- Extremely detoxifying, master antioxidant
- Regulates blood pressure and is a weapon against cardiovascular disease
- Regulates body’s production of insulin
- Regulates 300 enzymes in the body and assists cellular, muscular and nerve function
- Beautification of skin and hair
- Increase creativity by allowing your brain to rest from its normal task and sensory oriented obligations of processing sights, sounds, temperature and balance
- Increase brain’s capacity to self regulate and self heal due to the freedom from processing billions of pieces of sensory data
- Engage your relaxation response
- Heightened senses lead to a deeper appreciation of the world around us
- Zero pressure points or muscular tension throughout your body for a prolonged period of time
- Generate and store a tremendous amount of vital energy
- Reduce inflammation and increase stamina and endurance
- Speedy removal of lactic acid build up
- Better ability to focus on detail oriented tasks
- Enhanced right brain functionality allows for pattern recognition and ability to absorb information in broad context
- Strengthen your mind – body connection through self awareness
- Experience a highly alert mind in a deeply calm body
- Increase the production of your natural pain killers known as endorphins
- Strengthen your immune system and improve overall well-being
- Balance and regulate your overall pituitary –adrenal activity
- Floating activates the relaxation response by lowering the adrenal-sympathetic arousal hormones such as cortisol and ACTH or adrenaline, and increasing the production of the opiate like endorphins
- Enhanced right brain hemisphere functionality associated with creativity and insight
- Dissolve the ego
- Increase your problem solving skills and enhance your learning ability
- Freedom from time – the distinguishing characteristic of ‘flow’
- Nothing to practice, memorize or learn
- Easily access the same state of brain wave activity associated with deep meditation
- Increase visualization techniques and your brain’s ability to retain and manipulate mental images
- Effortlessly ignore distractions, improve your attitude, decrease muscle stress and just ‘let go’
- Reduce adrenaline, ACTH and cortisol in the blood stream
- Experience a deep, pervasive inner calm
- Gain control over your autonomic nervous system’s vital functions such as blood pressure, heart rate and breathing
- Strengthen your immune system by reducing stress and anxiety
Why Should I Float?
Scoliosis and Parkinson’s disease can both lead to poor bone density and the onset of Osteoporosis; thankfully floating can assist with structural alignment (Scoliosis) as well as regulate Dopamine (Parkinson’s).
A float tank is a self-regulation tool that assists our body’s internal operating systems. Our body has many interconnected systems that affect each other; the ability to regulate and balance this network of closely related systems is the most powerful function of the float tank. This is also what makes floating appear deceptively simple when in fact powerfully corrective and regulatory physiological functions are getting stabilized, balanced and reset.
The damaging effects of stress are so severe they are almost unmentionable. Among the worst things are the extremely high risk of abortion and miscarriage, losing your employment, losing a significant other and loss of life.
How can Floating help eliminate stress?
People who are prone to stress related illness, anxiety and depression benefit from decreasing the production of harmful stress hormones such as ACTH, Adrenaline and Cortisol which are directly associated with your influencing your mood, energy, focus and outlook. These adrenal sympathetic hormones will not be released when we enter into prolonged states of relaxation because there is no external stimulation to trigger their secretion. When we trigger our relaxation response it prevents negative stress hormone production while increasing the release of endorphins at the same time; a balance of this delicate chemical dispensary system built into our brains. Floating delivers deep relaxation; therefore, floating literally makes you feel ‘better’. The results of floating are cumulative; the more you float the better you feel.
Endorphins have an astonishing variety of functions ranging from relieving pain and causing pleasure to integrating information from our senses. Research indicates that just a few minutes of stimulation of certain areas of the brain can provide pain relief lasting for twelve hours or more. Further, it’s now known that just mere thoughts have the power to trigger endorphin release. This means that the good mood floaters experience from the deep relaxation of an hour or two in the tank is directly related to their brain turning up the dial on endorphin production.
Floating has a powerful influence on our reality well beyond anecdotal suggestion; concrete evidence from double blind research experiments displays floating has a proven ability to decrease stress and significantly reduce the pain associated with all of life’s challenges ranging from headaches, sadness of heart break or even broken bones. This is done by regulating the flow of information to the brain through sensory deprivation. This means, by calming our RAS, by limiting the amount of data we are processing from the external world in the calm solitude of the gravity free environment, we can shift our attention internally and as we enter this meditative brain rhythm linked to higher states of internal awareness, the mind discovers its ability for self-regulation of brain chemistry.
The International Journal of Stress Management of May, 2003 reported that individuals suffering from stress-related health problems such as chronic pain, depression, or anxiety are often helped a great deal by floating. The reason stated was the individuals have usually tried many other forms of stress management prior to floating and had little success. They are individuals who are in the greatest possible need of relaxation but who have the hardest time adopting methods of relaxation.
A Swedish team of scientists studying the effects of floating on combatting stress uncovered that prolactin, a kind of ‘life-force hormone,’ is released in large amounts when we float. Prolactin plays an essential role in enabling females to produce milk as well as all human metabolism, regulation of the immune system, and pancreatic development. Most interestingly related to stress management and floating, Prolactin also regulates the release of our body’s Dopamine. As most types of ‘rewards’ increase the Dopamine production in our brains, it has a direct association with how addictive drugs relate to our brain. Dysfunctions with the Dopamine dispensary system in our brain is linked to such significantly destructive diseases and disorders such as Parkinson’s, Schizophrenia, ADHD, substance abuse and more.
When we float, we cease production of the stress related chemicals that lead to and facilitate these symptoms while simultaneously increasing optimism, self-assertiveness and more socialization. This is due to the simultaneous increase in the production of Endorphins we experience when deeply relaxed inside the tank.
Do these symptoms sound familiar? Currently taking liver destructive pharmaceuticals to manage these reoccurring symptoms?
These symptoms are all responses. Responses to what our brain perceives as a threat. The problem with anxiety sufferers is that the brain can experience one small trigger causing what would be a normal response to a threat, and then spiral out of control with a flood of Biochemicals that spill out like a faucet with a broken handle. What should have been a small ‘reaction’ dose of stress hormones released into the system becomes a steady stream; this is essentially the definition of a ‘phobia’. A phobia is where the normal ‘response’ becomes a debilitating life disrupting illness.
Like depression, anxiety has physical and hormonal effects, including muscular tension, elevated blood pressure, high pulse, heightened levels of stress related hormones and a broken ‘off switch’ on top of everything.
Floating, as you know, reduces the stress hormones, the catalyst behind the scene, as well as providing immediate physical relief in the form of reduced muscle tension and slowed heart rhythm. Essentially floating will combat anxiety from both a mind and body perspective.
* If you are pregnant or have any health concerns, check with your doctor before using Epsom salts.
Those who wish they had the time to meditate or want to learn and can’t seem to find the time or the energy to just get started get to reap the benefits of long time practitioners without mastering any techniques, training their mind or trying at all. The hard fact about meditating is some people are better at it then others, some people find it easier than others and some people experience more powerful results than others. With floating, it’s a guarantee that you will experience benefits similar to meditation without doing anything. Literally, doing nothing!
High stress means low productivity, low retention of staff, client dissatisfaction. I don’t think we need to continue this list. Improving the stress of your employees will ultimately lead to lower health care costs if you want to look at it from a business stand point; however, from a human perspective, lower your team’s stress and increase their happiness, their work output, their ability to make the client happy, their calling out sick, their quitting after one year and ultimately, improve your corporate image. It may be time to buy your hard working sales team who just hit their quota a three-pack of floats at Theta State not only to thank them for their hard work; however, to ensure their recharged enough to do it for you again!
Stress hormones being continuously released into your bloodstream have a jarring effect on your ability to remain calm enough to enter sleep friendly brain wave patterns. In fact, simply the thoughts you are having about stress are causing more stress hormones to be released and thinking about not sleeping feeds into a vicious cycle. It is imperative that you gain control of your brain’s chemical dispensary system and turn down the volume on the amount of adrenaline coursing through your veins or you will forever experience anxiety when you try to go to bed.
There are two ways of combatting sleep disorders that have been having a lot of clinical success. Putting yourself into a state of prolonged relaxation resulting in slowing your brain wave activity to the rhythmic Theta State, or consuming habit forming prescription pharmaceutical medication that damages your liver, interferes directly with your natural chemical mechanisms and ultimately leads to a full blown addiction. Drinking yourself into a coma with Scotch also seems to work; however, Theta State Float Center does not recommend this technique.
What can we do to combat this annoying co-passenger?
Drink lots of water, avoid alcohol and tell your taxi to take you directly to Theta State Float Center.
In the tank, your body is at rest due to the effortless floating on the surface of the water. This zero gravity environment allows your body to regain vital energy at a rate of four times faster than REM sleep. This means two hours in the tank provides as much ‘rest’ for your body as a full night’s sleep. Beyond this energy gained are the wonderful benefits of your brain hemispheres synchronizing, endorphins being released, stress melting away and perhaps the most important for globe trotters, sleep patterns stabilizing. Your definition of jet lag surely will change as you move away from “2 days of being exhausted” to “two hours of deep relaxation”. The mental focus and clarity gained inside the tank will have you prepared for that business meeting well beyond the rehearsing your lines repeatedly in the taxi technique most sales people go with.