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

How to get your Water Tested – DSP 359

Every once in a while during float industry events, during this podcast, or talks given by health department professionals and the like, they’ll say something like “if you get your water tested and…”. But how does a float center do that? Where should they look? Is there just a lab that they can send their float solution to? Are all labs the same? How much does it cost? 

Ashkahn and Graham take on the difficult task of making sense of microbiology testing laboratories, regulatory institutions, and acronyms, all so you don’t have to. 

A Few of Our Favorite Things – DSP 358

Graham and Ashkahn take a break from all the doom and gloom of the float world to talk about the amazing things that floating has brought them. What they love, the things that surprised them, and the many ways in which they’re inspired to stick with it and pioneer in this wild and crazy industry.

Learning to Trust Your Gut in Business – DSP 357

Learning to Trust Your Gut in Business – DSP 357

Sometimes, the hardest part of starting any project is to just take the leap of faith complete step one. 

With some words of encouragement and caution, Graham & Ashkahn channel their inner Tony Robbins and encourage a highly knowledgeable aspiring float center owner, to trust their gut and start their float center.

How Long to Run a Filter Between Floats – DSP 356

How long should you run the filtration system for between floats? It’s an eternal question that has plagued float center owners since the dawn of time (Or at least until 1978 when the first float center opened up). 

Ashkahn and Graham break down the science behind why you should filter for as long as you do and how to properly plan for it. This densely packed episode is filled to the brim with a summary of knowledge on water dilution, filtration, flow meters, and water sanitation brought over to float tanks from the pool and spa world. Take notes as you listen, there’s a lot to assess.

How to Reward your Employees – DSP 355

Recognizing that your employees rock is one of the most valuable traits an employer can have, but only as long as said employer is able to properly acknowledge that appreciation. 

Graham and Ashkahn share their take on rewarding employees for their hard work and how to make it count when you want to give them a gift. The duo has no shortage of examples of how they’ve shown their appreciation at Float On, and this episode is dense with examples of nice gifts and rewards to provide staff, from the practical to the symbolic. 

Latest Blog Posts

B-Gray’s School on Nothing

B-Gray’s School on Nothing

I Got Nothing to Say! Okay, so here’s the thing. Floating is often associated with meditation and ultimately achieving this state of void, commonly and perhaps glibly referred to as “Nothing” by salty tank proprietors everywhere. And listen, I’m totally on board with...

When (and how) Salt Attacks!

When (and how) Salt Attacks!

This post was spurred on by work that I did illustrating hundreds of pages for our Construction Packet. As an illustrator, I spend extra time nailing down details, just to eliminate potential sources of confusion. While looking into salt weathering, I came across some...