The following Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Mark Sisson, and is narrated by Tina Lehman.

From float tanks to silent retreats, why are people looking for more extreme forms of sensory deprivation?

I'm thinking about a Philip K. Dick story, never published, perhaps never put down on paper,

or even imagined.

In this story, which might only exist in my mind, the world is a wash in sensory stimuli, bright lights, flashing

signs, and endless cacophony. A world of quick jump cuts. It's like the Couson Road at 11 p.m.

Standing on a Los Angeles overpass at rush hour, or living inside a YouTube video. Imagine your first night in the Amazon, only instead

of insects and birds and other creatures, it's horns and conversations and alarms and drunks and

car doors and rattling manhole covers and ringtones. In the world of this story silences a

premium. To escape from your senses, you need to pay up.

$1,000 gets you three days in a retreat center staffed by robed monks,

who prepare vegetarian meals and confiscate your smartphone and other noise makers.

No one talks. No one demands answers.

The floors and walls are padded, limiting the noisy reverberations of human locomotion.

$100 gets you an hour in an isolation tank filled with lukewarm salt water attuned to your body temperature.

For that single hour, you won't hear, see, or feel anything.

When the hour's up, you return to the sensory soup.

At work, mindfulness experts lead mandatory classes,

training you to be at peace in your head,

and company memos urge you to utilize the quiet room, at least twice a week.

Sounds a little crazy, right? Like something out of a dystopian novel?

But it's real. And everywhere you look, people are trying to get away from it all.

...