Floating In Quiet Darkness: How to Float Away Fear With Magnified Meditation by Glenn and Lee Perry

Just when we thought the turmoil of 2020 was behind us, the chaos of January 6, 2021, rattled many Americans and added to the stress we feel in the spiraling pandemic. There’s a possible remedy for the overstimulation and angst we feel in our constant engagement with social media and technology, and Glenn and Lee Perry helped invent it almost 50 years ago: the floatation tank.

Made famous by celebrities such as Joe Rogan and in pop staples such as Stranger Things, floatation tanks are soundproof, lightproof enclosures with less than one foot of water heated to skin temperature. Epsom salt dissolved in the water allows a person to float effortlessly.

Glenn and Lee pioneered the first commercial float tanks and founded what is today a worldwide industry. In their new book Floating in Quiet Darkness: How the Floatation Tank Has Changed Our Lives and Is Changing the World, they tell how this space for deep meditation and self-reflection invigorates our awareness and creativity. 

Float Away Fear With Magnified Meditation

Neuroscientist Dr. John Lilly created the first isolation tank in 1954 at the National Institutes of Mental Health Lab in the Virgin Islands to probe the frontiers of human consciousness when the people are removed from external stimuli. Glenn was working as a computer programmer at Xerox in the early 1970s when he first tried Lilly’s invention.

Previously so shy that he avoided talking to more than one person at a time, he emerged from the tank able to recount his experiences to a group without feeling nervous. “I thought: if something could make me able to open my mouth in front of a group of people – wow, it must be really incredible!” he recalls in Floating in Quiet Darkness.

Today the tank offers myriad benefits for our over-stimulated, distracted and stressed-out society, including giving harried humans a time and place to engage in the deepest kind of meditation. “Many people today experience being stressed or not having enough time away from phones, emails, Zoom meetings and news updates.” Glenn says. “The incessant input and internal mental chatter crowd out our ability to think clearly, focus and reflect on what matters most. The tank provides an amazing space that allows us to be with our thoughts, our intentions, our deeper self. We become much more present.”

“Floating in quiet darkness with no outside distractions allows adventurous souls to reboot the brain, access a sense of deep calm and reconnect with childlike creativity,” Lee Perry says.

Floating in Quiet Darkness includes a selection of vivid personal narratives and photos depicting the depth and breadth of experiences people encounter when floating.

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