Walk into the future of health at Westland’s Element Float Spa

Business offers futuristic (but proven) methods to relax, recover, heal

Best-selling author Tim Ferriss (“Tools of Titans”) described the relaxation effects generated by floatation therapy as the closest thing available to returning to your mother’s womb.

The procedure — which includes laying in a closed pod, floating in body-temperature water that is combined with Epsom salts to aid buoyancy — generates such a degree of sensory deprivation, stress and worry are replaced by peace and ultimate relaxation, its proponents assure.

While the therapy sounds like something straight out of a science-fiction movie, it’s actually available at a facility near you today — along with full-body cryotherapy, which treats several ailments (including migraines and arthritis) by standing in a vertical machine for up to three minutes that chills the air by as much as minus-220 degrees fahrenheit.

An employee at Westland-based Element Float Spa & Cryotherapy explained that individuals can burn up to 500 calories in just one three-minute cryotherapy session as the extreme cold accelerates the body’s metabolism. However, it is recommended that customers work their way up to the most-extreme sessions of three minutes in -220-degree conditions.

Both therapies are available at Element Float Spa & Cryotherapy (36423 Warren Road in Westland), a three-year-old business that operates by appointment only.

Once visitors walk through its front door, they are greeted by relaxation-themed aesthetics — including a waiting lobby that features a highest-definition television showing schools of brightly-colored fish swimming near a coral reef and slick lighting that brings can bring out the chill in even most stressed-out individual.

Benefits from the business’s float therapy sessions can decompress the spine, relax all muscles, relieve anxiety while improving sleep and boosting creativity.

The buoyancy tank makes the individual experience a sensation free of sensory impulses that soothe the mind like nothing else, Ferriss explained.

A single 60-minute float therapy costs $60 while a 90-minute session runs $80. Multiple-visit, cost-efficient packages are also available (for instance, eight 60-minute sessions cost $360).

Float therapy sessions — Element Float Spa owns two pods, each commanding its own calming-enhanced room in the facility — include options. Customers can opt to float with the pod completely closed or open at the end, and they can listen to a selection of soft-music offerings (think Kenny G) or experience the sensation in total silence.

Customers choosing to try the cryotherapy can venture into the full-body machine for four levels of treatments ( ranging from beginner — 0.5 to 3 minutes at -166 degrees fahrenheit; to professional — 0.5 to 3 minutes at -220 degrees fahrenheit); or there is an opportunity to focus the healing benefits of the extreme cold to specific parts of your body that requires sitting in a reclining leather chair instead of stepping into the whole-body machine.

Whole-body cryotherapy sessions cost $60, with packages available (eight sessions run $360).

Localized cryo treatments run $30 per session with cost-efficient packages also available.

The facility includes a post-treatment room for changing and freshening up and a bathroom.

Sessions can be reserved through appointments only by calling 734-351-5128 or visiting ElementFloatSpa.com.