Flotation Therapy : A Summary

The largest floatation manufacturer and supplier of floatation therapy tanks and float rooms in Europe is Floataway. We have many customers throughout the world who use our flotation therapy tanks. At Floataway, we design, make, supply and sell beautiful flotation therapy tanks, float rooms, and we also have a full design service that can cater for all your custom floating requirement. Floataway can give technical advice from planning a float centre to private installations.

Some customers, we have found, prefer flotation rooms and others prefer floating tanks.There is no significant difference for an experienced floater. First time floaters find the idea of a room less claustrophobic than a floating tank according to those who prefer float rooms. We provide both. We also provide either chlorine sterilisation or hydrogen peroxide plus uv systems, whichever is favoured locally.

Floating in a float tank with warm Epsom Salts was invented by John Lilly in the sixties but of course floating and swimming are as old as our species. He started working on the effects of sensory deprivation through his interest in meditation and in the physiology and psychology of the meditative state. His experimental subjects, (his students), discovered that they enjoyed the experience of floating and reached levels of relaxation only seen in deep meditation. In fact a person can reach a depth of relaxation within a few minutes of starting to float which takes, by classical meditation techniques, many years to achieve.

Some of the benefits seem too good to be true because Floatation therapy is such a simple idea. They are real however and scientific research has validated the performance enhancing and health giving effects.

Relaxing sleep in bed is essential to good health and it is well known to be often the best way to recover from stress and illness. Our bodies have amazing powers of recuperation when we give them the chance to relax to let those powers work.

In a float tank the floating state is even more relaxing than bed rest. This has been proved in several studies. The body is better able to recover from stress in the profound relaxation state. Pain is relieved. Blood flow is stimulated, indeed maximised through all the tissues, endorphins (the bodies natural pain killers) are released, the brain gives out the theta waves associated with porfound relaxation and meditation. It feels so good!

Almost everyone finds floating to be a marvellous experience. We have many apocryphal reports from our customers of relief from pain, reduction of oedema (swellings), freedom from joint stiffnes, and success in anger management, control of pre-menstrual tension, better focus, and most of all a wonderful uplifted feeling of wellness and clarity. Often this happens in the first float experience. Where to float?

Some people go to a float centre (or floating center) to take the chance to day dream and can, in the same way as adept meditators with many years experience, enter wonderful vivid dream states. Floating to relaxation is a quicker and much simpler technique. Some find float tanks in hotels or spas. An increasing number of people buy their own float tank to use at home. We believe that the development of the float tank has the potential to be a major advance in the progress of human consciousness and has already proved its worth.

Incidentally we use both flotation and floatation spellings because more than half our customers use the former. In addition to floating, some people also use floting, flotting, flowtation and flotion !