Understanding Float Tanks - Media vs Reality
Float Tanks in the media are most commonly shown as psychedelic-inspired journeys – a sort of modern vision quest in which the character often confronts either internal (or sometimes literal) demons. This leads to a breakthrough that allows the character to grow and progress on their journey.
Although the benefits from floating are deeply profound in many cases, they also tend to emerge more subtly. Float tanks aren’t one-off epiphany machines, and although visuals while floating aren’t uncommon, they’re far from the surreal DMT trips shown in television shows and movies. As a practice, floating has many benefits, including things like reduced stress and anxiety, decreased muscle and joint pain, an improved immune system, heightened creativity, and many other benefits that we’ve written about previously – but these are developed and maintained by floating regularly.
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Breathing Deep: How Floating Impacts our Respiration
James Nestor is an acclaimed author, journalist, and speaker who has brought a fresh perspective to our understanding of breath. He ventured into the sea of human physiology with his book 'Deep'’ and later explored the lost art and science of breathing in his book 'Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art.'’
He is also no stranger to the Float Conference stage, having made his third appearance last year in 2022, when he talked about pooling his work on breath with the practice of floating. The Float Conference – an annual gathering of floating enthusiasts, researchers, and floatation tank owners – has been a perfect venue for many of Nestor's unique explorations.
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Breathing Easy - A Look at Floating and Blood Oxygen Levels
mmediately after her first float, Jeanine was already at a new level of relaxation. She says it was an “oh my gosh” moment for her, and recounted how all of her muscles were, “just so relaxed,” even after that single session. Over the following weeks and months, she became aware of another benefit that was even more profound – a rise in her blood oxygen levels, something she had been tracking regularly using an O2 ring.
Normal blood oxygen levels are around 95%, and before finding floating, Jeanine was seeing huge dips in her overnight blood oxygen levels, reaching as low as 77%.
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FLOATNotes: The Gulag Archipelago
5-minute Ideas from Important Books. Exploring sensory deprivation as a point of commonality for the generation of philosophies.
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Improved Sleep Through Floating
A systematic review of nine studies on floating found that in every study “floatation-REST demonstrated beneficial effects on sleep, both in clinical and non-clinical samples.”
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FLOATnotes: Meditations
5-minute Ideas from Important Books. Exploring sensory deprivation as a point of commonality for the generation of philosophies.
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How Floating Can Help With Arthritis
You may be surprised to learn that arthritis affects more than 60 million people yearly, making it one of the most common disabilities in the country.
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The Science of Floating and Mystical Experiences
The ideas of altered states of consciousness, mystical experiences, and voluntary self-isolation often bring with them images of shamans, spaced-out hippies, geometric art, and vibrant colors, as exaggerated stories and tales of these experiences get passed around. These misconceptions are reinforced through movies and TV shows. As many who have emerged from the tank can attest, it is often a much more dreamy, ethereal, and calming environment than is typically conveyed on screen.
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