Michael Hutchison

Michael Hutchison's wrote The book of Floating

it covers subjects like :

• The Seven Theories of Floating
• Stress and floating
• Brain Waves and floating
• Creativity through floating
• Health and floating

Through all sorts of tests, including EMG(which measure muscle tension), EEG, blood pressure, and measurements of certain biochemicals, scientists have determined that the float tank can bring about a state of extraordinarily deep relaxation-probably deeper than is possible by any other means yet available except for certain drugs. This state of relaxation is in itself beneficial to health, since it allows the body to maintain its internal system of checks and balances, its homeostasis. That is, the body has its own highly effective methods of maintaining itself at an optimal level of well-being,and if allowed to operate freely, it will generally do so flawlessly. But certain mental attitudes can throw this delicate mechanism out of whack. Stress causes harm by its disruption of our natural biochemistry. For example, researchers have recently discovered that, under stress, Type A personalities secrete forty times as much cortisol and three times as much adrenaline as Type B men. Cortisol has been proven to suppress the immune system. Tests have shown that floating decreases cortisol. Excess adrenaline, and related biochemicals such as noradrenaline and ACTH also cause our bodies to rev up in fight-or-flight response,and, ultimately, to wear out. Floating, through deep relaxation, lowersa the levels of the harmful chemicals.

Deep relaxation is beneficial in another way. Because of what has been called the curare effect, and as explained by the Webber-Fechner Law, floating leads to increased sensory awareness; we simply feel our bodies better, more clearly, and as a result we are able to regulate them more effectively. As John V. Basmajian's experiments showed, we have the capacity to control the firing of a single motor neuron in the body, once we are made aware of that neuron.

Deep relaxation also leads to improved access to internal imagery. And awareness and control of mental imagery is the key to self regulation.

© Michael Hutchinson "The Book Of Floating"

Floatation offers a relatively stress-free environment in which to escape temporarily from stressful external stimuli and free your system from its chronic state of arousal. This makes it a useful and life enhancing tool. But if that were all it did, floatation would be essentially a passive tool, and entering a tank would be little different from sitting quietly in a dark room. While the absence of stress is desirable in itself, it doesn't necessarily bring about the presence of its opposite, relaxation.

Floatation goes far beyond the passive. Scientists have now proven that floating activates a physiological response that is parallel to, and as powerful as, the stressful one of fight or flight. This response mobilizes the body's resources to bring about an active, alert, positive, and beneficial state of relaxation.

The idea of alleviating psychosomatic disorders by breaking the vicious cycle of stress and stress-reaction brings us to the floatation tank. While the stress relief of the tank works on a number of levels simultaneously, one obvious fact is that entering the floatation tank removes you from most stressors, both the primary stressor and secondary environmental stresses. In the tank there is no noise, no light, no other people, nothing to do, and nothing that needs to be or can be done. Like that time after the fight of the near accident, when you needed someplace just to sit and wind down, the tank is the perfect recovery-from-stress spot. There, with no possible threat from the outside world, your body slows down, the flood of chemicals that has jangled your nerves is eliminated, and your body chemistry returns to normal. And just as when, after some stressful moment, your heightened arousal gives way to a feeling of deep calmness, so in the tank the deepening relaxation of your body and brain is perceived as a delicious sensation of peace, well-being, exhilaration: I have survived and I am alive!

We all know what stress is. Though we might not be able to explain the physiological process, we're quite clear about our feelings. We talk about sweaty palms, chills down the spine, quivering like a leaf, getting cold feet, being tight-assed, having butterflies in the stomach, or receiving a shot of adrenaline. Many use these phrases with the belief that they're just figures of speech, apt cliches, not realizing that they are describing with poetic exactness very real physiological processes, all if which are part of an unconscious, reflective reaction to stress known as the flight-or-flight response.

© Michael Hutchinson "The Book Of Floating"

By now few are unaware that the activity of the human brain creates patterns of electrical energy, that the electrical signals of the brain can be monitored by placing electrodes against the scalp, and that a device known as an electroencephalograph (or EEG ) can record the brain waves by means of a sensitive mechanical pen tracing, across a long sheet of paper, a mountain range of jagged lines - as immortalized in a thousand science fiction movies and television hospital series. Flat line equals brain death - cart him away, nurse. These brain signals have a tendency to fall into certain patterns which scientists have classified in four types:

Beta.

When the brain is generating mostly beta waves, whose frequency is about 13-30 Hz ( that is, a rhythm of 13 to 30 cycles per second ), it is in what is called its waking rhythm: The brain is focusing on the world outside itself, or dealing with concrete, specific problems.

Alpha.

As the brain waves slow down they take on a more coherent rhythm, and can be seen on the EEG as a regular sawtooth pattern at about 8 - 12 Hz. These waves are often present when the brain is alert but unfocused, and most people generate alpha waves when their eyes are closed, even if only bursts of one or two seconds. Frequently, alpha waves are associated with feelings of relaxation and calmness.

Theta.

As calmness and relaxation deepen into drowsiness, the brain shifts to slower, more powerfully rhythmic waves with a frequency of about 4 -7 Hz. Everyone generates these theta waves at least twice per day: in those fleeting instants when we drift from conscious drowsiness into sleep, and again when we rise from sleep to consciousness as we awaken. The theta state is accompanied by unexpected, unpredictable, dreamlike but very vivid mental images (known as the hypnagogic images ). Often these startlingly real images are accompanied by intense memories, particularly childhood memories. Theta offers access to unconscious material, reverie, free association, sudden insight, creative inspiration. It is a mysterious, elusive state, potentially highly productive and enlightening, but experimenters have had a difficult time studying it, and it is hard to maintain, since people tend to fall asleep as soon as soon as they begin generating large amounts of theta.

Delta.

Cycling at an extremely slow frequency (.5-4 Hz), delta rhythms are produced when people are deeply asleep or otherwise unconscious. Throughout the 1960s, experimenters discovered that with the use of equipment that electrically monitored selected physical functions, humans could learn to generate those functions at will. While biofeedback equipment could be made to monitor just about any physical function, researchers often focused on the production of alpha waves. Stress was a problem shared by almost everyone, and an accepted antidote to stress was relaxation; since alpha waves accompanied relaxation, and were relatively easy to learn to produce at will, clinical biofeedback experts assumed that if you learn to generate alpha waves, you would automatically become relaxed. In the early 1970s, with the advent of relatively inexpensive equipment came an explosion of interest in biofeedback, and alpha became the catchword seized on by the mass media and seekers of expanded consciousness.

Research:

Almost unnoticed amidst the hoopla surrounding alpha was an earlier study by Akira Kasamatsu and Tomio Hirai which analyzed EEG tests of Zen monks going into deep meditative states. The study showed that as the monks went into meditation they passed through four stages: the appearance of alpha waves, an increase of alpha amplitude, a decrease of alpha frequency, and finally ( for those with the most skill at meditation), the production of long trains of theta waves. Interestingly, the four states "were parallel with the disciples' years spent in Zen training." In other words, the more meditative experience a monk had, the more theta he generated 9 i.e., those monks who had more than twenty years of experience generated the greatest amounts of theta waves). And, even in the depths of theta, the monks were not asleep but mentally alert.

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