Floating is a magical thing. That’s what I wrote in my column last week after watching ducks effortlessly float on top of the surface of the waves and thinking of how many organisms in or on the ocean depends on their ability to sink or float to survive. I started to get into humans’ ability to float — either in a boat of some type or just simply by lying on your back, if you can master that. But I was curious to look beyond the science of floating and buoyancy to learn more about its health benefits — why it is not only enjoyable but also apparently beneficial for all sorts of physical reasons.

Floating is used in various therapies and there are a number of facilities where you can reserve a period of time to experience floating. Float pools or pods are filled with incredibly salty water — around 800 pounds of salt for a 150 gallon float tank (as compared to about 45 pounds of salt in the same amount of ocean water). That amount of salt makes the water very dense and thus can hold up a person. When you think of typically sinking down through water, it is because you are more dense than the water. Add a bunch of salt to that water and it can push you back up, making you float. The tanks are also relatively shallow — typically only a foot or so deep — so that it doesn’t take as much salt to raise the salinity as it would in a deeper pool with more water.

You can imagine that, without the pull of gravity, all kinds of good things can happen to your body when it is allowed to be weightless. There are apparently benefits to circulation and musculoskeletal systems as well as benefits from the magnesium that is in the Epsom salts used in the tanks. Magnesium is known to help relax muscles and help with sleep. Floating in Epsom salts means that you can directly absorb magnesium from the water.

In addition, there are the mental health benefits derived from having little sensory input; the tanks are typically dimly lit and you are encouraged to wear ear plugs and submerge your ears in the water as well as close your eyes while you float. Floats typically last an hour, so this is a significant amount of time to be without external stimuli.

While I had not heard of float tanks until recently, they have been in use for a long time. The first one was developed in 1954 at the National Institute of Health and was used to study the ability of the brain to go to sleep without external stimuli. Later, researchers at the University of British Columbia studied the benefits of float tanks in relieving muscular pain as well as for combatting certain types of addiction. The first commercially available tanks were manufactured in 1972 and were part of a float center in Beverly Hills, California. From there, the industry has grown and now there is even a float center in Brunswick.

Curious to know more, I inquired at Maine Coast Float on Bath Road in Brunswick and had the opportunity to tour the facility and learn about the different types of pods and rooms as well as what to expect and the procedures used to clean and circulate the tanks. I also had the chance to try it out. As someone who doesn’t float well in the ocean but loves to swim, it was a strange sensation to lay in a pool of water and be literally held up by the water. At first, I wasn’t sure about what to do with my head but then found that it floated just fine. And when I moved my arms and legs slightly I ended up drifting to one side of the tank or another. Because I’d taken off my watch and had no way of keeping track of time, I just went with the experience and waited for the music to stop before getting out. Afterwards, my skin definitely felt softer from the salt and my neck felt much looser, so I’d say it worked some degree of magic.

If you’re wondering if you can make your own float tank, you can definitely do this on a small scale in the kitchen by making a really salty solution and seeing what you can get to float in it. For a bathtub, however, you’d need over 100 pounds of salt to get yourself to float. The experience was pretty unique and gave me a greater appreciation for how much effort it takes to make a human body float as effortlessly as the ducks I had been watching that inspired this column.

Susan Olcott is the director of operations at Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association.

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