Learn best practices for starting and running a float center:
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Something in the world of floating have you stumped?

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Show Highlights

The Parasympathetic Nervous System is the part of your body that gets really excited when the rest of your body is winding down. Taking care of the digestive and rest systems are an important part of human health and physiology. How do float tanks affect this system?

Many of the studies on floating have demonstrated an impact on the parasympathetic nervous system. Graham and Ashkahn talk about the information that’s been studied so far.

Show Resources

Buy your tickets for the 2018 Float Conference!

Book hotel rooms for the Float Conference

Check out our Free Scientific Research List for up to date information on all float related research

The Float Clinic at the Laureate Institute of Brain Research (Justin Feinstein’s research)

Annette Kjellgren’s Research page at Karlstad University

Justin Feinstein’s Talk at last year’s Float Conference

Tom Fine’s Talk from the 2014 Float Conference

The Float Research Panel from the 2015 Float Conference

More videos from the Float Conference

Listen to Just the Audio

Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)

Graham: All right.

Ashkahn: Welcome.

Graham: Hello everybody.

Ashkahn: Yeah. This is Ashkahn.

Graham: I am Graham.

Ashkahn: We’re gonna answer a question today.

Graham: Which is, “have there been any studies that show floating engages the parasympathetic nervous system?” The old PNS.

Ashkahn: Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

Graham: Thank you for the question. Good luck finding them.

No, let’s start with what the parasympathetic nervous system is.

Ashkahn: Yeah. It’s not the sympathetic nervous system.

Graham: Bingo. Therein lies the entire story.

The sympathetic nervous system is generally much more active. It’s when your adrenal system activates. The parasympathetic nervous system is your rest and digest system, sometimes called.

Ashkahn: Yeah. The little phrases are fight or flight, versus rest and digest.

Graham: Yep. Parasympathetic is much more associated with things like digestion, as you can imagine, with your heart rate slowing, breathing slowing.

Ashkahn: Resting.

Graham: All these things, if you’re familiar with floating, which hopefully you are since you’re listening to us ramble on about it day after day.

Ashkahn: If not, welcome. It’s about to be really exciting to you.

Graham: Right, those are the activities we associate with floating. When you’re in the tank, your heart rate slows, your breathing slows, you calm down.

Ashkahn: People say they come out feeling very hungry sometimes.

Graham: It’s because you’re activating your parasympathetic nervous system. That’s what we’re talking about here.

Ashkahn: This is most likely a very simplified view of the entire thing, but I always think about it as our bodies react to the external environment. When there’s stuff you have to do or there’s an animal trying to eat you, or all the stuff that generally comes with staying alive, your body has to prioritize resources.

Graham: Yeah.

Ashkahn: If a bear is chasing you, your body is like, “You know what we should be doing right now is digesting food.” It allocates the resources it needs to deal with the much more important stuff that’s happening, and then when you don’t have things like that going on, your body shifts into another mode. It’s like, “Great, now we have time to do maintenance stuff. Let’s repair things, let’s rest, let’s grow.” Part of human growth can be part of the rest and digest system.

I think there’s very acute cases of children, of huge amounts of stress in their childhood actually being stunted in terms of their growth. All this stuff is our body switching the fire hose of resources around.

Graham: Yeah. As far as studies showing that that’s the system that’s being activated, for any study that actually looks at humanmetrics and is measuring heart rate, is measuring our brain wave levels even, or what’s going on to us physically in the tank, you’d be hard pressed to find any of those studies that don’t point to the parasympathetic nervous system being activated.

Ashkahn: Yeah. Like most of the stuff you hear about in terms of research, of cortisol levels, and heart rate, and blood pressure, and-

Graham: Breathing.

Ashkahn: Breathing. All these sorts of things are those kinds of effect, the effects of your body switching gears like that.

Graham: I’ll turn the question around to you listener and say, “Do you know of any studies that don’t show the parasympathetic nervous system being activated, that are focusing on humanmetrics.” ‘Cause I would say, “I can’t think of any.”

Ashkahn: Yeah. It seems like it’s just a big broad category of things that our body does, and almost everything is showing, I think that’s probably one of the symptoms of an overabundance of stress in our society, is that our bodies don’t have as much time to be in the parasympathetic nervous system mode as we used to. We used to have longer periods of activating that, and that just gets a little bit harder in modern society with cars, and blinking lights, and sound effects, and all that sort of stuff that our bodies interpret sometimes as things they need to respond to, and things they need to respond to with more of our active survival instincts.

Graham: Yeah. I remember having a discussion with Glenn Perry at some point, one of the founders of our industry, and owners of some Samadhi Tank Company. He was saying, it wasn’t that long ago where we’d finish up a day of work, and then maybe we’d sit on our porch and watch the sunset, and think about things that we done during the day. Maybe we’d reflect and say, “Oh, you know, I was a little too mean in that scenario.” Or, “Oh, my calf hurts. Maybe I should take it a little easy there.” It’s true, we’re a society of chronic stress these days. We don’t have that down time. To me, the fact that the float tanks do activate the parasympathetic nervous system, they, as Glen Perry was saying, recreate this end of the day relaxation contemplation that we used to get very naturally, is a lot of their benefit. It’s certainly at least for me, one of the big things that I take away from floating, is forcing that rest and digest system back into my busy life.

Of those, I guess just to name some, I would say the early ones like John Turner, Tom Fine, they took some really detailed metrics the best that they could do for the time when they were running research back in the ’80s, up through the ’90s. They’re some of the people whose early findings are showing this parasympathetic nervous system activating. More recently, Justin Feinstein has just been collecting a bunch of data on biological metrics and marking. Just to kick you off, those are two big ones. But I think Anette Kjellgren over in Sweden, and the Swedish researchers have also shown the same results. Again, any study that you’re looking into where it’s focusing on this biological aspect of floating, you’re probably find that same parasympathetic nervous system activation.

Question answered, I guess?

Ashkahn: Yeah. Yeah, I guess we did it. We only know so much about the technicalities of all this stuff. The same with that we’re not lawyers, or doctors, or economists. We’re also not researchers. I feel pretty good about the broad strokes of how all this stuff works, but I’m pretty sure there’s plenty of nuance too, to the human body.

Graham: I’ve never found that to be true, but if you disagree, go over to FloatTankSolutions.com/podcast and shoot in your own questions so we can embarrass ourselves with that analogy.

Ashkahn: Yeah. Please.

Graham: It’s what we live for.

Ashkahn: All right. Bye everybody.

Graham: Thanks.

Recent Podcast Episodes

Benefits of a Free Float Giveaway – DSP 315

Float On has been known throughout the years for pulling off outlandish marketing stunts with mixed success. For example, we ran a giveaway on social media back in 2014 for a full year of free floats to our lucky winner. 

Derek and Ashkahn provide a follow up on the success of that campaign and talk about the primary, secondary, and tertiary benefits that came from doing such a major giveaway. 

The Importance of Social Media – DSP 314

Social media seems to be the only marketing platform that anyone talks about anymore. How to do facebook ads, when to post on Instagram, how to improve Google SEO… it’s a broad topic that seems to dominate the conversation in marketing. 

Ashkahn and Derek explain not only why it seems this way, but the misconception of relying too heavily on social media in marketing strategies, as well as a defense of social media as a platform.

How to not be salesy selling memberships – DSP 313

Derek and Ashkahn give the low down on pitching memberships to customers. A lot of float center owners don’t want to come off as pushy sales people after people get out of their floats. 

Ashkahn sympathizes with this a lot, since that’s exactly how he felt when he first started selling memberships for Float On. He and Derek suggest a perspective shift on the idea of memberships, as lots of customers end up being appreciative of the opportunity, and don’t feel like they’re being overly pitched to. 

Why is Water Treatment Important? – DSP 312

If float tank water is safe, in part because of all the salt, then why is there such a huge emphasis in the industry for water treatment? After all, there haven’t been any reports of anyone getting sick because of floating.

Ashkahn and Graham tackle this question and challenge the idea on its face, because, well, just because something hasn’t been reported doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, and given how little is known about water treatment in float tanks, it’s a good idea, as an industry, to minimize the risk of infections and illness as much as possible. Really, there’s a lot of reasons, from peace of mind, complying with health regulation standards, and even marketing, to maintain your float tank solution to as high a standard that you can. 

Soundproofing Windows of Your Float Center – DSP 311

Graham and Ashkahn discuss soundproofing windows of a float center, but first they talk about which situations may even warrant soundproofing in the first place. It may be that soundproofing is better prioritized elsewhere.

If you do decide to soundproof your window, the guys give you some tips on how best to do it and what to look for when picking out which type of glaze you may want along with a few other options. 

Latest Blog Posts

What? Another Product Announcement? The New and Improved About Float Tanks Guide!

What? Another Product Announcement? The New and Improved About Float Tanks Guide!

We’ve learned a lot since then, so has the industry and the rest of the world. Floating is no longer considered some obscure practice. The industry has become very well established the world over and is continuing to grow. As such, the About Float Tanks Guide in particular desperately needed updating.

There has been new research, new standards in manufacturing, and as an industry, we have a much better understanding of all things float tank.

Download the latest version today!

Announcing: The 2017 Float Tank Industry Report

Announcing: The 2017 Float Tank Industry Report

In 2014 we started gathering answers to a survey that would eventually become the very first State of the Float Industry Report. We've released one every year since, and this year we (once again) have the most contributions that we've ever had. In total, 193 existing...

Working with a Landlord

Working with a Landlord

If you’re planning on opening up a float center, it’s likely that you’ll end up renting and, therefore, working closely with a landlord. Like any business relationship, it takes communication, discernment, and openness to make a renter-landlord relationship feel truly comfortable.

Everyone involved is taking a risk and the reality is that, when it comes to floating, it’s probably more risk than your average small business – craft shop, bar, hair salon, law office, what-have-you.

This piece also includes a free download – a compilation of support letters from float center landlords!

Employees vs. Independent Contractors. Which is better when offering additional services?

Employees vs. Independent Contractors. Which is better when offering additional services?

Part of what makes all of this so confusing is there isn’t a one-size-fits-all set of actions that differentiates a standard employee from an independent contractor. Your State regulators, the federal Department of Labor, and the IRS all have their own criteria for what constitutes an “independent contractor”. Here, we’ll just be using the IRS definitions as a sort of jumping off point to the issue. If the status of employees is ever challenged, the IRS determines the status on a case-by-case basis over several criteria by a panel of judges, very similar to American Idol.

Basically it comes down to who is in control of the work. How much control does the company have over the type of job being done vs. how much control does the person providing the service. This manifests in different ways, but to fit the definition of an independent contractor, a service provider really does have to be independent. Beyond just using this guide, you should always consult an HR lawyer if you feel like there’s any confusion or ambiguity.

Basically, the rules fall into three main categories…