Rick Senley sees if floating will, you know, float his boat
By Rick Senley • Dec 22nd, 2009 • Category: Features
(THIS LADY IS NOT RICK SENLEY. RICK SENLEY IS A MAN WITH A BEARD AND EVERYTHING.)
A police helicopter snarls overhead, some violent halfwit on the run; the imbecile offspring of microwaved dinners walks into me and a newspaper flogger offers me one.
‘Standard, free sir now, free.’
‘No thank you’ I retort, his proposal unnecessary, ‘I’ve already got one.’
‘Standard, free sir now, free.’
‘No thank you’ I retort, his proposal unnecessary, ‘I’ve already got one.’
‘Standard, free sir now, free.’
‘You can frig off and shove that right up your arse’ I retort, my proposal necessary.
It would appear that I am highly strung yet I am neither a businessman nor a pilot. I am not under pressure from my job because I haven’t got a job. My wife doesn’t harangue my mortgage payments because I am unmarried and my living quarters are rented. My children do not clamour for pocket money nor for tickles because I rarely reproduce, yet I still want to kick a dozen people a day in the knackers.
There is only one thing for it; remove all items of clothing and lie in warm water in pitch darkness for exactly an hour.
The people at Floatworks near London Bridge have heard of my well-intentioned misanthrophy and suggest some darkened nudity could assist the state of my mind. I’ve tried yoga but it makes me fall asleep. I’ve tried mediation but it makes me fall asleep. And the people there wear striped trousers. And have got awful little beards. And like eating biscuits. And drink herbal bastard fruit tea.
I remain quiet and assent. If floating with my trousers off can help me conquer this all-encompassing aggressive form of unwarranted stress, then I’ll give it a go. If spending half an hour in a lift with Ant and Dec would help, I’ll give it a go. Actually, no I wouldn’t – I’d probably kill myself and then kill them one by one with lift wires and electronic components. Or something like that.
A floatation tank (above) is like a pretty bath-tub with a roof and the experience is oddly pleasant, unsettling, unnerving and soporifically lovely, like a booming Father Christmas taking you onto his knee for a bit longer than expected in his underwater grotto.
This is complete sensory deprivation; the water’s deep salinity ensures I float, removing the pressure on my spine, skin, veins and arteries.
I lie gravity-free and the blood flows quicker, speeding up my oxygen supply and ditching the toxins, reducing the stress hormone Cortisol, the vessels no longer squashed between the skin and a chair. The water is heated to body temperature so I am unable to tell where my skin ends and the water starts and apart from the breath in my ears and the startled splash when I nod off, there is complete silence, complete, empty silence, something that is so hard to find in life but something we all intrinsically need, an utter void of distraction with nothing to do other than float and think, to drift off, snore, wonder about time (have I been here for five minutes or fifty-five minutes, it’s hard to tell), no television, no texting, no phone calls, no internet, food, nothing and it’s magical.
In the darkened silence, with no physical or sensory distraction, the brain drifts into a deep relaxed state, balancing its two sides – halting activity in the logical left and increasing creativity on the right and supposedly allowing us to access previously unavailable source of imagination, unhindered by the constraints of reason.
My mind flits in and out of a dream-like state, fully aware of being not fully awake, hesitant to let go and submit to this unknown level of relaxation, shocked by an hour of nothingness so I propel myself from one end to the other, pushing off with my feet for something to do, anything, so unused to this complete emptiness that it frightens me, the chance to be truly alone with just my mind for company.
And then before I know it – but actually it feels like hours – my time’s up. I get dressed, have a glass of water and head back into London. The tube’s broken down and I burn my mouth on some pastry chicken concoction and then I drop my keys in a puddle and a fellow burps on my back and, and, and….And I decide to go back for another float soon but it must have helped a bit though because I didn’t swear at anyone until the morning.
A one hour session costs £40 and Floatworks are open seven days a week from 10am-10pm.
Rick Senley is a very tall young man, probably too tall for his own good. He sometimes drinks heavily and has incidents. His favourite place in London is lightly breadcrumbed with a twinge of lemon juice but frig the chips.
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You have a beard? Impressive!
not a genuine one alas
The second one is always better as it’s a learned experience and after the sky’s the limit…….