Joe Rogan Explains the Benefits of the Isolation Tank

And I know from the tank, from the isolation tank, that it's a great way of absorbing magnesium through the Epsom salts. Oh, into your muscle? Yeah, through your skin. You know, because Epsom salts is so high in magnesium. Yeah, right. And the tank has a thousand pounds of Epsom salts in it. That's crazy. Does it make your skin look nice when you do it? Yeah, it just feels good too. But it feels really the tank. Have you done it yet? I did it once in San Francisco. You can do it anytime you want if you want to come here. Yeah. I think it was really something wasn't right, because I could feel the temperature of the water was off. And I did enjoy what I did. I mean, it was nice. So at first I got in and they had some music playing. Music? And then the music went away. Oh, to sort of relax you? At first, yeah. But I was sort of in my head a bit in that. But I kept feeling the water, and so I didn't feel like I was sensory deprived. Are you ever here other than when you come down to do the podcast? Yeah, I do. I'm coming back in November. Anytime you're here, just let me know in advance, and we'll open it up. And this tank here is the best, the float lab, or if you want to go to the place in Venice. But the one you could do here is so easy. And it's got a shower in there and everything. Yeah, that would be cool. I would like to try it again. Yeah, anytime. I mean, there are studies showing meditation and all that stuff is really important for it. I think it's an important one of many components in healthy aging, healthy brain aging, lowering stress and stuff. So I would definitely like to. I get out of that thing. I feel great. I'll come down here. Do you do it frequently still? Yeah, it's right here. So I'll come down here early in the morning and do it sometimes. How long do you have to stay in there to really? I like at least an hour, but I really like to do two hours. Two hours for me is a sweet spot. When I come out after two hours, I'm just so chill out. Relaxed? Yeah, it's almost like during sober October, it's like cheating because you're basically getting high in there. Are you doing it during sober October? Yeah. I mean, you're not taking in a drug, but you're so chilled out. And you do have a weird psychedelic state that you achieve. It's a very extreme form of meditation in a lot of ways because of the fact that you're not feeling your body at all. And you're only experiencing whatever is going on. It's like your brain detached from all the input of the body. Some of those studies that have been done on long-term meditators or even just people that haven't meditated, then they're put in some eight-week trial of meditation and how immediately all these changes in brain activity start to happen that are basically in line with good brain aging and improved all sorts of measures of improved cognitive function and stuff. It's super interesting. It would be really interesting to see how that differs from. Meditation is one thing I have a hard time with. Well, meditation in conjunction with the tank, I think, is really the key. I think the tank allows you to achieve a state of your physical body not being or not. You don't ever completely eliminate the sensory input, but you diminish it so significantly that that environment is not available anywhere else on Earth. Well, you're floating, so you don't feel your body. Your water is the temperature of your skin. The air is the same temperature as the water. And you feel like just flying through infinity. You're in total darkness, total silence. Yeah, I didn't feel that way. I mean, it was a little relaxed. I didn't feel like I was flying through infinity. They have cheaper tanks. That's part of the problem. Some of the tanks are just not. I could feel the water the entire time. Yeah. It's probably either too cold or too hot. It should be. Do you feel like your brain is in the now when you're doing it? Is that something? I feel like my brain has way more resources available to it. So if you and I were having this conversation, and we didn't have the headphones on, and there was a jackhammer next to us, it would be really distracting. You'd want to get away from that jackhammer. Let's go talk over here until you'd want to get away as far as you could from the. But everything is a distraction. The seat on my butt is a distraction. The shoes on my feet are something I'm thinking about, the watch on my hand. There's all these different things that are distracting you. But when you get in that tank, there's none of those things. You settle in. And once you settle in, you touch each side so that you can, because you get in the water, there's a few ripples and little waves. And then you touch each side. So you calm everything down. And then I sink into the water. And then I take some deep breaths. And then I slowly bring my arms in the middle. And then I chill out. And I've done it so many times. My body goes, OK, here we go again. It's not like, whoa, what is this? This is so weird. I've done it so many times that my body gets into that state very quickly. But if I take time off, and I do, sometimes I'll take weeks or even a month off. And then it's a little more weird at first. Like, oh, we're doing this again. Oh, I haven't done this in a while. But when I do it consistently on a regular basis, two, three times a week, then I could just sink right into it. I wonder if it would be any therapeutic benefit to people with sensory gating disorders. Sensory gating disorders? In other words, you were mentioning all the other sensory things that are happening. There's auditory. There's smell. There's visual. I mean, these things are our brains inputting it at all times. I mean, there's stuff going on. But we're able to kind of filter it out. And you and I are having this conversation. Jamie's been sitting over the whole time. And I really haven't paid much attention to it. I haven't paid attention to it. But some people, particularly people with schizophrenia, they don't filter that out. And so it's like an overload. It's called sensory overload. And so they oftentimes can't go into a room with a lot of people. They don't want to go off and by themselves or whatever. So I wonder if there is any sort of benefit for doing something like that, where you're not, the sensory input's kind of like, if you could kind of train your brain a little bit. I don't know. I just find that for me, it helps me think way clearer. Because I feel like I have more brain available to access. I feel like if you were trying to say something that was very, very complicated, and you were trying to explain something that required a lot of the resources of your brain, if there was a lot of noise around you, you wouldn't be able to do it. But if there's a lot of noise, you're like, you want to eat? Let's go eat. And you're like, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, some jackhammer. I'm hungry. You want to eat? Yeah, let's go eat. You could be able to communicate something very simple. But if you were trying to explain the various mechanisms of secure things. Man, I should really try this. Yeah. Because I think I- Because I go through it. I also sometimes use this sauna for that, where I'll have something prepared. I used to actually, before giving a presentation, I would go in the sauna, and I would go through it in my head. So it's like, that was something that I used to do a lot. Remember, because the sauna, there's nothing in there, just you sitting there. And it gives you that unusual environment of just silence. It really helped. Yeah. So it's kind of interesting that you mention that with the presentation. That's a step toward it. But I think the float tank is the ultimate. And right now, there's a really interesting podcast that's available. I've talked about this podcast before, Stuff to Blow Your Mind. They have an episode right now this week that is about John Lilly, who is the psychedelic pioneer who created the sensory deprivation tank. And he also is a pioneer in interspecies communication, figured out how to communicate with dolphins, and did a bunch of weird psychedelic research with dolphins. There it is, from the vault, John C. Lilly. He is a really amazing, amazing guy who- I mean, if you go- They go deep into the history of his career, too, which is just very varied. Fucking really strange guy. But I think his great contribution is not just understanding the sentient nature of dolphins and how incredibly complex their language is, and how smart they are, but also the sensory deprivation tank, which I think is- It's one of the most underutilized tools for consciousness, for exploring consciousness, and just for relaxation, and for me, for examining ideas. If I have an idea- Like, I used to do- I used to do a lot of jiu-jitsu in there. Like, I would go into the tank, and I would go over moves. Because when you're completely- I would drill moves in my head, like, as if I was doing them. I would, like, clinch, hook, roll, tuck, grab, sink. I would do all these different things in my head. And practicing, yeah. And I would allow- I would do that to get me to this, like, relaxation state. Or I would go over a joke that I'm struggling with, or a comedy bit. I'm like, what is a better way to say this? What's the best way to get this across? Now, I'm saying it this way, but it's offensive, or it's blunt, and it's not the funny part. Like, I'm taking a shortcut, maybe I'd- And then I would go over it in my head. And then, eventually, once I would do that, I would get to this relaxation point, where then I could just concentrate only on breathing. So, after I've, like, worked out all the things that are bugging me, and sometimes it would be like a seminar on my life. I'd get in there, and then, as soon as I close the tank door, and lay down, I'd take a few deep breaths, and then I'd be like, Okay. So, here's what's wrong, fuckface. You're doing too much of this. Clean your goddamn office. You know, how come you only get eight out of ten things done on your to-do list? That's bothering you. You know, you need to spend an hour a day just doing this. And instead of drinking coffee and looking at your phone before you work out, just fucking work out. Just get in there and get your- you're wasting 20 minutes doing that. That 20 minutes, you could have been done 20 minutes earlier, and then you wouldn't have to rush over here to do the podcast. And it's like it starts sort of giving me almost like a subconscious renovation. You know, like just sort of like, okay, like, this is- all this stuff in your subconscious is disturbing you, and here's why it's disturbing you. Because you've got all this clutter. So, let's clean this shit up. Clean it up. Get it together. And it's been responsible for, I think, a lot of my focus and discipline, like understanding the significance of that focus and discipline. And it's not just like to be a tough guy or to just go out there and kick ass. It's more like to absolve yourself of brain clutter. That's pretty awesome, that introspection you're talking about. I think a lot of people could use more of that, including myself. I mean, it's certainly- I think all of us. I think all of us, really. Anyone listening to this. And I think there's probably one in San Diego. So, if there's a tank place in San Diego, reach out to Dr. Rhonda Patrick. And I'm sure that there's a place you could use this down there, this near you. I mean, I certainly use other things like extra running long runs. Sure. Do something similar. Yeah, that zone. The zone, yeah. It's sort of- But what you're describing sounds kind of like next level. A lot of people get it from swimming as well. Swimming, okay. Yeah, because it's just like, whoosh. Kind of repetitive. Yeah, that repetitive thing. And then you're sort of managing the motion of your body. And then once you get in, it's almost like a mantra. Managing the motion of your body and then the breathing. And then once you get it all synced up, if you're in good enough shape, that it's not like a Titanic struggle with every lap or every stroke of your arms, you can get into this sort of meditative state that a lot of people achieve with running or- or even with just like sitting there breathing, like a lot of people get that. Yeah, I have a difficult time doing that, but- Yeah, it's hard. Yeah. Is it funny that it'd be hard to sit still? It is. It is funny. It's actually like some of the other interesting stuff is just doing that, sit there, sit still, and breathe. Changes like the activation of enzymes and stuff like telomerase, the enzyme that rebuilds telomeres. Yeah. It literally activates telomerase. So fascinating how just like certain things like- Like I wouldn't imagine doing that would actually, you know, change telomerase. Yeah, the body is just this never ending puzzle. It really is. And whenever I talk to you, I'm more and more sort of aware of that because there's so many different things and so many different mechanisms in terms of nutrition and nutritional absorption that I just- I'm so ignorant of. And it's- I hear all these things and I'm like, I'm trying to get a map of the territory. Yeah, I mean, also there's so many things I'm ignorant of as well. But I feel like every time I talk, it's like someone's breaking out a little napkin and going, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you take a right here and you go there and I go, all right. But it's not a real map. Like the map of the whole thing escapes me. It's too big. It is. Too big. It's too complex. And I'll listen to this podcast again. Like I'll listen to all the things you said again, and I'll try to take notes maybe tomorrow or the next day. But then my stupid brain will like, it'll like leak half of it'll leak out. It's like I'm trying to hold water in my fingers. It's like I got it. I got some water. It's not fucking dripping down my wrists. So hard. So hard to get a real understanding of this stuff.