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.

Use This Morning Routine For Stress-Free Living

All I have is good days.

As I spring out of bed ready to tackle the day and all of the challenges in front of me, I think back to when it wasn’t like this - when the mortal coils of the daily grind seemed to close a little bit tighter around me day after day.

With the right morning practices in place you can inoculate yourself against a lot of the mundanity of daily life and start to find more joy in living mindfully and paying attention to the little things that matter.

Fortunately, I am a morning person and so I do understand that the feeling of a great morning is going to be different for some people. If you gravitate towards the night, then just being able to roll out of bed before 9 may be a victory for you if you’ve owned the previous night and gotten the most out of that quiet time.

Regardless of your disposition towards mornings or nights, we do live in a society that tends to require you to prepare yourself well for the mornings before distractions and stress start to creep in from every direction. If you feel yourself stressing out almost as if the cortisol were oozing out of your adrenals by just thinking about the daily grind, try taking action towards these following tips for starting your morning with a routine that can combat your stress all day.

First Thing’s First:

Keep your phone off. If you really want to start the day off right and without your cortisol levels spiking from a cascade of notifications, keep your phone powered off or at least on airplane mode as you go about starting your day.

Practice Gratitude

One of the simplest ways that you can improve your morning routine is by practicing gratitude. If you are also going to start journaling your thoughts (see below) it can benefit your to write down the things you are grateful for, or you may just want to think about and meditate on them. I find it more powerful to write the things I am grateful for down, an important practice that I will talk about more in the next tip on affirmations.

Tony Robbins talks about including a morning gratitude practice as part of his 10-minute routine to prime his body and mind for a great day. Robbins’ gratitude practice includes thinking about 3 things he is grateful for and spending about a minute on each one. When coming up with 3 things to be grateful for, he recommends that you include one that is a small, simple thing in the present moment to be grateful for.

This simple object of your gratitude could be the cool glass of water you’re drinking or the sun creeping over the horizon.

Whatever it may be, feel grateful for something in the present moment - this ties into living mindfully.

If you want to read more about Tony Robbins’ morning practice read this: https://www.businessinsider.com/tony-robbins-morning-priming-exercise-2017-7

Start Your Day with Intention - Affirmation

In addition to being grateful for 3 things and taking a moment to truly feel that gratitude, write down your intention either for this day in particular or for this overarching chapter of your life.

If you’re seeking a new job, write down that you will ace the interview:

“I will have a great interview today” or “I am the type of person who shows confidence at interviews."

If you’re trying to lose weight, you may write that your goal will be to lose 10 pounds, but also be specific in what steps you are taking on a daily basis to get there:

“I am the type of person who goes to the gym daily” or “I will not eat carbs before dinner.”

These “I am” or “I will” type of statements are more powerful than simply stating what you want because they tap into your subconscious and start the process of you actually identifying with the statement.

In Grounded in Gratitude, Josh Bryant talks about how writing down these intentions or affirmations is also very important.

By actually writing it down, the information is able to be shared by both the left brain and the right brain and so you can more powerfully work on making your goal a reality by synergistically combining the power of your whole brain.

The other benefit of writing your intention down is that by allowing your subconscious to start identifying with the statement, you will be primed to pick out more opportunities to act upon that goal in your everyday life.

Sound too good to be true?

Try it out and fully embody that intention and let me know how it goes.

Journal

Create a short, daily journaling practice to harness these affirmations and things you are grateful for. Tim Ferriss often talks about using a morning journalling routine to get the thoughts bouncing around in his monkey mind trapped on paper so that he can focus on what’s most important for that day.

I like to structure my daily journalling practice around the "Five Minute Journal" concept and then if there are thoughts in my head I need to structure better on paper I’ll write those down after I’ve completed the 3 steps.

The morning component of the 5-minute journal that I’ve adapted looks like this:

1. List three things you are grateful for:

2. List three things you must accomplish today (this is your Power List)

3. State your intention or affirmation for the day, or for this chapter of your life.

Move

Even if it’s just 3-5 minutes, move around and get your blood pumping as soon after you wake as you can. Do a brief yoga and stretching routine or chase your dog around the yard, as Aubrey Marcus suggests in Own The Day, Own Your Life. Moving, combined with the next tip, is more powerful than a shot of espresso to get you kicked into high gear and ready to start the day on a positive.

Cold

I saved this tip for last because it requires the most discipline to implement but is also the one that can have the most powerful effect.

"The Iceman” Wim Hof has popularized cold exposure on his quest to educate people on how powerful the cold and just breathing better can impact your quality of life and your health. Brief cold exposure in the morning fires up your nervous system and releases norepinephrine which will boost your mood and leave you feeling invigorated. Chronic stress exposure can wear down your immune system and leave you constantly battling illness. Research has now validated that the jolt to your body from brief cold exposure has a powerful effect on combatting chronic stress and will reduce your susceptibility to getting sick.

Tony Robbins also includes a cold plunge into his morning practice and has plunge pools installed at his homes to be able to do this daily.

That quick burst of firing your nervous system up in the morning leaves you feeling great and is one of the reasons that we built the contrast therapy room at Flow Spa. In this room, we have a hot tub along with a cold tub set to 5ºC. We will definitely be running the morning Wim Hof club for all of the morning warriors wanting to kickstart their hearts with a cold plunge.

There are a lot of different things that you can start to implement for having a better day and eliminating stress from your life. If you’re already stressed out it may seem like too many things to juggle at once, so instead of trying to add in everything at once, just pick the one idea that’s easiest for you to implement right away and start with that. Overtime as you start to feel the beneficial effect of the routine you can add in more steps to the harness the full power of a morning routine.

What do you like to include in your morning routine? Leave a comment below!

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.

Sweet Dreams: 9 Ways You Can Sleep Better Tonight

Sleep is so important to health and performance that the next stage in the evolution of talking about sleep is that it will become a regular prescription from doctors.

When we think about sleep, the world has shifted to considering it that stretch of time where we have lost productivity from the constant grind and hustle that is preached by entrepreneurs and professionals alike. But the reality is that quality sleep is one of the most important factors for improving productivity and performance. It’s no wonder that professional athletes like LeBron James and Hafthor Bjornsson get upwards of 10 hours of sleep each night.

If you struggle to recover from heavy training or your progress isn’t as good as you expect it to be, your sleep should be one of the first places you look to make a change that will benefit you. Even if how good your workouts are isn’t a primary factor that you use to gauge how you feel, sleep quality will dramatically affect your performance at work and your mood.

In getting a quality night’s sleep, the term that is often used now is “sleep hygiene” and it refers to the different steps that you can do to make your sleeping domicile (aka the bear cave) as conducive for sleep as possible.

I find this to be particularly important as a competitive strongman athlete because for many of us our sleep isn’t great to start with due to a prevalence of sleep apnea. If you’ve gone through and made changes in the following nine steps and still don’t feel well-rested, you should consult a sleep lab to get a sleep test done to see if you’ve got sleep apnea or any other sleep disorder that can be treated. Using a CPAP for treating sleep apnea will make an immense difference in your quality of sleep, recovery, performance, and well-being.

In Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker put together the most comprehensive account for the fascinating effects of sleep. Walker outlines a multitude of sleep hygiene steps that can be taken to hit that recommended sweet spot of 8 hours of sleep each night.

A lot of it comes down to how well you prepare your nighttime ritual to prepare yourself and your bear cave for deep slumber. Here are some of the most important steps I have found to help, as well as some additional tips that may be worth checking out.

Steps to improve sleep hygiene (roughly in order based on the timeline before bed)

10+ Hours Before Bed

Avoid Caffeine - typically most people should stop around 1 pm if they aim to sleep around 10 or 11. Even if that afternoon pick-me-up doesn’t leave you feeling jittery, there may still be enough caffeine floating around in your system to impact your sleep quality and make it more difficult to fall asleep.

3 Hours Before Bed

No Strenuous Exercise - getting your heart rate pounding within a few hours of your scheduled bedtime can make it harder to relax and fall asleep. If that’s the only time you have available to workout and it’s a priority in your life, training may just have to come before sleep quality but you can also consider going to bed earlier and waking up earlier to get your workout in.

No Big Meals - Eating to the point of discomfort means your body has a lot to process and digest and can leave you feeling like you’ve got a rock pressing down while you’re trying to get comfortable for sleep. You also want to ideally time your last meal around the 3-hour mark so your stomach isn’t grumbling either as you try to fall asleep.

1-2 Hours Before Bed

Keep the Bear Cave Cool - You’ll want to start to drop the temperature in your room in the last couple of hours of the day, as one of the factors that trigger your brain that it’s time to sleep is a drop in temperature. Before we had temperature controlled houses, the temperature while sleeping in a hut or cave dropped as the sun went down and we went to sleep. It’s usually recommended that you set your room somewhere in the 65-68 F range and you’ll have to play around with this to find your own sweet spot. An additional tip you can try is sleeping with socks on. Your feet like to be a little bit warmer than the rest of your body for the best sleep possible.

Electronics out of the Bedroom - this really should be 24 hours before sleep thing because everyone who values quality sleep can agree that electronics need to be removed from the bedroom. When we watch tv in bed we tend to go to sleep later and the same thing goes for watching videos on YouTube or scrolling social media. It also ties into the next tip...

Blue lights out Before Bed - Depending on what time you go to bed relative to the cycle of the sun, this may even come before the 1-2 hour mark but blue lights should be eliminated as early in the evening as possible. Set all of your devices to Night Shift towards a warmer tone. I like to have mine automatically set to follow the sunrise/sunset cycle. This will also help to reduce eye strain if you find yourself constantly staring at the blue light. Taking it a step further, you can buy a set of blue light blocking glasses on Amazon for about 10 or 30 bucks depending on how fancy you want them to look.

In getting rid of this blue light before bed, it also means you should shut down the tv, tablet, and phone and read an actual book. If you’re in the market for switching out your light bulbs in the bedroom, you can also replace any bulbs with a colour-changing LED bulb that can shift towards a red light, like the Philips Hue. This is the ideal way to go about it. The best compromises that you can make would be to dim your existing lights and then use an offline e-reader so you aren’t being distracted with messages or phone calls when you’re trying to wind down for sleep. The backlight of a Kindle can be turned way down so that you can simply illuminate the page with your dimmed light the way you would for a hard copy.

Have a Contrast Shower or a Hot Bath - In Why We Sleep it’s suggested that you take a hot bath to prepare yourself for sleep because as you get out of the hot water, your brain will notice the dramatic temperature gradient and signal your body to prepare for sleep. I can’t stand getting so hot before sleeping so another option that many people including myself prefer is to do a contrast shower starting with hot and ending on cold. Typically this consists of alternating between 10 seconds of hot and 20 seconds of cold for a total of 8 to 10 cycles. I like that ending on cold gets you out of the shower with the temperature drop already started so you’re on your way to sleepy town. The contrast also works nicely before bed because I’ve found that simply doing cold may get you too cold which actually makes it harder to sleep.

Block EMFs in Your Home - I’m still not convinced that there’s much merit to these claims but it has been suggested that electromagnetic fields from electronic devices and WiFi routers are negatively affecting our health, including sleep quality. If you follow all of the steps above and still have a hard time getting quality sleep, you may have to “ground” yourself and eliminate EMFs. The simplest way to do this is to put all devices on airplane mode and turn off your WiFi router during the night. Plugging your router into an automatic wall timer may be the simplest way to accomplish this without having to remember to turn your WiFi router off and back on.

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Bonus Tip: Know Yourself - the Oura Ring

The Oura ring is the most comprehensive sleep and recovery tracker that I have seen on the market. With the combination of sleep tracking and heart rate variability (HRV), Oura helps you to go a step beyond just “feels” to know how well you’re recovering and how prepared you are for training each day. If you’ve been working out for any appreciable amount of time, hopefully, you are introspective enough about how you feel in order to know fairly well what your body is dictating your training should be like each day. In using the Oura ring daily for two months now, I’ve noticed that much of how I think I feel is reflected in my score each day. The ring is sensitive enough though that you can get into the very fine details about things like how well you’re sleeping based on what time you ate your last meal or even what type of foods you ate at dinner (or throughout the day). Sleep can be messed up in all sorts of ways due to the foods we eat by throwing off blood sugar and stressing the body with highly inflammatory foods or foods that we are allergic or intolerant to.

The Oura ring also gets smarter as you continue to use it and it’s able to detect your own trends better. This makes it a neat tool to use short-term but a much more valuable part of your reflection on training and recovery as you use it more regularly. I said the same thing a few years ago when I wrote more about using HRV for training.

(If you are concerned about the EMFs from this little device you can also put it on airplane mode and only take it off airplane mode when you want to upload your data).

This sort of next-level biohacking is what can take your overall sleep and well-being from whatever mediocre state it currently is into being at your own pinnacle of health. It does take more conscious effort but if at the end of the day you are living a more fulfilling life or striving towards your goals better, it can be well worth it.

Sleep Well!

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.

Peterborough Float Centre Progress Update

The slow, autumnal creep of the progress to opening Flow Spa over that last few months has transformed into a turbo-charged rocket blast forward. In terms of visible progress, this last month has been nothing less than spectacular. After getting city building permit approval at the very beginning of the month, it was all hands on deck to make progress before the Christmas and New Years breaks impeded the momentum.

Removing the concrete.

The floor was cut to make way for the shower drains - the crucial first step when it comes to constructing float rooms as private showers are part of the experience.

With the floor cut, the plumber was able to put the first piece of the puzzle together in terms of room requirements.

Next were the frames for the walls. While the plumber was still plumbing away, we started to see most of the walls being framed in. This has been the most visibly dramatic change thus far.

Out With The Old...

In With The New!

Then the intermediate permits started to fall into place. The frames were inspected, followed by the underground plumbing. With those permits in place, we were able to pour the cement back down to close up those trenches for the shower drains. All like a beautiful symphony of construction.

With the holidays closing in on us we still had some time to continue the framing of the walls and start on the electrical work. A few days later the wiring was in place and like Jordan in the fourth quarter, the electrical inspector came in to approve the work and put the finishing touches on a successful month of building out the float centre.

Now we see the changing of the guard as the next trade comes into the scene to modify the HVAC system to suit each of the new rooms we are building.

The First Tank Arrives!

In the background with all of the renovations going on, there was still much to do this past month to see that our timeline for opening remained true. All of our equipment is in the final stages of production, if not already shipped and delivered to us, like our Float Pod which arrived from the U.S.

Our new sign.

Holiday pre-sales were a blast and a radio ad plus overhead signage helped to spread awareness of our burgeoning existence.

And now we move into the second half of renovations. With everything in its place, it will be time to put together the final package and present Flow Spa to the world. If all goes according to plan and we don’t face any hold ups we will be open sometime in February.

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.

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.

Peterborough Float Tanks Update

This past month took a lot of overcoming inertia to get the ball rolling but now that we’ve got things going speed is picking up. 

A lot of detail and planning must go into the commercial building permit process and now that’s squared away and we can start to make more dramatic progress towards opening. 

The most exciting news though in this progress update is that the tanks have been ordered and our timeline to opening is starting to close in!

Most float tank manufacturers build to order their products and so getting these tanks ordered as soon as we possibly could was important for keeping on track with our goal to getting open as soon as possible. 

Here’s a little bit of information on each type of float tank that we are going to have a Flow Spa so that you can start to think about which one you’ll want to have your first float in:

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Pure Flow by Float Pod

This futuristic looking float pod has the aesthetic to make it inviting to all types of floaters, including those who are new to floating. 

This Pod provides a more cozy sensory deprivation experience but has all the features included for if you prefer to start out with some lights or audio keeping you company. The lid may also remain open if you start out feeling claustrophobic. 

Many first-time floaters looking to document their experience on social media love the Pure Flow for its attractive and modern look to accentuate their Instagram or Facebook feed. 

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Pro Float Cabin

In addition to the Pure Flow we will have two Pro Float Cabins are Flow Spa. These cabins are extra spacious which provides a great experience for athletes and bigger individuals who just want more room to stretch out and move around in.

I personally prefer the Pro Float Cabin because of the extra space that I have in it to stretch out. While I still fit in various pods and tanks, I like the extra space granted to me when floating in a cabin.

This is another great starting point for someone who may be a little claustrophobic or just want more space because of the height and width of the Pro Float Cabin. The door can also remain open on these cabins and there is optional audio and LED lights to accompany you. 

We’ll be sure to provide you with more information in the coming weeks as we document our journey to getting open at Flow Spa.

If you’re interested in learning more about the science of floating and meditation, the blog on our website is the place to go. We will continue to put out new content every week or so and will send out occasional newsletters with links to the articles so that you can stay informed. 

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.

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 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. 

Peterborough Float Centre Construction - The First Month

It’s been a challenging month in getting ahead of the anticipated delays and troubles in kicking off the construction and renovations of Flow Spa. If you’re not careful and ready to act, every two steps forward will come with one step back. There are many different roles to juggle all at once when in the start-up mode for a business and this month has been a testament to that fact. 

As the progress continues to be made, the pipeline of tasks begins to narrow into a more logical sequence of one after another; albeit with other roles and unexpected decisions still peppered in. 

The two major projects for this month have been finalizing the details of the financing for the business and getting everything squared away for the building permits and starting the renovations. 

As necessary as funding may be for starting a business, there are many steps and a detailed legal process that goes into receiving a loan for a business. Due diligence must be taken by both parties to ensure that a proper agreement has been met; much like the process of lease negotiations. But once the details of the money are out of the way, you can march forward much more efficiently as long as you know who’s doing your work and they are ready to get started with you.

Dealing with the city for the requirements of the building permits has been a more painstaking process. The Peterborough building department is overwhelmed with work and so getting an answer either in-person or online is time-consuming and slows down progress. It’s frustrating when you’re ready to work with someone but need to verify from the city any questions that arise first and it takes two days to get a response. 

There are some strange rules with my business being classified in the large business category despite seemingly falling under the limitations of a small building because of the overall size of the property it is contained in. This not only complicated the requirements as far as what I have to provide for design, but it also increased the costs for permits about four-fold. While this still doesn’t seem logical to me, it is how things are and I just have to move forward from here.  This is just one of the many reasons why you need to have contingencies in your business plan to accommodate unexpected expenses like this.

At least now that I have the answers from the city, my designers are working on what’s required of them and we’re back to making good progress towards getting everything done on time. 

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.

Progress Update #2 - Float Tanks Coming To Peterborough

Show Me The Money

The first major hurdle for Flow Spa was the quest for funding the startup costs. Securing funding for a massive endeavour in a new industry is never an easy thing and our ability to move forward with the construction plans was entirely contingent upon securing a loan for the purchase of equipment and renovations. 

After months of diligent research and revisions, I presented my case on Tuesday of this week and received my response a few hours later. 

I was approved for the loan!

Now we enter the next stage of preparing the business for opening and go full force into renovating the space we have leased. 

Location, Location, Location

Speaking of which, our location is at the Asta Plaza - 866 Chemong Road. This location provides great accessibility and visibility as we proceed with educating our community on the benefits of floatation therapy and the other modalities that will be provided inside Flow Spa. 

In the coming weeks, I will reveal more of what’s behind the renovations going into opening a float centre as well as the fascinating benefits of floating and the research that the float industry is collaborating on to raise awareness and further validate the importance of the experience of floating. 

Feel free to send any questions or comments my way.

Thank you for reading, 

RJ

Peterborough Float Centre Progress Update #1

As we go about taking steps to get this business open, I will be providing updates along the way to keep everyone in the loop about our progress. 

Today in the first progress update I will touch on the following:

• business planning and seeking funding

• settling on a location

• contractors

• float tank manufacturers

Business Planning

Float centres are expensive endeavours.

We have been diligently working on perfecting our business plan in order to secure the funding needed to open this centre. With the business plan rigorously developed now, we anticipate having a clear answer on the funding in the coming weeks and by the next progress update, I will be able to give you an answer as well. One thing that I’ve learned is crucial about going into a funding proposal is being sure that you’ve got accurate estimates of your capital expenditures.  Under asking and not having enough working capital to see us through the early growth phase of the first few months must be avoided. Getting these numbers dialled in is like trying to reach the top of the moving staircases at Hogwarts - there are many moving pieces that can change the outcome in the blink of an eye. 

Location

We’ve got a location picked out now and the lease has been signed contingent on receiving funding. This is important for any business venture that is dependent on funding being secured because most lenders will require that you have a lease signed before presenting your business plan to them. 

Picking a location was challenging because we needed enough space to properly build out a float centre and also had to consider other factors like the traffic to the area, noise levels in the neighbourhood, and the other businesses to work with (or have to compete against) in the area. 

Contractors

One of the moving staircases in preparing the business plan are the contractors doing the build out. This can often be dependent on the location if the landlord has specific companies or individuals that he or she works with. 

It will also be a matter of comparing bids on the work since the build-out costs for float centres can be out of this world expensive. This is a critical step though and cannot be skimped on when providing the best possible experience to customers. We have been working with the companies that the landlord uses as well as close connections that my business partner has in the city to get the bids for the construction costs prepared for the business plan.

I’m confident that people will be blown away when they see our finished space and come in to float or use any of our other recovery modalities. 

Float Tank Manufacturers

Shopping around for float tanks can be one of the more enjoyable tasks in the early planning phase. If you don’t already have a specific manufacturer or model in mind, this often means getting to go on excursions to test out float tanks if they are close enough to where you live. We’ve picked out the tanks that will be best for our customers and their experience with floating and so now all that’s left is to order them and start the long waiting process until we receive them. It’s important to take care of this early in your buildout phase because most float tank manufacturers build to order the tanks and so wait times before shipping to you can be 9-12 weeks if you’re lucky and there aren’t any manufacturing delays. 

That’s it for this update! There are lots of new things to learn with starting any business but especially one that’s in a booming young industry like floating, so I’ll be updating again soon with anything else that I learn.

My First Float

How often do you get to have a completely new experience, unlike anything you have to compare to?

Experience the Dead Sea without travelling to Jordan.

Today I floated for the first time ever. And not just like doing a starfish in the water to stay near the surface. I was completely buoyant in water denser than the Dead Sea. 

At first, I was unimpressed and underwhelmed. So much for the experience of a lifetime.

But then everything changed.

As I climbed into the float cabin and uneasily lay back, I let the buoyancy of the Epsom salt take over and my body was whisked upwards from the bottom of the shallow water. From there I struggled to relax and get used to the thunderous sound of my heart beating in my chest. It was all I could hear other than the occasional pop and crackle of a joint completely released of all its tension.

Once I got my rhythm and played with my body in relation to the sides of the tank a bit, I was sinking deeper into the zone. I had an hour and a half in the tank. I didn’t know how I could possibly last it. When you’re in the tank eyes open or closed doesn’t mater - darkness is pitch either way. 

If you stay still, the temperature is perfect. You have no idea which body parts are submerged or exposed. Everything melds as one experience and time becomes funny. 

It felt like an eternity and before I knew it, it was over. 

The 90 minutes was done and I swear only 45 minutes at most had elapsed. The music slowly grounded me in reality and I thought there was no way my time was up - this music had to be coming from inside my mind. Sure enough, my time was up. I was relieved. After that length of time, I was ready to get up and use the bathroom.

That was when the real magic started. Just like with meditation, floating isn’t all that exciting of a therapeutic modality. The near-complete absence of stimuli, however, trains your mind to react differently.

The rest of the afternoon I was as calm as a cucumber. It was like I was floating on a cloud above all the bustle and nagging thoughts that usually race through my anxious mind. 

Everything just slid off my shoulders with nonchalance. This is what it must be like to experience the blissful non-judgement of the Zen Masters. To live a life free of pain, depression, anxiety, stress, and anger. All because it has no chance to gain purchase on your shoulders. 

You come to realize that the burdens of modern society are meaningless.

Welcome to a new outlook on reality.

Welcome to floating.

Welcome to Flow.