Floating

I recently went to a SPA place to take a one-hour-long floating session and it was a great catalyst to a train of thoughts that stayed with me for a few days. I decided I’d not keep it to myself only and share them with the Hive community. This will be something about the time and the lack of it; about how sometimes a week can seem like an eternity, while at the same time months and years go by as quickly as you wink.

A birthday gift
You see, it was back in April when I was thinking about what to gift my girlfriend to, as her birthday was approaching soon. I had a few ideas, but one of them was to give her a new experience. This is something that we try to do: instead of giving things, we prefer giving each other memorable experiences.

Since we both work and travel a lot, and also try to juggle other things at the same time, we sometimes find ourselves caught in a constant rush. I usually am the first to notice when we start to lose the balance—or at least I am the first to voice my concerns, because usually it quickly becomes obvious that we both feel the same, or at least in a similar way. It was exactly that case back then in April, so I thought I’d buy as a voucher for a floating session for two.

What is floating?
It actually surprises me when I talk about this with my friends, as I was pretty sure that while maybe not the most popular thing to do, it is at least somewhat widely understood that floating exists and what it is—more or less. However, most of people I talk with need some sort of an introduction, so I’ll do it here as well.

Floating is considered to be one of the wellness procedures. I hate that term, but well. Simply put, floating means entering a sensory deprivation chamber that is filled with water, and lying there in the water for anywhere from half an hour, and up to a few hours. In the chamber you’re completely cut from any external stimuli. There’s a complete darkness and a complete silence. The water is a very strong solution of water and epsom salt, which means the water is able to hold you afloat easily. Moreover, the temperature of the water and the air is kept at around 36,6 degrees Celsius, so you don’t even feel that you’re in a water.