What Is Float Tank Therapy?
A comforting and relaxing practice, Floatation Therapy (FT) involves lying in a private, spacious pod designed for suspension in 30 centimetres of water accurately warmed to body temperature. There is 580kg of pharmaceutical-grade magnesium sulfate dissolved in the water, allowing you to suspend freely in full relaxation. The result is a feeling of calm weightlessness, as the sensation of your skin against the water becomes unnoticeable.
Due to the natural buoyancy created by the high salt concentration, you will float effortlessly in silky water that is maintained at natural skin temperature (35.7 °C), allowing both mind and body to let go entirely, and drift into a state of deep relaxation. The Floatation-Bath experience is a gateway to the benefits of meditation, and similarly leads to losing track of space and time. This unique treatment can also help individuals access various levels of consciousness that are difficult to achieve on their own in everyday life. So… who’s keen to try Float Tank Therapy at Fast Twitch?
Sensory Deprivation sounds scary, but in effect it is just the simple absence of distraction and over stimulation. We currently receive input from innumerable sources and that hyper-connectivity occurs 24/7. The relentlessness of sound, light, touch, electronics, appointments to keep, things to remember and attention to give is causing our stress hormones, cortisol and adrenaline, to fluctuate at abnormal levels and sequencing that does not flow with our natural circadian cycle.
If you’re wondering how clean our float tanks are, read our blog on our float tank cleaning procedure.
A Floatation session allows you to experience three phases of discovery. First, you will access a state of physical awareness, followed by a state of surrender that allows slowly coming to terms with the weightlessness; and lastly, you will reach a phase of very deep relaxation that only a Floatation- Bath can offer.
This results in chronic stress that if unaddressed causes damage to brain regions responsible for; learning and memory, emotional regulation, attention, executive functioning and higher order processing - aka the “CEO” of your brain. Neuroscientists are considering this addiction to hyper-connectivity to be harmful in many ways. The foremost reasons being; constant attention shifting uses up the fuel required to maintain focus, splitting attention during study recruits new data to be kept in incorrect and inconvenient places in the brain - meaning that later recall becomes difficult and inefficient and the system of reward/pleasure chemicals become reliant on ever increasing stimulation as each hit of dopamine we receive becomes less satisfactory over time. In short, we inherently suck at multitasking in a world that rewards and encourages it and we are becoming increasingly unhealthy - physically, mentally and emotionally - because of it.
Sensory deprivation has been shown to lower these damaging cortisol levels. In a recent study, people who floated eight times in two weeks saw their cortisol decrease by 21.6 percent. They also showed a 50.5 percent decrease in cortisol spikes during stressful situations. Magnesium is involved in over 300 enzymatic reactions in the body and is necessary for energy, to utilise glucose within the body, for muscle contraction, nervous system function, protein synthesis, bone development, the balance of ions within cells and for nearly all hormonal reactions.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics suggests that 1 in 3 people do not meet the minimum daily magnesium requirements. Prolonged soaking in Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate) has been shown to effectively increase blood magnesium concentrations. Transdermal magnesium, meaning absorption through the skin, is the preferred method of increasing magnesium stores as edible variations of the mineral can cause digestive discomfort. High doses of magnesium from oral supplements or medications can cause nausea, abdominal cramping and diarrhoea. In addition, the magnesium in oral supplement form can interact with some types of antibiotics and other medicines.
Magnesium works to successfully calm the body and mind by inhibiting ACTH (the hormone released by the pituitary gland that tells the adrenal glands to secrete cortisol) and it also works to fight insomnia by increasing sleep efficiency, sleep time, sleep onset latency and enhancing early morning awakening
For athletes looking to increase performance or those looking for better muscular adaptations to exercise, studies have shown the more active you are, the more magnesium you need.
There have been demonstrated positive associations between magnesium levels and grip strength, lower-leg power, knee extension torque, ankle extension strength, maximal isometric trunk flexion, rotation, and jumping performance. Another way magnesium benefits athletic performance is through reducing/delaying lactate accumulation in the muscle. This suggests benefit to the growth of muscular endurance as well as faster post-exercise recovery rate.
Live in Adelaide? Book in a Float Tank Therapy Session at Fast Twitch!
