Flotation therapy, mindfulness meditation, and interoception

08 Apr Flotation therapy, mindfulness meditation, and interoception

When floating for the first time, it can be challenging to enjoy all it offers. We strive to relax our body and mind, but something prevents us from fully indulging in sensory tranquility and its benefits.

Through our own experience floating, we’ve discovered three main obstacles that stand in the way of complete mind and body relaxation:

1.  We live in an environment of continuous external stimulation and an information flow our brain constantly processes. We are used to an active lifestyle and a stressful environment. When we put ourselves under conditions of sensory deprivation, the mind is still tuned into the busy lifestyle it’s used to. Intense thoughts and anxiety can invade our mind, and prevent us from enjoying the practice and reaping its benefits.

1. We’re all human beings and carry our own fears and prejudices. Getting out of one’s comfort zone isn’t an easy task — e.g. fear of water or claustrophobia. We’ve all experienced similar fears, such as the fear of falling when learning to ride a bicycle, or the fear of being alone in the dark. Fear is a factor that prevents us from taming our minds and relaxing our muscles, leading to tension in various parts of the body.

1. According to scientific studies, it takes people at least three float sessions to build trust in this new environment, to fully understand flotation and the brain-body connections, and to let go of our initial instincts and fears that come with them.

One solution to overcoming these obstacles is mindfulness meditation, where instead of using the traditional approach of observing the movement of the mind from minute to minute and the changing thoughts and emotions that come our way, we aim to deliberately relax every part of our body. A significant element in achieving this is interoception.

In our muscles, tendons and joints there are receptors from which the brain constantly receives information about the exact position of the body and its parts in the surrounding environment. Most of the time we move consciously in the space that surrounds us, but there are movements and adjustments in body posture that we are not aware of. Take climbing stairs in the dark for example. At first, we are very careful and it takes time to get over the first few steps, but then the task becomes easier and we climb the rest almost unconsciously. This happens thanks to the interoceptive information that our brain receives, it is already familiar with the height of the steps and the distance to each next one, and it is no longer necessary that our full attention is involved in the process.

Interoceptive information is also relevant to the daily fight against gravity that our body is subjected to. Our brain analyzes this information and sends signals to various muscles and muscle groups in our body, thus regulating and maintaining a certain body position to stay on our feet and not fall to the ground under the pressure of gravity.

In the conditions of sensory deprivation (total darkness and silence), most of our senses are turned off, gravity and the constant effort we make to maintain our posture are also out of the equation because of the water salinity in the float tank.

Through the methods of mindfulness meditation, we become more aware of the configuration of individual parts of our body, and flotation heightens sensations, enhances our ability to feel our physical body – we are able to feel the tension in different parts, we can focus on them and through the feedback mechanisms, using the interoceptive information we already understand, we can consciously relax every single part of our body and release the tension as we float. This makes relaxation easier even for a beginner and allows us to get the most out of flotation therapy.