I'm floating naked on 10” of water that's been saturated with 800lbs of Epson's salt – floating like a cork. The water temperature is 93.5 degrees Fahrenheit which is also my skin's temperature. In short order the separation between my body and the water begins to disappear. The effects of gravity are also gone. I wear ear plugs and my float tank is light proof. It feels like I no longer have a body – like my consciousness is floating in space – how cool is this?

We experience the world via our 5 senses of taste, sight, touch, smell, and hearing. While I'm Floating There's no sight, sound, touch, or gravity. There's nothing to smell and you don't even want to taste Epsons salt - yuck. When these sensory inputs stop and my nerves dissipate, my body relaxes. “It says, ‘Hey, there’s nothing happening here. I’m safe.’ And the body self-regulates. That state is one of deep relaxation. Western medicine would call it an aid to homostatious or the maintenance of a stable level of internal conditions even though the environmental conditions are changing. An example of homostatious is your body temperature. Regardless of outside weather conditions your body maintains that 98.6 or “normal” temperature. Disturb this homostatious and you'd call it being ill. Is floating new-agey mumbo jumbo? Not quite - floating has been around for over 60 years,and has oodles of published research to back it up. No mumbo or jumbo here.

I'm a firm believer in the bodies ability to self heal itself under most if not all conditions. No offense meant to my doctor and healer friends, but without the bodies cooperation your bag of tricks are worthless. Floating gets you out of your own way and allows the body to heal itself.

Doctors Joe Dispenza and Bruce Lipton both claim that up to 90% of your brain is out of your conscious control. That 10% of your brain that is under your conscious control can and often does raise hell with your health - if you let it, so I regularly give it a break via sensory deprivation or floating. I like to call it meditation on steroids. The benefits of meditation are well-documented, but the benefits of floating have some catching up to do. My friend google found only 8 float spas in Oregon. I'm sure there's many more than that, especially if you take into consideration all the people that float at home, but if you compare that to the millions of mediators in Oregon it's still a relatively new thing to the public. Lucky for me one of the eight float spas is located close to me in Southern Oregon. Jamie and her crew at SO Float and Massage are all super friendly and keep the place hospital clean. http://sofloatspa.com/ is just a few miles up the street from me.

One of the many theories on brain function is talked about by Dr. Jill Bolte in her Ted Talk: A stroke of Insight She talks about the two hemispheres of the brain. The left side is responsible for monitoring our external systems and is under conscious control. It tells me to pick up milk on the way home, or to call my girlfriend tonight, and the right hemisphere is responsible for monitoring our internal systems and is mostly unconscious. All of your bodily functions like beating your heart, digesting your food, controlling your bodies temperature etc.

Jill suffered a stroke and the resulting hemorrhage and blood clot destroyed part of her left hemisphere. In 1981 I was in a severe car accident and one of the many surgeries I had following was the exact surgery that Dr. Jill had to remove a blood clot from my left hemisphere. It had been damaged much like Jill's. Both Jill and I have learned that the right hemisphere is responsible for much more than your body functions. It's the receiver of Source energy – the source that connects all of life. It gives us a much more holistic view of life and tells us that we are not separate, but connected with everything else in the Universe. It's my belief that floating can and will give this right-brain perspective to all that bother to learn and practice it. What are you waiting for?