By Kalyn Wolf
At Cloud Nine Flotation, many businessmen are regular clients. They tell me they use floating each week to enhance their creativity, expand their thinking processes and increase clarity and intuition. Many note they look forward to their tank sessions, particularly when they are stymied by a problem because they have discovered that floating enables them to think ‘outside the box.’
What about businesswomen????
Until recently, they were only conspicuous by their absence! As a female business owner myself, I can state that floating has enabled me to solve problems, expand my goals, and enhance my creativity. Why aren’t more women executives regular floaters?
My own sense is that many haven’t yet accepted the importance of “no time”. Steve Jobs was well-known for scheduling regular periods of inactivity and Albert Einstein said he had to stop thinking and ‘swim in silence’ to find deeper answers. Yet many women appear to think perfection lies in multi-tasking from sun up to sun down, juggling everything until they drop from exhaustion, only to rise and do it all over again.
It is time to adopt the successful practices of our male forebears…and float regularly!
The benefits of floating include:
- Profound relaxation
- Mind expansion
- Physical recovery (deeper and longer lasting than massage)
- Better focus
- Unleashed creativity and more.
If you can find solutions to problems easier, discover inspiration and enhance inner health — shouldn’t you be floating?
Are you thinking you’re doing great because you schedule regular spa days? Think again! Spas are wonderful, but they do not provide sensory isolation. In fact, quite the opposite! Music, scents, heated stones, conversation with your masseuse – it is a session of a broad array of sensory inputs, not a break from them!
Clearing your mind and loosening the bonds of daily life requires isolation, and that is only available in a sensory isolation tank. The tank itself is filled with 10 inches of water, kept at the same temperature as your skin. That water contains 800 pounds of Epsom salts, which is largely magnesium chloride. Like the Dead Sea, all that salt makes a body — any body! — totally buoyant. It takes no concentration, no ability on your part. You get in, lie down and float. It’s automatic, and completely liberating.
One of the lesser known benefits of floating is relief from jet lag! Why? Because being in an environment such as a float tank resets your inner clock. There is no perception of time in a float tank, so it gives your mind the opportunity to be in whatever current time zone you are in. Whenever I travel to a new time zone (more than an hour difference) I always book myself into a local float center for a 90 min float. That time will enable you to fully utilize every minute of your trip!
If you are in a new city to give a presentation and you need to be fresh, there is no better place to pre-plan that presentation than a float tank. Not only will you relax, your mind and body will move into the current time zone, and you may even discover some new aspect to highlight in your presentation.
Recently, a businesswoman new to floating came to try it at Cloud Nine. She reported getting new ideas for resolving some long term problems and scheduled regular floats for the coming weeks, despite living a good distance away.
I was taught in using Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) that if you want success you need to discover what successful people do and duplicate it. Put simply, successful people FLOAT.
“No time” is important. You need the space to dream, to imagine, to enter Tech No – no sensory input, no boundaries. Olympians Delaney Schnell, Ally Raisman, Alec Gregory, Michael Phelps…dozens of professional sports teams…they all float. Shouldn’t you?
A lot of people want to know how they will feel after a float. I wish I could answer that question but I can’t. I can tell you what will happen physically: you’ll be immersed in magnesium filled water, absorb that magnesium and receive all the benefits of that like smooth skin, and a good night’s sleep. I can tell you that your body will be suspended in a zero gravity position, which will take the pressure off your spine and hips. But I cannot tell you what will happen in between your ears. Some people come out incredibly refreshed, and energized. Some people want a nap and there is no predicting what your float results will be. It’s best to plan to do, you guessed it, nothing for a couple of hours after your float just in case you get the nap float.
Whatever your days consist of, floating will give you insights that will enable you to make the most of them!
