Meditative Tanning - Choose Your Own Adventure #2

As someone who practices yoga and meditation several times a week, I decided to go with an odd choice of an altered state that the average person would probably not consider to be a type of meditation. Tanning in a sun bed was my method of an altered state for some time. I tanned in sun beds for many years through middle school, high school, and into college, and always said it was “an addiction” to the comfort of being in a big warm bed, but really it was what would happen if I was focused enough. Typical tanning beds have a set limit of minutes that one can tan from 10 minutes, all the way up to 30 minutes. I was able to figure out that if I were to tan in a 30-minute bed, I would simply fall asleep completely, only to be jerked awake by the bed shutting off and the air around me going cold and dark. While 10-minute beds hardly gave me enough time to even remotely dose off, the 20-minute beds became my favorite because I was able to learn how to lucid dream while in the tanning bed. For someone to lucid dream, it simply means that you are aware that you are dreaming, during the said dream. Over time, you can actually be aware of the dream earlier in the dream, and therefore control the goings on, and the outcomes of what you want to happen in the dream. While I understand many people believe this to be a false phenomenon as I did when I heard there was an actual name for it, quickly discovered that I could very rarely lucid dream outside of an actual tanning bed. If you’ve never been in a tanning bed, its an extremely odd situation that you eventually get used to, and deem it incredibly relaxing. You’re in a cylindrical tube that is very warm, very bright, and often very loud. These three together can cause you to enter a meditative state just as we see the shamans dancing to a consistent drumming. The consistent loud humming of the bed eventually fades into the silentness of your own thoughts, as it drowns out any other noises you may hear in the salon. The brightness of the lights (and the danger of them) causes you to either wear goggles the whole time, which pretty much just blacks out everything you could see, or you must keep your eyes closed, causing a focus of just being in your own mind. The warmth of the bed just adds to the relaxation and the coziness of it. The tanning bed became a safe space for me to completely let go, and relax for 20 minutes, and easily within 4 to 5 minutes, I would already be lucid dreaming. 

For a long time, I suffered from general anxiety, but wasn’t able to put into words my feelings of anxiousness, and worry. Yet when I was tanning, all of that would melt away. If I was particularly anxious about a situation such as in school with teachers, or friends, or my parents, once I was in the tanning bed, I would easily just direct my dream to deal with the worrisome situation, and literally play it out in my head as to how to talk to someone or how to deal with a situation. If it wasn’t a “huge situation” I could easily play out 3 to 4 different scenarios in the span of my 20-minute session in the tanning bed. 

I no longer tan in tanning beds for physical health reasons, but from time to time, I will literally find myself daydreaming about going tanning because it was a short escape from reality, and was an easy way to walk myself through problems and issues of everyday life. One could easily argue that while tanning is bad for your skin, it could be really great for your mental state. It would calm my anxiety and my fears about the unknown. As I said before, tanning can become an addiction, and I think people think that it’s just a superficial addiction, when really the relaxation and meditation is what the addiction is really about. To walk away from something that can calm you down, can be really difficult. Looking “sun-kissed” is just a bonus.