I Paid $67 to Lie Naked in the Dark - Now I Can’t Shut Up About It

What started as a sceptical lunch-break experiment became a regular escape from my own brain.

Jen* (not in a floatation tank). Grutas De Tolantongo. Tolantongo Hidalgo Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo, Mexico. April 2025.

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It begins, as many deeply transformative experiences do, with a foreign woman earnestly inviting me to strip naked in a dimly lit room.

“You’re welcome to wear swimmers,” she chirped, “but most people float in their birth outfit.”

I nodded slowly. Birth outfit? Was this some kind of wellness cult? Was I about to be cradled by a stranger while a playlist called “Reclaiming the Womb” pulsed through hidden speakers? I’d paid $67 for this. I’d also skipped lunch.

Eventually – thankfully – it dawned on me that “birth outfit” was just boutique-day-spa-speak for “nude.” Which was fine. I love nude. I am pro-nude. I have long been a fan of gravity’s quiet reminder that we are, at all times, slowly being pulled into the Earth like overripe fruit.

So there I was: floating, nude, alone, in a coffin-shaped pod filled with body-temperature saltwater and the vague scent of eucalyptus hand soap. My first thought? This is either the stupidest thing I’ve ever done or the beginning of something magnificent. Possibly both. The line is blurry when you’re lying naked in a water sarcophagus while attempting not to bump your knees against the fibreglass wall of serenity.

I had, until recently, been a sceptic. Float tanks reeked of tech-bro pseudo-science and smug self-optimisation. They were for Joe Rogan acolytes and wellness influencers with jawlines like weaponised granite. The kind of people who use “recalibrate” as a verb and describe water as “structured.”

But things change. A few floats in and I’d become something worse than a believer – I’d become an evangelist. I’m floating on my lunch break. Sometimes on a Wednesday. Willingly. With no one forcing me and no trauma to process. Just me and the dark.

How did I get here?

My Brain Is Loud, Always

To understand the appeal, you first need to understand the problem. My brain is not quiet.¹ My brain is not still. My brain is a poorly indexed national archive with faulty lighting and an overenthusiastic grad throwing files around yelling, “YOU’VE GOT TO SEE THIS.”

At any given moment, I might be thinking about a minor legislative amendment from 1987, a girl I once fancied in Grade 10, three outstanding work emails, Scott Morrison.²

Other people, I am told, do not live like this.

Apparently, they can focus on a task without veering sideways into half-remembered cricket matches or the smell of Prague in autumn. Apparently, some people just think one thought at a time. Fucking amateurs.

For years, I assumed everyone’s mind was a deranged carnival of hyperlinks and side quests. That their inner lives, too, were punctuated by a relentless stream of half-formed observations, rogue song lyrics and vivid flashes of every side boob they’d ever been lucky enough to glimpse.

But I’ve since discovered that’s not the case. Desperate for stillness, I run. I swim. I breathe.³ I briefly flirted with yoga before remembering I’m physically incapable of taking seriously any activity that features incense, plank pose, and someone shouting “open your heart chakra” without irony.

Eventually, I ended up in the tank. Not because I was searching for myself, or trying to achieve transcendence, but because I just wanted – very badly – for my thoughts to shut the fuck up. Even for a moment.

Even that seemed impossible. Until, quite shockingly, it wasn’t.

The Float – A Surprising Surrender

It’s hard to feel spiritual in a fibreglass pod that looks like a rejected prototype for Elon Musk’s cryo-capsule. Harder still when you’re trying not to stub your toe while climbing into it naked, damp and mildly overcaffeinated.

But I’ll say this: once you close the lid and the world disappears, it does feel – against all rational expectation – rather magnificent.

At first, yes, it’s weird. You bounce. You bob. You try to find the centre of the pod and discover you are always, somehow, drifting slightly off it. You think about your nipples more than usual. You hear your heartbeat. You wonder if you remembered to turn your rear bike light off.

But then something strange happens. Your body – your treacherous, tight-hipped, overstimulated body – starts to soften. Your breath deepens. The usual parade of committee papers, poorly written sentences and erotic flashbacks begins to slow. And for a moment, a rare, silent moment, you forget who you are.

Not in a mystical way. More like you become irrelevant to yourself. Which is, I cannot stress this enough, a tremendous relief.

And yes, I am nude. Joyfully, completely, unapologetically nude. It’s not sexy, it’s not rebellious, it’s not even particularly aesthetic – it’s just right. Like a wee kiddie under a sprinkler or a retired hippie sunning themselves on a rock. There is a kind of primal contentment to it. Clothes, I’m convinced, are tyranny.

The warm, salty water does the rest. Skin-temperature and magnesium-heavy, it holds you without effort. No tensing, no adjusting, no angles to manage. Just suspension. Buoyancy. A sense, however fleeting, that maybe the world can carry you after all.

It’s addictive, this quiet. Not because it’s profound, but because it’s rare.

And it turns out, rare is enough.

The Science and the Snake Oil

Of course, once I’d fallen for it, I needed to know if I’d been duped. Was this just wet navel-gazing with better lighting? Was I part of a very expensive placebo?

Turns out: maybe, but also, not really.

According to Dr Justin Feinstein – a neuropsychologist with an actual lab coat and everything – floating reduces cortisol, improves blood circulation, and helps rewire your Default Mode Network, which sounds like either a productivity hack or a rogue government agency.⁴ Theta brainwaves. Neuroplasticity. Decreased lactic acid. The full alchemy of relaxation.

Studies (small but sincere) suggest that floating helps with everything from anxiety to insomnia to post-footy soreness. It’s been used to treat depression, migraines, and, in a few cases, the existential horror of open-plan offices. One paper even hinted at increased creativity, though I’m still waiting for the Great Australian Novel to arrive unbidden mid-float.

What I can confirm is this: it works better than yoga, meditation apps, and whatever the hell “forest bathing” is supposed to be. There are no instructions in the tank. No dulcet voice telling you to soften your gaze or visualise your inner river. Just you. Your body. And a silence so complete it sounds like pressure.

Naturally, this entire subculture has been colonised by podcasters, biohackers, and men named Chad who refer to it as “recalibration.” Joe Rogan, patron saint of sweaty bro-philosophy, has made the tank his personal sermon cave. That almost put me off. Almost.

But the beauty of the tank is this: Joe Rogan can’t reach you in there.

No ads. No algorithm. No TED Talk. Just a void so deep and featureless that even your ego takes a nap.

It’s the antithesis of influence. Which, in this economy, feels revolutionary.

Body Parts and Internal Diplomacy

Some people meditate by picturing a candle. Others chant Sanskrit or imagine melting into a cloud. In the tank, I’ve adopted a far less poetic but far more effective method: I talk to my body like a diplomat on a goodwill tour.

It begins with the feet. Hello, toes. Thank you for your service. Calves, you’ve been tight lately – what’s that about? Quads, we good? Hips, I know. You carry everything. Let it go, just for now.

It sounds mad, I know. But the tank gives you time, space, and enough magnesium to believe you might actually be made of light. So, I do the rounds. Ankles. Knees. Hamstrings. Lower back, upper back. Each one getting a moment of attention. Each one, miraculously, relaxing under scrutiny. I don’t try to empty my mind, I let it fill with a quiet roll call of forgotten architecture. Sternum, lungs, jaw, neck. You in?

By the time I reach the scalp, I’m practically vibrating with calm. Not the Instagram kind, not curated wellness content, but actual, physical calm. Like your body’s finally been given a chance to speak without being interrupted by Outlook notifications or your own neurotic narration.

And the feel of it… God. It’s like being swaddled by physics. No pressure points, no angles to hold. Everything softens. Even your ribs, those anxious little prison bars, seem to widen. Your hands float without effort. Your spine forgets it’s a Protestant. Every bit of you untangles.

I am, briefly, not a person. Just a gentle arrangement of molecules enjoying their temporary cohesion. It is bliss. Not metaphorical bliss. Not philosophical bliss. Just: this feels fucking amazing.

Float Culture vs Life Culture

The strangest part isn’t the floating. It’s what happens after. You step out, towel off, and the world seems... louder. Dumber. Like it’s trying too hard.

Outside, people are jogging while listening to motivational podcasts. Someone is forest bathing with a GoPro. A man in $600 athleisure is telling a friend about his “fasted cardio plus bioresonance protocol.” A woman is selling breathwork workshops for $240 a session. Everyone is optimising something.⁵

Meanwhile, I’ve just spent an hour doing absolutely nothing, and it was the most profound sensory event I’ve had all week. No performance. No hashtags. Just water, salt, and silence.

It makes you realise how much of life is branded nonsense. You’re not allowed to simply walk anymore; it has to be a Scandinavian sadness hike. Eating lunch? That’s now “fueling your midday cycle.” Sleeping without pyjamas? Please: welcome to textile-free circadian recalibration.

We are all so deeply uncomfortable with ordinary things that we dress them up in spiritual drag just to feel something. I say this as someone who once called a swim “natural elemental submersion therapy” just to annoy my wife.

But the tank? The tank doesn’t care. It doesn’t sell you anything. It doesn’t track your metrics or correct your form. It doesn’t even speak.

It just holds you, perfectly still, and lets you remember – however briefly – what it feels like to not be constantly trying. Ironically, this is probably the most advanced wellness practice of them all.

After the Float – Walking Back to Work

Afterwards, there’s no music. No wisdom. No voice in your ear telling you you’ve unlocked your higher self. Just the simple, blessed act of standing up and noticing your limbs.

You shower. You dress slowly. Everything feels deliberate, like your muscles have become polite. Even your clothes feel quieter.

Outside, the world continues. A truck groans down the street. Someone honks at a roundabout. The footpath is uneven in places and your socks, absurdly, feel luxurious. You walk back to work. Walking feels right. Necessary, even. Like your body wants the rhythm.

There is no great insight. No hallucination. No spirit animal delivering a TEDx pitch. Just a hum. A stillness that lingers in your chest like the echo of a cathedral.

You pass a jacaranda and notice the precise purple of its flowers. You smell someone’s toast through an open window. You feel calm, not in the social media sense, but in the bodily sense. Like you might, briefly, be OK with the next meeting. Like your skin has been tuned slightly more in your favour.

And, for once, your brain isn’t arguing.

A Quiet, Salty Gospel

I go regularly now. On my lunch break. It is far more rewarding than the alternative.⁶

I know how it sounds. I can hear myself. A man who writes diatribes against forest bathing voluntarily climbs into a futuristic clam shell of warm salty water to talk to his knees and “connect with stillness.” I should be ashamed. I’m not.

This is not a conversion. I’m not here to sell you the Float Life™. I’m not putting a mandala on my business cards or quoting Rumi. But I am saying: it works. For me.

It works in the way freshly vacuumed carpet feels good under your feet. In the way, it feels to scratch your back just right. In the way you sometimes sit very still after a really good cry, not sad anymore, just emptied out and strangely clean.

There’s no spiritual epiphany. No revelation. No sense that the universe has whispered its secrets into the saline.

But I do emerge calmer. Less reactive. More likely to let things go that would normally get me up at 2:47 in the morning, muttering about phrasing in paragraph 6.2. I float. I breathe. I come back feeling like I’ve been put down and picked up properly.

I’m sure there are better ways to spend $67. I’m equally sure that for one uninterrupted hour once in a while, I am gloriously, deliciously not participating in anything.

Not achieving. Not performing. Not producing.

Just floating. Naked. Pointlessly content.

So yes. This is my float gospel. I believe in the warm dark. I believe in talking to my hip flexors. I believe in nothing happening, and that being enough.

If that makes me a wellness hypocrite with a podcast voice and an evangelical glint in his eye, so be it!

Just don’t knock until you’ve tried being gently poached in magnesium until your inner chaos sighs and goes quiet.

It’s heaven. Silly, salty heaven.

1. My brain: A chaotic filing cabinet operated by caffeinated possums. Priorities include obsolete road names, obscure policy trials, and sudden, crippling concern about door hinges.

2. Like, seriously, Scott FUCKEN Morrison. WTF?!?! A human error message in a Bunnings hat. Vacant, smug, flammable. Wagged coal in Parliament like a Pentecostal show-and-tell, then buggered off mid-apocalypse. Governs like a malfunctioning dunny - all bluff, no flush - and yet half the country queued up to vote for the prick.

3. Yes, I read Breath. Yes, I now nose-breathe through meetings, sleep, and minor existential crises. No, I won’t shut up about it—and yes, it actually works.

4. Al Zoubi, O., Misaki, M., Bodurka, J., Kuplicki, R., Wohlrab, C., Schoenhals, W.A., Refai, H.H., Khalsa, S.S., Stein, M.B., Paulus, M.P. and Feinstein, J.S., 2021. Taking the body off the mind: Decreased functional connectivity between somatomotor and default‐mode networks following Floatation‐REST. Human brain mapping.

5. See:

6. This usually involves a Vegemite sandwich and an internal scream into the void.