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SEVEN THEORIES OF FLOATING

DR JOHN LILLY - FOUNDER OF *SAMADHI* FLOATATION TANKS, AND PIONEER OF INTERSPECIES COMMUNICATION

HISTORY OF THE FLOAT TANK

MORE EXCERPTS FROM MICHAEL HUTCHISON'S BOOK ON FLOATING

From everything we have seen, in the last 13 years of investigating alternative healing approaches, the simplest, most holistic and far reaching has been the therapy that is naturally produced in the extreme relaxation of the floatation tank.
Though there are similar traditional forms as is found in the practices of many ancient esoteric traditions, the prerequisite to make advances has almost always been a healthy body, capable of relaxation for long periods of time. In fact many traditional forms have exercises to specifically help one reach that state. But what if you can't sit for long hours, and laying down hurts your back or even makes you fall asleep? Deep, stable, conscious and consistent relaxation has been known throughout all traditions to bring many benefits, other than just good health and a long, satisfying life.

With very little acclimation, simply lying in water heated to your body temperature, that is saturated with MgCl or NaCl(for bouyancy), in a chamber that becomes completely dark and completely quiet, one can quickly move into spaces of relaxation never before experienced - and get clarity about one's life as a result. .
In this new depth of relaxation, new potential of self healing naturally opens up. The body unwinds, the spine straightens, the organs can even readjust their positions - anything that the body has not been able to focus on due to daily stress, it now takes care of - automatically. The natural laboratory in the body begins to create what is necessary to put everything back into balance. The nervous system is enhanced and enlivened, and the mind has an opportunity to view itself from a new perspective, many times bringing monumental insights. Drowning if you fall asleep? Not possible - the water is so bouyant that you would have to turn off your back and stick your face flat in the twelve inches deep water. Turning off your back would require a lot of effort - taking you out of a relaxed state, and keeping you from sleep. The floater is quite aware of any spontaneous movement of the body. This is highly recommended even if you can already reach deep levels of relaxation - for meditation or consciousness studies, there is nothing quite like it. Relax.Relax. Relax...
 

from Michael Hutchison's "The Book Of Floating"

Floatation offers a relatively stress-free environment in which to escape temporarily from stressful external stimuli and free your system from its chronic state of arousal. This makes it a useful and life enhancing tool. But if that were all it did, floatation would be essentially a passive tool, and entering a tank would be little different from sitting quietly in a dark room. While the absence of stress is desirable in itself, it doesn't necessarily bring about the presence of its opposite, relaxation.
Floatation goes far beyond the passive. Scientists have now proven that floating activates a physiological response that is parallel to, and as powerful as, the stressful one of fight or flight. This response mobilizes the body's resources to bring about an active, alert, positive, and beneficial state of relaxation.
...We all know what stress is. Though we might not be able to explain the physiological process, we're quite clear about our feelings. We talk about sweaty palms, chills down the spine, quivering like a leaf, getting cold feet, being tight-assed, having butterflies in the stomach, or receiving a shot of adrenaline. Many use these phrases with the belief that they're just figures of speech, apt cliches, not realizing that they are describing with poetic exactness very real physiological processes, all if which are part of an unconscious, reflective reaction to stress known as the flight-or-flight response.

...The idea of alleviating psychosomatic disorders by breaking the vicious cycle of stress and stress-reaction brings us to the floatation tank. While the stress relief of the tank works on a number of levels simultaneously, one obvious fact is that entering the floatation tank removes you from most stressors, both the primary stressor and secondary environmental stresses. In the tank there is no noise, no light, no other people, nothing to do, and nothing that needs to be or can be done. Like that time after the fight of the near accident, when you needed someplace just to sit and wind down, the tank is the perfect recovery-from-stress spot. There, with no possible threat from the outside world, your body slows down, the flood of chemicals that has jangled your nerves is eliminated, and your body chemistry returns to normal. And just as when, after some stressful moment, your heightened arousal gives way to a feeling of deep calmness, so in the tank the deepening relaxation of your body and brain is perceived as a delicious sensation of peace, well-being, exhilaration: I have survived and I am alive!

ere's a rough attempt to articulate my first float: I began to contemplate my "thereness"--not in terms of simple location, because in a void there is no "whereness" just "awareness." The thereness to awareness is the inner place, which the "echo from Eden" addresses. The echo from Eden is the first question God posed to man, "Where are you?" Taken literally it would be about simple location (behind the bushes). Taken metaphorically, it's about levels of consciousness. As an echo, it's the archetypal question which confronts everyman, in the stillness of his innermost soul. Further ponderings: The question is raised when man is hiding. Again, not literally, but metaphorically. The question was first asked not to authentic man, but to estranged man--hiding from his true self. What do we do in response to the question, "Where are you?" Look at what man has done throughout history. We drown out the question with our own mind chatter and our meaningless rituals. Arthur Hauck, my mentor, referred to common prayer as "holy motion" to quench the stillness where we hear, "Where are you?" When the congregation collectively prays, it's "holy co-motion!" Church is not a place where man finds himself, it's a place where man sanctions his estrangement. He's still hiding in the bushes, he's simply clipped them into a spire shape. Therein he bows before the gods of his own making. The true meaning of the world church (eklesia) is the "called out ones"--out from the bushes to what Hauck calls heaven--"the celebration of authenticity." The answer to the question, "Where are you?" in that sense might be, "home."

History of the Tank Does the Brain Need Stimulation?
When: 1953 Scientific Question: What happens if you remove the stimulation of the outside world? Hypothesis: Many scientists wondered what would happen if a person were cut off from all sensory stimulation and from interactions with the world outside. Scientists influenced by the "behaviorist" school, thought of the brain as an organ that reacts to stimuli. They predicted that if all outside stimuli were cut off, the brain would cease its activity resulting in a condition resembling coma, or dreamless sleep. An alternate hypothesis was that in a state of profound isolation from stimuli and interaction with the world, the brain would continue operating and generating experiences. Dr. John Lilly tested these hypotheses with experiments he set up at the National Institutes of Mental Health Lab in the Virgin Islands. He limited stimulation to the minimum possible level while removing sources of discomfort and stress. His "isolation" tank design approached this ideal as closely as possible and the experiment was up and running by the end of 1954. John C. Lilly MD, the tank's inventor

The First Isolation Tank Work

In the isolation tank, Dr. Lilly found that he could relax his mind and dream, but his consciousness was always there, ready to take charge. He could choose to relax and let things happen, in which case the images would free-associate, moving as if randomly from one to the next. Or he could choose to program what would happen, in a process similar to lucid dreaming, but with an even greater degree of control. He could invent a scenario ahead of time with his consciousness fully focused, and then relax and let his brain carry out the program.

The Principal Discovery

The important discovery was, "So within yourself you do have at least the circuitry to exert control over these systems. You can create a sense of well-being, or you can create a sense of fear out of the operation of your own bio-computer. That's the most important message we have in regard to self meta-programming. I saw that in the tank."
"Somewhere, deep within the brain, was a mechanism capable of generating internal experiences completely independent of the outside world, and this settled the issue of what happens in profound physical isolation. The mind does not pass into unconsciousness, the brain does not shut down. Instead, it constructs experience out of stored impressions and memories. The isolated mind becomes highly active and creative. This was the principal discovery that Dr. Lilly reported in his first three scientific papers on the isolation tank research, published in 1956, 1957, and 1958."

The First Major Group - the Exteriorites

"Lilly sees the tank as having two major uses. One is for individuals who are satisfied with and thoroughly tied into modal Western concepts about the relationship between the individual and the external world: that is, for whom the external world is the only reality, and for whom the internal world of imagery and fantasy is perceived as something unreal. If the individual is satisfied and content in this mode, the isolation tank can be used as a place to consider one's problems and work out solutions with a minimum of distraction...."

Consciousness Seekers

"For another group of people, the distinction between external circumstances and internal processes is not so clear-cut. They perceive both sets of phenomena as partaking of the quality of realness. These people may be interested in self-analysis, meditation, transcendental experiences, and altered states of consciousness. For them, the isolation environment is useful because it minimizes interactions with the external reality and allows the internal domain to be more fully explored."

Promise or Possibility

Author Michael Hutchinson in "The Book of Floating" speaks well here. "A new tool has been developed that, like the computer, has the potential not only of bringing about enormous increase in our capabilities as individuals but also of fundamentally changing our way of life as a society. This tool is the floatation tank, an enclosed chamber filled with approximately ten inches of warm saturated solution of Epsom salts. A solution so dense that even the thinnest person floats supine with the entire body at or near the surface of the water. The buoyancy counteracts the effects of gravity, giving the floater a sensation of weightlessness. The chamber is pitch-black, silent. In the absence of sensory input, the floater feels detached, free, at peace, Most floaters report enhanced mental powers. Virtually everyone finds the experience immensely pleasant. And, as one prominent scientist says, the tank provides a method of attaining the deepest rest that we have ever experienced."

Who's Who In America ...Lilly, John Cunningham, med. scientist, author; b. St. Paul, Jan 6, 1915;....to the present. "My life is devoted to exploration of inner and outer realities; this means a thorough self-review frequently, conducted with candor and discipline derived from medical, scientific, psychoanalytic and research training over the years...." John C. Lilly was honored in a Symposium held April, 2000, originating from San Francisco and transmitted globally by webcast. This symposium is an historical event with the goal of demonstrating the scope and reverberations of Dr. Lilly's work and disseminating it globally to allow it to infect the lives of those waiting to know of and use this body of work. During the time of the Symposium the following letter arrived:"It has been many, many years since, at the age of 17, I discovered "Center of the Cyclone". It came at a very painful crossroad in my life, when I was confused and muddled, not merely because that was the nature of my life at that age, but because there was tremendous tumult going on in society at large, and it overwhelmed me. When I found the "Center of the Cyclone", and subsequently the "Diadic Cyclone"--- but even more, "Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer"-- it changed my life forever. I began to have what may be best-called a "relationship" to internal reality, corresponding in objectivized-spatiality to the outer reality. It was as though you had given me a rational "peg board" in which to place all subsequent information. It was the greatest gift-- a universal category, so-to-speak, like the Transcendental Schemata of Kant. Over the years, I have realized how, in great child-like innocence, and a desperate need to understand-away pain, I identified with your devotion to exploring and teaching what you discovered. You were a n invisible role-model for me. Above all, I identified with your insistence on "objectivity, despite the destructive draw of many different spiritual perspectives, which claim truth. At the age of 46, now doing inter-religious work with all the world's religions, I grow more and more clear that the understandings you unearthed in the "Cyclone" are foundational to every major faith-including that "faith", or consensus, we call "objective-science". In short, you changed my life as a teacher, like no other teacher or writer has ever done. Thank you. Thank you. If you should ever be in the New York Metropolitan area, I would be honored, if you would let me buy you dinner - and more honored, if we would have an opportunity to speak in person, and perhaps, form the rudiments of a friendship. And of course, I would be willing to come to California, or meet you half-way, at your convenience. With great love for someone I have never met. Rabbi Michael Shevack

The Samadhi Eco... call or email us for prices Contact Us

New, innovative, functional and very appropriate to this time. We call it the artist's tank because artists usually appreciate new ways of looking at ordinary materials. Yes. We replaced all the plastic parts that could be replaced with rugged corrugated board. That's a fancy name for cardboard. Of course everything that comes into direct contact with the water still has to be made of plastic. Everything else that could be converted has been changed to cardboard, to help the environment - and save you money.

* 1100 pound test tri-wall for structural support
* 600 pound test double-wall for structural support
* ABS plastic entry door
* PVC Plastic liner
* Lightproof
* Video and print Owner's Manual