Online article in The Wall Street Journal written by Elizabeth Bernstein. The Wall Street Journal link here Appeared in the June 15, 2023, print edition as 'Finding Your Bliss by Floating'.
In the summer of 2022, the Float Research Collective (FRC) was officially formed as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Its mission is to establish worldwide acceptance for Floatation-REST (Reduced Environmental Stimulation Therapy) as a treatment to naturally relieve pain, stress, anxiety and other related conditions.
Justin's Float Conference talk form 2020
True Health interview the Director of the Float Research Collective, Justin Feinstein, PhD , to learn about therapeutic floating as a modality for stress, anxiety and pain management. Tom Rifai, MD, FACP - 20 July 2021
From LIBR to “Daddy School” – it’s been a big shift for everyone’s favorite float researcher. If you attended the 2020 Virtual Float Conference, you may have heard the big news that Dr. Justin Feinstein was leaving the Laureate Institute for Brain Research. Now that he’s officially living a tropical life, you may be wondering if Dr. Feinstein’s float life is over. As we chat with him in this episode, it’s clear that that notion couldn’t be further from the truth! While Dr. Feinstein has been focusing on his family life for a few months, the great work at LIBR is continuing under the direction of Dr. Sahib Khalsa… AND Dr. Feinstein’s big dreams are starting to take shape! As he says, he’s “doubling down” on floating, and he needs help getting the Float Research Collective off the ground and then opening his own float clinic in Maui. He presented the idea at Rise in 2019 and is ready to bring the whole float community into the research world, in a way that will help gather publishable data. If you would like to get involved, sign up for newsletter updates h ere .
Recent eating-disorder-specific research supports Floatation-REST not only as a safe intervention, but also as one that might have a surprisingly positive effect on body image.
Sahib Khalsa of LIBR talks to CNN about the positive effects of floating.
"Once you get into the tank and have marvelled at your own buoyancy, flicked the lights on and off to see if you're scared (I am a bit, initially), and rolled around, everything relaxes. When your thumb has stopped involuntarily scrolling, and your brain stops telling you to refresh your emails, you relax your shoulders, unclench your jaw, move your neck around, straighten your back, release your tongue from the roof of your mouth, and loosen your hands. Related: Thinking of joining a book club? It may improve your wellbeing And when you've really settled in, and you're floating, naked and spread out like a starfish in a silent, black pod with a quiet mind, there comes a point when the temperature of the water, which is body temperature, becomes indecipherable from the air in the pod. The lack of light and sound reduces your sense of touch, so when I reach that meditative state, it doesn't feel like I'm in a pod, in water, or in anything at all. It's like floating in nothingness or drifting in space. If you have 15 tabs open in your brain at any one time, three to-do lists on your desk, and find you're doing everything and achieving nothing, flotation therapy is the one for you."
What is it about floating that makes it such a great therapy for anxiety, depression, PTSD, and other disorders?
Los Angeles resident Megan Holiday was looking for a little peace and quiet. As an on-air personality at KROQ radio station and host of her own podcast, 7 Words, the busy, media-savvy DJ found a potential source of respite through some of her favorite entertainment outlets. "I first began hearing about deprivation tanks on podcasts — Joe Rogan, Duncan Trussell Family Hour — and it was in hearing them talk about the experience that my level of interest began to peak," she writes via email. "They talked about how it was the ultimate meditation experience, a place to fully disconnect from outside stimulus and go inward. As someone who deals with anxiety on a daily basis, I use meditation as a way to cope and felt that the deprivation tank could also be a new resource for me." Holiday isn't alone: Since the 1950s, people have been dabbling in a practice known as restricted environmental stimulation therapy (REST), a type of intervention rooted in sensory deprivation (i.e., cutting off your senses of sight, smell, hearing, etc.), often through the use of a special chamber known as a deprivation tank. Studies have found that REST may be a useful stress-management tool, a successful treatment of addictive behaviors and a potential adjunct therapy for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Not to mention, even "The Simpsons" partook in the experience in the 1999 episode, "Make Room for Lisa." If you, like me, are wildly claustrophobic and the idea of a "deprivation tank" (also known as a "sensory deprivation tank," "flotation tank" or "isolation tank") terrifies you to your core, then perhaps you've written off the therapy altogether. But there's a lot more to the nontraditional method than you may know....... read the full article here
