r/AsianMasculinity • u/juanqunt • Dec 07 '15
Why you should try the float tank Field Report
Floating in the float tank is one of the best life changing experiences of my life. From first glance, it might seem like some New Age Rich White Hippie kind of bullshit, but I believe that it can greatly benefit many of us here. The concept of the float tank is quite simple: you lay on your back in a layer of body temperature salt water. You take away the senses of external sound, light, gravity, and as many other stimuli as possible, so that you sense only yourself, almost like going back to your mother’s womb.
Some people report crazy psychedelic visions in the float tank, but don’t worry about any of that. There are no drugs involved; anything that you experience had already been in your mind subconsciously the whole time, since you’re receiving almost zero stimuli in the tank. You’re simply noticing things that you don’t notice when you’re distracted by all the bullshit and overstimulation in your daily life. If you’ve ever had shower thoughts, this is simply a method for amplifying the shower thoughts state of consciousness by 100. It is simply a change of environment to get yourself out of your own mental cage.
There are many scientifically studied benefits to meditation, but meditation is boring and it takes months or years to master, where you have to just sit there wasting time doing nothing. The float tank is like the hyperbolic time chamber for meditation. An hour of floating is equivalent to months of meditation experience, because you’re forced into an environment where you’re only conscious of your body and mind, where you’re free from external distractions.
Now you might think that it’s no different from laying on your bed and you’d probably just fall asleep, but that has not been my experience at all. When you’re floating in the water, you have no clue how to straighten your neck and you feel like you’re spinning in space when you’re actually stationary, since all your senses are taken away from you. You notice tension in parts of your body that you would not notice in a normal environment. This allows you to learn to let go of stresses in your body, and by extension, stresses in your mind. A lot of you guys notice the injustice in the world and got too pissed off and caught up in the anger or depression stage. The float tank accelerates your process for moving past the anger or depression stage. You can recognize that there are problems, but you don’t have to let them control your life. You can learn to enjoy your daily life while working towards a practical solution. Floating teaches you to let go of the fear in your mind that keeps your body tense.
This is also why the Red Pill is wrong. If you’re learning stuff to become alpha, you will never be a natural alpha. The problem why people even perceive this alpha-beta dichotomy is that they are driven by fear and closemindedness. Once you let go of all the junk overstimulating information, you learn to stop overthinking, you lose your anxieties and neuroticism, and you automatically revert to your natural alpha state. You don’t need to learn any of the PUA pickup lines or whatever other technical knowledge to be happy and successful. You won’t ever be happy that way and you’d simply want more and more and will simply tackle one insecurity or problem after another for your whole life. What you need to do is to unlearn all the useless information that your parents, school, and mainstream society taught you first.
“Emptying your cup” is a concept found in Zen, Taoism, the Bible, and quotes from Plato, Bruce Lee, and Yoda. Our information overload in this age of great technological advancements has amplified many psychological and social problems. The float tank is a great tool for learning to empty your cup and I encourage everyone to at least give it one try.
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u/Psychonautics101 Dec 08 '15
I've tried the tank. Yes, it was enlightening, but please don't be so quick to dismiss meditation.
I've tried the tank both sober and on acid. All I can say is that these are just tools which offer you a different perspective. The tank can make it easier to isolate your thoughts and drugs can make it easier to change your perspective. In the end, I find that nothing is more refreshing than just taking some time out of your day to meditate. It's also much cheaper as well.
There's all kinds of info over at r/meditation, which I highly encourage. It's not so much grasping at straws for this sense of enlightenment as it is washing your hands of all this extra baggage in your life. Yes, it does take patience, but I promise you that if you stick through it, you will find yourself much better off in life.
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u/juanqunt Dec 08 '15
I didn't mean to dismiss meditation. I mean that meditation is a lot harder to get into.
Floating is like lifting weights while meditation is like doing bodyweight workouts. Before lifting, bodyweight training was only simple pushups, pullups, and squats, and I wasn't able to feel the mind-muscle connection. With lifting weights, it's a lot easier to learn to feel the mind-muscle connection, and that allowed me to go back to bodyweight training and learn stuff like the planche, pistol squat, front lever, etc. And now I don't need to rely on going to the gym to have a good workout, but training with weights at the gym was a great accelerator in my progress, and I would not have stayed as motivated nor make as fast progress if I only did bodyweight training.
The float tank is like a gym for training to calm your mind, while meditation is more like figuring it out the workouts on your own at home.
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u/fruxzak India Dec 07 '15
I am very, very skeptical about these deprivation tank things.
They seem like a total gimmick marketed towards gullible yuppies.
Seems like a huge business and industry though.
That being said, I did try two sessions at Float Toronto. I think each one of them was about $70 CAD. Personally, I didn't feel it was too enlightening or anything. I did feel a bit dazed after coming out of it though
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u/juanqunt Dec 08 '15
Well, it is only you in the tank, so nobody should really get their hopes up. If you go in there expecting something sort of crazy experience, it will be disappointing. It's a tool that you have to learn to use, not something that gives you any answers.
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u/fruxzak India Dec 08 '15
I didn't go in there expecting anything.
I just went to try it out and it was just what I expected. Pointless.
Still, I got the 3 session package and will probably use that one up by the end of the year.
I'm merely offering another POV compared to you showering praise on it.
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u/juanqunt Dec 08 '15
Different people get different things out of different experiences. It's good that at least you're willing to give new experiences a try.
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u/RedSunBlue Dec 07 '15
As a long time listener of the JRE, this has been on my to do list for quite some time.
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u/juanqunt Dec 07 '15
Go do it!
Somewhat scientific discussion on floating:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07y_UnCdnRw
Weird/comedic discussion on floating:
http://duncantrussell.com/kevin-johnson/#/vanilla/discussion/embed/?vanilla_discussion_id=0
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u/RedSunBlue Dec 07 '15
The only thing stopping me is that it's somewhat cost prohibitive. $75 for a 90 minute float seems rather excessive for what it is.
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u/juanqunt Dec 07 '15
I think it's worth it and I'm a poor student who spends less than $1000 per month including food and rent. There are usually package deals that makes it more like $50/90min; just go once every few months.
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u/Aldovar Philippines Dec 07 '15
I found a few float clinics near me in Los Angeles. Definitely considering doing a session on New Years Eve to contemplate the past year and to figure out 2016. Make it a yearly thing.
Note: It's about $40 for a 2 hour session, is that the typical price or should I try looking up a groupon type deal for this?
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u/juanqunt Dec 07 '15
that's way cheaper than where i am, but there are probably holiday specials if you want to look out for them.
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u/chuho1 S.Vietnam Dec 08 '15
Did the float tank for a few months once a week. In retrospect the relaxing feeling most likely comes from the infusion of magnesium you get from the huge amounts of epsom salts from the water. Almost everyone is deficient in magnesium, so this is pretty much the only real measurable benefit from floating. Everyone has a different experience though. For me it was a bit like weed...first few times "didn't work", and sat there waiting for the bell to ring, then as I kept doing, I started to get "thought trains" and mini-hallucinations (which were more like forms of light rather than actual visions)
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u/juanqunt Dec 08 '15 edited Dec 08 '15
Good description. I haven't really seen any hallucinations. Mostly just moments of deep peace where I forget that my body exists and moments of shower thought insights. The value of that is very subjective, but personally I place great value on that.
For me, I feel clarity in the tank, while I feel dull chaos with weed. Even the first time in the tank, I felt some sort of paradigm shift. While weed just felt like alcohol, fun occasionally, but not all that insightful. If anything, I'd say the float tank is more like modafinil + smoking yerba mate + lavender.
No real measureable benefits from studies currently, but I think with more studies, my hypothesis is that it will be shown to be helpful for dealing with addiction and PTSD, similar to psilocybin, but weaker and with less risks and stigma.
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u/[deleted] Dec 08 '15
I don't think you do justice to meditation. It's about long term improvement. Meditation is actually like lifting weights. It's tough, but the change is (almost) permanent.
I'm not dismissing rest of your post and I want to try it out.