OFF BEAT LAUNCHES
Ashley Martin looks at culture in new column
Welcome to Off Beat! This biweekly column has a broader focus than my last one, Live To Eat. (Despite all the awesome restaurants in town, it was really hard to keep up a food-specific series as a mostly vegetarian.) In Off Beat, I’ll write about arts and life, venturing away from my daily news reporting (hence the title).
Procrastinator that I am, I never got around to floating until last month.
Prior to that, my main frame of reference was an episode of The Simpsons, in which Homer and Lisa each float in a coffin-sized sensory deprivation tank.
Christian Zrymiak has heard this before.
“That’s one of the three ways people have learned about floating,” said Zrymiak, a co-owner of Regina’s newest float business.
I figured it wouldn’t be quite like The Simpsons, especially after my colleague Austin Davis relayed his own Float Now experience.
A float tank is nothing like a coffin, for one thing. It’s amply roomy — six feet wide, eight feet long and with more than enough room to stand up.
Inside, there’s 1,100 pounds of Epsom salts in 13 inches of water (which is triple-filtered between each use), so you float easily.
While floating for 90 minutes in the pitch dark — or in blue light or simulated starlight, if that’s your preference — wearing what might be the most superb earplugs on the planet, you’re able to mentally unwind, too.
“We’re constantly avoiding situations where we get hit by cars,” Austin told me, paraphrasing Zrymiak.
“After 45 minutes, the part of your brain that’s constantly worried about avoiding death gets to relax.”
“Basically floating does three things,” Zrymiak actually explained later. “It reduces stress, it reduces pain through reducing tension in the body, and it increases self-awareness.” OK then, sign me up.
Right from entering the spa-like space — a former call centre office, renovated to be unrecognizable — I felt a weight lift. Maybe it was the minimal decor, or the quiet ambience, or co-owner Evan Duncan’s calm demeanour (which probably comes from floating).
“It’s very centring for me,” said Duncan. “And I’m nicer to other people when I’m floating a lot. It just seems to bring the best out of me.
“I love floating because it shows me what I’m not,” he added. “I’m not my stress or pain in my body or ideas that I have about myself.”
The calm continued during a tour of one of their four float cabins (two more are being built soon), as Duncan ran through some tips for an ideal float.
Turn off your cellphone. (Just knowing that it can’t ring, ding or vibrate is de-stressing, right?)
Dry your face after your requisite shower, so you’re not tempted to wipe it with saltwatery hands. (Salt in the eye — not fun.)
Don’t try too hard to relax. “You drink a cup of water, it’s not the effort that hydrates you, it’s the water,” said Zrymiak.
Basically, be in the moment and don’t overthink things, because, as Zrymiak said, “thinking about how you should be thinking about nothing is just twice as many thoughts.”
So, while hanging out for 90 minutes, distraction-free and obligation-free, my mind wandered frequently and aimlessly, from work to groceries to past vacations to future plans.
In stillness, I felt like I was falling backward at times, then would occasionally jolt to the present as my body twitched for some reason. Those moments usually led to pingponging to one side or the other of the tub.
But without moving, it’s almost as though you’re suspended in space. The salty water and humid air are the same temperature, a perfect 34.4 C.
“Since the water’s the same temperature as your skin,” said Zrymiak, “if you don’t move, your body stops telling the difference between where you start and where everything else starts.”
That can help with anxiety, he added, because your nervous system goes “on holidays,” and “when your nervous system is relaxed, it’s not capable of being stressed at the same time.”
Zrymiak is a strong proponent of floating not only for mental and physical well-being, but for pain relief.
“The muscles relax from the lack of pressure on the spine, the muscles, the joints,” he said.
“We honestly get people who limp in here and skip out.”
I can see that. Having floated twice, I’ve felt less stiff afterward — in body and mind.
It’s kind of like combining the most relaxing bath ever with the ideal nap. You just feel rested.
Unlike Lisa Simpson, I haven’t had any revelations from float meditation. Maybe it’ll come with practice, which I fully intend to do with my newly purchased membership ($49 a month includes one free float and additional floats for $39).
Float Now was co-founded in Saskatoon by three ex-Reginans, Duncan, Zrymiak and their friend Russel Mueller, after Zrymiak built a float tank in his basement in 2012.
Their new shop lengthens the list of existing float companies (there are at least three others).
Float Now is located at 2024A Albert St. in Regina and 203 Idywyld Dr. S. in Saskatoon. Visit floatnow.ca for more information.