Five years, Floating, and Vivid

Today, Michael and I celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary. Five years! That's longer than most goldfish survive. That's longer than I've ever had the same job. That's about as long as it takes to travel to Saturn. 

Since it was a rainy day, we spent the first half of the day burning some bacon and french toast, and facetiming family. Then we tried floating for the first time. We ended up going to a place near Manly, although since making the reservation there we found out there is an even closer and cheaper one really close to us in Paddington. 

This is what I will say about floating. It was an interesting sensory experience. It was really hard for me to stay still the whole time. My experience wasn't as obviously calming  as other people tend to describe it (I wasn't so relaxed I was in a trance or about to fall asleep), however it did definitely relax all my muscles (and I do often suffer from a tight neck and shoulders). There were also parts of the experience that weren't as obvious because they were "negative" effects, in that they were the absence of something, and I only noticed them after the experience when they returned. For example, I am often a person who thinks about the past or thinks ahead, and when I was in the pod I was very in the moment because nothing was cuing me to think of anything else. I am a person who is often thinking about food and how hungry I am; in the pod I didn't think about food or feel hungry at all. Temperature wasn't an issue, whereas I am often adjusting my body temperature by removing or putting on layers (as I warm up moving around or get cold when I stop moving). I am a person whose memory automatically reacts to stimuli around me a lot; I can look at an object or smell a certain smell, and memories of previous experiences pop into my head beyond my control. While I was in the pod, that simply wasn't happening. My brain could be "still" and simply not react. Since I found it hard to stay still, I tried moving into different positions, kind of swaying from side to side feeling like how I imagine an anemone feels. I also found stretching very nice since the minerals had already relaxed my muscles. 

Michael had a different experience than me, since he was more comfortable floating still. In fact, I have never seen him look so relaxed as he did afterward. He isn't sure if he fell asleep or not. He also has a typically hard time visualizing things (the opposite of me, sometimes visualizing more things than I want to), and said he found visualizing different scenes easier with no distractions while floating in the pod. Anyway, it was an interesting experience and he and/or I may try it again at some point in the future. 

After our floats, we had a delicious dinner at Pony in The Rocks. Everything we had was delicious, as usual. After that, we did a different kind of float. We took a ferry ride around the harbour to see the lights of Vivid. I wasn't as impressed at the lights this year as I have been in the past, but it was still a nice and free way to check it all out. 

We went from pitch black silence and stillness to a festival of crowds and lights and music in a short span of time. Bizarre. I suppose it was as good a way as any to celebrate.