Do I Need To Be Able To Meditate To Float?

Many people feel hesitant around the float tank because of the idea of sensory deprivation and what you’re supposed to do for an hour with your mind.

It can be daunting to think about going into an hour of solitude to be alone with your thoughts, but many of our clients have no experience with meditation and you don’t have to either.

Let’s talk about some of the experiences of the float tank and why you don’t have to be a good meditator to reap the benefits.

An hour of peace and quiet with no distractions from your thoughts is one of the most nourishing and powerful things we can do for ourselves in today’s day and age.

The float tank is so physically relaxing because you’re supported weightlessly by the Epsom salt solution, that it helps your mind to calm down too.

This is one of the reasons that the float tank works wonders for people in pain as well as for relieving anxiety. Sometimes when your mind can’t shut off and you’re stuck worrying, it can feel like it’s impossible to calm your mind and focus on meditation. By letting yourself float peacefully with calming music or having it fade out to silence you’re able to let your body naturally guide your mind to a calmer state.

Research on float therapy has looked at what our brains do when we’re floating and has found that our brainwaves reach the slow theta state. For the most part, Theta brainwaves usually only show up under two conditions: during REM sleep and in highly experienced meditators. But because of the unique environment of the float tank is so calming and free from external stimuli, our brains are naturally able to reach this deeply rejuvenating and calm state.

Experience float therapy for yourself to see these research-backed benefits. Whether you’re booking in Peterborough at Flow Spa or your closes float centre wherever you are in the world, I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful experience.

Getting Started With Meditation: A Beginner's Guide to Finding Peace and Relieving Stress

Mindfulness is one of those words of wellness that means so much but mystifies so many.

At the essence of it though mindfulness simply means being where your feet are at. You are here in the present moment and fully engaged in what is happening within you or around you.

Sounds simple right?

For some of us, it is and for others, it takes some time to get to a state of being more mindful.

Our minds are awash with ancient instincts that were developed for simpler times. We didn’t have four thousand advertising messages exposed to our nervous systems each day along with ongoing triggers of our stress and rewards systems with the blips and pings of notifications.

Mindfulness has been practiced for thousands of years so if it did the people well in simpler times where stress was activated by life-threatening situations, might it also do us good today when our stress systems are on high alert most of the time due to stress we’ve imposed upon ourselves?

So let’s talk now about how we can get started with a mindfulness practice. Whether you’re looking to get started for the very first time or reboot a past practice, this article will guide you through the process.

It Starts With Change

Before we get into specific recommendations, it’s important to recognize that any new behaviour starts with the desire to change. In the realm of coaching and psychology, this field is known as Change Psychology.

Readiness to change is the biggest predictor of success in any goal that you set for yourself so take this part of the process seriously.

If you’re reading this article and you’ve made it this far, the good news is you’re likely ready to make a change and start a new mindfulness meditation practice!

Now let’s make it easier for you to get started.

There are only two things that drive us towards making a lasting change in our lives:

• Getting away from pain

• Moving towards pleasure

Pain is two times more salient than pleasure so as we’re talking about change, we’re also talking about what specific goal you are setting for yourself. You want to gain something of pleasure in making the change but you also want to acknowledge what you’re looking to get rid of that is hurting you in some way.

Take some time to think about this and even write it down for yourself. Be as specific as you can for why you are making this change.

“I am committing over the next 30 days to a daily practice of meditating for at least 10 minutes as a way to help with my anxiety and bring me calmer in my life.”

The Many Benefits of Mindfulness

You get to mix and match the myriad benefits of mindfulness in whatever way you like to come up with your purposeful goal. As a refresher here are some of the benefits that mindfulness and meditation can bring to you or negative things that it helps to take away:

• Increased focus and attention

• Greater empathy

• Reduced blood pressure

• Reduced stress

• Lowers anxiety

• May have a positive effect on depression

• Improved sports performance

• More resilient against adversity

• Increased discipline and mental toughness

• A greater sense of calm and peace

• Aiding in overcoming trauma

Forming the Habit

Now that you’ve got your specific meditation or mindfulness goal set, it’s time to form it into a lasting change in your life. We do that through habits. Despite your best intentions, if something is not ingrained as an automatic response in the form of a habit, it’s not likely going to get done when things blow up in your life and get difficult. The key to forming habits is enough consistency over time that it becomes an automatic response.

What doesn’t get scheduled doesn’t get done, so make sure that you’ve got your meditation planned out each day in your calendar.

I recently completed a challenge of exercising for 60 days straight and reflected upon the experience in this video here: 7 Lessons Learned from Exercising for 60 Days Straight.

I talk about habits a lot in that video because it was clear that after a certain point, the task of exercise became a habit to my brain as a day no longer felt complete without that exercise routine. There are many factors that affect how long it takes to form a habit which is why somewhere between thirty and sixty days is smart to start with when it comes to the mindfulness goal you set for yourself.

We most often approach these positive changes in our lives with a short-term goal to get started but deep down at its core we are making the change because we recognize that it’s going to positively impact our lives if we continue it long-term and indefinitely.

So now, let’s talk about making the choice of meditation that works best for you because if it doesn’t resonate with you, discipline will only take you so far in terms of keeping you going.

The Many Options To Choose From

There is no one-size-fits-all to meditation and while I do recommend that everyone try to start with some form of seated mindfulness-based meditation practice, it might not be the right practice for everyone long-term.

Meditation Apps For Getting Started

Sitting meditations are a great place to start though for learning the basic skills in a controlled setting.

There are countless apps that help you to learn meditation. Some of my favourites include the Waking Up app by Sam Harris, Headspace, Oak, and Insight Timer.

Waking Up and Headspace have free trials to get started with and you can learn much of the basics of meditation just with the trial, and then they offer subscriptions to continue on with. This can sometimes give you just enough of an investment to want to take your practice more seriously.

Oak and Insight Timer offers free options for guided meditations or calming music to help keep you relaxed while practicing unguided.

The Basic Practice of Mindfulness

(You can download a free meditation track here)

1. Get into a comfortable position in a quiet and calm place where you won’t be distracted. There’s no right way to position yourself, you can cross your legs if it’ll be comfortable, keep them bent in a chair, or even lie down on the floor or your bed.

2. We usually start out practicing meditation with eyes closed but you can also leave your eyes open and soften your gaze.

3. It starts by bringing more attention to your breath and where you are directing it. It can help to place a hand on your chest and the other on your abdomen to feel where the air is going. Work on letting the belly expand and fall with each breath and keeping the chest relatively still.

4. We want to place most of our attention on our breathing. It can help to focus on the sensation of air passing the tip of your nose or that feeling of the belly rising and falling.

5. Thoughts will come into your head. A common misconception of mindfulness is that you are failing or not good at it because you cannot clear the thoughts from your head. This isn’t true though. We use meditation to detach ourselves from the thoughts by letting them pass by as if they were floating past us down a stream or like clouds passing by. The strengthening practice of mindfulness is in letting the thoughts go by while acknowledging them without holding on to them.

6. The work of meditation is in noticing when thoughts come to mind. You simply want to return to the breath each time you are distracted.

7. It can help to count your breaths or count the cadence of each breath as a way to occupy your mind a little more.

That’s all there is to the basic meditation practice! You can set a timer for keeping you to your goal time or just continue meditating as long as it feels good and gradually increase your time.

What Time of Day Should You Meditate?

It’s important to mention that timing during the day can make a big difference. We generally see it beneficial to practice meditation first thing in the morning to start your day off right but I’ve often found that I fall asleep or can’t focus well enough if I’m not fully awake, so for me mid-day or the evenings is when I meditate.

Right before bed may not be the best time either because if you’re getting sleepy, it’s once again hard to maintain the adequate focus needed for strengthening the mindfulness practice.

If you start this seated meditation practice for a few days and it doesn’t jive with you, consider a more active form of meditation like walking meditation, forest bathing, or qigong and Tai Chi. These practices can be equally mindful but helpful for those who spend a lot of their time sitting at work and need to expend some physical energy to restore balance.

Now you’ve got all that you need to get started with a mindfulness practice. Write down the intention for why you want to make this change, schedule your meditation for each day, and start practicing with whatever app or method you find easiest to follow.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or specific concerns with your meditation practice.

What Can We Learn and Apply from Silent Meditation Retreats to Our Everyday Life?

I recently had my friend Tony Francis on the FlowCast where we went in-depth on the story of a virtual silent meditation retreat that he attended during the COVID-19 quarantine. Not only was this a unique style of a meditation retreat, but it also got me thinking about how we all could apply those lessons to our everyday lives. Instead of endlessly flicking through social media what if we paused to listen to the birds chirping and just watch the clouds drifting by us?

Instead of seeing meditation as a bandaid solution to a tightening in our chest what if we made it a part of our daily routine just because?

What would our life be like then?

Today, let's look at what we can learn from the experience of others who have attended silent meditation retreats and see how we can live a little more mindfully by following their lead.

We're Always Chasing The Next Mountain

We face an immense issue in our modern world that is driven by our primitive brains in this hyperstimulated setting. We are so driven and focused by the next milestone or next objective that we never stop to appreciate what's in front of us. You've probably experienced this yourself before. You go on a beautiful hike, seeking out the highest point in the area. You are so focused on reaching that zenith too far away to even see in the distance that you don't take in the forest around you. Or maybe you're on vacation on the Mediterranean coast, and instead of appreciating the breathtaking scenery, you're only thinking about what you're going to have for dinner and where you're going to eat.

Our agendas are meant to guide us towards living more purposefully, not to own us and our every thought.

Silent Retreats Give Us Access To Experiences No Other Humans Have

Sam Harris is a neuroscientist who has found his purpose in teaching meditation, primarily through his Waking Up app where he teaches daily meditations, brings on guest instructors, and has deep discussions with long time practitioners. In his book of the same name, *Waking Up*, Sam talks about his first silent meditation retreat experience which happened when he was only sixteen. Sam talked about the misery of the experience, as part of the retreat included a multi-day fast in the woods alone. Chasing his metaphorical mountain, Sam spent the first few days journaling about all the foods he would eat when he was back home. Despite the challenge of the initial phase of the retreat, over the years Sam has reflected that he believes silent retreats give us access to experiences that no other humans have. There's a transcendence of the primal chase when we exact our willpower to retreat into silence for days at a time. It strips away all the distractions from what is known as "the wound of existence." We recognize that life is entirely made up of NOW. Unlike a prophecy, whatever comes next has not come into existence yet and whatever has already passed may have left a scar but is equally nonexistent in the present moment.

While I have not attended a silent meditation retreat, I am deeply curious about what this exclusive experience Sam Harris talks about might be...

Unlocking Peak Experiences and Flow

Perhaps one part of the silent retreat experience that Sam Harris talked about is what Abraham Maslow called peak experiences and we more intimately know as the flow state. Flow is technically defined as an optimal state of consciousness, one where performance goes through the roof, and we are forced into the present moment.

The conditions of flow are most commonly met in activities with clearly defined goals and a degree of challenge that is ever-so-slightly above your skill level (4% above to be exact). But what happens when we find flow in situations without a definite outcome?

There is no goal of meditation and that's what most people new to the practice get tripped up over.

Am I meditating correctly?

Am I doing it right?

I'm sure that you've had these thoughts before.

To paraphrase what Tony said so eloquently in the podcast, "we often meditate when we are already anxious as a way to try to relieve that anxiety." One thing that he took away from the experience of the silent retreat when meditating for upwards of three hours every day was the feeling of meditation solely the sake of meditating without needing to do so because one is anxious is a profoundly different experience.

When you let yourself meditate for the sake of meditation, you learn to derive joy from the experience itself rather than some expected outcome of your actions, in other words, it becomes autotelic, another keystone of flow. Then there is the action of mindfulness which is like doing bicep curls for your brain, as each fleeting thought gets flexed away to bring yourself back to open awareness. You experience progress in real-time which when you do for the pure pleasure of the act, keeps you perfectly aligned in that flow channel where challenge meets skill.

All of this culminates in one of the most intoxicating effects of flow; we experience time differently as it becomes distorted. This is very common in the float tank where the dials on all sensory inputs are turned way down. It feels like forever and then it's over. When meditating for prolonged periods and stripping away all temptations of distraction, we come to experience it in a very similar way in finding flow.

Can a Digital Detox Be an Entry Point to a Silent Retreat?

Maybe like me, you are left a little more curious about what experiences are invited into your being when you set out on a silent meditation retreat so I want to leave you with an idea of how we can incorporate some of this mindfulness into our lives.

Within 24 hours we are hit with over 4,000 advertising messages in our environment. Because a silent retreat is all about stripping away all those distractions, I have a hypothesis that a digital detox could be a great entry point to the experience if you're hesitant to dive in or not at liberty to do so at this point in your life.

A digital detox allows you to get some clarity through turning off all of your devices for a period of freedom. While you can do a 30-day social media fast, as Cal Newport suggests in his book Digital Minimalism, a more realistic starting point for you may be starting with a digital Shabbath as Tiffany Shlain describes in 24/6. Having a "screen off Saturday" makes it very easy to unplug without an overwhelming amount of stress and anxiety around feeling like your work life may be falling apart while you step away.

By turning off your devices for 24 hours on the weekend, you can take a step back and look at your life a little more clearly from a vantage point that is away from the frontline of battle.

So what are you waiting for? I encourage you to figure out a way to make this happen right away because you just don't know the depth of experience that is waiting on the other side for you.

Whether you want to venture out into the wilderness on a silent meditation retreat to explore the nature of your reality deeply or take an afternoon to hike through the local woods without tech pinging and binging around you, you are bound to discover the wonder that waits for you when you learn to take a pause and breathe.

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.

Are Sports a Suitable Replacement for Your Daily Mindfulness Practice?

Do Sports = Mindfulness?

I recently heard a debate from a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teacher that caught my attention as it related to the question of whether playing sports or participating in physical activity can substitute a mindfulness practice.

The argument was that people who claim they get everything they need out of their physical practice are missing an inherently valuable component of more traditional mindfulness practices and that playing sports won’t carry over any benefit into an everyday situation. One of the primary concerns of the author was that the sport you are most passionate about because a vehicle of escape over time.

I look at it as a situation where there is a complementary value of participating in a physical challenge along with taking the time out to find regular stillness in your week.

The mindful value of sport primarily comes when operating a peak performance, when everything depends on your mind and body working in harmony and you reach the flow state. By meditating, you help to strengthen the mind-body connection, allowing yourself to avoid distractions to reach and maintain the flow state more often, whether in competition or casual sports practice. Vice versa, most people gravitate towards a physical practice that they have enjoyment and passion for which is another critical factor for producing a state of flow.

Playing sports and practicing mindfulness have some of the same qualities to them but they are not exactly the same thing. The statement cannot be made that all sports are mindfulness practices just as much as you cannot say that all mindfulness practices are sports. But are people who say that their meditation or mindfulness practice is found in the gym or on the field or court wrong? I think that if in their own mind they feel a mindfulness benefit from their preferred physical activity, it’s good that it is helping them, at least in the short-term.

Former Navy SEAL commander Jocko Willink talks about how the gym and training Jiu Jitsu is his mindfulness practice and it helps to serve him well. Some people really struggle with sitting still to find mindfulness and so maybe you will need to find a balance between the physical and resting types of mindfulness.

One of the statements the MBSR teacher made that cuts through the differences between sports and a more calming mindfulness practice is that many people who gravitate towards sports as their mindfulness practice end up having it as a crutch that cannot help them as much in real life or when they are injured and can’t keep playing.

This is why you don’t want to just practice sports, because you may be missing out on a valuable part of the everyday practice of mindfulness and meditation for helping you to cope with other stressors.

Physical activity is a stress in and of itself, albeit a beneficial one. By getting your blood pumping and releasing beneficial endorphins, you are also activating the sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for the fight or flight response in emergency situations. On the other hand, meditation and mindfulness practices turn up the parasympathetic nervous system, enhancing calm and relaxation.

The Mind-Muscle Connection and Flow

Many people gravitate towards more traditional mindfulness practices only after having found a passion for a particular sport or physical activity because there is that excitement and passion that comes with doing something that gets your heart rate up and produces endorphins. This also seems to be an entry point to mindfulness as the inherent challenge in sport, whether competing against yourself or others, is a powerful driver of flow. Once people find an activity that reliably produces the flow state, it’s hard to get them to want to stop. Flow is the ultimate destination of practicing mindfulness - finding peak present moment awareness to push the body and mind to its limit.

But it can be very difficult to maintain a flow state even when pushing yourself in a sporting environment because of the intense focus it requires. To strengthen this focus on the present moment I believe that it is absolutely essential to have a daily mindfulness practice. It’s like lifting weights - you can’t expect to get stronger by lifting weights just once; it has to be done consistently over many months and years to produce results.

Sweep The Floor

Or better yet, my favourite analogy for the need to practice consistently comes from the final chapter of Ryan Holiday’s Ego is the Enemy: you’ve got to sweep the floor.

You don’t just sweep a floor once, dust your hands off, and consider it done; you’ve got to sweep the floor regularly in order to keep it clean.

In Ego is the Enemy, Holiday is referring to practicing Stoicism when he talks about sweeping the floor but Stoicism and mindfulness have a lot in common and the analogy works well for either of the practices. Practicing mindfulness daily will bring more richness of experience to your world when playing sports or any other physical practice and that’s why you shouldn’t just do one or the other - they work better together for finding your flow.

An example of someone who fully embodies this dichotomy is Arnold Schwarzenegger. If you’ve listened to any interviews with him, particularly The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, or read his biography Total Recall, you might be familiar with how Arnold spent two intensive years practicing Transcendental Meditation to find peace of mind and hone the mind-muscle connection to improve as a bodybuilder. Arnold claims that he got everything he could out of his daily meditation practice and as a result was able to focus better in the gym and this was part of the practice that made him into the legendary bodybuilder that he was. After those two years Arnold treated meditation as a refresher that he did occasionally to reset himself.

It’s the same with floating regularly - some people love floating so much that they transform it into their weekly mindfulness practice but you still need to keep the daily mindfulness practice in place to get the most out of your float sessions.

So here’s my conclusion:

Physical activities and mindfulness might have a lot in common when it comes to present-state awareness but the similarities end there. The two practices are not the same but work synergistically to get you more deeply in touch with your mind and body and should both be incorporated regularly for living a rich life and finding your flow.

The Year of Living Mindfully

The start of a New Year always marks a time of introspection. While many high-achievers may balk at the need to have a specific time of year when you set goals and resolutions, any time is better than no time to do it. If you are looking towards 2019 as your year to accomplish more of the goals you set for yourself, or even just want to be happier, that’s great!

In consideration of what you want to accomplish this year, I have a challenge I would like you to consider joining me in.

Make this year your year for living mindfully.

Last year I kicked off the year by meditating for the first 100 days and it was transformational in that what had previously been something I tried to do daily but never properly formed the habit for, became a consistent part of my life as it was solidified as a habit. Now a day for me isn’t complete without some sort of mindfulness practice but I’ve come to learn that it doesn’t always have to be the traditional "sitting cross-legged" meditation practice in order to be valuable to you.

Mindfulness meditation is great to learn - it’s the closest thing to a superpower that we have as humans. It isn’t the only way to be mindful though because we still have a lot more living to do and we can’t just sit in silence all the time. Meditation should be treated like cleaning your room - you do a deep clean of your room once per week but then keep up the daily routines required for your room to be neat and tidy at all times.

Another analogy I love to compare it to comes from the end of Ryan Holiday’s book Ego Is The Enemy. You’ve got to sweep the floor. A floor doesn’t stay clean and dust-free without sweeping it, you regularly go back and sweep the floor to keep on top of it. Maybe you will meditate daily to keep your stress and anxiety under control. I certainly try to as much as possible. But maybe you will gravitate more to using meditation more like your deep cleaning day where you actually vacuum and mop the floor and the rest of your days you apply that skill to living mindfully in other ways. That’s the true purpose of meditation after all and will lead you to live a more fulfilling life, regardless of what you do.

So let’s make this the year of living mindfully. Each day, find a moment of silence in your life. Take 6 deep breaths and look around you. Really take in the environment around you. Pay attention. Listen. As the explorer Erling Kagge writes in his book Silence, the only true silence we can find is within us. Even with the world racing around you silence can be found. And when the stress metre gets maxed out, go back to your meditation practice and dig deeper into the silence.

Or if things get really out of control, go for a float. I have found that floating in a sensory deprivation tank offers a more complete escape from stress than meditation alone can offer me, even after extensive meditation practice. It’s wonderful. Nothing can phase you after a float. It’s named the post-float glow for a reason. You become like a beacon of lightness after coming out of an hour of floating. These more intensive mindfulness practices don’t have to be an everyday thing though if you keep up the daily practice of living mindfully. Keep that in mind, set a reminder for yourself each day if you need to, and make the most out of this year by becoming present on a daily basis.

Start using this mindfulness technique to combat stress and improve your wellbeing.

My heart begins to pound first. It’s the feeling of my body heating up - cooking from the inside. Then I can feel my eyelid twitch. Next, the blood vessels in my eye burst. Something is stressing me out and these are the physical signs of overwhelm which have become telltale to me.

Stress is one of the most insidious issues that plague us today. The devastating effects of chronic stress negatively impact the health of both your body and your mind.

Counteracting stress is easier said than done when there are a million tasks on your list and our world is no longer set up to simply allow you to clock out when you need to.

And it’s not going to get any easier.

The good news is that there are still effective ways in which you can combat stress in your life. They often take some conscious effort on your part to be most effective though.

Creating a mindfulness practice like meditation can become your secret weapon in your fight against stress and a whole host of other issues.

Meditation has become a buzzword that makes it seem like the barrier to entry is much higher than it actually is. By meditating you are simply applying one of the many ways of becoming mindful - another word that is full of mystique. Mindfulness means becoming focused on the present moment instead of letting your thoughts wander aimlessly between the past and the future, which is what most people do when they go on an out of control stress spiral and let either depressed or anxious thoughts dominate.

If you’ve ever gazed in wonder at the stars or sat in awe staring at a beautiful sunset then you’ve both practiced mindfulness and have what it takes to continue to build it into a habit that will benefit you even more from regular practice.

In the traditional sense, you meditate by sitting comfortably and then working to clear all thoughts from your head. Most people find it beneficial to focus on a single point which is why you will often be instructed to focus on your breath flowing in and out by noticing the movement of air past the tip of your nose or the rising and falling of your abdomen.

Another common meditation practice is the use of a mantra, which is repeated to keep other thoughts at bay - this is known as Transcendental Meditation or TM.

Many people fear that they cannot possibly meditate because they have too many thoughts in their head or that practicing meditation will fundamentally change some edge that they think they have and will mellow them out too much.

Rest assured that neither could be further from the truth. Meditation will help you reign in your emotions but it won’t change who you are. Also, there are many different ways to start meditating and guided meditation apps that can help you along the way no matter how scatter-brain you start out.

The other great thing is that you can keep your meditation as low key as you want it to be. There are no rules stating that you have to get into a cross-legged position on the floor if that is uncomfortable or just plain awkward for you. I usually sit on a chair or my bed and occasionally even lie down on the bed. You don’t even have to be seated or stationary — you can stand still or walk mindfully - although I will say that it makes it more difficult to get into a truly mindful state and you might be better off waiting until you’ve gathered some more experience while remaining seated.

Being able to better control your stress and emotional response to the world around you is well worth the small amount of time and effort it takes to get into the routine of meditating daily. And these benefits are not exclusive to the yogis who have been practicing mindfulness for years on end - research has shown that taking just six deep breaths is enough to reduce blood pressure and therefore impact your perception of stress.

So give it a shot. Schedule a time and start with even just a few minutes of closing your eyes and breathing deeply. Almost all of us have around seven to eight hours free each day outside of work and sleep and most of that time is wasted on television and social media. Blocking off 10 minutes for a daily meditation practice is insignificant.

If you need more convincing, we’ll go into more of the benefits and how you can implement a meditation practice another time. But for now, just try it out. Do it right now as you finish reading this.

Breathe in for 5 seconds.

Notice the stillness as you pause at the top of your breath.

Breathe out for 5 seconds.

Notice the similar stillness as all of your air is exhaled.

Repeat this 6 times and see how much clearer and calmer your mind is compared to one minute ago.

You Can Use the Same Technique World-Class Athletes Do to Improve Performance. Here’s How.

I find a comfortable position and close my eyes. As I focus on my breathing, my attention becomes immersed in the present moment. Everything and nothing is within my awareness.

Now it’s time to perform. It’s time to visualize.

With my body and mind relaxed I turn my attention to my sport - strongman. We usually know ahead of the competition what the events are going to be. Just like football players watching tape of the opposing team, knowing what lifts we are going to do gives us time to prepare so that we can put on a better show and reduce the likelihood of injury.

I picture the setting - outside on the grass, hot, sunny day. There’s a good crowd cheering us on as we perform these odd feats of strength. I can see the ref’s face as he calls me up for my turn to lift. The picture is painted in vivid detail and when I go to pick up the stone into my lap my muscles and nervous system feel the strain as if I were actually doing the lift. An explosion of movement launches the stone onto the platform and I can see myself shuffling laterally to pick up the next stone and load it as well. This continues for the final two stones to complete the run.

With intense concentration time becomes distorted but if I time it, it will all be over in less than 20 seconds in my mind. My actual time on the day of the competition - 18.2 seconds.

This is how visualization works and it’s a not-so-well-kept-secret performance technique used by almost every world-class athlete who has become a household name.

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Michael Phelps and the rest of the U.S. swim team practice visualization under the watchful eye of coach Bob Bowman. They do this not in place of but in addition to the monstrous metres they put into the actual pool. They know exactly how many strokes they will complete wall-to-wall and can get their visualized swim times down to within milliseconds of their actual race times.

Steph Curry regularly uses a float tank to visualize his three-point shots as the sensory deprived environment is the ideal space to quiet his mind and achieve complete focus on performance.

The human brain is wired with what are called mirror neurons - these are neurons that fire when seeing someone else perform an action as well as when you imagine yourself completing an action. Brain scanning techniques like EEG and fMRI have validated that our brains fire as if we physically performed a movement when we only just imagined it.

Scientists have helped people suffering from the phantom limb pain of amputated limbs get a release of their tension through visualization and athletes who visualize the performance of their sport see a statistically significant increase in performance compared with those who spend their recovery days laying around on the couch playing Xbox.

This all sounds fun in theory if you’re an athlete right? Here’s the cool part: visualization isn’t just for sports performance; anything that you can imagine yourself doing can be improved through focused visualization. Musicians can visualize the performance of their song, a chef can see their flawless knife work, and a lecturer giving a keynote speech can visualize the presentation going without a hitch. If you can visualize it, you can physically improve upon it. Albeit these everyday examples are not as strenuous as sports performance and so they can be practiced more frequently but taking the time to see yourself perfectly executing the action in your own mind can help to hone it further to perfection.

How do you get started with visualization?

• Pick a quiet, comfortable place to do your visualization practice. Your favourite meditation corner is perfect. Float tanks also work really well because you’ve given yourself permission to spend a distraction-free hour immersed in the present moment.

• Spend a few minutes focusing on your breathing. Relax and breath deeply.

• When you’re ready, start to imagine the scene around your activity in vivid detail like the example from the opening paragraph of this article. You may have to do some research if you’re performing in a setting you’re unfamiliar with but the more detail you can generate, the more realistic you can make your visualization practice.

• Picture yourself in minute detail going through the performance. If done with enough effort and focus, your muscles may tense and your heart rate may spike - particularly if it’s a physically intense performance that you are imagining.

• Repeat the practice as much as needed. Practice makes perfect and one of the reasons athletes like visualization so much is that they can continue to do the repetitive practice without putting the same physical strain on their bodies.

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Alex Honnold might be the best athlete in the world and yet most people have never heard his name and wouldn’t recognize what his physically unassuming body is capable of.

In the summer of 2017, Alex approached the base of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park with a pair of rock climbing shoes and a bag of chalk and began to free solo what is considered by many to be the most difficult sheer granite face to climb in the world.

Free soloing means there are no ropes and harness for if the climber happens to fall.

It takes most climbers 3 or 4 days to summit El Cap but that’s also out of the question for Alex climbing free solo since he has no way of taking a nap to recover. But Alex won’t need it.

In 3 hours and 56 minutes, Alex completed the climb to the summit of El Capitan. He was deep within the flow state to complete this performance and attests to the practice of visualizing the entire climb to getting his mindset right to complete this seemingly impossible feat.

Jump to 7:46 in the video below to hear Alex talking about his visualization practice.

Imagine being by yourself in the dead center of a 3,000-foot vertical cliff -- without a rope to catch you if you fall. For professional rock climber Alex Honnold, this dizzying scene marked the culmination of a decade-long dream.

Visualization is not just a practice in the realm of superhuman athletes, it has been used by people practicing skills across a wide range of industries and you can take advantage of it too for anything you hope to get better at.

The Four Factors of Well-being and Floating

We all face adversity. But what do you do when you receive that bad news? Do you accept your fate as it is or do you seek the opportunity that can be found within all obstacles? 

According to neuroscience research, there are four factors that contribute to our overall well-being and that are within our control. Knowing that these factors are controllable means that we don’t have to play victim to our hardships any longer. What we can control we can change for the better with practice and over time. 

Research from Richard J. Davidson shows that the four areas of mental functioning can be trained to significantly improve well-being; in this way, wellbeing is fundamentally seen as no different from riding a bike - the more we practice the better we will get. 

By incorporating these four factors into our routine and practicing them, we are able to improve our mental health and are better prepared to face hardships that come our way. 

The four factors are resilience, outlook, awareness, and generosity and this is how floating can directly impact these factors and lead to improving your wellbeing. 

Resilience

Resilience refers to how quickly we can adapt to obstacles in our way and the sense of adversity and negative emotions that come from those obstacles. Float therapy harnesses the essence of mindfulness meditation, which is one of the key ways that Davidson has found that you can improve your resiliency. By limiting all external distractions, the float tank facilitates a mindful state that helps to build resilience. When you are better able to practice mindfulness you can look at your situation for what it truly is and not what your automatic reactions are telling you. In this way, you can better address adversity from a calm and logical perspective, not reactionary and overly emotional. 

Awareness

Awareness is focusing on the present moment and there’s no better way to enhance that than through floating. It’s not easy by any means to stay anchored to the present moment, even in the isolated environment of the float tank but it definitely helps when we aren’t bombarded by external distractions. 

Enhancing awareness is how we stay immersed in the present moment without dwelling on the past or anxiously awaiting the future.

As you settle into your float, bring yourself more and more into the present moment by focusing on your breathing. It’s challenging to feel the rise and fall of your abdomen in the float tank, so focus on the breath moving past the tip of your nose. Let this be your single point of awareness for the full duration of breathing in and breathing out at your own pace. If you find your mind wandering, don’t fret, simply return your attention to your breathing. This is the practice of mindfulness. 

Outlook

Davidson uses the term outlook as what is often referred to as optimism or pessimism; outlook is the ability to see the positive in life and to savour those positive experiences. Coming out of a float therapy session being completely relaxed is a perfect time to savour a moment of tranquillity. At Flow Spa, we have designed our lounge to serve in this capacity so that you can continue to further enjoy your state of wellbeing as you transition back out of the float environment. 

Davidson’s research has also shown that practicing loving-kindness or compassion meditations can improve your outlook. Our float tanks offer audio input if you want to enhance your loving-kindness practice during your float session through a guided meditation. These guided meditations are also available after your float session in the lounge.

Generosity 

Generosity is the last of the four factors to be trained for wellbeing and is the least likely to be directly improved upon by floating. Generosity implies expressing compassion and doing good for others, like through volunteer work. Practicing compassion meditation while floating will only go so far to truly impact the factor of generosity. However, by floating and improving the other three factors of your wellbeing, you are going to be much more inclined to act generously and compassionately with others because you will already feel so much better and at ease with yourself. In this way, floating can help to guide you towards more generosity.

A Continuing Practice

While these four factors of mental training for wellbeing are not exclusive to the float tank environment, the additional relaxation and isolation of a float tank do help to turbocharge the process with these otherwise challenging practices to make time for.

Remember that to truly have an impact on your wellbeing, the factors of resilience, outlook, awareness, and generosity need to be practiced regularly - ideally daily. You can’t shovel the driveway once and expect it to stay clear of snow all winter. Whether you return to the float tank to recharge or start a regular meditation practice of your own, there’s always more to be done to keep your mind strong and ready for any obstacles that life throws your way.