Oakland Floats

This is a guest post by my lovely and talented wife. Her website on spiritual direction and other matters is Sleep on the Hearth.

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I've long been curious about sensory deprivation, so I decided to try a 75-minute float in one of the tanks at Oakland Floats.

Everything about making and paying for my reservation was easy, and I received a friendly voicemail with tips about how to prepare. The staff was helpful and professional, and the place was wonderfully clean and had a strong, healthy energy. All this was the easy part...more complicated were the deep stirrings that went on inside me as I anticipated and then actually did this crazy-seeming thing.

Flotation tank: One fear I had was of being trapped inside, unable to find or open the door. But when I arrived and told Daisha (if I'm remembering her name correctly!) about my fear, she showed me that there's no latch on the tank door that can accidentally be locked or even latched. She also told me I could prop the door open with a towel if I wanted to, and that's all it took to calm the surface-level fear I was feeling.

I say surface-level because deeper down lay fear of a whole other stripe, fear that neither Daisha nor anyone else can do anything about. First of all, I've read that people in sensory-deprivation tanks can hallucinate. I've experienced hallucination, and I hope never to experience it again. Secondly, I had a fear that was nameless until the right word came to me in the middle of my float, and that word is death. Floating sightless in a box with no sense of attachment to your body seems to me, well, a heck of a lot like death.

So why did I pay money to spend time in said box?

One thing I was hoping for was the ability to sink into a deeper meditative space than usual, and while I had only a little bit of the experience during this first float, it was enough to show me that more could easily happen next time. After a few minutes in the tank, I felt comfortable enough to close the door all the way. It took a while to relax and trust the water to hold me up, but hold me up it did. There was no danger of sinking or accidentally flipping over. I was so buoyant, and the water was such a perfect skin temperature, that I could simply lie still and exist, without feeling the water or the air.

Lying there, I thought of Denise Levertov's beautiful poem "The Avowal." I thought about daring to lie face to the sky, to use Levertov's words, floating into Creator Spirit's deep embrace. Beautiful, but it made the thought of death all the more present and real, because isn't her poem, in the end, a metaphor about death?

But there was a powerful counterpoint to the death theme. When my ears were submerged (which I discovered was my preference; I didn't like the neck pillow), I heard my heartbeat, a steady, faithful, powerhouse of a noise. I'm very much alive.

The other counterpoint is harder to describe and was completely unexpected. It came to me when I spent a few minutes scanning my body to notice how each part felt. When I checked in with my back, I became aware of my spine, and it felt like a thing unto itself. In fact, I felt like I was a spine with a heart, and nothing else, with the rest just along for the ride. The simplicity of my aliveness was a different melody than my fear and answered it wonderfully. Counterpoint.

Also, I'm happy to say that I did not hallucinate, so I'm about to make a reservation for another session at Oakland Floats. All in all, my first float was great, and I look forward to doing it again.

Oakland Floats is on 40th near Broadway, just on the edge (Gene tells me) of the Temescal. They sublet space to Body by Melisa and other folks in healing professions, including talk therapists and a Rolfing practitioner. Just downstairs is Five Flavors Herbs, which I visited after my float, and Paeonia Integrated Medicine. Five Flavors Herbs is a light, pleasant space with interesting art, and the man I spoke with took the time to look something up for me and explain which herbs might help my allergies. I think it's terrific that such compatible businesses share the building--the whole corner of 40th and Manila is dedicated to various aspects of physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Excellent!

Oakland Grown joins forces with Sustainable Business Alliance

OG+SBA luncheon

Friday afternoon, members of the Sustainable Business Alliance (SBA) met at Swan's in old Oakland to hear about Oakland Grown. The SBA recently 'adopted' Oakland Grown, which is a natural fit because local is usually more sustainable, and is definitely good for local businesses. The main speaker was Erin Killmer-Neel, who told SBA members about Oakland Grown and the new gift card program.

Kilmer-Neel is the program officer for the One Pacific Coast Foundation, one of the co-founders of Oakland Grown, and a driving force behind the recently released Oakland Grown Gift Card. You may have seen her emceeing the Oakland Indie Awards.

There was also a discussion with SBA board member Jenny Kassan about the new relationship between the SBA and OG. Kassan is the CEO of Cutting Edge Capital, a community development consultant, and a lawyer, specializing in environmentally friendly and socially responsible ventures. Katovich and Kassan Law Group's clients include Awaken Cafe, Mandela Marketplace, Oaklandish, Rock Paper Scissors and a host of other local businesses and organizations.

One thing we heard about from Kassan is HR2930, the "Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act" which legalizes investment in small local businesses. Basically it makes crowd funding a business legal, and easier for the 99%. (The 1%, i.e., "accredited investors", can already invest in whatever they like.) Read more at the Change.org petition and sign it! The bill recently passed the house, but still needs to get approved by the Senate and the President.

Besides hearing about the joining of forces of the SBA and Oakland Grown, we also broke out into small groups to discuss the gift card and what impact it would have on different local businesses. The consensus was that in its current form it makes sense for retailers, but it would have to change some before it became more of local currency and useful for business-to-business transactions. Personally from a consumer standpoint, it makes a lot of sense -- it says you care not only about the recipient, but about the community we live in, too.

More pictures:


Speaking of the Oakland Grown Gift Card, Farley's East on Grand is having a fundraiser for Oakland Grown. Join Oakland Grown on Thursday, from 5-9pm for Happy Hour! Farley's will donate 20% of sales during the happy hour. Meet the OG crew, pick up an OG shopping bag, purchase hot drinks, beer, wine, delicious paninis & salads, learn more about The Great Oakland Grown Holiday Challenge & The OG Holiday Gift Guide.