Inner Exploration via Float Tank (Tokyo Weekender)

I wrote about my first time in a flotation tank (aka float tank; sensory deprivation tank; isolation tank), at Tokyo’s Float Spa Cocorodo.

For me the experience facilitated some almost “psychedelic” inner exploration. Mental wellness care utilizing substances such as ketamine and MDMA is gaining recognition in the US and Europe. In Japan, however, the unlikelihood of authorities authorizing these kinds of treatments—at least in the near term—gives the float tank potential as a tool for providing quasi-“psychedelically assisted” therapy, while remaining within the law.

Mental and spiritual care in Japan is, as Cocorodo's owner puts it, "really behind the curve," and physicians' response to mental health issues is generally to prescribe a fistful of pills. Tokyo's slow-building buzz around flotation tanks, though, might point to the emergence of a more enlightened approach to mental wellness.

(June 2023)

Read article at Tokyo Weekender

Image credit: Float Spa Cocorodo