Floating Above Cuba Street

James Smith Mar­ket’s Float Well offers sub­mer­sion into a space that’s been a site for relax­a­tion, med­it­a­tion, and con­scious­ness-exper­i­ment­a­tion through­out the 20th Cen­tury. The Wel­ling­tonista takes a dip.

In Ken Russell’s barmy 1980 sci-fi thrill­er Altered States, Wil­li­am Hurt plays a psy­cho­lo­gist whose hun­ger for third-eye-candy takes him on drug trips, indi­gen­ous vis­ion-quests, and ulti­mately into the pitch-black silence of a sens­ory-depriva­tion tank. Here the film — ostens­ibly based on real-life research — has Hurt’s char­ac­ter do battle with his inner­most self, suc­cumb­ing to the rav­ages of his own id. He devolves — it can’t be over­stated, this film claims its ori­gins in the real­ity of aca­dem­ic­ally sanc­tioned research — into first a mur­der­ous cave­man, and ulti­mately a raging cloud of pure malevol­ent elec­tri­city. Spoil­er!: he throws it all away when he real­ises he’s head­ing to a state of being wherein he can’t fuck no more.

If there’s a dark­ness in which Russell’s film can be said to have first been birthed, it’s that of John C. Lilly’s Restric­ted Envir­on­ment­al Stim­u­la­tion Tech­nique, or R.E.S.T. tank. Lilly — whose research ran the gamut from LSD ther­apy to dol­phin-human com­mu­nic­a­tion — developed the tank in the 1950s as an exper­i­ment in depriving the human brain of extern­al stim­uli. The tech­no­logy has since evolved but the essen­tial form remains the same. Today’s float-tanks, like Lilly’s, com­prise a sound­proof, light-tight space filled with heav­ily-salted, body-tem­per­at­ure water. Like tour­ists in the Dead Sea, the body can’t help but float; and in the absence of stim­uli, the hope is that lying in the tank evokes a still yet deeply explor­at­ive state of mind.

Wil­fully sur­ren­der­ing your senses to the void evokes an uneasy fas­cin­a­tion, and the pop-cul­tur­al pres­ence of the R.E.S.T. looms large. The Net­flix show Stranger Things has a char­ac­ter enter the tank to access inter­di­men­sion­al powers; in the ‘90s, the tech­no­logy was lam­pooned in The Simpsons and employed in the future-fix­ated com­ic-book epic The Invis­ibles as a deliv­ery mech­an­ism for vir­tu­al real­ity.

Lilly’s tech­no­logy also spawned con­sumer-level self-explor­a­tion, though. Rid­ing the wave of the con­scious­ness-explor­at­ive ‘60s, the tanks fell out of fash­ion in the later quarter of the 20th Cen­tury. In recent years the curi­os­ity has returned along­side the renewed interest in mind­ful­ness and med­it­at­ive prac­tise.

“Med­it­a­tion is some­times uncom­fort­able,” admits Sam­antha Roz­it­is, co-founder of float­a­tion space Float Well: “your foot will fall asleep, or your back is feel­ing sore, or if you lie down you’ll fall asleep instead of stay­ing alert or present. In the tank you’re try­ing to get into the same theta brain­wave state as you reach in med­it­a­tion, but it allows you to get in that state a lot quick­er and stay in that state because there aren’t phys­ic­al dis­trac­tions. It gives you a space to relax quick­er and focus.”

Roz­it­is and her part­ner, Kev­in Spacey (no, obvi­ously anoth­er one) arrived in New Zea­l­and from Canada in 2012: she has a back­ground in addic­tion coun­selling and yoga tuition, and he’s a struc­tur­al engin­eer work­ing on the Christ­ch­urch rebuild. Turned onto float­a­tion by pod­caster and fer­vent advoc­ate Joe Rogan (yep, the Fear Factor guy), they saw a niche in Wel­ling­ton for a ded­ic­ated, world-class float­a­tion-space: “It’s some­thing that we’re try­ing to pro­mote more as a prac­tise than just a buck­et-list thing”.

They out­fit­ted the upstairs space in the James Smiths build­ing with two large float­a­tion tanks, with plans to add more; in the mean­time, Float Well aug­ments its float­a­tion setup with mas­sage and craniosac­ral ther­apy offer­ings as well.

“Most people who go into the tank are going for stress relief and relax­a­tion,” says Roz­it­is: “an escape from their day-to-day lives.” But there’s anoth­er cohort as well: those who, like Altered States’ quest­ing elec­tric cave­man, “come for the explor­a­tion of con­scious­ness: the curi­os­ity of the mind.”

“Because you’re weight­less there’s no pres­sure points on the body,” explains Roz­it­is: “You may feel parts of the body that have been hold­ing onto ten­sion for years, or old injur­ies that have nev­er been fully resolved, may feel tender. It’s an envir­on­ment that allows you to scan through your phys­ic­al body, your emo­tion­al and men­tal state. Every single person’s float is dif­fer­ent.”

It’s indeed a unique sen­sa­tion to sub­merge in the salt water, pull the lid closed, and hear the gentle slosh­ing gradu­ally sub­side as the body finds still­ness. The body gen­er­ates its own sen­sa­tions of move­ment, sub­con­scious envir­on­ments drift­ing to the edge of con­scious­ness. Turn off your mind, relax and float down­stream, as ‘60s pop music exhor­ted the first wave of salt-water pion­eers.

The mind and body soon start com­mu­nic­at­ing dir­ectly, with con­scious­ness releg­ated to some­thing of a bemused bystand­er. The head hangs heavy, jaw lolling open, eyes blink­ing in an attempt to dis­tin­guish closed from open. You shower thor­oughly before and after float­ing, but the salt water bites acutely at the Muladhara and Svad­histhana chakras: a remind­er that in here, the whole body’s just one big bob­bing ball of sens­ory stim­uli.

The out­side world may be out of sight but it’s by no means out of mind: shal­low-bur­ied thoughts can’t help but come to the fore. It’s an envir­on­ment at once out­wardly relax­ing and inwardly chal­len­ging, dis­solv­ing the bound­ary between men­tal thoughts and bod­ily ten­sions. Time passes quickly, and it can be hard to believe a phys­ic­al jour­ney hasn’t taken place.

Most people start out with a one-off hour-long float, but some of Float Well’s ded­ic­ated explorers prefer to sub­merge for up to three hours. This is a jour­ney as deep as you’re will­ing to go, and you may not get far the first time. But the phys­ic­al sense of calm after­wards, the sound­ness of that night’s sleep, are undeni­able.

Thanks to Float Well, Level 1, James Smith Build­ing, 55 Cuba Street.