An organized collection of float tank experiences. My First Sensory Deprivation Float Tank Experience! Sensory Deprivation Chambers. Lllustration by Robert Neubecker How did I end up naked in a stranger’s apartment—floating in a saltwater tub, surrounded by darkness and silence—realizing that for the first time in my life I had achieved total mindfulness?
Let’s begin our story in 1961, when Peter Suedfeld was a first-year psychology graduate student at Princeton. Another scholar in the department was running a “sensory deprivation” study that offered $20 to volunteer subjects. Suedfeld wanted the cash, so he agreed to be shut inside a pitch-black, soundproofed room for 24 hours, with only a bit of sustenance and a toilet to keep him company. An out of body experience in the heart of Gotham.