Can you find serenity in 10 inches of water at H20 Float Spa?
Danforth business follows new trend promising to calm people’s nerves and aches
Panic.
My hands stumble along the walls of the “float pod,” searching, frantically, for a light switch — or an exit. Just10 minutes after I begin my firstever journey in this enclosed fibreglass womb, I accidentally splash salt water into my eye — it’s burning and the air feels like it’s getting thin.
Shelley Stertz, co-owner of H2O Float Spa, one of the city’s newest spas and part of a growing trend to float away your troubles and physical aches, told me during our briefing that it takes time, often more than one visit, to fully relax and reap the calming benefits of “floating” and feeling weightless for an hour.
She assured me I can’t drown. Or suffocate.
That brings me little comfort as I grope in the dark. The pod, which is roughly the size of a Honda hatchback with no wheels, feels increasingly like a roomy coffin.
Mercifully, I stumble upon the handle, lift the lid and exhale.
After a quick eye-flush in the inroom shower, I slide back into the pod, determined to escape the outside world and my anxious thoughts by embracing the serenity of this sensory deprivation tank.
I close the lid, this time choosing to leave on a low green light, and lie back down. My bum is suddenly pushed up and my spine is swished to alignment by the 1,200 pounds of Epsom salt in the 10 inches of water beneath me.
Apparently, this is more buoyant than a float in the Dead Sea.
As my eyes shut, I try not to think about the others who have used this tank (co-owner Jack Ouzounian explained to me, as I checked in, that the water is filtered via UV light and an ozonator, cleansed with hydrogen peroxide, skimmed after each use and bacteria doesn’t stand a chance of survival in all that salt).
Slowly, the slightly soupy, “skin” temperature water begins to feel indistinguishable from my own skin and I swear I’m resting on a cloud, completely free of gravity’s oppressive force. I get it now — and understand why more than one third of H2O’s customers visit often for pain relief.
Ouzounian says he was wooed two years ago into trying out a float spa in Montreal by promises it would alleviate his neck and back pain. Once he hit the water and bounced to the surface, he was hooked, he says. He and Stertz opened H20 on Danforth Ave. 14 months ago.
Since then, he and many customers have been floating regularly in H2O’s serene and pristine spa as a way to meditate, he says. Alone in the darkness with no sound, annoyances, devices or physical sensation there’s increased self awareness and the “imaginative part of your mind” comes to the fore, he says. “It’s for people who want to create some space in their lives and get away from everything.”
When you’re inside, and finally calm, it’s true: Everything — the angry strains of responsibility and all — disappears.
Until Stertz’s quiet voice signals, over an in-pod intercom, that my session has ended. Too bad, I was just getting started.