The Power of Nothing in A World of Perpetual Stimulation

Let's face it, we live in a world where there are constantly things going on. Social media, news, entertainment, work, etc. We wake up each morning, we prepare our first meal if we're lucky enough to have time, we head to work, we become tired, we get home, we zone out on TV, the internet, or find our face in a book, yada, yada. Before we know it, it's time again for bed, only to wake up and go through the cycle again. I, as I'm sure many of you can relate, found myself perpetuating this day to day business, finding time for myself but unknowingly always filling my brain with more.

Something I've learned over the years has been that life keeps moving, you have to keep up or you get left in the dust, and that ultimately, and here's the important part, it's a self repeating pattern. This being so, I found myself stressed out all the time. I'd blame one thing, another, and ultimately myself for things that I didn't really need to. The cycle of life continues on, it always does, and I kept finding this blame game as part of my story until one fateful night changed my perception forever.

My friend introduced me to a float tank. I'd heard about them online from the usual places, you know, podcasts and the like, though I never took that extra effort to go out and try this new thing that these people were raving about. Life can get so busy that sometimes the thing you need most comes as a suggestion from a friend. I thought, "Why not, there's nothing else planned for the night." And so we went for the last appointments of the night at Float Seattle. We were shown the rooms and tanks, got into our individual sensory deprivation chambers, and after the water settled once I laid back, something magical happened.

That magic was a state of nothingness, a truer void than anything I'd experienced before consciously. I noticed that my once racing mind had begun to slow. I'd think about something somebody said or did at work, which I'd normally fester over for hours if not days or weeks, and it just kind of faded within a minute or two. Then more thoughts came, telling me that I needed to do something. Again, they began to slough off my conscious plate too. Eventually the thoughts stopped all together and I was left with a feeling of warmth and nothing more. Having done a bit of research, I gathered that the name of the game in these tanks was to let go as often as possible, and so I did. I let go of my body. My perception became a white wisp of imaginative clouds, something called hypnogogic imagery. Out of the wisp began to pour shapes, partial scenes of reality, memories. I tried my best to not control it, just to see what would come out. By doing so this wondrous cloud began to vanish. By trying to do anything with it, I had negated it. I felt my body again. I worked on letting go once more and it reappeared. I played with this state of mind for an amount of time that I cannot measure through memory. Music began to play, my time in the tank had ended.

When I emerged from the darkness, I found myself standing still, in a state of utter disbelief. A giggle emerged from deep within me and wouldn't stop. It followed me into the shower and out of the room afterward. For the rest of the night I felt something akin to a psychedelic afterglow. Almost as if I were laying in bed under my covers first thing in the morning, but I was outside walking around the city. That was only the physical nature of my being after my first float. My head was clearer than I could remember. My thoughts weren't nagging, my mentality was a mellow so pure it felt like it was on par with Bob Marley's soul. Over the next few days life began to pile itself back onto my conscious state.

It took me awhile, but after the stress in life built back up enough I found myself back at the float center. I had found something special, a void or vacuum for all the mental junk I absorbed. That's something about me, I absorb the energy around me. I'm a Libra, so I guess it makes sense in the grand scheme of things, but it definitely rings true on the microcosmic level of that broad macrocosm. Floating for me had become a freedom, a liberty that I didn't know existed. When I pondered this more, I came to some further realizations about the magic of this nothingness.

If life really is a self repeating pattern, which I truly believe, I've asked the Sun, the moon, and the four seasons that pass each year. They tell me that there is a consistent pattern to the nature of reality. Our brains operate in a similar fashion. If one were to think about the complexity of the world in its current state, it could be concluded that we're well within an ocean of organized chaos. Look around you and try to point to a void. I'll bet you can't do it. We're constantly stimulated by electronics, physical media, and culture in general. It's tough to even find a place in nature where you can be guaranteed to not see a plane fly overhead.

Because of this constant stimulation, I feel like our brains are perpetuating our pasts by linking every moment on different sensory inputs related to the level of energy associated with each of our lifetime experiences. That's how we follow the things we love, that's how we find ourselves depressed by traumas, behind both is the same inherent function. This is what the magic of the float tank holds, it's a place with no stimulation that gives us control over this self repeating pattern called life. It gives us a blank canvas to work with ideas and not have our brains constantly be linking with external stimuli. Healing, creation, even simple relaxation are at the heart of what each of us should be able to experience to live a life of joy and happiness. For me this is what floating provides. Please, if you will, take a moment to meditate over these words, see if any of it rings true to you. If it does, try floating, try taking control over your trauma, your creativity, and most importantly, your future. I never thought that nothingness could have so much importance until I found somewhere to truly experience it.

—Drew Walker