Quite simply, flotation is the most effective method for stress relief and relaxation. The flotation tank has 10 of water saturated with 1000 pounds of Epsom salt, creating incredibly buoyant water for you to float on. The water is heated to skin temperature (93.5 F). Once you're settled, it is virtually impossible to distinguish what parts of your body are in contact with the water and which aren't, tricking your brain into a "floating" sensation.
Inside a Flotation Tank
As you situate yourself, you will be able to close the door to the tank. Don't worry if this sounds a bit intimidating; it doesn't lock or anything. You can open it up on your own at any time! Once inside, you will have no light, no sound, and essentially no feeling of touch. You will experience a level of quietness and darkness that will allow the mind to drift off into an incredible state of relaxation.
Experience Euphoria
Unless you're planning a trip to outer space, our flotation tanks are as close as you will get to weightlessness. Surprisingly, a large amount of the brain is used to deal with the effects of gravity. With this lack of processing, the logical side of the brain is able to slow down until it synchronizes with the creative side of the brain. This will leave you in a dream-like state, similar to thoughts experienced just before you drift off to sleep. At this state, the brain enters a plethora of endorphins, sending you into a euphoric state.
Easily Achieve Deep Meditation
The state of relaxation is incredibly deep. However, your brain will stay quite alert, involved in a deep level of meditation. As you enter this state, the brain moves from its standard alpha state and starts to generate theta waves. This is a level of meditation desired by Buddhist monks and others interested in entering a deep state of meditation. Instead of spending hours, days, weeks and years learning to achieve this, you will get the experiences with a simple flotation session. Best of all, the effects are cumulative the more you float, the more intense the effects!
Effects Of Flotation
The effects of flotation are quite profound. Here is a short list of some of the effects reported by users and researchers:
Promotes relaxation
Reduces pain
Eliminates fatigue
Improves sleep
Alleviates stress (mental and physical)
Improves creativity
Improves athletic performance
Reduces sports injuries
Speeds up healing process
Decreases production of Cortisol & Lactic Acid
Deepens meditation
Reduces depression
Reduces anxiety & fear
Helps treat drug addiction
Relieves arthritis
Relieves migraines
Reduces blood pressure
Reduces heart rate
Reduces oxygen consumption
Facilitates weight loss
What Are The Uses Of A Flotation Tank?
Floating is an experience that can benefit absolutely everyone! Customers are anywhere from 6 years old to 90 years old; males and females alike. It doesn't matter if you want to float with a purpose or just to satisfy your curiosity.
Mental Stress Relief
One of the primary reasons people use flotation tanks is mental stress relief. The brain is frequently engaged combating the effects of gravity and an onslaught of other stimuli. When you're floating, the brain has a lot less to worry about, allowing it to relax. This extremely relaxation allows the logical side of the brain to synchronize with the creative side of the brain. This synergy allows the brain to quickly work into a deep state of meditation. Instead of spending hundreds of hours mastering meditation techniques, you're able to take a short cut by floating. At this point, you'll be in a dream-like state, although completely alert and aware. There are quite a few other reasons and explanations that show you why floating helps to relieve mental stress: Anti-Gravity Explanation, Brain Wave Explanation, Left-Brain / Right-Brain Explanation, Three-Brain Explanation, Biochemical Explanation, Biofeedback Explanation, Benefits of Boredom Explanation, Relaxation Response Explanation, Visualization Explanation, Flow Explanation, Aquatic Ape Explanation, Homeostasis Explanation
Physical Stress Relief
As you might imagine, being completely weightless has enormous advantages for your body. Every single muscle is allowed to rest and recover. You might think laying on a bed or sofa is resting but even then, your body is constantly fighting the effects of gravity. While floating, your muscles, joints, and bones are free of the stresses of gravity. This increases the efficiency of blood circulation, quickly helping to repair your body. We invite you to come try it for yourself to see the effects first hand.
Athletes: Mental & Physical
For the same reasons floating helps your physical stress relief, it helps athletes. When you eliminate the effects of gravity, massive amounts of stress are relieved from your bones, joints, and muscles. With increased blood circulation, you're able to achieve an incredible rate of recovery. Recovery that typically takes days is complete in a matter of hours. Don't believe us? Come try it out and see the results for yourself.
Pain Control
When the logical side of your brain slows down and is able to synchronize with the creative side of your brain, you enter a dream-like state and start to release loads of endorphins, the body's natural painkiller. These natural painkillers are often more powerful than many prescription drugs. Those that suffer from migraines, back pain, arthritis and many other ailments can find incredible relief from flotation. Other studies show indisputable evidence that flotation lowers blood pressure and reduces the heart rate, both which will help to minimize the risks of heart attacks and strokes.
Corporations & Employees
Stress related illness is a growing problem in the business world. Companies are losing billions of dollars due to their employees suffering from stress-related ailments. Many companies are being proactive in eliminating these issues for their employees and co-workers. Yoga, Tai Chi, massage therapy, and other methods are a great way to help combat these issues, but require tremendous dedication and commitment from the individual. It often takes months before noticeable results are achieved. Flotation is the perfect solution. The only requirement is to show up and lay in a pool of water. The effects are immediate. With the guaranteed results of eliminating stress, it is clear to see why more and more executives are utilizing flotation tanks as a means to improve their company. If you are interested in booking a large number of floats to see the results for yourself, please contact us for special pricing.
Floating Information
There are a lot of theories as to why flotation provides such extreme benefits across so many aspects of our lives. Michael Hutchinson, who some consider to be the master of floating, has provided a great deal of information in his "Book of Floating". He covers quite a few reasons why floating has its advantages:
Anti-Gravity Explanation
Gravity No More
Gravity is something we fight with every day. Our bodies grow used to this force as it remains a regular part of our lives. With a flotation tank, you can get the best of gravity and achieve a weightless environment.
Gravity's Effect on Our Body
We tend to not think about it since it's such a constant, but our bodies are always battling gravity. Whether we're running, walking, standing, or sitting, there is always a very limited amount of our body that is in contact with the earth. When you're sitting, nearly all of the pressure is on your rear. While standing, there is tremendous pressure on the spine and soles of the feet. This immense pressure on these limited areas causes excessive stress in relatively weak locations of our bodies: knee & hip joints, lower back, neck, abdomen, and more. Even the heart has to work harder to pump the blood upwards from the lower body. Our bodies' fights against gravity end up developing chronic muscle tension in certain spots. The result of that tension? Pain. We develop discomfort and even extreme pain in our backs and necks. This tension also results in head aches, shallow breathing, high blood pressure, ulcers, asthma, and cardiovascular disease.
Gravity's Effect on Our Mind
Since we are constantly dealing with gravity, we become less sensitive and less aware of its presence. The removal of gravity from the equation allows us to detect much smaller sensations. Things we feel while under the strain of gravity that go unnoticed are felt while in the flotation tank, in a weightless environment. The increased perception of these sensations allows us to get more in tune with our own bodies. We tend to ignore the fact that our mind is so actively involved in this struggle against gravity. Our brains are always busy calculating inertia / acceleration and dealing with gravity. Some estimate that over 90% of all activity that affects our nervous system is related to gravity. This leaves only a small portion of the brain available for the rest of the functions.
Using Our Newly Freed Mind
With our brain no longer having to deal with responses and tasks with our nervous system, it is much more free than its used to. Instead of dealing with the affects of gravity, the brain is able to deal with matters of the mind and spirit. Some users report this as a sense of coming home; back to a place that is familiar to them. Some have associated this experience with a return to the womb. It sometimes feels as if this is the way our bodies and minds were intended to be treated, finally released from gravity. These sensations are hard to describe in words. You will have to try the tanks yourself to see what you feel.
Fight Muscular Tension
With a weightless environment, our bodies are able to relax more than possible in other circumstances. With our increased perception, we become aware of knots and muscular tension that had previously gone unnoticed. Once these sensations are discovered, our mind and body are able to work in unison to help alleviate the discomfort and address the problem areas.
Increased Blood Flow / Lower Blood Pressure
With the strain of gravity removed, our body is able to circulate blood more freely and completely. This blood is able to reach parts of the body that need it most, expediting necessary healing. The heart is able to operate more efficiently and with less effort. Floating can provide some much needed rest for your heart. This reduction in stress helps to provide a significant decrease in blood pressure.
Summary
By removing the effects of gravity, flotation tanks allow us to receive tremendously positive effects on both our mental and physical health.
Brain Wave Explanation
With modern science, we're able to record the activity in the brain, including the production of different types of waves. There are four types of waves detected:
Beta Waves
When the brain is generating beta waves (13-30 Hz), it is dealing with actual tasks and problems.
Alpha Waves
When the brain is generating alpha waves (8-12 Hz), the person is usually alert but unfocused. These are associated with relaxation and calmness.
Theta Waves
We produce theta waves (4-7 Hz) twice per day: as we're falling asleep and as we wake up. In these times, we're presented with unpredictable, dreamlike (yet still vivid) images. Theta waves offer access to unconscious material, sudden insight, and creative material. It is a mysterious, elusive state that's quite difficult to study because as soon as someone produces theta waves, they start to fall asleep.
Delta Waves
These occur at 0.5 to 4 Hz when a person is deeply asleep or unconscious not much fun there!
Other Info - Brain Waves
Producing Theta Waves
As you probably guessed, the most exciting type of brain activity is theta waves. This is the ultimate goal for practitioners of meditation and other methods of relaxation. Most must dedicate endless hours of studying, dedication, and practice to achieve this type of state. Users of flotation tanks are able to achieve theta wave production quite easily, while still allowing the person to be alert and awake.
What do Theta Waves mean?
When the brain produces these waves, we are at our most creative and imaginative state. Throughout studies, as users start producing theta waves, they often report integrative experiences leading to feelings of psychological well-being. These same people reported improvements in personal relationships. Many started recalling long-lost childhood memories. Researches report that those whom experience high levels of theta waves, "experience a new kind of body consciousness very much related to their total well-being." They also found that those people "manifested improved relationships with other people as well as great tolerance, understanding, and love of oneself and one's world." The users also had "new and valid ideas or synthesis of ideas, not primarily by deduction, but springing by intuition from unconscious sources."
Summary
The production of theta waves may not lead to each of us coming up with the world's next greatest idea, but research does indicate that those of us who float will experience an increase in creativity as well as an improved sense of purpose and love of life.
Left-Brain / Right-Brain Explanation
Halves of Your Brain
Your brain looks quite similar to an over-sized walnut. It is split into two halves and connected by a series of nerves. The left brain is responsible for analytical, sequential, and logical thinking. The right brain deals with non-verbal, simultaneous, intuitive, nonlinear, timeless, imaginative behavior. To put it bluntly, the left deals with facts and the right deals with creativity.
Enhancing Your Right Brain
The left brain often times overpowers the right brain since it is used so much in our daily lives. Throughout our day, we're responsible for making decisions based on reason and logic. Even throughout our education, we are rewarded for left brain actions. The right brain is often not given the chance to act due to the overwhelming amount of the verbal / analytical information being transmitted by the left brain. When we float, we're removing many of the tasks processed by the left brain. This finally gives our right brain a chance to thrive. This simple phenomenon is why so many users report increased cases of creativity during a float.
Synchronizing Brain Hemispheres
It is agreed upon by most neuroscientists that the left brain and right brain working together will result in the most balanced individuals; physically, mentally, and spiritually. One of the main purposes of nearly every religion, psychology, philosophy, and healing practice is to provide unity & symmetry between the two halves of our brain. There are many ways to achieve this, but none easier than floating. Through the use of PET scans, CT scans, and EEG's, doctors are able to monitory this 'harmony' of the two halves of the brain. Research has shown that there is more unity between these two halves during and after a float. This synchronization may indeed be one of the biggest benefits from usage of the sensory deprivation tanks. This is why many floaters report "an increase in productivity, performance, efficiency, and generalized feelings of competence, confidence, and wholeness." As Hutchinson, the father of floating, puts it, "The tank does not hinder the left hemisphere, but changes its role from one of dominance to cooperation, enabling floaters to use all their mental powers."
Summary
Flotation has been proven to enhance right-brain functions. Users who float are also more likely to experience a synergy between the two halves of their brain, one of the greatest accomplishments of the human psyche & brain.
Three-Brain Explanation
Our Brain: Three Parts
One of the reasons for why floating has such a massive effect on us is the three-brain explanation. It can be said that our brain is made up of three parts:
Reptile Brain
The oldest part of the brain, controlling self-preservation, reproductive, and life-sustaining functions.
Limbic System
This deals more with motor skills such as gripping a doorknob.
Neocortex
This is the part of the brain separated into two hemispheres. This is what makes us humans so different and is responsible for memory, judgement, and intellect.
Floating Effects on the Reptile Brain
This part of the brain houses the reticular activating system (RAS), known as the alarm bell of the brain or volume control knob of the brain.
This allows us to distinguish between events that are normal and extraordinary.
People with an RAS that allows lots of information & stimuli to pass through do not seek out additional stimulation and tend to be shy; an introvert.
People with a restrictive RAS seek extra stimulation to feel alive; an extrovert.
People with an RAS that allows many stimili tend to tune this alertness down with the use of alcohol or depressing.
Someone with a slower acting RAS may choose a substance to increase their alertness, such as speed. Needless to say, the RAS has a lot to do with drug addiction.
Floating has a very powerful effect on the RAS, causing it to go into a relaxed, yet highly alert state.
This is why floating has such a tremendous affect on alcohol consumption, drug consumption, neurotic behavior, shyness, introversion, and extroversion.
Floating Effects on the Limbic System
The limbic part of the brain is what tends to affect how we perceive information coming in. This will determine if we see the world through rose-colored classes or in a blue funk. Subsequently, this system impacts our affection, sexual behavior, parental attachment, and altruistic impulses.
Hypothalamus: Pleasure Center
One of the key parts of the limbic system and in fact a key component of our entire brain is the hypothalamus. This is the main regulator of all bodily functions. Stimulation of the hypothalamus causes intense pleasure. The hypothalamus is also the key regulator of our response to pain and stress. If the information passed in is deemed as stressful, neurochemicals are released through our glands; the pituitary and adrenal. This is why we receive an adrenaline rush and have a fight or flight response. Essentially, the hypothalamus is what dictates if we turn the incoming information into something of stress and pain or pleasure. Floating has been proven to have a direct, substantial influence on the hypothalamus. Due to its impact on such an important part of our brain, floating has a powerful impact on our mood, emotions, and overall our mind-body relationship.
Floating Effects on the Cortex
It can be said that one of the biggest things holding back our brain development is the lack of communication between the third part of our brain, the cortex, and the other two systems. When the communication between these parts improves, we call it a vertical alignment. Humans have been trying for thousands of years to achieve this vertical alignment. It can be achieved through meditation and other practices, but often takes thousands of hours of practice and an incredible amount of self-awareness and discipline. Float Tank and Vertical Brain Alignment
Float Tank and Vertical Brain Alignment
Sensory Deprivation
Once we're deprived of our senses within the tank, our RAS decides our level of stimulation is too low and cranks up the volume on our senses. This increase in our senses makes us very aware of our thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations including our heartbeat & respiration. This acknowledgement helps to align our three brains.
RAS Calming Down
On the flip side, the RAS often perceives floating as a sensory overload. We're experiencing and noticing things that we never experienced before. This causes our RAS to put us into a deeply relaxed, physically immobilized, mentally still state. The result is a state that we are not used to experiencing; a unique situation where we're extraordinarily quiet yet intensely conscious.
Limbic System Increases Endorphine Output
Floating causes our limbic system to not only slow the release of stressful hormones such as adrenaline, norepinephrine, ACTH, and cortisone, it also increase the release of endorphines. This release causes the limbic system to exert a strong influence over other parts of the brain, putting us into a state of euphoria. The limbic system also causes the cortex to think in certain ways and become synchronized, giving us the ability to generate theta waves, increase visualization, and have access to deeper memories.
Other Floating Advantages Reasons
Biochemical Explanation
Biofeedback Explanation
Benefits of Boredom Explanation
Relaxation Response Explanation
Visualization Explanation
Flow Explanation
Aquatic Ape Explanation
Homeostasis Explanation
Massage Therapy
Gravity Spa employs experienced, professional massage therapists, disciplined in numerous types of massage therapy:
Deep Tissue Massage
This is a whole body massage with a focus on customer specified areas of the body. The therapist uses additional pressure on problem areas.
Hot Stone Massage
This is similar to a relaxation massage, but utilizes hot stones to apply pressure which allows for a more intense massage.
Prenatal Massage
Pregnant and looking for a massage? Look no further. Gravity Spa employs certified therapists that are trained to give you an amazing massage that's completely safe for the little one. Massage can only be performed during certain times of your pregnancy, please check with your OB/GYN prior to booking this massage.
Relaxation Massage
The basic massage. You tell us what you want worked on and we'll take care of the rest. If you're not sure what type of massage you want, go with this one!
Sports Massage
This is the perfect massage for athletes. Our therapists will make sure to avoid injuries while providing a focus on stretching and problem muscle areas.
Swedish Massage
A Swedish massage is similar to a relaxation massage but is more invigorating due to a series different techniques being applied.
Thai Massage (Do not currently have. Let us know if you are certified in Thai Massage!)
Thai massage involves placing the recipient in a series of yoga stretches as well as using hands, elbows, forearms and feet to do compressions on the energy lines of the body.
Warm Oil Massage
This is a high-contact, fluid massage with less pressure and warm oil being used.