the service, has two types of tanks. There’s the “Summer Sky” model, roughly 7 by 7 feet and equipped with fiber-optic lights. Then there’s the pitch-dark “Escape Pod,” which, at about 7 by 4 feet, resembles a convenience-store ice chest.

Guess which one I ended up with.

Standing in my private room, I was pessimistic. For one thing, I’m not good at mental relaxation. (During yoga, I often spend savasana planning dinner.) For another, I’m mildly claustrophobic. I pictured floating like an hourlong panic attack in a very salty bathtub. With this expectation in mind, I flopped into my watery prison. Immediately, my body rose to the surface without an ounce of exertion. I waited for my senses to fade away, my thoughts to quiet, hallucinations to grip my mind.

But mainly I was just…floating. And pretty bored. I began drafting this story and worrying that my earplugs would block the music that signals time’s up. You’re doing this wrong, I scolded myself.

Finally, after about 30 minutes, it happened: I relaxed. For maybe a minute, I saw colorful plumes of smoke behind my eyelids, curling outward before beginning again. Then I started to overanalyze. Was I seeing things only because I expected to? Unsurprisingly, the “smoke” dissipated quickly upon examination. Soon, it was replaced by a sense of utter calm. My muscles released. Images I hadn’t recalled in years flitted in and out of my mind: pasta I ate in Paris, the site of my brother’s high school cross-country meets, a bar where I danced in Greece.

Then it all stopped. Resting with my hands on my stomach and my legs outstretched, I slipped into a half-conscious, sleeplike state. Here I stayed until the soothing music—not blocked by my earplugs after all—trickled into the pod.

I emerged feeling as though I’d woken from a wonderful nap. The sensation stayed with me as I rinsed off, got dressed, and sipped a cup of tea in Float’s lounge. I drifted out the door on a wave of tranquility—before being slapped back to reality by my Uber driver blasting heavy metal with abandon.

All good things, I guess, must come to an end.

$60 per hour (monthly memberships available); Float Boston, 515 Medford St., Somerville, 888-443-5628, floatboston.com.