The story below is from our January/February 2020 issue. For the full issue Subscribe today, view our FREE interactive digital edition or download our FREE iOS app!
Still Water Floatation offers a new wellness service in Roanoke.
Christina Nifong
To step inside Still Water Floatation’s historic brick walls is to instantly sense your shoulders drop. It’s warm, with a walk-on-the-beach-salt-spray kind of feel.
Owners David Landes and Tabitha Cain have spent years thinking through every detail of the recently opened float center — from the look of the rolling ocean floor to the 10 1/2-inch-thick walls that block out sound to the cup of tea waiting for you after your session.
Their hope is that it all adds up to 90 minutes of relaxation, healing, refueling of mind and body, absolute bliss.
“So much heart and soul went into building this place,” says Cain.
Still Water is Roanoke’s first “sensory deprivation” tank, and one of about a dozen in Virginia. First developed in the 1950s by a U.S. physician and neuroscientist, a wave of modern float tanks began in the 2010s, on the West Coast. They’ve been making their way East since; more than 300 now operate in stand-alone centers nationwide — even more are featured in spa settings.
A visit to a float center typically goes like this: Make an online or by-phone appointment. Shower before stepping into the pod of your choice. (Still Water offers four different shapes and sizes to accommodate various needs and desires). Adjust the lighting and music to your taste — there are a variety of colors, as well as complete darkness or tiny pinpricks of light that resemble stars.
Then lie back, naked, in a foot of body-temperature water infused with 1,000 pounds of Epsom salts. With little to no light or sound, limbs completely suspended, the brain switches into another gear. The result, say people who’ve floated, is something like the best sleep you’ve ever had/an amazing meditation session/yoga on steroids.
Research on floating’s benefits is small but growing. It has shown positive results for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder sufferers, for those who live with chronic pain, and for healing after injuries.
Floating — also known as Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy or REST — has gained a following among those interested in creating wellness, bolstering immunity and reducing stress and anxiety.
Landes discovered floating in 2016, as he traveled the country on a quest to find a new direction for his life. He paused, for a time, in Portland, Ore., where he not only learned to love floating but decided to find a way to bring this deep relaxation of mind and muscle back to Roanoke.
“I really want to be part of something bigger, something that puts people before profits,” he says.
In 2018 Landes bought a single float tank and placed it in what is today Still Water’s lounge. That’s where Cain tried her first float.
“I developed a real passion about being able to share this with people,” she explains.
It’s also where Landes invited doctors, athletes and patients to experience what floating was all about.
Educating Roanokers is still part of the job. But every person who samples and is smitten by floating is one more convert, one more customer.
“There’s a cumulative effect,” Landes says. “The more often you float, the quicker you can get your mind settled. It’s a practice, like yoga.”
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