Float blog

A made-up story we watch happen every week

“This is weird. It’s literally floating on water.”

That’s what Mary thought the first time a friend told her about floating. Eight weeks later she’d tell you something very different. This is what happens in between.

First, the honest part: Mary isn’t real.

I made her up. There is no Mary, no hockey team, no brunch.

But I own a float center, and I have met Mary more times than I can count. Different names, different jobs, same story. Most of the people who walk through our door didn’t find us through an ad. A friend told them about floating, usually over a meal, usually more than once, and they usually ignored it the first time.

So this is fiction, and it’s also the most common thing that happens here. If you’ve never floated, this is what the first few months tend to feel like from the inside.

A quick note. My journey into floating has a lot of similarities with Mary. My first float was not the best. I was confused, apprehensive, and wondered if this was “for me”. Now I wish I had known about floating when I was in sales, maybe I finally could have beat my good friend Byrce in a sales contest for once.

Mark, owner of Float Boston

Sunday brunch

“You need to float.”

Mary works nine to five at a job that doesn’t actually end at five. She coaches a club hockey team of thirteen- and fourteen-year-old girls. One of them is her daughter, which means the car ride home is also a coaching session. Her son is ten. Her husband works all day too. Somebody always needs something.

She’s at brunch with her friend Jen, the first time they’ve managed it in two months, and she spends the first twenty minutes listing everything that’s going wrong. The deadline. The tournament schedule. The parent who emails her at 11 p.m. about ice time. She hasn’t slept through the night in a while.

Jen listens, then says it. “You need to float.”

Jen has been doing it for years. An hour in a private room, lying in warm water with so much Epsom salt in it that you can’t sink. No phone. No noise. Nobody asking for anything. “I honestly could not live without it,” she says.

This is weird. It’s literally floating on water.

Mary nods, says it sounds nice, and changes the subject.

Body
Shoulders up by her ears. Sore low back from standing on a cold bench. Tired all the time.
Head
Forty tabs open. The Sunday-night dread now starts on Saturday.
One week later

Why not.

The week gets worse. A project blows up at work. The team loses two games it should have won, and she lies awake replaying line changes. Her son melts down over homework, she snaps at him, and then she feels terrible about it for the rest of the night.

It isn’t one big thing. It’s that there’s no space between the things.

At 10:40 on a Tuesday night she’s scrolling on the couch, too tired to go to bed, when an ad for a float center comes up. She hears Jen’s voice. She thinks, why not, and books a first float for Thursday before she can talk herself out of it.

Body
Headache by 2 p.m. most days. Jaw clenched without noticing.
Head
Short fuse. A low, flat feeling she can’t quite name. Nothing is fun, it’s all just next.
Float one

Forty-five minutes, and that’s fine.

She almost cancels twice.

She shows up early and nervous, and her ADHD is in high gear. What if I can’t shut my brain off. What if I hate it. What if I fall asleep in there.

The person at the front desk has clearly heard all of it before, and isn’t in a hurry. They walk her through the room. Here’s the shower. Here’s the tank. The water is about ten inches deep and you float like a cork. Light on or off, your call. Door open or closed, your call. Get out whenever you want. There is no way to do this wrong.

That last part is what drops her shoulders an inch.

The first fifteen minutes are loud. Not the room. Her head. The grocery list. The email she forgot to send. Whether she’s doing it right. Her neck won’t let go, so she fidgets. Then somewhere in the middle there’s a stretch where she loses track of time, and she couldn’t tell you whether it was five minutes or twenty.

She gets out at forty-five minutes. She’s had enough, and nobody minds.

I don’t know what that was, but I feel… rinsed.

She’s surprised by how refreshed she is. That night she sleeps straight through for the first time in weeks.

On her way out, the float operator tells her something she doesn’t expect: almost nobody really gets it on the first float. It takes three or four floats inside about eight weeks for your body and brain to learn how to do this. The first one is mostly practice.

It sounds a little like a sales line. It also describes exactly what just happened in there. She buys the beginner package.

Body
Shoulders down. Neck looser. First full night of sleep in weeks.
Head
Still busy, but quieter around the edges.
Float two

The whole hour.

Two weeks later she’s still a little nervous walking in, which annoys her. It’s been a day, and her mind races at the start just like last time.

The difference is that now she knows the racing is only the opening act. She doesn’t fight it. She lets it run, and it burns itself out.

When the music comes on to end the session, she is honestly surprised. That was an hour?

On the drive home she notices her low back, the one that has ached since the season started, doesn’t hurt.

Body
Back quiet for two days afterward. Jaw unclenched.
Head
An entire hour without checking anything. She can’t remember the last time that happened.
Float three

Practically a regular.

She walks in calm. She knows the routine now: shower, earplugs, light off, lie back. She settles within a few minutes, and this time the quiet isn’t something she’s waiting for. It’s just there.

She does some of her best thinking in the tank without trying to. A practice plan rearranges itself in her head. A problem at work that felt enormous on Monday turns out to have a fairly obvious answer.

Body
Breathing slows on its own. She notices what relaxed actually feels like.
Head
Focus. One thought at a time instead of all of them at once.
Float four, week eight

Everything got easier. Except nothing did.

She can’t explain it well, and she has tried.

Her kids aren’t stressing her out the way they were. Her job got easier somehow. Her team is listening better.

Then, driving home, she actually thinks it through. Her kids are exactly the same. Her job is exactly as demanding. The girls are still thirteen and fourteen. Nothing around her changed.

She did. Same stress, different reaction. There’s a half second now between the thing happening and her response to it, and in that half second she gets to choose.

Nothing got easier. I just stopped taking the bait.

Floating changed something in her, and she’s fine not knowing exactly what.

Body
Headaches mostly gone. Sleeping. The back only complains after tournaments.
Head
The flat feeling has lifted. She laughed at practice last week and meant it.
Six months later

It’s on the calendar.

When the beginner package ran out, she didn’t think about it for long. She became a member.

She floats once or twice a month now, the way other people get a haircut or go to the gym. Her family knows that Thursday night is hers. Her husband has started asking questions about it.

It isn’t a treat anymore. It’s maintenance, and she notices when she skips it.

Sunday brunch, again

“This is going to sound weird.”

She’s at brunch with a different friend, Dana, who is twenty minutes into listing everything that’s going wrong. The job. The kids. How life is starting to feel like almost too much to handle.

Mary listens. She knows this speech. She gave it.

“Okay,” she says. “This is going to sound weird.”

And the cycle continues.

If a friend sent you this, you’re Mary at the first brunch.

That’s how most people find us. Your friend isn’t selling anything. They just remember how they felt before, and they recognize it in you.

Here’s how I’d start:

  1. Book one float. Don’t research it for three weeks. You can’t think your way into knowing what it’s like.
  2. Tell us you’re nervous. Nearly everyone is. We’ll walk you through the room, and you control the light, the door and the clock.
  3. Get out when you’ve had enough. Forty-five minutes counts. So does thirty.
  4. Give it three or four floats in eight weeks before you decide. The first one is practice. That’s what the beginner package is for.

Your life won’t get quieter. You can.

Float Boston is on Medford Street in Somerville. One private room, one hour, nobody asking you for anything.

Book your first float See the beginner package

Mary is a fictional character, and her experience is a composite of what we commonly see. Individual results vary. Floating is a wellness practice, not a medical treatment. If you or someone you know is dealing with anxiety, depression, ADHD or chronic pain, keep working with your doctor. Floating sits alongside that care, not in place of it.