The Swedish Floating tank

Translation from Swedish to English

[0:16] - Floating is more than an alternative treatment. The method has been examined by scientists worldwide. One of them is Anette Kjellgren, associate professor of psychology at the University of Karlstad. She began studying the flotation in 1997 and together with her research colleagues presented two dissertations and published about 25 scientific papers.

[0:40] - A total of around 2,000 people have gone through some form of treatment and hence perhaps 500 people who have gone long treatment series with the 10-12-15 treatments. Some have up to 30-40 treatments.

[0:55] - The results you come up with, are they credible?

[0:59] -Absolutely. And they are credible not only because we have a study that says that you are feeling better but we have done so many studies with many different instruments, with many different tests, many different approaches. All studies made speak the same language which is to floating are an effective method to reduce muscle tension, pain in back and neck. That's what we have concentrated on. Then it's also good for you will also reduce your stress so you get less anxiety, you have less depression, you will be happier, you get better sleep at night and, as a side effect, pain patients take less drugs and drinking less alcohol.

[1:40] - In any form of treatment is an element of placebo, thus the impact is partly due to expectations and not the treatment itself. How much is the placebo of the floating effects?

[1:52] - This is a very interesting question, because in all types of medical treatment and you have always a large part of the placebo. I would not call it imagination for it implies that it would be stupid in some way, without the body, the brain works in order to obtain an analgesic effect only to such as a nurse comes and gives you a pain relieving spray. You can get pain relief in medical care before the morphine even reaches your brain. Or other types; antidepressant drug treatment, perhaps nearly half are so-called placebo effect, so it’s there alright.

We have studied the placebo effect a lot in the floating tank, we have made various experiments to see how much we believe is placebo? And to our surprise, we discovered that there seems to be very little placebo effect with floating. We have investigated different types of environments; you look around here so it's very dull, white, bare walls. We have tried with lively colors, with strange music, different attire to reception staff, on a variety of information to participants, different expectations among participants. We have turned and twisted in all we can think of - there are no differences.

We have let people come and float, or people have come and float and got lot more attention, all to simulate or make / pretend it's an extra treat as there is time - we find no differences. So we may say that, to our surprise, seems to float the idea to be quite free from placebo. This means you do not need to believe in something, you do not expect anything for it to work. Lie down in the tank, float, relax, it happens all by itself.

[3:46] - But what is happening to people in a floatation tank?

[3:51] - I think you may have for the first time in your life, if you live a normal, busy life and get the chance to spend time with yourself. For you to think your own thoughts, you may feel your own feelings and you do not have any interference, you are offline, there is no one chasing you, you put a parenthesis around everyday life, you have to be alone. Your body will look after itself; you're in your own world.

My grandmother once said that children grow when they sleep, and grandmother probably did not know what current research has shown that it is at night, it is during deep sleep that growth hormone is released. The same is when our body is resting, then it will spread these substances that heal our body, which is restoring, repairing the damage and of course, you will not rest when your body wears a lot harder. Here you get into deep sleep, you will wind down and it is clear that it is favorable. The body's healing systems can be activated.

Translation Swedish/English Stefan Gerleman

www.restingwell.com

"Ladies and gentlemen I am Peter Suedfeld and I truly appreciate the invitation to speak to you and I regret that I couldn't be there to do it in person. It is a source of great pleasure for me to know that there is once again a conference of people involved in the Restricted Environmental Stimulation Technique known for short as R.E.S.T.

It has been a long time since the last one and I had wondered if there would ever be another. Although I know that your interest focuses on floatation R.E.S.T. the original 1950's version was chamber R.E.S.T. then called sensory deprivation. After trying different techniques the most commonly used technique became having the subjects lie on a bed in a totally dark and sound proof room for up to 24 hours. Early reports of hallucinations, disorientation and high anxiety turned out to be the result of procedural errors, not of stimulus reduction itself. When those errors were corrected, sensory deprivation was easily tolerated by most volunteers and the bizarre effects disappeared.

In the 1960's systematic research programs appeared exploring effects of basic psychological and psychophysiological processes. During the next decade, the 1970's, attention also moved to the use of the technique in psychotherapy, health psychology and behavioural medicine. By 1980 Rod Borrie and I had coined the term R.E.S.T. to replace the inaccurate and somewhat scary term sensory deprivation. Researchers in many active laboratories had established that chamber rest has the following beneficial health effects.

It is an unusually powerful tool in smoking cessation, even more so when paired with another effective treatment and reduces relapse rates dramatically.
It reduces alcohol intake in borderline alcoholics
It reduces phobic reactions
it is effective in weight reduction among over weight subjects
It reduces the symptoms of acute LSD and PCP psychosis, autism, schizophrenia and disorientation in Alzheimers patients
It reduces memory loss after electroconvulsive treatment

The 1970's were also the decade when floatation-R.E.S.T. became prominent after John Lilly invented the (float) tank in which dissolved Epsom salts allowed people to relax in shallow skin temperature water.

You all know how the tank works but you may not all be aware of its established uses, Rod Borries talk will go in to more detail, but here's a list of effects found in anything from one to a dozen or more studies.

Reduced physiological signs of stress and tension, blood pressure, stress hormones, heart rate and so on
Improvement in positive mood states
Reduced psychological tension, anxiety and subjective stress
Increased spontaneous recall of pleasant autobiographical memories
Decrease in chronic tension headaches
Decrease in chronic pain from various causes, including rheumatoid arthritis and pre menstrual syndrome
Decrease severity of obsessive compulsive symptoms
Decreased muscle tension amongst cerebral palsy patients
Increases in perceptual motor performance in pilot training and athletic tasks such as basket ball, ski racing, darts, rifle marksmanship and tennis
And enhancement of other treatment methods including medical hypnosis and meditation.

In the 1980's research on health benefits proliferated, commercial tank facilities for public use spread around the world and the field began to organise itself. The International Rest Investigators Society (IRIS) and the Floatation Tank Association, respectively the scientific and applied parts of the field held conferences and issued publications.

Most of this efforts lost momentum in the 1990's. Why has R.E.S.T. not continued to be studied and applied evermore widely? Objective reviewers agree that, despite promising results, not enough rigorous research has been done. In addition, there is no overall theory to explain the wide variety of positive effects. This is a problem for scientists, although not pragmatic practitioners. I also think that R.E.S.T. has suffered from its treatment by the mass media and text books. First it was linked with torture and brainwashing, then with what was considered "far out" mystical conditions. Here John Lilly's combination of experiments with drugs and floatation and Paddy Chayefsky's film Altered States did the field a disservice. Last as the melodramatic data were discredited by further research text book authors ignored progress in R.E.S.T. and a new generation of students and professionals didn't learn about it.

I hope that this conference with start a new decade of revival which will move R.E.S.T. toward the appreciation and utilisation that it deserves. The commercial and scientific arms of the R.E.S.T. community should make an effort to work together in finding and then applying new and solid facts to nourish the field. This meeting may impel new steps in both directions. I wish you high levels of stimulation, enjoyment and productive interaction. Thank You.

Video

Video

Videos about floating / Flotation-REST

Actually is it impossible to tell anyone how a float sessions feels like....

Professor Anette Kjellgren Karlstads Universitet · Department of Social and Psychological Studies. Sweden

The Sensory Deprivation Tank - Joe Rogan Fear factor, UFC. MMA