Sensory Deprivation or Sensory Enhancement? A History of Misleading Names
Floating, despite its emphasis on stillness, has struggled in the past to settle on a name. For one reason or another, the attempt to aptly name and describe the experience of floating in the warmth of quiet darkness has led to monikers that fall short of reality. Of all the names associated with floating throughout the years, few have had the kind of staying power and winding history as its most misleading: sensory deprivation.
As a term, sensory deprivation was first coined by Canadian researchers in the 1950s. Ostensibly, they were studying phenomenal distortions in people working monotonous jobs, including truck drivers and radar observers. Beneath their stated goal was a more covert one intimately linked with the unfolding geopolitical stage of the Cold War.
In the thick of Cold War paranoia and in the wake of confessions elicited in Communist interrogations, the Western Bloc’s most vigilant became convinced these confessions were nothing less than the result of advanced brain warfare. Out of this cultural moment of anxiety came the Canadian Defense Research-funded studies at McGill University. The studies approached isolation as something to be subjected to as researchers looked on from the outside. While the use of early isolation tanks would later factor into these tests, the term itself was coined before such a thing came into being. The tanks themselves were developed for the purpose of exploring a very different kind of solitude.
Independent of the McGill studies, Dr. John Lilly worked at the National Institute of Mental Health to answer more fundamental questions. In response to the prevailing belief that consciousness is not primary but a consequence of the material world, Lilly set out to explore the limits of conscious thought free from external stimuli. In his own words, Lilly wanted to “reduce the absolute intensity of all exterior physical stimuli to the lowest possible level.” From his own firsthand experience inside the tanks, he found his colleagues’ descriptions of the environment as a “sensory deprivation tank” to be a total misnomer.
Significantly, while some senses can be deprived, others become heightened. Sight can be diminished in total darkness but even in the most soundproof room, blood rushes through your ears, your heart beats in its chest, air moves through you with each breath. Your sense of balance, perception of weight, temperature, the movements of muscles, all become enhanced and renewed. None of this even touches on the phenomena of phosphenes: when light and movement manifest in the absence of actual light.
Lilly realized in the absence of external stimuli, inner awareness does not go dormant, in fact, it expands. By listening to ourselves we can recognize our wellbeing free from distraction and explore the imaginative realm in an environment of spacious inner solitude. Floating puts you precisely in that present moment inside that specific space, amplifying your awareness of the here and now. As Samadhi Tank co-founder Glenn Perry contends, “clearly the experience in the tank is not sensory deprivation, it is sensory enhancement.”
Still, the popularity of the term has endured, despite the campaigning efforts of advocates like Dr. Henry Adams in the 1980s. This is in part due to its presence in pop culture like 1980’s Altered States and its inclusion in some remedial psychology textbooks. The idea of the inner world as a catalyst for horror, that our own interiority is something to fear, becomes an instinct when the unexamined life takes precedence over our own basic needs and self-awareness. On the contrary, having a safe space to explore solitude can be a tremendously empowering experience.
Anecdotally I can recall many instances of first-time guests coming out to excitedly report their experiences, whether that’s the knocking sound that turned out to be their own heartbeat, or the expansive feeling of drifting through boundless space. Regulars who have made floating a consistent practice discover fruitful ways to tap into its creative and restorative potential: if they compose music; confront and work through trauma; or simply step in to rest their weary bones. Instead of depriving you of your senses, floating keys you into senses that otherwise go overlooked.
Whatever name it might take — isolation pod, external stimuli deprivation tank, sensory enrichment tank, flotation tank — its benefits are abundant and waiting to be discovered.
Sources:
Perry, Lee, and Glenn Perry. Floating in Quiet Darkness: How the Floatation Tank Has Changed Our Lives and Is Changing the World. Nevada City, CA: Gateways Books and Tapes, 2020.