Regardless if you are a musician, a writer, an athlete, lawyer, pregnant woman or just a person who suffers from chronic moods, headaches or depression, there is a lot to be gained by going for floatation therapy. Studies have repeatedly found that floating once or twice a week was able to improve the technical ability of musicians, improve the performance of athletes, enhance the levels of creativity in artists and even bump up the problem-solving abilities of CEOs.
These float session that typically lasts between 60 to 90 minutes could cause individuals to be restless for the first few moments, especially for first timers, however, this feeling subsides as soon as their body and mind settle into the spectrum of sensory deprivation therapy.
The therapy which involves placing individuals in environments that are completely void of stimuli (even gravity is eliminated to an extent) due to the foot of water concentrated with 800 pounds of magnesium sulphate. This is akin to the Dead Sea where the salinity of the water is so high that people cannot sink with the only difference being that you will be in a pod and will be floating in darkness.
As to why people do this, float tanks / floatation tanks are an effective way to minimize the impact of stress to begin with. Stress is a precursor to a multitude of other illnesses caused by the hormone known as cortisol which is produced by our bodies when we are subjected to stress. Studies or rather clinical trials have shown that people who went for floatation therapy 2 or 3 times a week managed to decrease their cortisol levels by approximately 20 % which naturally allowed them to handle stressful situations or environments better.
In general, floatation tanks help people to go into relaxed states faster, help them to achieve and maintain better moods, combat fatigue, enhance performance and speeds up the process of injury healing quite significantly. Other studies have revealed that floating could be utilised as an integral component towards treating pain and PMS discomforts. This is largely due to the fact that floating enhances oxygenation by promoting vasodilation which means the blood flow to the brain, limbs and organs are enhanced significantly.
What this means is that not only is oxygen delivered more efficiently to all the parts of our body that needs it, the distribution of nutrients and minerals are also simultaneously enhanced. This is the primary reason that float tanks also provide significant relief from pain and eases muscle tension effectively. Apart from that floatation therapy also reduces lactic acid in the blood (lactic acid from muscles move out faster) which eases the level of muscle stiffness and soreness which is the reason as to why athletes have become the main advocates of floatation therapy.
To explain this article in a simpler manner, floating basically helps people to bounce back more rapidly from not just depressive or lethargic states and make them more resilient to the pressures of life.
