IMAGE BY SCOTT MURRY | @HOTDOGTACO
Stop reading this now if you’re claustrophobic. And keep reading if you’re a fan of entering a steel cocoon filled with salt water until you start to see things.
Because that’s Float, the forthcoming spa launching from the husband-and-wife team of Colin Roald and Sara Garvin in Magoun Square. The latter being a licensed massage therapist who read about “floating” in an article last summer, and saw a void to be filled. As of last week, the pair locked in a location making the project a go.
Here’s how it works: First, you’ll book an appointment. Then, someone leads you into a private room for you to get naked and shower all the oils off your skin, followed by submerging yourself into a tank (as well as a private room with a large tub in it) filled with 800lbs of Epsom salt, which makes the 90+ degree water denser than the Dead Sea (as well as the average mall salesperson hawking that Middle Eastern hand lotion always attacking you during holiday shopping). You’ll lay down, let the salt water lift you up so you aren’t touching the bottom or sides, and then you close the door above you.
Then it’s dark. Warm. No sound, and no light. Your brain takes a break. Since you’re floating, you’ll wind up losing track of time and the feeling of things around you. Proponents of it say it’s like a full body sigh of relief, while others claim a near-hallucinatory state sets in akin to when you’re drifting off to sleep and something startles you awake, but you’re still kind of dreaming. Or something.
Don’t worry if you nod off. Built into the walls of the tanks are speakers that slowly begin to emit soft music that increasingly gets louder, using the water to wrap the sound around you.
Call it Inception hot-tubbing.
FLOAT. SLATED TO OPEN IN OCTOBER. 515 MEDFORD ST., SOMERVILLE.
