What Is Float Therapy?
The basic idea of floating is simple. First you minimise or completely remove the sensory input to your brain – you just shut everything off – every signal to your brain from the outside world! Float therapy is freeing yourself from all sensation of gravity, temperature, touch, sight and sound (which together accounts for 90% of normal neuromuscular activity), you then conserve and can redirect vast amounts of natural physical and mental energy.
Most people have five senses: touch, sight, sound, taste and smell. Taste and smell are easy to remove from everyday life (just go into a clean empty room and don’t eat anything!) Real distractions come from touch, sight and sound. These are the hardest to minimise or remove. Normal life means your body and mind is in a constant state of hearing, seeing and feeling. Its how life is and how we function. Even doing nothing and standing still in an empty room your body is having to process the environment, you are balancing your body and your brain is constantly scanning, computing, categorising to process your visual surroundings and your state of wellbeing.
What Does It Do For Pregnancy?
As you float in warm and comforting darkness or ambient lighting. This experience promotes the physiological phenomenon known as the ‘mirror effect’, whereby expectant mothers have the opportunity to form a closer physical and spiritual bond with their baby through the similarity of the experience. We often hear from mums-to-be that being in the float pod they become a lot more aware of their baby’s movement, sometimes even hearing the little one’s heartbeat.
Your body becomes weightless. This means that you are relieved of the extra weight gained during pregnancy and pressure is taken off your joints. Water retention and swelling is reduced and blood pressure is lowered as blood circulation around the body is increased.
How Does It Work?
Float therapy consists of floating on a bed of body temperature water saturated with 500kg of pharmaceutical grade Epsom Salts in a light proof and soundproof pod to which you just lie back, relax, and let yourself float effortlessly on the surface of the water and enjoy a feeling of complete weightlessness.
Our pods are 8ft in length and 5ft wide and have only 12 inches of water in them! More than enough space for the tallest of people to stretch out and move around. Floating takes the pressure of gravity off joints and muscles and your body is put into a high state of physical relaxation. Blood pressure and oxygen intake reduce but at the same time blood flow and the distribution of red blood cells increases. Float therapy has been shown to loosen the muscles and give more control over your nervous system. Floating stimulates the brain to secrete endorphins; pain killing, euphoria-creating substances know as the body’s own opiates.
What Does Floating Do For Recovery?
Floating takes the pressure of gravity off joints and muscles and your body is put into a high state of physical relaxation. Blood pressure and oxygen intake reduce but at the same time blood flow and the distribution of red blood cells increases. This speeds recovery from injury and helps flush any lactate, cortisone and adrenaline that may have been built up through training or performance. Physical exercise can cause a build of lactic acid, which is often experienced as pain and a cramping of the muscles. It has also been linked with feeling of depression known as ‘post-game let down’.
What Else Does Floating Help With?
Fibromyalgia
Fibromyalgia sufferers experience immediate and cumulative benefits from floating. Floatation therapy relaxes the sufferer and provides relief to tender “trigger points” located throughout the body. Results from an international study demonstrated that Float therapy can help sufferers of Fibromyalgia relax, manage pain and attend to tasks which normally cause them difficulty. Improvements are carried over from one float session to the next, and immediate effects of each float session showed a significant reduction in symptoms with improvements in movement, relaxation, wellbeing and energy.
Menopause
During pregnancy the body works extremely hard to send nutrients and energy to your growing baby. It goes without saying it is an immense task which requires ultra-human strength, add in all the duties life throws are your daily such as family, work etc. it’s no wonder that many women feel exhausted and stressed at times throughout the nine months. As your body changes and grows you produce a certain amount of necessary fat, extra blood, placenta and amniotic fluid.
Stress & Anxiety
It’s been suggested that around 90% of your brain’s normal functions, such as responding to gravity or threats, can cease. This creates a massive surplus of energy and resources, which your body naturally puts to good use to begin it’s own natural healing processes – much like when you’re in a really deep sleep. Float therapy has consistently shown to be effective in improving sleep quality, reducing stress and anxiety, and letting the body get back to a healthy balance of hormones – which can be significant in feelings of anxiety or depression.