Waiting for Nothing

On float tanks, meditation, Minus the Bear

There’s a Minus The Bear song I love that’s about the simple joy of being alone and floating in water when no one else is around and there’s nothing that needs to be done.

I can do anything I want

And so I'm swimming

More like floating

And I'll just stay out here until the night comes crashing down

And I swim out as far as I can

And float on my back

Just waiting for nothing

That song is called “I’m Totally Not Down with Rob’s Alien.” A lot of great Minus the Bear song titles belie the actual depth of the song with terrible names.

“I’m Totally Not Down with Rob’s Alien” goes through my head a lot when I’m in open water, like the ocean, where the first thing I do after acclimating to the temperature is float on my back.

It was running through my head as I floated effortlessly in the total pitch black of the sensory deprivation float tank, until I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about anything, and the hand in my mind guided the thought away.

Meditation is something I, like a lot of people, have toyed with over the years, but it never really clicked until recently. Leading up to when I got surgery last May, my therapist and I talked about how it might help calm my nerves. I ended up buying a book on meditation by Dan Harris, the guy from “Good Morning America” who now peddles meditation as a commercial entity through his 10 Percent Happier app and associated content empire. The book I read was about meditation, but also the cross-country trip he went on to teach meditation to others. It was also, unintentionally, about he’s a pretty annoying dude, and runs the risk of turning curious wannabe-meditators like me off the practice forever, doomed to a life of chaos and mental anguish.

From my perspective, the path to wellness takes a few forms. 

There is commercial wellness, where someone charges you a lot of money for products or services that allow you to cut corners to total enlightenment, or tell you that the only way to achieve that level of clarity is through their knowledge, but that knowledge will cost you. There’s combative wellness, which are the things that guys like Joe Rogan harp on about, where the only way to truly achieve any meaningful breakthrough both physical and mental is to punish the body and mind – cold plunges, absurdly hot yoga, bathhouses where old Russian men beat you with branches. There’s also performative wellness, which is where people go to great lengths to show that they are doing a lot to achieve equanimity –TikTokers showing off their powder drinks, turmeric shots, crystals, etc.

The float tank is sort of the middle of this Venn diagram. But, all of these wellness categories have some kernel of truth in them. Most are, to some degree, based on ancient traditions. So, there must be something to it, right?

I powered through that Harris book mostly out of spite. I started to really dislike him as a person, especially the way he characterized his physician wife. He used that old cliche of “oh my wife just thinks I’m the biggest idiot on the planet.” Maybe it was well-meaning self-deprecation and he doesn’t have the writer chops to pull it off as he intends, but it came off as a weird, backhanded way to tell people he kind of hates his wife and his wife might, deservedly, hate him, too. 

I did take things from the book, aside from a dislike of its author. Little techniques and tips. The main one was that meditation is not supposed to zap you into some zen state. It’s a constant battle with intrusive thoughts. The first page of the book depicts meditation as an old lion tamer cracking the whip on an oversized brain. 

In my head, when I am trying my best to achieve thoughtlessness while I count my breaths – in and out to 10 – I picture a hand from an old minigame from Mario Party on Nintendo 64. It’s one where you warp Bowser’s face to match a picture. My friends and I played that game so much in my shed growing up that now the personification of mental clarity in my mind’s eye is a cartoon glove.

Whatever works, right?

Anway, the glove should probably enter my mental frame now, and guide these thoughts away. Back to the tank.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

In the tank, you really are weightless. The 10 inches of water, heated to your skin’s external temperature of 94 degrees, is full of 1,200 pounds of salt. When I climbed in, I sat in the water for a second to get my bearings, and kept the light on. With my hands on either wall to stay steady in the middle of the tank – probably about six feet wide and nine feet long – I reclined and allowed myself to pop up to the surface. I was floating. I hung out like that for a few minutes, counting my breaths. As you float, occasionally you bump up against a wall. When my feet or hands touched the barrier, I gently pushed off to correct, floating now in the pitch blackness and trying my best to tune out the meditation playlist that was still audible through the earplugs they give you so you don’t end up with water in your ears.

One time on vacation in the Outer Banks, I got water in my ear during a shower. Not even in the ocean. The shower. I didn’t think much of it until it still refused to come out after three days. By the last day of the trip, I was half deaf and in agony. My parents stopped at an urgent care somewhere in rural North Carolina, and the doctor told me he’d have to jam a piece of cotton into my almost-swollen-shut ear just for the eardrops to get in there and do their thing. It’s called a wick. It hurt like hell. As he shoved it into my ear, he asked if I was doing anything fun this summer.

“Not right now,” I said.

I got back from the trip and Michele and I went on one of our earliest dates to see “The Dark Knight Rises.” I told her we had to sit on the left side of the theater so I could hear things.

Push off the wall again.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

After a while, in the complete blackness, I realized my eyes had been open for a while. There was no difference between open or shut – it was total visual deprivation, as promised. I couldn’t tell where I was positioned in relation to the walls, or if I was moving at all. I forgot I was naked, too. 

Before I got in, the woman who worked there gave me a full rundown of what to do before, after and during the float, but didn’t mention whether I should wear a bathing suit or not. I brought one, and would have probably defaulted to that if I hadn’t asked.

“So, I what do I wear to go in, am I…”

“Naked.” she confirmed.

That was fine, but you never want to assume nudity. Though the tank was in a room just for me, the scenarios still played in my mind:

Like one where she walks in and goes, “Oh, hey I forgot to tell you one more thi- WHAT THE HELL? YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE NAKED IN THERE! WHY WOULD YOU THINK YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO DO THIS NAKED? I’M CALLING THE POLICE BUT FIRST I’M TAKING YOUR PICTURE AND POSTING IT ON REDDIT.”

Gloved hand in again.

Most of the intrusive thoughts I need to guide away are hypothetical situations, both positive and negative. Part of my practice is reminding myself those moments aren’t real. My heart rate usually goes back to normal.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

It’s a big deal for me to realize I had my eyes open, because it meant I wasn’t blinking. My friends and family reading this – or anyone that has interacted with me in real life – probably noticed I blink a lot. 

It started as some sort of nervous tic when I was in about 6th grade, and has never really let up. I can control it, but it often gives away when I’m feeling nervous or scared or excited. My therapist noticed it in one of our earlier sessions, when we finally broke past pleasantries and into the real stuff, and said “you’re blinking a lot, are you OK?”

I even “blink” when my eyes are shut. I squeeze them shut tighter for a split second, as if there’s a second set of lids to blink when I’m trying to fall asleep.

But in the tank, I didn’t blink for who knows how long. I lost track of time and physical presence.

At that point, weightless, I got as close to whatever runner’s high meditation practicers preach about (and charge for). I floated for a while longer and, figuring my 90 minutes of floating had to be near a close, decided I wanted to listen to that Minus the Bear song.

The iPad fixed to the wall of the tank was fair game, the employee told me, and I could put on what I wanted or turn the music off completely. 

I got my bearings and went to sit up. Having been weightless for the duration of a major motion picture, sitting up was extremely strange. I felt dizzy for a moment, and the weight of my body felt heavier than usual as I sat up and pushed the door open. The light in the room was disarming, and my head buzzed. I stood up slowly, and stepped cautiously onto the linoleum floor that now had a big puddle of saltwater on it.

I stepped over to the iPad, ready to finally re-enact a song that has felt so comfortable for me for so long, eager to spend my last few minutes of meditative serenity with it.

I thought I’d find a new connection to a piece of art I had enjoyed for so long. A song I have replayed in my head while seeking out mental stillness, simplicity, quiet. Something countless people have bought and sold over the years. Now I’d be able to fully enjoy this moment, really hearing it, really floating, and waiting for nothing.

The iPad didn’t turn on.

So, I climbed back into the darkness, sort of like when you wake up long enough before your alarm that you don’t want to stay up, but you know if you go back to sleep you’ll feel like shit when the alarm goes off.

I counted my breaths in the darkness again until the lights turned on. This time they were red, and a gong sound filled the box.

I felt a bit like I was in hell. Maybe I should have stayed out, but I had payed for my 90 minutes, and I figured I could still milk a few more minutes of meditative practice out of this.

As I rode the bus home, I felt good. I felt, if nothing else, exfoliated. And that’s something people spend a lot of money and time on, too.

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Today’s Snakes and Sparklers musical guest is boygenius.