Hello, readers! Today, we have a special blog post for you. Instead of talking about a general area of interest, we thought we would post about a personal floating experience. We hope you enjoy!
I have just returned from a vacation with my husband, and I have some post-vacation floating-related thoughts to share!
Our vacation was relaxing, rejuvenating, and just what we needed. We saw many beautiful things and walked pretty much everywhere. So, at the end of our long days, with our tired feet propped up on pillows, we often found ourselves craving a float. One evening, I remembered a recent interview I held with a frequent floater, in which she called floating “a mini vacation.” From this point on, on a number of occasions, I said to my husband, “We need a mini vacation when we get back from our vacation.”
Since so many of you take a vacation during the summer months, I thought it would be fun to share about what is unique about using floating to support a transition from vacation back to “the real world.”
It’s been four days since I returned, and I have floated twice.
- First, I notice the help with jet-lag. Like most people, I typically rely on adrenaline to help me through a jet-lag transition. We all know what it feels like to jump back into “the real world” and feel like you’re eating breakfast at what feels like 2AM and making your way to work at what feels like 4AM, though the clock reads 6AM and 8AM, respectively. While adrenaline helps us re-enter our lives and complete what we need to complete, it can cause us to do too much too soon, become exhausted, get sick, and ultimately complete even less. This morning, I noticed that my float helped me listen to my body so I could work with consistency, but not drain myself on my first day back to work.
- Second, I noticed that as I eased from vacation mode into work mode, my floating practice helped me cultivate self-awareness. The automatic way we transition from vacation to our typical day-to-day life is to simply get on with our lives without noticing much. Floating during this transition helped me to be aware of the thoughts, feelings, conflicts, joys, and memories that make up my typical day-to-day life. Sure, I can notice these parts of me anytime. But, there was something special about noticing these aspects of me after they were essentially at rest for a few weeks. I felt able to approach them from a more balanced point of view. If I hadn’t floated, I probably would not have noticed these joys and conflicts gently or with the openness that the floating environment provides.
All of this has caused me to reflect. In our go-go-go world, it’s common to mentally categorize something like floating as something special we do for ourselves. Like a massage or a spa-day, it’s something that we believe we earn once we have become sufficiently depleted or exhausted by our jobs and every day lives, which means it’s probably not a tool we reach for as soon as we are back from vacation. But, even thought it is a privilege to float often and experience the nuanced ways that floating enriches our lives, we don’t need to wait until we have worked ourselves thin in order to jump into the tank.
It’s no surprise that at FLOAT STL, our dream is for as many people as possible to experience floating more frequently than as a last resort. We love to support our floaters’ regular practices and hear about the many ways that the effects of floating (like a more persistent state of relaxation and pain-prevention) take deeper roots. And while we whole-heartedly support and celebrate floating as a well-deserved reward for your life’s labor, our dream is for floating to become as essential, familiar, and consistent as drinking your morning coffee-or-tea, making time to exercise, or tending to your relationships.
Whether you continue to enjoy floating as a reward or as a consistent life practice, we whole heartedly hope that you continue to delight in your floats. Any time you are in the mood to share, we would love to hear about your unique floating experience!