Floating in
the News
the News
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Sunday Mirror - UK
The secret behind Wayne Rooney's great form has been
revealed - the England ace has been spending 10 hours a week
in a flotation tank. Rooney has enjoyed some of the best form of
his career of late, scoring 12 goals in 26 appearances for
Manchester United this term. Previously the 22-year-old was
suffering from a string of injuries and had been struggling to find
his form for club and country.
But Rooney has been setting the Premier League alight recently
and friends reckon the flotation tank is the key. Wayne, 22, had
the £10,000 water pod installed at his £1m Cheshire mansion on
the advice of fiancee Coleen McLoughlin, 21.The treatment is
thought to have helped mend the ankle injury that kept Wayne
out of England's ill-fated Euro 2008 qualifier against Croatia last
November and insiders reckon it's working wonders for his football
career.
'At first, Wayne wasn't exactly keen to try it out, but he was
desperate to get fit after spraining his ankle so he thought he'd
give it a go,' a source tells the Sunday Mirror.
'He noticed an immediate improvement in his condition and
made his return to action a couple of weeks ahead of schedule.'
"Floatation For Recovery and Visualization"
- Muscle & Fitness Magazine
You can imagine your physique as you would realistically like it
to look so you'll have a clear goal to work toward. Picture
yourself handling heavy poundages or mastering form in a
particularly difficult isolation exercise. This subconscious input -
mental practice - affects the mind the same as physical
practice. The next time you try the poundage or movement, your
mind signals nervous responses as you imagined them, helping
you achieve your goal. In fact, sports-performance training and
other forms of superlearning are proven benefits of flotation tank.
"Float Those Pounds Away" - Weight Watchers
"Whatever you hear while in the tank sticks in your mind and
remains there," explains Dr. Borrie. "It has a more profound
effect on you because you hear it in a situation that's totally
foreign from your daily routine. In the tank you want to do the
right things. And the reasons for wanting to do them become
stronger later on, even when you have a competing urge." In
other words, what do you do while floating in a tomb-like tank
listening to a voice telling why and how to lose weight? You
pay attention!
"Isolation Tanks" - The State of the Art
Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy, or REST, is a
very effective clinical tool for working with stress related
disorders, chronic pain, habit disorders anxiety disorders and
personal enhancement programs. REST offers the benefits
associated with relaxation training, hypnosis, meditation and
biofeedback; both in the physiological and the cognitive
dimension.
We have an American scientist to thank for the floatation tank.
Dr John Lilly was working with the US National Institute of
Mental Health when he first devised an isolation chamber in
the early 1950s and found himself a champion of the benefits
of floating.
He was investigating what happens to the brain when all
external stimuli are switched off. The theory, before his work,
was that the brain would shut down and drift into a coma-like
dreamless sleep.
Lilly was able to show this was not true, and that the brain
carried on, creating its own input, sifting information and
working but in a more creative way: "I found the tank was and
is a rich and vast source of new experience. One is not
deprived, one is rewarded," he said.
The benefits of floating are well documented. Epsom salts,
which are mostly magnesium sulphate, are so effective at
lowering blood pressure that in a recent US study, scientists
found that pregnant women suffering from high blood pressure
caused by pre-eclampsia did much better when treated with
Epsom salts than when anticonvulsant drugs were used.
The combination of being weightless and having no external
stimuli encourages the body to relax deeply. Like meditation,
it slows down the brainwaves and stimulates the production
of mood-boosting endorphins, which is why you feel so good
when you step out of the tank.
Floating is used by sportsmen and women to accelerate
recovery after strenuous exercise - there are wonderful
anecdotes about second-rate US baseball teams acquiring
tanks and soaring straight to the top of the next league - and it
is even said to rebalance the left and right sides of the brain,
so that you get your most creative insights not during a
brainstorming business meeting but while silently blissing out
in a tank of warm, salty water
Esquire Magazine
A recent body of research into tank experimentation in
hospitals, clinics, and graduate psychology departments was
made public for the first time at Denver, and from a welter of
medical statistics and laboratory data emerged convincing
evidence that even brief sessions in float tanks can cause
mental and physical transformations. Among the revelations:
Indications that floating stimulates the brain to secrete
endorphins, the neurochemicals called the body's own
opiates. The endorphin effect would explain the pain relief and
euphoria floaters experience. Anecdotal evidence and
preliminary research showing that floating results in a
spontaneous reduction or elimination of habits such as
smoking, drinking, and drug use and counteracts Hospital in
Appleton, Wisconsin, where a yearlong statistical analysis of
the effects of float tanks revealed solid success rates ( a
70-85 percent improvement) in treatment of a wide range of
problems, including anxiety, gastrointestinal and
cardiovascular ailments, migraine and tension headaches,
chronic pain, ailments, migraine and tension headaches,
chronic pain, hypertension, and recovery from cardiac
surgery. Hospital administrators are so impressed that the
hospital tank is now seeing heavy daily use, attended by two
full-time stress-management specialists. Tests of floating's
effects on hormone levels, showing sharp decreases,
maintained over long periods, of sympatho-adrenal activity
(including cortisol and ACTH, both associated with stress and
heart disease); and evidence that floating reduces anxiety and
stress.
New York Post - "Trends"
Women seem to reap most beneficial rewards. Sessions in a
tranquility tank unknot forehead tension and relax tightened
strings of the face. "I look and feel ten years younger," is not
an uncommon comment. Plastic surgeons have always
understood the aging factor of tension. When muscles behind
the skin are in stress, they are reflected on the skins' surface.
When tensions are removed, the skin becomes as
uncomplicated as a baby's smooth visage.
People Magazine
I personally find that the tank is an absolute necessity in order
to recover during the day quickly and easily from overloads
brought about by too much activity, too much exchange with
other people. If I am worn out during the day, instead of taking
a long nap, I go into the tank for half an hour. For example,
one day recently I became exhausted shoveling gravel and
decided to go into the tank. The day's residues slowly
disappeared. I did not go to sleep. I entered an abstracted
state. There was no body, no external reality, only the floating,
the darkness and the silence. I came out of the tank
completely refreshed.
"Floating Off To Lotus Land" - Delaware Today
As a serious athlete, Wier says he floats "to decrease the
recovery time from the abuses of training for rugby. I go in
stiff, and come out with a very positive physical response."
These toxins, which cause tension and soreness, apparently
leave the muscles much more quickly after a float than they
normally would.
The secret behind Wayne Rooney's great form has been
revealed - the England ace has been spending 10 hours a week
in a flotation tank. Rooney has enjoyed some of the best form of
his career of late, scoring 12 goals in 26 appearances for
Manchester United this term. Previously the 22-year-old was
suffering from a string of injuries and had been struggling to find
his form for club and country.
But Rooney has been setting the Premier League alight recently
and friends reckon the flotation tank is the key. Wayne, 22, had
the £10,000 water pod installed at his £1m Cheshire mansion on
the advice of fiancee Coleen McLoughlin, 21.The treatment is
thought to have helped mend the ankle injury that kept Wayne
out of England's ill-fated Euro 2008 qualifier against Croatia last
November and insiders reckon it's working wonders for his football
career.
'At first, Wayne wasn't exactly keen to try it out, but he was
desperate to get fit after spraining his ankle so he thought he'd
give it a go,' a source tells the Sunday Mirror.
'He noticed an immediate improvement in his condition and
made his return to action a couple of weeks ahead of schedule.'
"Floatation For Recovery and Visualization"
- Muscle & Fitness Magazine
You can imagine your physique as you would realistically like it
to look so you'll have a clear goal to work toward. Picture
yourself handling heavy poundages or mastering form in a
particularly difficult isolation exercise. This subconscious input -
mental practice - affects the mind the same as physical
practice. The next time you try the poundage or movement, your
mind signals nervous responses as you imagined them, helping
you achieve your goal. In fact, sports-performance training and
other forms of superlearning are proven benefits of flotation tank.
"Float Those Pounds Away" - Weight Watchers
"Whatever you hear while in the tank sticks in your mind and
remains there," explains Dr. Borrie. "It has a more profound
effect on you because you hear it in a situation that's totally
foreign from your daily routine. In the tank you want to do the
right things. And the reasons for wanting to do them become
stronger later on, even when you have a competing urge." In
other words, what do you do while floating in a tomb-like tank
listening to a voice telling why and how to lose weight? You
pay attention!
"Isolation Tanks" - The State of the Art
Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy, or REST, is a
very effective clinical tool for working with stress related
disorders, chronic pain, habit disorders anxiety disorders and
personal enhancement programs. REST offers the benefits
associated with relaxation training, hypnosis, meditation and
biofeedback; both in the physiological and the cognitive
dimension.
We have an American scientist to thank for the floatation tank.
Dr John Lilly was working with the US National Institute of
Mental Health when he first devised an isolation chamber in
the early 1950s and found himself a champion of the benefits
of floating.
He was investigating what happens to the brain when all
external stimuli are switched off. The theory, before his work,
was that the brain would shut down and drift into a coma-like
dreamless sleep.
Lilly was able to show this was not true, and that the brain
carried on, creating its own input, sifting information and
working but in a more creative way: "I found the tank was and
is a rich and vast source of new experience. One is not
deprived, one is rewarded," he said.
The benefits of floating are well documented. Epsom salts,
which are mostly magnesium sulphate, are so effective at
lowering blood pressure that in a recent US study, scientists
found that pregnant women suffering from high blood pressure
caused by pre-eclampsia did much better when treated with
Epsom salts than when anticonvulsant drugs were used.
The combination of being weightless and having no external
stimuli encourages the body to relax deeply. Like meditation,
it slows down the brainwaves and stimulates the production
of mood-boosting endorphins, which is why you feel so good
when you step out of the tank.
Floating is used by sportsmen and women to accelerate
recovery after strenuous exercise - there are wonderful
anecdotes about second-rate US baseball teams acquiring
tanks and soaring straight to the top of the next league - and it
is even said to rebalance the left and right sides of the brain,
so that you get your most creative insights not during a
brainstorming business meeting but while silently blissing out
in a tank of warm, salty water
Esquire Magazine
A recent body of research into tank experimentation in
hospitals, clinics, and graduate psychology departments was
made public for the first time at Denver, and from a welter of
medical statistics and laboratory data emerged convincing
evidence that even brief sessions in float tanks can cause
mental and physical transformations. Among the revelations:
Indications that floating stimulates the brain to secrete
endorphins, the neurochemicals called the body's own
opiates. The endorphin effect would explain the pain relief and
euphoria floaters experience. Anecdotal evidence and
preliminary research showing that floating results in a
spontaneous reduction or elimination of habits such as
smoking, drinking, and drug use and counteracts Hospital in
Appleton, Wisconsin, where a yearlong statistical analysis of
the effects of float tanks revealed solid success rates ( a
70-85 percent improvement) in treatment of a wide range of
problems, including anxiety, gastrointestinal and
cardiovascular ailments, migraine and tension headaches,
chronic pain, ailments, migraine and tension headaches,
chronic pain, hypertension, and recovery from cardiac
surgery. Hospital administrators are so impressed that the
hospital tank is now seeing heavy daily use, attended by two
full-time stress-management specialists. Tests of floating's
effects on hormone levels, showing sharp decreases,
maintained over long periods, of sympatho-adrenal activity
(including cortisol and ACTH, both associated with stress and
heart disease); and evidence that floating reduces anxiety and
stress.
New York Post - "Trends"
Women seem to reap most beneficial rewards. Sessions in a
tranquility tank unknot forehead tension and relax tightened
strings of the face. "I look and feel ten years younger," is not
an uncommon comment. Plastic surgeons have always
understood the aging factor of tension. When muscles behind
the skin are in stress, they are reflected on the skins' surface.
When tensions are removed, the skin becomes as
uncomplicated as a baby's smooth visage.
People Magazine
I personally find that the tank is an absolute necessity in order
to recover during the day quickly and easily from overloads
brought about by too much activity, too much exchange with
other people. If I am worn out during the day, instead of taking
a long nap, I go into the tank for half an hour. For example,
one day recently I became exhausted shoveling gravel and
decided to go into the tank. The day's residues slowly
disappeared. I did not go to sleep. I entered an abstracted
state. There was no body, no external reality, only the floating,
the darkness and the silence. I came out of the tank
completely refreshed.
"Floating Off To Lotus Land" - Delaware Today
As a serious athlete, Wier says he floats "to decrease the
recovery time from the abuses of training for rugby. I go in
stiff, and come out with a very positive physical response."
These toxins, which cause tension and soreness, apparently
leave the muscles much more quickly after a float than they
normally would.
Soccer star spends 10 hours
a week in flotation tank.
a week in flotation tank.
In effect, the tank experience can
duplicate the mental focus
achieved in other forms of
meditation. In this state, a person
can employ the visualization
techniques valued throughout
bodybuilding.
duplicate the mental focus
achieved in other forms of
meditation. In this state, a person
can employ the visualization
techniques valued throughout
bodybuilding.
Your shoulders are tight.
You're surrounded by chaos.
You can't think straight.
And yet, you have key decisions to make and you can't seem
to find the clarity and calm to do so.
If all your high-tech relaxation gadgets -- humming
massagers, ambient-sound neutralizing headphones,
battery-powered pressure-point "energizers" -- are just letting
you down, maybe it's time you gave just plain old salt water
a chance.
150 gallons of water and 1,000 pounds of medical grade
Epsom salts to be exact. Oh, and a large tank.
Don't have all that stuff? Not to worry. You can always just
pay $50 for an hour in a flotation tank (a k a, a sensory
deprivation tank), like the two owned by Doron Weisbarth, 37,
owner of Floatzone.Calm, the only flotation center in Seattle.
If you have space issues (like you might freak out spending
dome) then Weisbarth says that you're the captain of your
ship -- or, in this case, your tank.
"The thing about claustrophobic people is their lack of
control. But with floating, people have the control. They can
float with the door open, with the door closed, for as long as
they want. I'm not sitting on the roof to make sure they stay
in," he says, chuckling.
The flotation tanks look like windowless, fiberglass-shelled
spaceships -- one white, one candy-apple red -- with
swimming-pool blue interiors. But the only laps you'll be
doing here will be in your mind.
As far as relaxation techniques go, no one will tell you to
breathe deeply, imagine rainbows or to locate your third eye
-- there's nothing New-Agey about this.
In fact this kindof floating was developed in a lab, not a
spiritual spa, by Dr. John Cunningham Lilly at the National
institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md., in 1954. Lilly
was interested in studying the effects of solitude on the mind
as well as the effects of floating on rheumatoid arthritis,
hypertension and something called "brain hemispheric
lateralization" (left brain/right brain relationship). But never
mind that stuff for now. Just step into the tank.
Here, you're on your own. And chances are, you haven't
been on your own like this before. The highly salinated water
makes you feel weightless. You're in the dark, and unless you
ask for music, the only sounds you'll hear are the movement
of the water and your own breathing. There's something
amazing about that, says floating enthusiast Tim Alsberg.
"You're the only thing in there...you and only you. There's
something about experiencing you and only you," he says.
He says he was intrigued by the concept ever since he saw
Ken Russell's scary 1980 movie, "Altered States," about a
psychophysiologist (played by William Hurt) who uses himself
as the subject of an experiment on human consciousness.
Alsberg didn't want a frightening experience. Rather, he says
he was just curious.
"There's something just fascinating about exploring the
mind. ... Initially, it was about exploring the mind, but I think
it's now more about exploring the spirit," says Alsberg, 32.
Weisbarth insists that you shower before entering the tank
(yes, even if you "just showered") and after you get out. The
extra-salty water leaves a viscous layer on your skin, which, if
left unrinsed, would dry into a gritty, salty layer. If you have
any cuts, Weisbarth provides some petroleum jelly to help
lower the (possible) ouch factor.
The salt in the water prevents the prune effects of soaking in
a regular tub. It also keeps the tank a bacteria-free zone,
which, by the way, is certified by the Washington State
Department of Health.
Also, Weisbarth circulates the water through an automatic
bromine feeder (a less smelly alternative to chlorine),
ultraviolet rays (commonly used to kill bacteria and viruses in
clean water systems) and extra strength hydrogen peroxide.
Weisbarth says his clientele is evenly divided, gender-wise,
which is a bit odd, given that the first tank he bought was
from a place that had a primarily female clientele. Of
course, that business had the word "spa" in its name.
"Apparently, if you don't call it a 'spa' men are more likely to
show up," says Weisbarth. A good chunk of his clients are
dot-com techies, but not the ones looking for a cure or some
sort of New-Agetherapy.
"This is about health, not healing -- I know, semantics -- but
you know, I'm not trying to cure anyone here," he openly
admits.
This doesn't make Weisbarth a man without a mission.
Indeed, he has a very focused goal: To bring meditation to
the masses.
He was turned on to meditation about 10 years ago and
found it so helpful in his own life that he wanted everyone to
experience it. And that's when he kissed his education as an
electrical engineer and physical oceanographer goodbye
and got into the flotation business.
"I think that some people could benefit from meditation. Our
world is going so fast in every direction that people don't pay
attention to who they are and where they're going," he says,
adding that after they float, people generally come out
looking either calm or happy.
Chicago ABC7 News Segment by Sylvia Perez
November 17, 2004 - Get your troubles to float away by
simply giving salt water and isolation a chance. Float tanks
are also known as sensory deprivation tanks. They were hot in
the 1980's and early 90's. Now some people are taking
another look at float tanks.
They are no longer seen as weird new-age toys or the creepy
containers in the fictional movie "Altered States." Floating is
now being sold as the latest in alternative treatment capable
of melting away stress and relieving pain.
Few of us over the age of 5 have the luxury of hearing a
good bedtime story and then taking a late morning nap. But,
John Tolva says a one hour trip into one of these is the next
best thing.
"My wife thought I was crazy locking myself into a chamber
with water in it by myself in the dark," said John Tolva,
floating enthusiast.
Actually there is no lock and John, a busy dad and an over
stimulated creative director for IBM, is constantly looking for
a quick way to relax. So when several other young
professionals recommended a dip in a sensory deprivation
tank, he was game.
"I really couldn't tell you what happens because the
deprivation of senses was so complete," said Tolva.
The idea is to literally shut out the world and give your brain
and body a therapeutic rest. The journey begins by stepping
into a tank that's roughly 5 feet by 8 feet in size. Inside is
about 10 inches of water with about 1,000 pounds of Epsom
salts mixed in that's what allows the body to bob like a cork
effortlessly. The water has a silky feel and is body
temperature. You can float with or without a bathing suit.
Once you shut the door it's dark and silent. The only thing
you might hear is the beating of your heart.
"It's awesome," said Tolva.
Debborah Hopkins is a floating enthusiast.
"If you float early in the day or early evening for the rest of
the night you are in bliss and peaceful," said Debborah
Hopkins, floating enthusiast.
Eric Polcyn is the co-owner of Spacetime Tanks, Chicago's
oldest and only float center. He says this is better than a nap
because the tank eliminates gravity, which no mattress can
do. So your head, neck, spine, muscles joints and bones are
floating freely.
"It's the one place on this planet that has the least amount of
stimulus and strain on your body," said Eric Polcyn, owner of
Spacetime Tanks.
Floatation Center
Please click the following links
Driftaway Floatation Center
Camino de Cruces Centro Comercial
Local 11
El Dorado Tel: 360 2050 (Español)
360 2051 (English)
e-mail: info@driftawaypanama.com
Camino de Cruces Centro Comercial
Local 11
El Dorado Tel: 360 2050 (Español)
360 2051 (English)
e-mail: info@driftawaypanama.com