Why Floating Makes The Perfect Resolution Wingman - Sticking To Your Goals in 2022

It might seem like New Year’s resolutions are often made for the sole sake of not sticking to them.

Many people joke about how their resolution for the new year is to not break their resolutions. And as funny as it may be to hold so much value to a particular time of year when it comes to goal setting, it’s also very clear that the challenge is real when we see all those new gym members dropping off from their workout plans 6 weeks into the New Year.

What it comes down to is that we need to place more intention into our goals as well as think about what we can do to help support us on our journey.

Getting strategic with using tools and different methods is one way to help with sticking to your resolutions. It’s human nature to revert back to the habits we already have in place, whether they are good or bad, so turning to solutions outside of our own willpower will be helpful.

Think about what your preferred method for keeping track of notes is. Do you like the traditional feel of putting pen to paper? Or do you thrive in the digital world to keep your todos all organized? Try using a journal or your calendar to help you plan the actions to take that will keep you working towards your goals.

One particularly helpful practice when it comes to reinforcing new behaviours and breaking bad habits is float therapy. Behaviour change was one of the initial inspirations for Dr. John C. Lily, the inventory of the first float tanks. Dr. Lily wrote several books on using float tanks to reprogram your brain. Floating is a great way to get deep recovery across all six aspects of our health. We dramatically reduce stress and anxiety through floating, get a chance to escape from all the noise and busyness of our lives, and also go deep on self-reflection and visualization of our future best self.

Reflecting on your goals and seeing the path forward from where you are to where you want to be is one of the keys to success.

Without planning and learning along the winding path that is goal setting, we are bound to repeat the same mistakes. And when you look deeply at your goals and uncover the core values that drive those goals, you come to find more harmony with the aspects of your existential health and live in alignment with your deeper purpose. This will ultimately also help you in seeing your goals and resolutions get fulfilled.

Self-reflection and visualization are two of the common reasons that regular floaters come in for float sessions, because the float tank is such an ideal place for those practices. Without external distractions and in a perfectly comfortable state, your mind is able to wander and also direct its attention to things that we often miss out on during the chaos of our days, like thinking about New Year’s resolutions and goals and what they mean to you.

And because of the physical and mental benefits of floating, incorporating wellness practices like floating into our routine can relieve the stress and anxiety that often is an obstacle in our way of achieving big goals. By finding better balance with stress levels and practicing deep recovery, we will find the energy and drive we need to take the steps towards making real changes in our lives.

Research continues to show how important it is to give ourselves a time out and disconnect from the constant demands of our lives. It just takes some purposeful planning to make it happen.

Floating may be the perfect way to escape the stress but even 10-15 minutes of calm breathing can help us to manage stress better, improve focus, and lower blood pressure, all of which can help us towards greater health changes.

It might seem like by simply declaring our resolutions at the start of a new year that you’ll be able to effortlessly follow through to make it happen but reworking the patterns that are we are used it is a challenge. It’s important to use whatever practices and tools you can to stay on track. Use a journal or calendar to plan out the actions you’ll take to work towards your goal, start your day mindfully with some breathing or get outside for a walk, and, of course, schedule some time to float regularly.

Making The Most of the Holidays

In preparation for the holiday season we buzz with excitement from the plans we have to reconnect with loved ones and celebrate. And usually that feeling goes overboard as we try to orchestrate a million things at once.

But holidays are also meant to be a time for us to get away from our crazy busy schedules. It should be our chance to enjoy special moments with the people we love.

It often turns out that this is one of the most stressful times of the year for us though. Trying to get to that peaceful moment where "all is calm, all is bright" tends to pack even more into the last frantic dash. The holidays don't quite feel like they live up to the name when we have a houseful of kids, in-laws, and finding the perfect gifts to take care of.

And on top of our social stressors, we've got sales and advertising coming at us from every direction on all of our devices. It can be really easy to forget about ourselves during this time with our attention pulled by the needs and demands of others.

Taking time to ground yourself and find balance amidst the holiday stressors is so important because it allows us to bring the gift of your presence to the festive gatherings. Your relationships benefit from this and you'll feel happier to be able to resist the overwhelm that comes so easily this time of year.

Despite all of your obligations during this time of year, it's also a time for reflection as we cross the threshold on another year and we recognize the importance of our health in so many ways. And not just your own health but for your loved ones as well.

For many of us, gift giving rituals feel more like a chore than a joy but that's where putting thought into the gifts we choose can make a big difference.

A gift can be an expression of how well you know somebody and that you care about that relationship you have. Nailing the right gift choice can not only have a positive impact on the relationship you have with the other person but also contribute to their life as a whole. These are the gifts that most people want the most. We recognize the importance of health and the often neglected self-care that we all need.

Gifts that refill that need for recovery and empty the tank of stress don't have to be extravagant. You can plan some quality time together to go for a hike or to go skating. Make a nice meal together, book them a massage, or pre-pay for babysitters or house cleaners to help encourage some more downtime for them. And of course, a gift card for a float is the perfect break from responsibility with serenity in the quiet darkness.

The gift of float therapy is restorative in so many ways and you'll even notice that their time spent with others is more joyful and connected because of this time out to practice peaceful presence.

Scheduling a float before a day out can be a great way to relax before sightseeing or going to an event. It's also a nice activity to do as a small group to all reconvene after your floats to chat and connect on a deeper and calmer level.

People rave over receiving floats as gifts because so many of us have always wanted to try it and experience the effects of the float tank and those who have already floated will glow with excitement over getting back into the tank for more deep relaxation.

In so many ways, floating is about something that so many of us are missing - connection. Connection to our deep health during the float session, and the lasting tranquility that comes afterwards and allows us to connect that much more with the people around us.

Floating inspires openness and ease in a way that not many therapies can for even those whose hearts are still two sizes too small.

This holiday season, take care of yourself and encourage others in your life to do the same. The gift of living in a beautiful state is the real greatest gift. And floating is one of many ways to spend more time in this state but it's also one of the best ones!

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?

Take this quiz to find out.

Floating Your Way To A Better You In 2021

The new year brings about a desire for change and a renewal of energy towards the goals that we have for ourselves.

Many of us saw our goals and ambitions grind to a halt in 2020 due to the pandemic. We had to push things off or delay our dreams, whether it was seeing a business take off, travel around the world, or compete in a sports event.

So as we get started with 2021, we mostly want to approach things with optimism that this year will be brighter for our ambitions.

So as you set out with New Year's Resolutions and hope this year, here are some of the benefits of floating that can help you along the way with your resolutions.

Sleep

Sleep and getting a good night's rest is at the root of all of the goals that we have for ourselves because none of it is possible without sleeping well and restoring our energy.

Enhanced Learning and Performance

The relaxing state that we get in with floating can have a beneficial impact on our emotional state, which also helps us with memory and retaining information. We've all experienced the brain fog that comes from intense emotions. When we are stressed or in a negative emotional state we can have a hard time with remembering positive experiences and recalling specific details.

Partly through reducing stress and anxiety and partly because of the deeply restorative state our brains get into while floating, researchers have found that memory recollection is more vivid in people who have floated versus control groups that didn't float.

Floating is also used by athletes and high performers as a way to break through plateaus and reach greater states of performance. When it comes to mental training for sports and creative pursuits, the distraction-free environment of the float tank can help many people with their visualization practices and rehearsal.

Addiction

Even a short time away from triggers for cravings and addictions can be beneficial when trying to break away and prevent relapses.

Sensory isolation has been used in studies of combatting addiction with nicotine, alcohol, and narcotics. In these studies, it was also shown that prolonged isolation can help with withdrawal systems, lessening their intensity and making them more manageable.

Certain recovery programs have even begun integrating floating into treatment programs as a way to lower the risk of relapse in drug addiction.

There are also many personal stories of people who have used floating as a way to help with addiction. John Lennon shared in his biography Lives of John Lennon by Albert Goldman that he used floating to help him overcome his heroin addiction.

Mindfulness and Meditation

Practicing mindfulness is a more trendy and newer resolution for a lot of people and floating is the best training wheel support for your meditation goals that you can find. Float therapy is gently-forced meditation. When you are floating, your brain and body can't help but get into the same state as experienced meditators do. The theta brainwave state used to be only accessible to monks and people in REM sleep but float therapy has opened up this realm of relaxation to everyone. Because the float tanks have audio in them, a float session can also be coupled with a guided meditation to facilitate this learning process.

Unless floating is the healthy habit you're looking to do more regularly this New Year, it can't help directly with the habits but it can help to support you with your New Years Resolutions in many ways.

Goal Setting and Finding Your Purpose

Even if you haven't figured out yet what you want to accomplish for yourself in 2021, floating offers the perfect escape to find some time with your thoughts to sort things out. Use this time during your next float to think about what goals align with your deepest values and what you would like to focus on this year.

The Secret Behind How Floating Dissolves Your Stress and Reduces Anxiety

There’s an incredible amount of pressure put on us from the choices we make each and every day. Not to mention that we are also in the midst of a global health crisis. It’s clear that the stress we face daily can cause a lot of health problems. Many of us recognize the commonly associated physical problems like heart disease and high blood pressure, but stress can also weave its way into presenting as mental health issues like PTSD, depression, and eating disorders.

Most of us can feel the need to recharge and provide ourselves with some of the self-care these days as the world seems to spiral out of control. We want to turn to any solution that may help but there’s always a bit of skepticism when it comes to alternative wellness practices and whether they are as helpful as they claim to be.

Floating is no exception to this.

So let’s dive into some of the science on floating to see just how beneficial it can be for reducing stress.

Float Therapy and Stress Reduction

Dr. Justin Feinstein is one of the most well-known scientists studying the effects of float therapy in his custom lab setup at the Laureate Institute of Brain Research. In a recent Tedx Talk, Dr. Feinstein shared some of his study results about the effects of floating on stress.

The effects were incredible.

Every single person who participated in the study experienced some amount of stress relief. Furthermore, most of the participants saw a significant reduction in their stress levels that lasted for more than 24 hours after just a single float session.

If there was a pill you could take that would allow you to be stress-free for the whole day, who wouldn’t want that?

Floating to reduce stress may be more time-involved than just taking a pill but the benefits of it seem to be even more significant than most anti-anxiety treatments.

And just as importantly, there’s no concern about interactions with other medications or other negative contraindications. It’s one of the safest and lowest risk wellness practices there is.

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Dr. Feinstein isn’t just studying the effects of floating on people with normal, everyday stress though. He’s looking at stress-related illnesses like PTSD, depression, and anxiety, and finding that the individuals with the highest levels of stress before floating experience the greatest benefit from the treatment. Everyone who floats returns to a baseline level of relief, which means floating will bring you down to a similar level of relaxation as those people who always seems to be as cool as a cucumber.

What’s The Secret Behind Floating?

So the next big question is how does it work? Do we really just lay in the dark and let our minds clear out our thoughts for an hour or so?

This does seem to be the key to it all.

It’s difficult to find the effects of the solitude of floating, where we can’t be bothered by the outside world, anywhere else. Our minds and bodies slow down dramatically, our brains enter a state similar to dreaming, and this all gives us the ability to recharge more quickly.

Before float tanks took over as the most effective and relaxing way to experience this solitude, a psychologist named Dr. Peter Suedfeld did a lot of sensory deprivation research in the 60s and 70s by placing people in completely dark rooms in isolation for 24 hours. The term he used for this was REST (Restricted Environment Stimulation Therapy).

Dr. Suedfeld created a paradigm shift in the scientific community on sensory deprivation. Before this time it was only thought of as torture, as a result of incomplete research and questionable methods performed by researchers that would prime the subjects for a bad experience before the experiment even began.

By keeping the subjects at ease and making the process simple for anyone, Dr. Suedfeld found that participants actually enjoyed the sensory deprivation experience.

Over the years, Dr. Suedfeld found that the benefits of REST carried over to many areas including addiction treatment, helping with autism, enhancing creativity, and reducing stress.

This research was the foundation for the future of float tanks and helped scientists, as well as the wider community, stay open-minded to the benefits of floating and reducing stress.

Since these early days, we’ve come even further in seeing the light that shines in the darkness of sensory reduced environments. You don’t need to spend a full day in the darkness to experience the benefits, a single float session can provide similar benefits.

In his Tedx Talk, Dr. Feinstein comments on how we as humans aren’t designed to be constantly plugged into looking at screens, listening to the cacophonous noise of the city, or sitting under the glare of fluorescent lights all day. We also aren’t supposed to constantly let our minds go wild thinking about our to-do list and everything else that we cram into the 24 hours of our day.

Even if we enjoy having a full and vibrant schedule, these things can wear us out and add to the stress of our daily lives. Taking a break is our chance at hitting the reset button, and as we’ve seen, floating has been proven to be one of the most effective ways to do that.

The Top Three Reasons Float Therapy Can Help To Reduce Your Pain Naturally So That You Can Live The Life You Want Again

It shouldn’t be so hard to find the right treatments when your body needs relief. Swollen and achy joints, stiff muscles, these things drag us down and impact our ability to feel our best.

Float Therapy can have a major impact on the pain you are experiencing. This modern innovation on a natural phenomenon has incredible benefits backed by science. When it comes to treating chronic pain, there are few therapies as gentle, yet effective as floating.

Here are the three main reasons why float therapy is so great at relieving pain:

Experience Weightlessness in the Float Tank

Floating is one of those miracles of human ingenuity that needs to be experienced to fully comprehend. It’s like harnessing the power of the Dead Sea in a giant bathtub.

Briefly, the float tank solution is saturated with 1,000 lb. of Epsom Salt, making the water denser than our bodies.

When you lay back and relax in the float tank, your joints and muscles decompress in a way unlike anything else.

You float effortlessly on the surface of the water.

Your body doesn’t even get this relaxed laying in bed or while deep asleep.

This decompression effect is the first potent pain-relieving effect of float therapy. Many people with joint pain and sciatica leave their float session doing a jig they feel so good.

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Magnesium for muscle relaxation

Laying in 1,000 lb. of Epsom salt, which is a magnesium sulphate salt, is a muscle relaxant. Often when we experience any type of pain, whether it’s in our muscles or our joints, we struggle with muscles locking up as a way to prevent further injury. But this in itself is very painful.

The super-saturated solution of Epsom salt in the float tank has been associated with increased cellular hydration and blood magnesium levels which suggests that float tanks are an excellent way to get more of this important electrolyte into our system. This also helps to explain why people experience less restless-leg syndrome and have some of the best nights of sleep after floating. As a muscle relaxant, magnesium is often used as a supplement to help with restless leg syndrome and as a sleep aid.

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Stress also Turns To Tension

Who doesn’t have stress in their life? We’re adapted to handle stress but the problem is that stress has become pervasive in most people’s lives and it is causing more sickness than we can imagine.

Stress often expresses itself in the body as tension being held in areas like our shoulders and neck. Different people hold onto stress in different ways. But when we physically lock up due to stress, it becomes very painful physically as well as limiting in many other ways.

It’s unbelievable how relaxing the float tank experience is. Many people are blown away by where they hold stress they didn’t even know about. This awareness while deeply comfortable is very effective for releasing tension and letting the clutch off of holding on to that tension physically and mentally.

People come out of the float tank feeling like brand new humans. Making it a part of your regular routine for treating your pain can be a radical shift in your well-being.

Book at Float a Flow Spa today.

You’re just one float away from a new outlook on life.

Feel your best by Booking an Appointment today or call today to schedule a free consultation to see if float therapy is right for you.

Floating Away Anxiety

Float Therapy for Anxiety Relief

It is so hard to stay grounded and focus on anything other than the thoughts swirling around in your head when you are feeling overwhelmed.

That chest pounding, hard to breathe anxiety feels like the worst thing ever.

And it’s so hard to get away from.

Often when we feel like this, our bodies hold on to that tension in ways we don’t even realize in the moment.

Bringing our bodies back into awareness when our mind is on overdrive is one of the most effective ways for coming back to the present and recognizing that everything is going to be ok.

It is for this reason that research into float therapy has been very promising in terms of helping to relieve anxiety.

Floating can significantly reduce anxiety and lower levels of stress hormones in the body.

The feeling of weightlessness in the float tank lets your tension disappear like a clenched fist opening up.

It doesn’t even take being a meditation guru to experience this beneficial effect of floating. The unique environment, designed to reduce all external stimuli tricks your brain into letting go into blissful nothingness and calm. (It is for this reason that researchers have termed float tanks as R.E.S.T for Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy).

And research like this that has led to more funding for studies on floating in the last five years.

Labs in the States are now looking at the long-term benefits of floating for chronic anxiety and pain disorders and as a way to help veterans with PTSD.

This video from the Flow Spa Experience course goes into further details on the best practices for using float therapy for anxiety relief.

If you want to learn more, you can get access to the full Flow Spa Experience course for free at www.flowacademy.ca/fsx

How To Achieve Your New Years' Resolutions with Floating

It's no surprise that most New Year's resolutions fail. The gym-goers and crash dieters who make resolutions in January are usually throwing in the towel within four weeks.

The issue with resolutions as well-intentioned as they may be is that they lack a plan. We often set goals and resolutions to break old habits and create new ones. But when we're stressed or busy, we often revert to our old habits instead of rising to the challenge.

Adding float therapy to your plan for a new you in 2023 can help you achieve your resolutions.

Here are 6 ways floating can help you to accomplish your New Years’ Resolutions.

Exercise and Recovery

Hitting the gym more is a popular resolution for many people but the problem that most of us face is dropping off from our goal too soon to see any real results.

Floating is one of the best sports recovery methods ever. The effects of floating effortlessly improve circulation and helps to remove the lactic acid that builds up from working out. The decompression on your back and muscles is also great if you're feeling sore or pushed yourself a little too hard with your workout.

The 1,000 lb. of Epsom salt in the float tank solution is also an athlete's dream, Magnesium is an important mineral for muscle function and Epsom salt soaks have been used by athletes for centuries to aid in recovery.

You may find yourself getting sore a lot at the start of your new adventures at the gym. Try to find the right balance so that you're not hurting too much to keep going to the gym on your planned schedule.

Weight Loss Support

This benefit of floating will be important to you if your New Years’ goal is to lose weight.

Getting control of your hormones through healthy choices is going to make a big difference in your weight loss. Cortisol is affected by our stress levels and when we're stressed all the time, cortisol remains elevated. This can lead to higher blood sugar levels and more fat being stored instead of burned.

Floating helps to drastically lower cortisol levels, supporting a healthier hormone balance in our bodies and improving our ability to burn fat, instead of storing it.

De-Stress

Maybe your resolution is to simply stress less this year and floating definitely helps with that. Floating is one of the most powerful treatments for reducing the stress hormone cortisol but the de-stressing effects don't stop there.

The physical relief of pain and the alleviation of anxiety also help to make a big difference in our stress levels, leaving you in a blissful state of relaxation.

Before you burnout, this New Year, consider floating away your stress. We find that most customers see the best de-stressing results when floating with one of our memberships every two weeks or monthly.

Addiction Support

Reducing your stress levels is also one of the most effective ways to prevent relapse when quitting smoking, drugs, or alcohol.

Researchers have effectively used float therapy as an anti-smoking intervention and the same efforts can be applied to supporting the recovery from other vices. The reduction in stress and anxiety can make a big difference in reducing cravings.

More Sleep

Most of our New Years’ Resolutions include resolving to do more.

More exercise.

More weight loss.

Making more money.

More, more, more.

And when we strive to do more, our bodies need the support and rejuvenation of more sleep. Floating relaxes the brain to the slower theta brainwave state that we also experience in REM sleep. This is one of the reasons why everyone likes floating for feeling refreshed and reinvigorated like you just came out of a great nap. Some people do indeed sleep during their float while others get this deep relaxation that allows them to then sleep better at night.

Meditation

Practicing mindfulness has become a recent resolution for a lot of people and floating is the best training wheel support for your meditation goals that you can find.

When you are floating, your brain and body can't help but get into the same state as experienced meditators do. The theta brainwave state used to be only accessible to monks and unconsciously while we are in REM sleep but float therapy has opened up this realm of relaxation to everyone.

Because the float tanks have audio in them, a float session can also be coupled with a guided meditation to teach you how to meditate while in a relaxed state.

Maybe you resolved to float more this year, but for all your other goals, the many benefits of floating can help you better achieve them.

Book a float session today to help you with your New Years’ Resolutions.

Creating Balance With Your Weekends

You’ve Got To Make Time To Recharge

The concept of burning the candle from both ends embodies the trendy term called work-life balance, or lack thereof as seems to be more and more the case. If you are in a hard and stressful job but also spending your weekends staying up late and partying or neglecting sleep for Netflix binges, the wick that is your lifeforce is getting burnt out from both ends.

Thanksgiving long weekend just passed us and usually, long weekends give us respite from the ‘always on’ mentality that we live with today, as businesses also closed for a day of rest and give us all the chance to pause. However, long weekends are also filled with family gatherings and times of celebration which can mean late nights, good food, and plenty of drinking. All of this is great when it means reconnecting with friends and family spread near and far to create lasting memories but recognizing its impact on your nervous system and stress levels is valuable for avoiding a state of full-on burnout and keeping your training or business progressing if you are involved in any sports or entrepreneurial endeavours.

My Thanksgiving weekend this year was the aforementioned kind as I was attending my best friend John’s wedding in Toronto and I knew that I would have to find balance in other parts of my life and throughout the weekend in order to not crash after the wedding.

This is what a few busy days and late nights can do to your recovery. The following data from my Oura ring display from Saturday morning and Sunday morning on Thanksgiving weekend tells you all you need to know.

Knowing how various factors impact my sleep quality helps me to make choices to regain balance or simply know that I may wake up feeling less than optimal after a busy weekend like this and that I should go light with training to avoid pushing myself into a deeper hole or risking injury.

The value in knowing that a few nights short of optimal sleep combined with busy and active days crushes your recovery and readiness for training extends to general exercise as well as sport-specific training. If you like to work out just to stay healthy, following a busy weekend like the one I had, you may want to consider doing light weight training only or avoiding it altogether and just doing some low-intensity cardio, yoga, and stretching until your body is more fully recovered.

In addition to considerations with how your workouts are designed to create balance, do what you can to mitigate stress at work, and find other parasympathetic activities to include while you are returning to normal. For me this included getting some extra rest with an hour-long float session once I returned home, getting outside for a quiet walk, and getting extra sleep for the following few nights.

Most often the choices that help us regain balance aren’t the most fun or easiest options (but they will make you feel better) which is why you need to make the conscious choice to improve your recovery and reduce chronic stress levels.

Tips For Regaining Balance

• Adjust Your Workout Plan Until You Are Better Recovered - don’t tax the nervous system with high-intensity weights or cardio.

• Eat healthy foods - this is completely subjective to you and your goals but you probably know when you’re making the right choices. Use a food tracker like MyFitnessPal for a bit if it helps you get back on track.

• Forest bathing - getting deep into nature has restorative effects on your mind, body, and soul.

• Get extra sleep - turn off your devices and go to bed early to catch up on some Zzz’s.

• Go for a float - find a float centre near you and get into a state of deep parasympathetic rejuvenation.

• Reduce caffeine - when your body is reaching its limits you may be reaching for that extra cup of coffee to keep going. Avoiding doing that will limit further contribution to adrenal fatigue and stress.

• Plan in advance - if you know you’re coming into crunch time at work or in training, prepare ahead of time with all of the above tips so that your competition or all-nighter at work doesn’t grind you into the dirt.

There are many ways to return to optimal functioning but it all starts with awareness which we intuitively know when we’re approaching burnout and overtaxing ourselves. We don’t always have the luxury of stepping on the brakes and settling down - there are seasons in our lives when we have to go full-tilt forward. But when you can it’s best to slow down and keep balance in place.

If you’re unsure of what this feels like in yourself or if you want even more details, a device like the Oura ring, Whoop, or other HRV tracking tools can help you to quantitatively measure your recovery to keep track of trends. Intelligent use of your own recovery trends will allow you to push yourself harder for longer without getting sick, injured, or burnt out and is a critical factor in the success of many world-class performers across all fields of business and sports.

When you’re stressed and overworked, proper recovery isn’t just going to come to you; you’ve got to create time to regain balance.

Make Time To Recharge Today

How Teachers Can Benefit From Float Therapy

Back to school time in the fall is a challenging transition for students and teachers alike. Momentum shifts and that sense of the grind through to Christmas as the weather gets colder imposes upon our psyche. The stress of the new school year is also compounded by the new germs being passed around which often leads to an uptick in colds shortly after the summer break. Having a strategy to incorporate mental and physical wellness into your weekly and monthly routine is essential for maintaining good health year-round but becomes critical at these transitional times. 

Teachers can benefit from floating through:

• Powerful stress reduction.

• A chance to get away to a quiet oasis without having to travel.

• Joint and muscle pain relief.

Float therapy is a wonderful way to reduce pain and stress naturally. Being supported in Epsom salt water that is denser than the Dead Sea allows your body to completely relax to relieve tension. The unique stimuli-reduced environment of a float pod or float cabin also allows your mind to let go of stress and anxiety. 

Stress Reduction

Teaching is a challenging and demanding job with all of the different factors that go into commanding the attention of a classroom full of students, all with their unique personalities. Combined with the tight timelines of grading work, and countless other factors, teaching can be very stressful. Float tanks may be the best technology we have to combat stress. Research has shown a significant reduction in cortisol levels come about from just one hour of floating. Anxiety is also significantly reduced and the “post-float glow” feeling of complete relaxation you get while not having a care in the world is extremely helpful when needing to unwind after a long day or a long week. 

A Quiet Oasis

The float therapy experience is incomparable. Customers leave saying that they’ve never experienced anything quite like it because we are never in an environment with no external stimuli. While some new floaters opt to leave the lights on or music playing, the benefits of the experience are compounded when you immerse yourself in the stimulus reduction through turning off the lights and letting the music fade out. This gives your brain the chance to bask in complete silence and darkness which extraordinarily refreshing in the overstimulated world that we live in. 

Pain Relief

Repeated strain from grading papers and desk work can lead to a lot of tight muscles and pain in the body.

There’s over 1,000 lb. of Epsom salt in each float tank, making it denser than the human body and allowing you to float completely without effort. Research shows this decompression is beneficial for back and neck pain, and ongoing studies are working towards validating the benefits that we’ve seen at Flow Spa with clients suffering from chronic conditions like arthritis and fibromyalgia. 

Needless to say, teachers who came into Flow Spa during the final grading and exams before school was out for the summer found their float experience to be exactly what they needed in terms of a reset between grading tests and papers. 

Developing different strategies to incorporate a reset into your routine will help to ensure that you are prepared through it all. At Flow Spa, we help in providing guidance with meditation and some of the various techniques you can use to consistently reduce stress and anxiety. Restorative exercise is also essential to maintaining balance and overall well-being. And when you need that time to get away from everything and decompress, float tanks offer an unrivalled experience. 

Top Eleven Health Benefits of Float Therapy

11 Ways Floating Makes Your Life Better

Jump to a Section:

1. Pain Relief

2. Complete Relaxation

3. Deeper Sleep

4. Anxiety Reduction

5. Stress Relief

6. Theta State - REM

7. Skin Health

8. Magnesium Deficiency

9. Creativity

10. Brain Injuries and Concussions

11. Sports Performance

Floating will make your life better. This incredibly therapeutic saltwater Flow Spa float experience has clinical evidence to back up a whole host of benefits.

Floating, float therapy, or REST (Restricted Environmental Stimulus Therapy), used to be called sensory deprivation tanks but the name has become a misnomer as improvements to the technology allows these spacious pods and cabins to be as comfortable as you want it to be. Customizations include leaving music, guided meditations, and relaxing lights on to help you get the most out your experience. Inside each of our pods and cabins are over 1,000 pounds of Epsom Salt dissolved into a solution at a depth of 11 inches. This makes the water denser than the Dead Sea allowing you to float effortlessly on the surface of the water.

Each person has their own unique experience with floating because it’s such a gentle therapy, the healing potential will benefit whatever is in most dire need of attention.

Here are 11 of the most common benefits supported by research and our own customer experiences when you come in for a Flow Spa float.

1. Pain Relief

Research supports the pain-relieving benefits of float therapy for chronic pains like neck and back pain. Because your entire body is gently supported in the Epsom salt solution, floating promotes better spine health by allowing the spine to decompress and all the tense muscles that don’t normally get a chance to relax - including during sleep - can reduce tension completely over time.

Other chronic conditions like fibromyalgia, ankylosing spondylitis, and arthritis have shown great promise in the customers we’ve had come in and long-term studies that are underway to gather further support for this beneficial effect of floating.

2. Complete Relaxation

Describing floating is challenging - it’s something you’ve got to see and experience to fully understand because it’s a completely new experience and sensation. One term that does get through most often in describing floating is that it is a complete and unrivalled relaxation experience. This type of stimulus reduction and peace sets the entire body and mind at ease in a way that’s hard to compare to anything else. The temperature of the water is the same as your body and most people liken it to feeling more like floating on a cloud rather than being in water

3. Deeper Sleep

Many people report having the best sleep of their life after floating. This is why it’s popular to float in the evening while winding down after work to allow the body to gently ease into sleep with a reduction in racing thoughts and to-do lists shuffling through your mind.

4. Anxiety Reduction

We live in a busy and distracted world and a byproduct of this is that many of us are facing greater levels of anxiety daily. Because floating is so relaxing and allows our overactive nervous systems to completely tone down for an hour, clinical evidence supports a dramatic reduction in symptoms of anxiety from float therapy. Many customers relish the feeling of leaving the spa without a care in the world about the things that usually bother them. More often than not customers will take some extra time to relax in our lounge and enjoy some tea or water after their float.

5. Stress Relief

In addition to reducing anxiety, floating busts through similar symptoms of stress. Researchers have shown a significant drop in the stress hormone cortisol after just one hour of float therapy. Having less cortisol present in your system allows you to have a clear and focused mind and to be more productive or to fully embrace the bliss of treating yourself to some well-deserved R&R.

This reduction in stress levels also contributes to a significant reduction in hypertension that comes with floating. High blood pressure is temporarily improved even after just one float session.

6. Theta State - REM Sleep

The theta brainwave state sounds like something very mystical, and sure, it can be but in essence, it is the slow and calm state our brains get into during REM sleep when we are dreaming. It is a sign that our brains are deeply relaxed and can be reached by experienced meditators as well. The cool thing is that research shows the deep state of relaxation that comes from floating induces a theta brainwave state without the need for years of practice in meditation or going completely to sleep. There are unique benefits to this including enhancing creativity, consolidating memory, and feeling refreshed without needing to completely fall asleep. While it’s not a perfect analogy, some people liken this theta brainwave activity that comes from floating as the equivalent of 4-6 hours of REM sleep. For people who sleep poorly, this can be extremely powerful when it comes to memory consolidation and recovery that sleep typically provides.

7. Skin Health

The float tank solution is nearly 30% Epsom salt which makes it supersaturated in magnesium. Magnesium is important for skin health and many customers dealing with dry skin or conditions like psoriasis and eczema report improvements in symptoms when adding floating into their routine.

8. Magnesium Deficiency

Testimonials from customers reporting that floating helps with restless leg syndrome or sleep quality (as magnesium is an important mineral for promoting deep sleep) suggests that magnesium may be boosted through floating. While it’s next to impossible for researchers to accurately support this due to differences in skin porousness and multiple possible pathways for absorption, it’s still great to know that floating seems to help with conditions often associated with magnesium deficiency.

9. Creativity

Deep relaxation and inducing the theta brainwave state has helped many artists and thinkers in a wide range of fields uncover incredible potential and ideas in their brains. Whether you go into a float with a particular problem you’re trying to tackle or it simply comes to you naturally from the depths of your subconscious, it’s undeniable that the unique environment of the float tank has produced countless fascinating works of art and ingenuity. Float centres in the U.S. have worked with various artists to put together entire music albums and art instalments produced from these artists after coming out of a float. Comedian Joe Rogan has also become a patron saint of floating as he often attributes this deep meditative state to helping him create many of his most popular bits of comedy.

10. Brain Injuries and Concussions

As if floating wasn’t good enough already, many doctors and health care practitioners working with patients dealing with brain injuries or concussions are starting to recognize the healing potential of float therapy. The typical post-concussion protocol involves having the patient spend some time each hour away from the blue light of digital devices and ideally in a quiet and dark area. Taking this a step further, the advantage of nearly-complete sensory deprivation that comes from floating provides an hour or longer free from stimuli, a significant amount of time for the brain to work its magic on healing itself.

This is an important point which has started to get the attention of athletes competing in high-contact sports and we’ve seen customers return to work after a shortened recovery period following traumatic brain injuries with the help of regular floating.

11. Sports Performance

Professional sports teams have started to take note of the potential of floating for more than just the potential to help with concussions. Athletes are highly driven and competitive and often have a hard time turning off their brains to enter a relaxed state. Floating can work wonders to allow athletes to shift into a deep state of relaxation to allow the nervous system to reset and recharge.

The very best athletes in the world also include visualization in their routine as a regular practice to perfect motor patterns for the repetitive movements involved in their sport. It sounds a bit odd at first and like magic to think that seeing yourself in your mind in action can lead to an improvement in the physical world but repeatedly this is the case in research done on a wide range of physical performances. Dry training with U.S. Olympic Swim Coach Bob Bowman’s athletes, including Michael Phelps, entails mentally rehearsing a race while timing it with a stopwatch. These world-class athletes become so myopically focused that they visualize their full race and can stop the clock within tenths of a second of their actual swim time. The sensory reduction of the float tank is the perfect place for athletes to mentally rehearse the practice of their sport to carry over to their performance in-game. Golden State Warrior’s All-Star Steph Curry floats multiple times per month to maintain crisp and perfect shooting.

Just like with any therapeutic modality, many of the great benefits of floating come with time and our customers experience better results over time as compared to just one session. While you’ll love your experience of floating even the first time, know that it gets better with each subsequent visit. A common recommended is that you try floating three times to get used to it and figure out your preferences for having the best experience.

Book Your Float Today

How Debbie Relaxed For Two Days Pain-Free After Float Therapy

The first voicemail was a courtesy call from Debbie to thank me; no need to call back. Debbie hadn’t had pain all day and didn’t have to take her usual cornucopia of pills.

The second call we received later from Debbie was even better…

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The healing potential of the float tank is quite incredible.

It’s hard to say just how and what benefits will come to any individual until they’ve entered through the doors of our float centre and stepped into another world of relaxation.

I’ve previously talked about how floating alleviates my back pain - a byproduct of years of heavy weightlifting - and this is something that has shown to be scientifically validated. There’s documentation consistent with these personal findings.

The oftentimes more amazing results come at the fringe of research where ongoing studies are working through the process of confirming hypotheses. This is where someone comes in not knowing if they will simply get an hour of deep relaxation and peace or if it will go further in alleviating deep-seated pains that have been persistent for years.

It’s been happening just like this so far at Flow Spa. A cosmic roll of the dice. What bonus gift will be dished out to our next customer? Will it be better sleep, a quieting of the mind, or the blessed release from the mortal coil of chronic pain?

It’s been happening more often than not and that’s why I’m convinced it’s only a matter of time before the ongoing research confirms these further benefits.

Everyone gets the relaxation once they get past the learning curve of the first 15 minutes or so. What’s on top of it is the icing on the cake.

From ages 13 to 89 we’ve already facilitated an amazing experience to an incredibly diverse group of customers but some still stand out as having their lives do a complete 180º after visiting us for a float.

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Another phone call was received several days later. Debbie was ecstatic. She couldn’t believe that she’d had two full days free from pain. The first time in what felt like an eternity.

Everything becomes better and easier when you’re not constantly in pain.

All the difficult times seem worth it when our customers become our friends and feel such gratitude for what we’ve been able to offer them.

This is why we float.

Book Your Float Today

Getting The Most Out Of Your Float | 1

At Flow Spa, we choose not to belabour the point of what to expect in the float tank because the experience is unique to each individual. There are far too many factors to take into account to be able to say “this is what you’re going to experience,” especially in the first few sessions as you learn how to relax deeper into the float. 

This isn’t to say that there aren’t tips you can use to get the most out of your float and bask in that “post-float glow.” 

Far from being comprehensive, today let’s look at some of the tips that you can work on applying when you come in to float to take the experience to the next level. 

Remaining Still

I include this as the first tip because I think it can be the more important one for many people looking to elevate their float experience. Part of the benefit of floating is that your body is given a chance to decompress and dissolve in relation to the environment around you. We’ve calibrated the temperature in our float tanks to be perfectly neutral to skin temperature and have made adjustments in the first few weeks to be sure that it is at the perfect comfortable temperature for virtually everyone coming in to float. This means that you’re not supposed to be able to FEEL that you are in water across most of your body or even be able to tell the difference between the air temperature and water temperature. After some thought and experimentation with this, I’ve come to realize that a very important step in nurturing this physical sensation dissolution is to practice remaining perfectly still once you set into your most comfortable position. 

Movement means that part of your brain is firing, whether you’re feeling restless or just fidgeting. 

The other reason to limit movement is that movement has a convective effect in the water, which will draw heat out of your core quicker and temporarily give you a cooling sensation at your skin as that heat is pulled away from your body. When you remain still everything in the float tank system, including your body, is in a perfect balance. Movement in the water is much like the cooling effect that standing in front of a fan while sweating in the summer heat has. The water draws heat out of the body and cuts through that vapour barrier that our bodies possess.

Slowing Your Breathing

The float tank is conducive to slowing down your breathing already because you are letting everything in your body relax deeply, which frees the diaphragm to take in fuller and deeper breaths and also allows you to hyper-oxygenate because all of your muscles are relaxed and not requiring copious amounts of oxygen for any demanding work. 

Many people never take full and deep breaths though so it can be a new and different experience the first few times in the float tank to allow your body and your breath to fully relax and deepen. 

I often advise starting with a box breathing style of 4-4-4-4 where you:

-breathe in for a count of four

-hold your breath for a count of four

-breath out for a count of four

-hold the bottom of the breath for a count of four

The Japanese Society for Hypertension has shown that even 1-minute of deep breathing (5-6 breaths depending on the cadence and method you’re using) can significantly reduce blood pressure. Spending an hour like this in the float tank, therefore, has a dramatic impact not just on mental wellbeing but on many physical markers of health as well. 

Some people prefer to count their breaths. When doing this style of deep breathing and meditation I like counting up to ten and then starting over. Holding any larger numbers in the mind can take away from the peace of mind you are looking for and if you’re deeply relaxed, even counting to 10 can become a challenge without losing track but whenever that happens you just start over. 

Come in with permission to relax

We all lead busy and distracted lives. It’s become a pervasive issue for many people which is why I believe the reset of floating first and foremost teaches all of us the value in practicing mindfulness in whatever way comes naturally to you daily. It’s not realistic for everyone to float more than once a month but trying to go 30-days with only one hour of mental peace of mind is also not a good strategy. 

When you do come in to float though you want to pamper yourself with the experience as much as possible. 

Turn off your phone or put it in airplane mode so that you can reap the most benefits of not letting your mind instantly get distracted again. Make a day out of it or at least a few hours by hanging out in our lounge before heading back out into the wild or schedule your float for a day where you do have to immediately get busy again after you are done. The more you can float on that cloud for a while afterwards, the more at peace you will be and the more you will realize the value in cherishing the present moment regularly in your life.

World Sleep Day and Recovery

This week’s blog features an audio companion for anyone who prefers to listen - check out this week’s FlowCast here.

Today is world sleep day and with daylight savings time just passed last week, it’s an important time to think about sleep and getting yourself reset this weekend.

Daylight savings time has become a hotly debated issue because it forces us all to accept a lost hour of sleep when we spring forward and for many of us with already full schedules this means we end up losing that hour altogether.

It may not seem like a big deal but from Matthew Walker’s research which is covered in-depth in his masterpiece on sleep science “Why We Sleep” we don’t properly catch up when we’ve accumulated a sleep debt by sleeping more later.

Sleep is an essential part of the circadian rhythm and as such requires diligent daily, not weekly, attention. Something astounding that Walker talks about in his book is that the incidence of heart attacks skyrockets the Monday following the spring forward in DST and plummets when we get an extra hour of sleep when we fall back an hour.

This doesn’t automatically mean that you’re going to have a heart attack because you lost an hour of sleep last weekend but from many people I’ve talked to this week, the change affects us all in subtle ways. The sudden shift in when the sun rises and sets, the sense of feeling the need to catch up all week, it’s kind of a funny feeling.

So what can we do about it?

Matthew Walker might suggest that we can’t make up for a sleep debt but getting an extra hour of sleep or recovery time for World Sleep Day or anytime this weekend can help to get you back on track still in my mind. Take a nap, spend an hour recharging in a float tank, get outside for a quiet walk in nature, turn off all of your devices and go to bed an hour early.

The quick transition of Daylight Saving’s Time is additional stress on all of us. Life is a constant balance of stress and recovery, sympathetic and parasympathetic - yin and yang. Out of respect for World Sleep Day, if you didn’t spend the March Break somewhere relaxing, take an extra hour to do something rejuvenating this weekend and perhaps start to make it a routine - but that’s a whole other topic for another day.

Does an hour of floating actually equal six hours of sleep?

Whenever something new meets Pop Media headlines, there’s a tendency for whatever tasty nugget might be included in this new thing to be sensationalized to attract greater readership. This “clickbait” opportunity has not been missed even on float therapy and sensory deprivation tanks.

While the comparisons to a portal to “Upside Down” from Stranger Things is often no longer included in the lexicon, the quote that is continuously blown out of proportion is in regards to the restorative effects of floating and sleep. Depending on which news source you’re reading, you’ll often see it stated that an hour of floating is equivalent to anywhere from four to six hours of sleep.

The most recent news blast that has likely proliferated this claim again was when Josh McDaniels from the New England Patriots said that 45 minutes in the tank was equal to four hours of sleep - extrapolate this and I think that is why people are now pushing the claim that an hour of floating is equal to six hours of sleep.

Is this really the case?

Let’s break down the components of this claim and decipher the reality from what is exaggerated.

What We Know About Floating as it Relates to Relaxation

Floating is a powerful way to combat stress and anxiety and multiple clinical studies have validated this claim. The absence of any external stimuli often allows your brain to sort things out on its own and realize that everything we stress about on a day-to-day basis doesn’t have to be such a big issue.

Because the brain doesn’t have all five senses providing input during a float session, our brain wave frequencies are able to settle down into a deeper state of relaxation. This relaxed state is called theta brainwaves and is the same state that expert meditators reach and we all achieve during REM sleep and dreaming.

Figure 1. This chart from my Oura ring shows the different sleep stages that I was in throughout the night. You can see that most deep sleep comes in the earlier half of your nightly slumber and REM comes during the latter part.

It sounds then very much like floating is pretty much the same as sleeping, right?

REM sleep is only one component of our total nightly sleep cycle. It often comes in the later stages of sleep and is associated with creativity and memory consolidation. REM sleep also plays an important role in re-energizing your mind and body. Reaching a theta brainwave state while floating is, therefore, one of the reasons why people love floating for the boost in creativity and energy that they get.

Most of the later hours of sleep are dedicated to REM (see Figure 1).

Sleep is a fascinating component of our lives and has a multitude of aspects that are necessary for good health, REM being just one of them. Another very important part of sleep is the deep sleep stage which is when our bodies release a beneficial cascade of hormones to help repair and grow muscle, making it the most restorative sleep segment.

There is no evidence thus far that floating can induce a deep sleep state and the associated release of healing hormones (that is unless you sleep in a float tank).

This is where making claims like sleep replacing 6 hours of sleep can cross the line from benefit to simply being misleading because people who only get about 6 hours of sleep each night might think that they can get away with replacing that with an hour float. (6 hours of sleep is simply not enough, for more on this read the excellent book Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker)

Perhaps an even bigger issue with people making claims like this is that it puts floating at risk of being converted from a trend into a fad and lumped into the likes of fidget spinners and pogs.

Floating has strong scientific support that is growing every day but if we keep having people trying to sensationalize it for a quick buck or clickbait then it’s going to start being that much harder to get further research taken seriously if floating is just seen as quackery.

How To Use Float Therapy To Help Treat Your Back Pain

Floating For Pain Relief Series - Part 1

Why do you float?

There are many ways that a float tank can be used to improve your life; from mental health to chronic pain to sports performance, float therapy has a truly impressive resume of benefits. In this series, we’re going to dive into the different benefits of floating and see what both the research and the people floating on a regular basis say about the benefits of this futuristic recovery vessel.

The focus of this first series of posts will be around pain, both chronic and acute, and how the warmth and density of the Epsom salt-filled waters work like a fountain of youth for all kinds of pain conditions.

As a competitive strongman athlete, I’m no stranger to back pain. Whether it’s the usual soreness that comes after deadlifting 700 lb. or the occasional low back muscle strain that leaves me out of commission for several days to weeks, back pain is unsurprisingly common in strongman.

Staying one step ahead of my injuries is the best remedy of all and combined with more acute treatments at the time a flare-up of back pain occurs, I’m able to get right back to training and competing sooner. In addition to daily stretching and movement to keep my muscles firing correctly, floating has become a key component of my recovery protocol for staying in the game. Floating not only to allow my mind to rest and focus better but because the support and buoyancy of the float tank solution allow all of the muscles in my back to completely relax while also decompressing my spine.

This therapeutic effect of float tanks on muscle tension pain, particularly in the back and neck, has been researched and shown to provide a significant benefit compared to a control group receiving no treatment for their pain (Kjellgren et al., 2000).

As I relax into the float tank to start my session, all the pressure and tension in my low back starts to drift away immediately. After a few minutes of finding my perfect position, I can almost start to feel my back elongate and decompress and in a much gentler way than if I were to use an inversion table or hang from a pull-up bar to stretch out. This becomes much more noticeable when you get out of the float tank after your session and you can feel yourself stand taller.

This has been reported almost unanimously as one of the most dramatic and immediate improvements that floating can offer as kyphotic customers leave their float sessions standing tall and proud once more.

Bulged discs get the relief they need to heal and over time subside.

Neck pain from being desk-bound or due to whiplash and traumatic accidents are no match, as your body is gently relaxed and supported from all directions to return to the most natural position possible.

But the benefits of floating for treating pain don’t end with back and neck tension. As we continue this series on floating for pain, you’ll find out even more about the myriad ways that float therapy can benefit both acute and chronic pain syndromes.

Book Your Float at Flow Spa in Peterborough today.

Floating and the Other Services Offered at Flow Spa

More Than Just Floating

While float therapy may be the main attraction at Flow Spa, it’s by no means the only service that we are offering, even as we just get started. As we continue to grow as a company, the services that we provide will also evolve.

In starting out as a new business, the services that we have in addition to float tanks for sensory deprivation include hot and cold tubs used for contrast therapy and the NormaTec pulsed compression suit. Let’s dive into the features of these unique services and talk about who can benefit from them the most.

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Hot/Cold Tub

One of the four main treatments rooms at Flow Spa is built for contrast therapy and cryotherapy. We’ve decided to utilize a hot tub and cold tub in this room as it’s the most practical and well-researched form of cold or contrast therapy.

Contrast therapy refers to alternating states of exposure to heat and to cold which is achieved by moving from the hot tub to the cold tub and back in regular intervals. Some of the typical protocols include 10 seconds of hot with 20 seconds of cold, alternating for 4 or 5 minutes. Performance experts like Dr. Kelly Starett recommend extending the cold exposure time to just before you start to shiver and then switching back to the hot tub to warm back up to a comfortable level before returning to the cold.

Cryotherapy implies using the cold exposure of the cold tub by itself and trains the body to better withstand stress, both physical and mental in nature.

Our cold tub is set to 5ºC and so this isn’t the typical cold shower you might take after a hot summer day. So the question you’re probably wondering now is why subject yourself to such torture?

Both cold and heat have incredible healing and restorative properties. Our bodies have become used to living in climate-controlled environments and for most people, extreme temperatures are no longer part of our daily lives, and if they are, it’s usually short-lived. Extreme temperatures are what is known as hormetic stressors - a little bit of exposure can boost our immune system and make our body more resilient in many different ways. It is well-researched and validated that regular, short bouts of cold exposure will improve your immune system to the point that you are better able to fight off colds and other viruses and infections. Cold is also a more potent anti-inflammatory remedy than any drug and if your body is cooking from the inside due to stress and other lifestyle factors, brief cold exposure can help to keep that balanced and maintain your health.

Heat, on the other hand, is cardioprotective. People who regularly incorporate hot tubs or saunas in their lives experience the benefit of a lower risk of heart attack and other cardiovascular diseases, in part because the heat stress exercises all of the interior valves and muscles that dilate the blood vessels to keep us cool during the heat.

The combination of hot and cold may be the most powerful therapeutic solution of all hormetic stressors. Contrast therapy works out the valves and tiny muscles of the cardiovascular system to promote blood flow while also crushing inflammation, which is why it’s the most sought-after rehabilitation and recovery method for top-level athletes. When attempting to recover from intense training and game-day performance, many athletes choose the hot and cold contrast therapy because it has been shown to be a highly reliable method of recovery from injury and for reducing soreness.

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NormaTec Recovery

Another sports recovery tool that we have at Flow Spa is the NormaTec compression system. The NormaTec is a pulsed compression suit which promotes blood flow and clears lactate from muscles after training or playing sports. NormaTec works much like contrast therapy but in a more localized manner. This can prove to be useful for athletes with specific body parts that need extra recovery time or for anyone not yet ready to brave the cold water. Because the NormaTec suit is like an intelligent and cost-effective massage, it’s also great for anyone experiencing pain, discomfort, or poor blood flow in their extremities that need regular attention. People with diabetes or Restless Leg Syndrome can see substantial improvements in quality of life by incorporating Normatec recovery sessions.

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Guided Meditation with Muse

Our mission at Flow Spa is to help everyone achieve a deeper and truer state of relaxation, which comes not only from relaxing the body but also helping the mind to be at ease. The most effective way to rest the mind is through practicing mindfulness by learning to meditate. We will be offering a whole host of classes on meditation to learn this often tricky art and we also have a Muse headband in our lounge area for anyone wanting to track their mindfulness progress.

Using the Muse before and after a float session can be an interesting way to see just how effective floating is for calming the mind by looking directly at its impact on your brain waves. The Muse headband can also be used to teach you how to reach a proper state of mindful awareness when meditating.

Muse works by using EEG sensors to detect your brainwaves, particularly in areas associated with focused attention or distraction. It then translates those brainwaves into nature sounds which you can use to guide you towards calmer and focus. When your mind is distracted the soundtrack will be more windy and rough waters at the beach, when you’re calm you will hear gentle waves and be rewarded with birds chirping to indicate you are in a calm state.

Using the Muse as a regular part of beginner-to-intermediate meditation practice can help to reinforce your state of mindfulness so that you can get better at helping yourself with stress and anxiety.

Booking Your Appointments

If you’re interested in booking any sessions for our additional services at Flow Spa, you may check out our online booking software for more information. These services will be open for access from everyone in the coming weeks as they become available in our spa.

What Is Floating?

The world is a radically different place from what it was even a few decades ago.

Technologies that were once considered Orwellian fantasies have now become our reality and are more and more creeping into our psyche.

Most people see these technological advances as a boon to our society as they present us with new opportunities, but it is undeniable that our primitive brains have also become fodder to this new type of on-demand world that we live in.

With the advent of instantly accessible information and entertainment available in our pockets at any time and the constant blips and pings of notifications that come with it, our reactionary nervous systems and brains biased towards detecting environmental dangers have become overstressed.

The average adult attention span has decreased in recent years and symptoms of stress-induced health complications have skyrocketed leading not only to a decline in health but also productivity.

Dedicated researchers who are curious about how we can overcome these changes in our society have started to focus on these concerns and what to do about them in the past two decades. Ancient wisdom has returned to the forefront of much of this research as a means to quiet the mind and remove oneself from the constant bombardment of distractions that we are all so easy to fall prey to.

This is where float tanks enter the picture.

A float tank in its purest form is an enclosed bed of shallow water in which you lie down in a saltwater solution and float on the surface of the water due to the density of the solution. This sense of weightless floating is achieved by mixing 1,000 lbs. of Epsom salt in a foot of water. The tank was originally referred to as sensory deprivation because the lid blocks out the light and within the enclosure sound is blocked from the external environment. These features have since then been upgraded to allow both light and music to keep the beginner company during this novel experience. The temperature of the water also remains body temperature neutral to keep physical sensations to a minimum.

The sensory deprivation tank as we know it today in a pod or cabin form was invented by Dr. John C. Lily back in the seventies. At the time, the prohibitive cost to build a tank coupled with Dr. Lily’s unusual research into trying to figure out a way to listen to peoples’ thoughts and also communicate with dolphins led there to be no real consideration for any therapeutic uses for the float tank.

In the decades that followed its inception, the float tank was relegated to the world of psychedelic explorers looking to take a trip to another dimension.

It wasn’t until research into ancient practices like meditation and mindfulness started to validate the benefits of the quiet practice of doing nothing in the late ‘90s and early 2000s that people started looking for ways to promote and facilitate these ostensibly difficult to describe practices.

The more stressors that our society burdened upon us, the more communities revolted with wellness practices to counterbalance their health. Yoga became a billion dollar industry and everyone had their own preferred specialty fitness club for spin class or boot camps or weightlifting. Innovators started to turn their attention back to those salty solutions for peace and tranquillity and introduced float tanks to communities as a place to go and escape from the bustle to relax and recover.

Incredible case studies started to pop up about individuals who were benefitting from floating in myriad ways.

Palliative cancer patients were able to find relief and rest pain-free for the first time in months.

Athletes saw their performance increase through improved visualization as well as physical recovery.

People suffering from anxiety disorders could enjoy life more as their overactive stress-response systems were quelled.

Then scientists started to research floating as a therapy and increasingly we are seeing the validation that these claims hold merit; not only of incredible mental relaxation but also a reduction in pain and physical symptoms due to the decompressing nature of being weightless in the tank.

Dr. Justin Feinstein has created the Float Clinic and Clinicalfloatation.com to help consolidate and clarify the research for the float industry. The collection of publications in scientific journals on floatation is rapidly growing.

The summarized list of current research includes benefits for: “hypertension, chronic tension headaches, chronic muscle tension pain in the back and neck, and stress-related pain with “burnout depression.”

Several studies have also concluded that floatation is a safe and effective rapid treatment for:

“individuals with clinical anxiety, including generalized anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), panic disorder, agoraphobia, and social anxiety disorder, with many patients presenting with comorbid major depressive disorder.”

“Clinical trials are currently underway investigating the long-term impact of floating in patients with anxiety disorders, anorexia nervosa, chronic pain, fibromyalgia, and insomnia.”

Clearly, the surface of the water has barely been scratched in terms of just how deep the benefits of floating go (pardon the pun).

One of the most interesting and promising points is that not only is floating an effective treatment, but it is also extremely safe with minimal possible side effects. This one feature is unlike virtually every other treatment we currently have for anxiety, stress, and pain disorders and serves as no wonder why floating has become one of the fastest growing industries in North America.

At Flow Spa, we are dedicated to helping our community to relax and heal by creating the very best float therapy experience as well as bring education and awareness to you about the float industry and the wider world of wellness. If you’d like to enrich your life and learn ways to improve your well-being, stay updated with the latest information and exclusive content by subscribing to our newsletter.

Cannabis and Floating

Marijuana was legalized across Canada last week; here’s what you need to know if you are thinking about augmenting your float session with cannabis.

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Key Takeaways:

• Floating by itself is so relaxing you might not want to get high and the deep relaxation state you can reach is like a good sleep.

• Marijuana may physically relax most people but its psychoactive effects tend to cause more anxiety. By floating while high you may get something out of it creatively but you probably won’t reach as deep of a mentally relaxed state as you could otherwise.

• Ultimately it comes down to personal preference but it is highly recommended that you go into your first float completely sober to understand the experience.

• Try CBD Oil for a relaxation effect to settle into the float more without the high.

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There are still many people who consider floating to be some kind of hippy practice so it serves as no surprise that many people are wondering what the protocol for floating and marijuana use are.

Additionally, there are a number of staunch advocates of float tanks who also happen to be renowned pot smokers and the two are regularly described as going hand in hand for some of these experienced floaters.

Let’s dive a little deeper into the weeds and see if combining marijuana with floating is really worth its weight in smoke.

Floating - Complete Relaxation, Easily Accessible

Float therapy is like taking a long and relaxing vacation condensed into a brief session and there’s good evidence to show that it actually works this way; becoming weightless in the tank helps to relieve joint and muscle pain and the break that your mind gets feels a lot like years of practice in meditation.

Through floating you are able to achieve a state of complete relaxation in mind and body that is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve through other relaxation practices. Floating is so relaxing in fact that many people equate an hour-long float session with four hours of sleep.

This is exactly what many people are looking for when they feel like smoking weed - they just want to chill out.

Does Cannabis Equal Calm?

Marijuana does have a pain-relieving and physically relaxing effect on many people. People with chronic pain looking for a remedy without an extensive list of terrible side effects may indeed find it beneficial to smoke some weed occasionally. These pain-relieving effects are primarily the domain of the cannabinoids in marijuana which act as pain-signal blockers in the body. This is why CBD products have become so popular.

CBD Oil and Floating

CBD has changed the game for combining floating with cannabis in a lot of ways. CBD works to create a calming, anti-inflammatory effect in the body without the associated high of THC. At Flow Spa we sell both Calyx Wellness CBD products as well at the broad-spectrum cannabinoids from Flow CBD. Using CBD in combination with floating provides a gentle relaxation effect to help those who are more anxious settle into the float experience more. CBD oil is fast-acting when a dropper of the tincture is placed under the tongue to absorb more directly into the bloodstream and helps with relieving pain and improving sleep quality.

The Drawback of Cannabis

Where it is unlikely that cannabis is conducive to a complete relaxation experience is that along with CBD, there is another common cannabis acronym thrown around a lot is THC - the psychoactive component of the plant.

As a psychoactive substance, THC is the part of the plant that results in people getting high. Getting stoned may glue some people to the couch to watch endless hours of Family Guy but it doesn’t similarly settle the mind and therein lies the rub. Most people become more anxious while under the influence of marijuana, they just can’t act on it when they’re stoned.

Research has shown that despite people thinking that marijuana helps them to fall asleep, their overall sleep quality suffers and this is the most important factor when it comes to sleeping and ultimately feeling better. This is not to say that some people don’t benefit from cannabis for sleep in another way - if the individual is in so much pain that he or she cannot sleep at all, surely lower quality sleep is better than no sleep at all.

Floating Plus Cannabis Equals...

If you’re entering a float tank to try to relax as deeply as possible, you’re not likely to achieve such a state while floating high.

With that being said, some people like to use the float tank for creative purposes. Turning off the outside world allows some incredible people to accentuate their talents. Many of these people also use marijuana on occasion (or more liberally) for creative purposes. By combining the two, like the multi-talented float advocate Joe Rogan, some people may enjoy a heightened experience of creative output during their float in the tank.

If you do decide to enter the tank while high, I would advise you to let the staff at your local float centre know prior to your session so that they can better guide you through the experience. If you are extremely intoxicated though, do know that most float centres reserve the right to turn you away until you sober up for your own wellbeing.

So should you float while high? I think it comes down to individual preference and what your intentions are for your float session. The only time I would say absolutely not is for first-time floaters who should approach the new experience clear-headed and receptive to all instructions for making the most out of the journey they are about to embark upon.

Have you ever floated while high? Leave a comment below to share your opinion with new floaters.

Get The Most Out Of Your Next Float

Discover the best practices for float therapy for your particular needs.

The Value of Stillness

“A moment of stillness makes all the difference”

How many unread emails do you have right now? How many event invitations and social media notifications?

The answer is approaching infinite if you’re anything like the average human being today. But that’s not how we were wired to function - always turned on and plugged into constant alerts. It’s stressful to the mind, body, and soul. It makes you less human and more like a cyborg.

Interesting, but frightening, fact - most humans today meet the definition of cyborg by being addicted and attached to our smartphones which we have on us at all times and cannot live without.

How do we get back to more human and less ‘being?’

By taking a step back and unplugging.

The more you give your body a chance to be free from all distractions and connect again to itself and to nature, the better you will feel.

Feeling grounded or connected to the real world around you isn’t some hippy practice. It’s been an essential part of the human condition since before the dawn of consciousness.

Just because we have the potential to accomplish so much more today than we could ten thousand years ago doesn’t mean that our bodies are any different. In fact, in many ways, our disconnect from our roots has been a detriment to our health and wellbeing.

Give yourself the chance to recognize what it means to be human again. Take a deep breath. Listen to the rain. Go for a walk outside. Float and listen closely to the inner workings of your brain.

Creating stillness is all part of enjoying life and recognizing that you’re human.