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DIY Home Float Therapy – A Little Bit of Magic, A Little Bit of Science

floatation-therapy-floating-article-button this image shows a drone view of a dark-haired woman wearing a sports bikini bottom and sport top is floating in the most beautiful blue water. Click this button to read the article on Floatation Therapy here on TheBodyIsMind

FLOAT THERAPY Ranks #2 For Effectiveness.

I think everyone should have their own float tank. Float therapy is the #2 most-recommended self-healing modality listed in the Ultimate Healing Guide.

As of this writing, I’ve spent 2,600 minutes experiencing sensory deprivation floatation in skin-temperature Epsom salt baths while also in pure darkness and silence. I know this because I’ve been logging it since December 2017. This includes over 40 hours floating in Colorado’s original “largest float spa” down in Parker, a 4-tank facility named Astral Float Spa.

Floatation therapy is as close as we’re gonna come to what it might feel like to float inside a Star Trek force field; you can hover in dozens of back-down or side-down positions as though weightless. This completely releases the tensions from every muscle in your body, if you give it enough time.

While you’re floating, you’re free to work on your imagination, formulate solutions to your problems, and imagining a brighter future where pain doesn’t play such a large role in your life.

Floating gives you a real chance to understand what it feels like to “let go” both mentally and physically. If you don’t get at least that much out of it, then you haven’t done floating long enough. This is advanced self-mastery at work, an easement into increased self-awareness… which is what we’re after on the self-healing path. Floating in space gives you high doses of self-awareness; just ask any astronaut.

Seriously, you won’t get much closer to what it must feel like to float in space without actually experiencing zero-G. Of course, the fluids in your body, your organs, and the food in your stomach still know which way is down. But beyond that, there are periods when you can expect to completely lose your orientation and feel like you’re floating vertically, head upwards.

Ultimately, you can plan to eventually experience complete disembodiment while floating; it becomes a gateway to the lucid dream state.

Float Spa Therapy: An Advanced Visualization Chamber

For those who are visionaries and visual people in general, consider the float tank as an advanced visualization chamber.

I’ve been a vision-boarding kind of guy every since I was about 19 years old. I have several pictures I drew back then of what my home studio would look like, as well as photo collages put together from cut-outs of keyboards and professional music gear taken from magazines. Years later, my home studio became reality and I never doubted it would happen. Fact is, I ended up with more gear than I ever dreamed back when I was only nineteen.

Dream Studio Rack and Keyboards circa 1989

Dream Studio Rack and Keyboards circa 1989

Imagination plays a key factor to your success on a self-directed healing path, so it makes sense that you’d want to work on strengthening your ability to imagine a better you. When you’re floating, after you’ve released your tension and have less attention on your body, you can begin to imagine what it might feel like to have less pain.

You can imagine waves of mentally-induced relaxation washing down through your body. You can imagine a future where maybe you don’t have as much pain. You can spend time devoted entirely to using your imagination on being free from your additions.

Do not underestimate the power of being isolated with your conscious awareness and time devoted to self-healing, self-care, and self-compassion.

DIY Home Floatation Solution

The Zen Co float tent v1.5 home float therapy tank is the most affordable way to add sensory-deprivation floating to your home. I personally contend that the self-healing ratio is higher with float therapy than with almost every other method available. For under $3k, you get quite a bit of kit to put together. As far as I’m concerned, this is the DIY home flotation solution which everyone’s been looking for since the 1960’s!

Zen float tent setup in the basement for home floatation therapy - The Body Is Mind

The Zen Float Co. Float Tent v1.5 fully assembled in the basement.

This substantial bit of kit weighs 1000 lbs. and was delivered via FedEx Freight in a single box. 850 pounds of it was the magnesium sulfate. The water tub comes as a folded single piece of man-made polymer material which can withstand the pressure from holding 2000 pounds of water and minerals plus your body weight. This includes 200 gallons of water, and all that is hung from fat stainless steel tubing on six legs with metal all the way around and down to the floor.

The tent kit tops off the tub and seals the darkness and moisture inside. A UV filter, filter bag, submersible water pump, a circulation system, a moisture barrier, tank-sized super-efficient heating pads, and a water temperature control system are all part of the kit.

Magnesium Sulphate Heptahydrate, also known as Epsom salt, is an inorganic compound made of magnesium, sulphur and oxygen. The powdery substance is used for everything from helping plants grow to helping muscles relax. NordFeed

The essential minerals magnesium and sulfur are chemically bound with water molecules to form Epsom salt, which is not really a salt at all. Sulfur, after calcium and phosphorus, is the most abundant mineral element found in our body. And magnesium is another essential mineral used for many functions in our body, including helping with the manufacture of proteins.

I had to huff all 1000 pounds up a flight of steps to the front porch, then down a flight of steps to stage the kit build in my basement. I time-lapsed everything except the tent setup. If I didn’t have a million other things to think about, I would have captured the entire kit build but missed the final steps.

Suffice to say that the tent-build was the least effort-intensive, and I couldn’t be more proud and excited to take full possession of a viable solution for my chronic pain.

The Zen float tent kit before assembly, laid out in the garage.

The Zen Co. float tent kit before assembly, laid out in the garage.

Having a DIY home float therapy solution in my basement is, for me, more exciting than when I purchased my first keyboard synthesizer back in 1987, maybe even more exciting than my 2nd Christmas in 1968. In fact, I can’t think of many things more exciting than this… with the distinguished and obvious exception that I have the privilege to live with my wife, Imzadi, best friend, and soul mate, and our intelligent, beautiful daughter.

Why floatation therapy works so well

There are two primary factors for the effectiveness of float therapy.

First, the opposing forces of gravity and buoyancy fight to hold you in a static position, effortlessly, where there is an equal force against your body from every direction of the water. This allows you to relax more deeply than anything you can experience while standing, sitting, or even laying down in the most comfortable bed.

Even when you’re laying in your favorite mattress, your muscles are fighting against the force of gravity while compensating for uneven pressure and impingements upon your flesh and bones. There’s no possible way that you can lay in any position on a surface like a memory foam or latex mattress and not feel different areas of pressure against your body. Floatation gets you there.

Second, due to the nature of sensory deprivation, your nervous system actually has a chance to calm down. To be honest, laying suspended within a dark space where you come to feel disembodied, you have the luxury to spend your conscious awareness on the specific task of calming your mind and calming your body.

The Zen Float Co. offers Veterans 10% discounts on home float kits. Tell them we sent ya!

As you lay floating peacefully, your mind slows and you come to realize you’re using chronically tensed muscles to hold your head, your neck, and your shoulders, perhaps even your hips, in a certain position created by nothing other than tension. It starts to become glaringly obvious that the stress and tension we hold in our bodies is directly related to the rigidity of our muscles. At some point after maybe an hour of floating, you consciously start to allow yourself to relax, to let go, and stop trying so hard just to hold yourself together.

In the float tank, you are left to fend with your own thoughts and emotions within the body and in your mind. You are there by yourself, in a safe space where you can let your guard down and explore the depths of your consciousness and relationship to the universe. You let go of your worries just as easily as you let go of your stress.

Floating is the Ultimate Water Bed

Floatation is different. When you’re laying in a stationary body of water which is saturated with minerals, you float effortlessly atop the water. Even when you fill your lungs with air and exhale, you won’t experience any rising or falling because the water buoys your body perfectly in a literal force field: you are suspended by the atomic forces of the molecules and atoms within the mineral-saturated water.

Push your hands towards the bottom of the 10 inches of water, and the moment you release your muscles, your arms float back to the surface. Your whole body is suspended in the most comfortable and relaxing state you could imagine. It’s the ultimate water bed! Let nothing stand between the molecules of your skin and the molecules of the water.

Besides, everyone knows floating in an Epsom salt bath is rejuvenating.

Floatation is Accelerated Meditation Practice

If you’ve ever wondered what it must feel like to meditate, treat yourself to at least five hours of floatation at your nearest float spa.

Part of the science behind meditation is that it allows you to consciously wind down the mind, separate yourself from your thoughts, and calm your body into the zone of relaxation. The entire objective of anything like this is to relax the nervous system and get into a state of mind where you feel balanced and centered.

Float Therapy is The Most Relaxing Thing You’ll Ever Do

Sure, hanging out on that beach in the Southern Indian Ocean with a drink in your hand was relaxing.

But there’s no way you’re going to step out of a float tank and not feel super relaxed on a level which rivals your most relaxing memories. Many people claim floatation is the most relaxing thing they’ve ever done. I agree.

In my case, I would consider floatation even more effective at releasing pain than deep-tissue massage therapy; I don’t feel sore afterward, and nobody needs a tip.

Finding a quiet place where your self-healing powers can have a chance to shine is what this modality is all about. The science is in the water. The magic happens when you add your self-awareness to the mix.

Read more in depth about the science and magic behind floating in our Floatation Therapy article and explore other modalities listed in the Ultimate Healing Guide as part of your self-directed healing path.

Here’s to a better you. Lot’s of people say that, but only you  can prove them right.