Shut out the world in your own personal isolation chamber
As marketing pitches go, it's a tough sell: For the low, low price of $1,500, we will deprive you of all your senses.
Yet Zen Float Co.'s monthlong Kickstarter project was fully funded within a week. The founders sold five units within the first five minutes.
On second thought, maybe it's not hard to see why. In this modern age, who hasn't wanted to just shut out the world, with all its bustle and distractions, and just be perfectly alone with your own thoughts for a while?
That's the ultimate luxury, isn't it?
Zen Float Co.'s innovation is the first real home-based isolation tank. At less than $2,000, with a footprint of 4 by 8 feet and a weight similar to a big water bed, it's far cheaper, lighter and more portable than any previous sensory deprivation chamber. The big breakthrough was wrapping it in special canvas rather than chunky metal cladding. Up till now, so-called float tanks have typically cost $10,000 to $30,000; the cheapest one cost more than double the Zen Float price, unless you wanted to go used.
Here's how it works: You float in an enclosed pool with 10 inches of heavily salinated water brought to exactly skin temperature. Your ears are submerged, and maybe you're wearing ear plugs too, so you can't hear anything. No light seeps through the enclosure, so it's pitch-black whether your eyes are open or not. Your body feels nothing -- no hot, no cold, not even gravity -- because the saltwater ensures you can't sink. (It's the same principle that keeps swimmers afloat effortlessly in the Dead Sea.) People who have tried it describe sensations like heightened lucidity, openness, calm and "un-ness" as well as, fairly rarely, a brief "euphoric" moment followed by "paranoia" and a hallucinatory "long waking nightmare." It's thought mostly to produce relaxation, mental focus and physical pain relief.
The idea was popularized decades ago. You might have seen it science-fictionalized in the 1980 movie "Altered States," or more recently on the TV show "Fringe."
But it's gaining traction among the public at large for its perceived mental and physical health benefits, as ABC's "Nightline" recently reported:
Zen Float co-founder Shane Stott discovered floating, also called sensory deprivation, when "I was battling with panic and anxiety years ago," he told Yahoo Homes. Simple meditation did help calm and relax him, but getting into a meditative frame of mind wasn't easy with all the distractions around him.
Then he stumbled onto floating, and "I just knew it would be the answer for me." At the time, there were few flotation centers in the United States, though now many metro areas have day spas where you can spend roughly $50 to $100 to float for an hour. He had to build himself a tank, which he documented online at IsolationTankPlans.com.
He used those lessons -- the roof shouldn't be flat, because it'll drip condensation; the steel frame needs to be strong stainless, so it doesn't rust -- to produce the Zen Float Tent. He's convinced the design is now "rock-solid."
Click here or on a photo to go to a slideshow with more details, such as the amount of water and Epsom salt the units require.
If you're interested in buying or building your own, you can contact Stott through his Kickstarter project, Zen Float Co. or Isolation Tank Plans. At the time of this writing, about 30 individual units were still available at about $1,700, and about 10 package deals remained for two to five tents.
