How Ready Are You for Change? (And Using Float Tanks to Help)
When Dr. John C. Lilly, the inventor of the float tank, entered into the darkness and solitude of the sensory-deprived environment, it sparked in him the realization that he had just ventured into a whole other world inside of himself.
Our brain rings out in response to this lack of input from the external world like a wake-up call.
Turning inward allows us to raise our self-awareness and with that, we can start to transform ourselves.
Change awaits us.
And that’s exactly what we’re all longing for right now.
The Changes We Seek To Make
What is life going to look like on the other side of lockdown restrictions?
Are you ready for a change or are you already taking steps to make changes in your life?
While there has been a lot that isn't under our control lately, something that is in our sphere of control at all times is our actions and choosing to become more aware of how we make use of the time we have. The past year has shifted the regular routines for many of us and opened our eyes to the need for change.
We get stuck in our routines and what we are used to because it's familiar and becomes automatically ingrained as a habit. Kind of like how we pull into our driveway after a long day of work only to realize that we were barely conscious of the drive home, unless we are actively trying to identify and understand our habits they will take control before even we know what we are doing. This includes the bad habits that we may be thinking about changing or feel really ready to take a stand against.
Float tanks can help you with making change by allowing you to focus on and understand your bad habits through deep introspection. This can also help you to understand the underlying motives behind the new habits you are trying to create change from.
When creating and refining the first float tanks, Dr. John C. Lily used the quiet isolation of that environment to develop a system around how to alter unwanted behaviours. He used this safe and controlled environment to focus on the negative aspects of bad habits and their underlying source.
Knowing yourself at this deeper level is one of the first steps to making long-lasting changes for the better.
What Is Your Goal?
Because we are creatures of habit, we all long for some return to normal in our lives. We get distressed when our routines are upset and we’ve all been experiencing some not so gentle disruptions to our routines over the past year.
Disruptions, like the ones we’ve experienced, do have an upside though, because it causes a degree of discomfort that makes us motivated to change. Whether we like it or not, the hiccup in our routine that has been the pandemic is something of a catalyst for change and the initiation of your mission if you choose to accept it.
Rebuild It Better
We can rebuild our lives in the way that we so desire and this past year has been a wake-up call for many who have wanted to make a change for some time. People have retired early and set off on new adventures, many others are quitting jobs they are unsatisfied with and analysts believe that a mass exodus from unhappy jobs is still coming as we move into the post-pandemic world.
Right now you have the opportunity to ask yourself, how do you want to rebuild?
Why not build a lifestyle that’s better than before? One that gets you excited to jump up out of bed in the morning.
Floating Your Way To Deeper Understanding
Dr. Lily was a different thinker in many ways, even by academic standards. Some of his work was related to how float tanks might affect our ability to “meta-program ourselves” Thinking of our brains like computers, everything that we experience - thoughts, emotions, actions - are all programs written by code in our brains. And yet, this code isn’t written from a little guy at a control station in our brain, but from our reaction to everything in our environment.
Dr. Lilly believed that if we focus on how our programs are written, we can modify the code and adjust and improve upon those programs. This is why he called it meta-programming but in simpler terms, it’s just another way to think about mindfulness and analyzing our thoughts and actions. Kind of like being your own shrink but instead of laying on a sofa and talking things out, your body is weightlessly suspended in Epsom salts as you do the talking inside your head.
Not only was it Dr. Lilly who found that floating could really help with the process of analyzing his thoughts, but many people who try floating and take it up as a regular practice for improving their health and happiness come to discover how helpful this can be.
Using Changes In Awareness To Make Change In Your Habits
We become much more aware of what is going on internally when we get to escape from the external world for a while through floating. We can use this time to let our bodies deeply relax while also exploring our programs and habits on a deeper level to sort out the cues and triggers and underlying origins of our habits.
This level of recognition is important and one of the first steps that I take when working with clients to understand the “Why” behind their desire to change.
We know that floating helps you to become more aware and present at the moment because there are no other sensory inputs from the external environment that you have to process or to cause distraction around you.
Many of the tools and techniques that we use and that are suggested in the scientific community today to improve mental and physical well-being include raising awareness, also known as mindfulness.
And it sounds simple to just pay more attention and become aware of the present moment but we are all facing the constant external pressures that make this more difficult than ever.
We feel like we’re being pulled in every direction.
Our external world is more and more distracting.
And we feel overburdened by responsibility in our lives. It’s hard to become aware and initiate change even when we still desire it.
We all crave freedom and because of the discomfort that restrictions have itched out in us, we are more mindful of the need for change right now.
Change is scary though. Starting anything new brings with it some excitement and anxiety. But our body and our brain do adapt, and rather quickly, with consistency.
And with change in ourselves, we can also help to initiate and inspire change in others. A lot of what we’re hoping for more of in the world right now.
How Ready Do You Feel For Making A Change?
It is daunting to make changes in our lives. Each of us has the ability to change if we choose to and part of that is knowing on a deeper level what you want to change first. This needs to come first before setting arbitrary goals that sound good on paper.
Are you ready for a change?