floathouse Blog Archive - Float House

Why Float

I've Floated Over 100 Times, Here Are My 7 Tips for a First Time Floater!

I've Floated Over 100 Times, Here Are My 7 Tips for a First Time Floater!

Since Float House in Gastown opened up about a year ago, I've floated close to 100, if not more than 100 times. I consider myself an experienced floater and am jazzed whenever I get an opportunity to talk to first timers about the experience.

Other than showering off really well, making sure your ear plugs are in nicely, what else is there to know about floating? Chances are if you ask any experienced floater, they'll have their own unique insights as well as some "true across the board" tips for you on your first float adventure.

Float Tanks and their Applications within Cognitive Science

Float Tanks and their Applications within Cognitive Science

When the first humans began to explore the dark crevices of the world, they were the first of us to experience a situation where they could deprive their senses from their harsh daily lives and slip into a mystical experience and reflect inward. Deep within those caverns, animal cults and secret societies emerged, as more complex and abstract ideas were experienced through ecstatic visions (Hayden, 2003). However, our ancestors did not then realize that those visions came from deep within themselves and one of the world's most complicated information processing machines, the human nervous system. We now do know these things and because of this we have developed the psychological and cognitive sciences in order to measure and analyze how we interact with the world around, and inside us, as objectively as possible.

Why Sensory Deprivation?

Why Sensory Deprivation?

Why would anyone want to deprive their senses? Why would anyone not want to feel anything? Well, simply put, just because you are in a sensory deprivation tank does not mean you don’t feel anything. All you are doing is minimizing the amount of EXTERNAL stimuli coming into your nervous system. So what does your nervous system do? It cranks up the volume. It tries to detect any sort of stimuli and yet still minimal is coming… so what happens?