About Floating
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The First Float Center in Dixon IL.
What is Floating?
Floating is a relaxation practice that is unlike anything else. Imagine your body is weightless with zero-gravity. You are completely buoyant -floating without trying in approximately 10-11 inches of perfectly warmed water. The silky salty solution is 1,000+ pounds of magnesium sulfate, otherwise known as Epsom Salts. The average float is 60 or 90 minutes . The temperature of the water is set to about 93-94 degrees, the body's external skin temperature. During this experience you are in a highly controlled environment with as much sound and light reduction as possible.
What are the potential benefits of Floating?
The main benefit of using a sensory deprivation tank is to ease mental anxiety and muscle tension. Due to how buoyant the Epsom salt and water solution is, you can fully relax all of your muscles when floating. This is similar to experiencing zero gravity.
Floating in a tank can also relieve migraines and provide stress relief and detoxification since Epsom salts are high in magnesium, which can remove harmful substances such as free radicals from your body.
Free radicals are small particles that can damage your cells and increase inflammation, resulting in the development of conditions such as cancer and autoimmune disorders.
Magnesium can also promote bone and heart health, and even improve insulin sensitivity, which can help prevent diabetes.
Is there scientific research to back up floating?
Scientific study of sensory deprivation dates back almost sixty years, to the mid 50s, and float tanks as we know them today date back to the mid 60s. They’ve never been mainstream, but they were invented and developed in research settings, and the literature on them is reasonably extensive. In the scientific community, the field is known as “flotation REST”, for Restricted Environmental Stimulation Technique, or Therapy. Here are some online resources to get you started, so you can research and come to your own opinions.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5796691/
https://www.floating.ee/floating/science-behind-floating
https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/floating-away-the-science-of-sensory-deprivation-therapy
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/10/16/554063496/floating-away-your-anxiety-and-stress