Significantly decrease blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen consumption, blood lactate, and muscular tensionWe 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 clichés, not realizing that they are describing with poetic exactness very real physiological processes, all of which are part of an unconscious, reflexive reaction to stress known as the fight-or-flight response.
This reaction is initiated and carried out by the so-called involuntary nervous system. This system, also known as the autonomic nervous system, has two distinct but interdependent parts, each of which operates to mobilize the body’s resources in quite different ways, one by spending, one by saving: the first, by pouring out the body’s energy in actions; the second, by conserving and storing energy. The first, the sympathetic nervous system, is activated during the fight-or-flight response, in several distinct steps. Something happens in the external world; it is conveyed to the hypothalamus, which interprets it as a threat requiring response, and releases several neurochemicals. Some of these chemicals go to the nearby pituitary, where they trigger the release of the hormone ACTH (adrenocorticotropic hormone), which is rapidly carried through the bloodstream to the adrenal glands, where it triggers the release of cortisol. Cortisol causes an increase in blood sugar and accelerates the body’s metabolism in various ways. Meanwhile, other chemicals from the hypothalamus go directly to the adrenals, triggering an outpouring of epinephrine (adrenaline) and norepinephrine, thus releasing more blood sugar and increasing the heart rate, respiration, and blood pressure. These chemical chain reactions and physiological changes are all directed toward one goal: preparing the body with great speed to deal with some external threat. In rapid order, blood pressure rises; blood flow is shifted away from the digestive system and the periphery of the body to the heart and trunk muscles; respiration becomes shallow and rapid; the pelvis becomes rigid, anus tight, genitals numb; palms sweat; muscles become so tense we often tremble; oxygen consumption increases; body temperature rises; and as stress hormones flood through the system we respond with an “adrenaline rush,” that jolt of surging energy that enables a tiny woman to lift an automobile off her trapped husband. We are in what Dr. Kenneth Pelletier calls “an intense, overall state of undifferentiated hyperarousal.”186
In rats, rabbits, apes, or humans, the fight-or-flight response is a marvelously efficient evolutionary mechanism for enabling an animal to deal with a threat to its security. The complex biochemical and neurophysical actions enable the body to mobilize quickly its strengths and powers for defense, aggression, or flight. In situations of real threat, the animal can respond with fight or flight and, having discharged the energy of the automatic response, can (if it has survived) dive into its safe home or burrow and let the aftereffects of the response fade away. After we have delivered a speech, or narrowly avoided a car accident, or emerged from a barroom punch-out, we need time to recover, to sit back, still trembling, heart still pounding, breathing shallow, and let the emergency juices flow out of us. And as they do, we feel our muscles relax, breathing deepen, entire body seem to soften with a feeling of delicious release and relief, as we realize that the threat is over, and even more, the threat is over and I’m still alive!
But times have changed, and we civilized folk rarely confront threatening situations that can be dealt with so clearly. Our daily threats are more likely to consist of sitting next to some loud-talking idiot in a restaurant and wishing we could strangle the motormouth as we try to maintain a calm exterior in an important business negotiation.
Most stress-inducing stimuli we confront today are subtle, unidentifiable, or indirect: noise and air pollution; business, social, and family pressures; ambiguous civilized conflicts; environmental carcinogens; potential nuclear war; unemployment; constant fears of street crime; general antagonism between the sexes; and other abstract and insidious stressors. “Habitual, chronic, unabated stress has replaced such immediate threats as loss of life, starvation, or territorial combat which characterized the stresses of primitive man and animals,” says Pelletier, concluding that contemporary man is in “a perpetual state of nonspecific arousal.”186
The results of such unrelieved stress have been noted by endocrinologist Hans Selye, who described the specific series of processes by which we react to stress, a progression he called the General Adaptation Syndrome (G.A.S.).214 This syndrome, according to Selye, consists of three stages: alarm, resistance, and exhaustion. The alarm is our initial reaction to a stressor, the dramatic fight-or-flight mobilization of the body’s entire stress mechanism. In resistance, our bodies focus their attention on the specific point at which stress is attacking us, and the resistance shifts to those organs that are best capable of handling the threat. However, because our resources are diverted toward dealing with the specific stress, our general resistance to disease is weakened. If the threat is prolonged, our resources become exhausted, the immune system becomes depleted, and the body begins to break down, especially the organ or system that is handling the stressor.
Ultimately, when prolonged stress is not overcome, the body develops symptoms such as the shrinking of the thymus, spleen, and the lymph nodes; the disappearance of certain white blood cells; and stomach or duodenal ulcers. Just as an overworked machine breaks down at its weakest point, the human body appears to break down at its weakest spot, the “target organ,” which varies from person to person depending on heredity and life history.
Burn-out. To resist this stress, each person apparently has a certain amount of hereditary “adaptation energy.” Some people start out with a lot, others with less. Once this allotted amount of adaptation energy has been expended in resisting stress, however, it is gone for good, according to Selye: Like a nation’s oil deposits, it can be used only once and can’t be replenished. So people who have stumbled into a stressful marriage, say, or been subject to prolonged torture will use up their adaptation energy rapidly, will age quickly, and be more liable to disease. Many such people are correctly described as being burned out.
To add to the problem, man is unlike the other animals in that he has developed an enlarged cortex, which has to some degree taken over control of the other parts of the brain. So while our reptile brain and limbic system are reacting to stress with a powerful fight-or-flight response, our new cortex is often imposing a kind of censorship on our actions. This censorship is based on moral precepts that have no biological basis at all but are purely creations of our own minds. Thus, rather than recognizing stress symptoms for what they are, we often try to desensitize ourselves to or dissociate ourselves from the symptoms. When people are so frightened that they can’t eat, they tell themselves they have indigestion; when anxiety robs them of sleep, they talk about insomnia; the chronic tight back that is a reaction to deep terror is referred to as a back problem.
Ironically, these reactions, which are actually only normal responses to stress, are perceived by the sufferers as symptoms of disease which increases their anxiety, which in turn increases the symptoms, in a self-feeding cycle of ever more serious symptoms and reactions. While our normal reaction to stress is to run or to violently defend ourselves, our society is based on restraining these impulses to action. However, as Pelletier points out, “Immobility is interpreted by the subcortex as evidence of insufficient preparation for fight or flight and it initiates more vigorous biochemical reactions. Subjectively the individual experiences this biochemical alteration as mounting tension. The termination or interruption of this highly destructive cycle may be the key to alleviating psychosomatic disorders.”
But how can we interrupt this progressively degenerative cycle? According to Pelletier, “To restore an individual’s capacity to identify, react to, and then relax from stressful conditions appears to be the critical point of resolution. Such an intervention based upon individual autoregulation is both necessary and possible.”186
Fight or Flight or Float
The idea of alleviating psychosomatic disorders by breaking the vicious cycle of stress and stress reaction brings us right 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 or 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 l am alive!
Another important factor: To relax fully, an individual must, as Pelletier says, have the capacity to “identify, react to, and then relax from stressful conditions.” Unfortunately, few people can find the time or place in this stressful society for serious contemplation of their lives and identification of the causes of their problems. For some with large amounts of time and money, psychoanalysis has attempted to fulfill this function. But the fact remains that our society places little value on sitting alone, silently, contemplating our lives, examining ourselves for tension, and seeking out its immediate and indirect causes.
The floatation tank, removing all external distractions, provides the floater with an unhurried, unpressured opportunity to examine his or her life from a distance, to get a comparatively objective view of any situation, to interrupt the cycle of fight-or-flight tension before it gets out of control, and before it is too late.
The Relaxation Response
That the floatation tank 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 makes it a useful and life enhancing tool. But if that were all it did, the floatation tank 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.
The floatation tank goes far beyond the passive. Scientists have now proved 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 deep relaxation.
The description of relaxation as a distinct, active, and alert state may strike you as paradoxical or nonsensical. After all, we get “relaxed’’ when we’re spaced out in front of the tube, or catching some rays on the beach, out fishing, or just goofing off, hacking around, laid back—none of which are particularly distinct, active or alert states. One of the unfortunate legacies of the Judeo-Christian heritage that still permeates our culture is the tendency to look on relaxation as something opposed to productive activity. If you’re relaxed, then ipso facto you’re not doing anything worthwhile. So, with its connotations of laziness, lethargy, and wasting time, we look on relaxation as a luxury, something unimportant or even a bit shameful, when in truth our normal life puts us into such a state of chronic tension and arousal that relaxation is absolutely essential to maintaining our mental and physical health.
Another misconception in our accepted view is that relaxation is something that just happens whenever we stop doing “productive” things or get away from overtly stressful situations—all we have to do is stop working and presto! we’re relaxed. In reality, as Pelletier points out, “The reacquisition of a harmonious state of mind-body integration requires both effort and training to establish and sustain.”186 It is no more natural to be in a state of true relaxation than it is to be in a state of fight-or-flight arousal. Like fight or flight, relaxation is a distinct physiological response that involves the coordinated activities of a large part of our nervous system.
The fight-or-flight response, initiated by the hypothalamus, involves the activities of the part of the autonomic nervous system that is called the sympathetic nervous system. There is a second part of the autonomic system, also regulated by the hypothalamus: the parasympathetic nervous system. Like a mirror image of the sympathetic system, the parasympathetic works by decreasing muscular tension and releasing biochemicals that fill the body with a sense of well-being, pleasure, safety, and euphoria. While the sympathetic system is mainly involved in spending, in mobilizing our bodies for outward activity, muscular exertion, and the use of large amounts of energy, the parasympathetic system is mainly involved in saving, in the housekeeping work of the body, and focuses on nourishing and repairing our tissues, excreting wastes, relaxing, and building up and storing energy.
The effects of the parasympathetic response are as striking as those of the sympathetic response, though generally opposite, and include a reduction in heart rate, blood pressure, and sweating, increased functioning of the gastrointestinal tract, a change in the predominant type of brain-wave activity from beta waves to alpha and theta waves, the relaxation of muscles, decreased respiratory rate, decreased use of oxygen, decrease of blood lactate. Like our vast repertoire of stock phrases to describe the fight-or-flight state, we have numerous colorful expressions for the parasympathetic response that we often assume to be simply useful metaphors but which are quite exact and apt: People feel “warmth in their veins,” are “glowing” and “positively radiant”; some people “soften our hearts.” In this state we become “loose,” or “solid as a rock,” and “breathe easy.”
Herbert Benson of Harvard Medical School made a study of this parasympathetic reaction and, counterposing it to the fight-or-flight response, named it The Relaxation Response. Benson and his colleagues found that this response, while produced by the activation of part of our involuntary system, can be quite easily elicited through conscious use of certain specific techniques, which can be learned and used by anyone.
Benson and his colleagues studied ancient meditative disciplines as well as such modern systems as Transcendental Meditation and the recent discoveries in biofeedback, and concluded that they all worked by eliciting the relaxation response, and that they all were able to do so by using certain techniques in combination. By eliminating nonessential elements and finding the common roots of all the techniques, Benson concluded that there are four preconditions for eliciting the relaxation response:
(1) Mental Device—There should be a constant stimulus e.g., a sound, word, or phrase repeated silently or audibly, or fixed gazing at an object. The purpose of these procedures is to shift from logical, externally oriented thought. (2) Passive Attitude—If distracting thoughts do occur during the repetition or gazing, they should be disregarded and one’s attention should be redirected to the technique….(3) Decreased Muscle Tonus.—The subject should be in a comfortable posture so that minimal muscular work is required. (4) Quiet Environment—A quiet environment with decreased environmental stimuli should be chosen.21
Benson, and numerous other researchers who have since studied the relaxation response, have found it quite effective in alleviating virtually every stress-related disease and problem (and most experts estimate that 85 to 90 percent of all illness today is stress-related), including high blood pressure, ulcers, asthma, anxiety, fatigue, and heart disease. In addition, anyone who regularly elicits the relaxation response seems to profit with increased emotional, mental, and physical strength and stability; decreased consumption of drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol; and increased ability to cope with the stresses of everyday life.
Something that is so good for you and makes you feel so good—there’s got to be a catch, right? Yes. The catch is, as millions of people have found out who have at one time or another tried to meditate, it is not as easy as it sounds. Meditation, or any technique for eliciting the relaxation response, demands discipline: You must learn the technique, and then you must stick to it long enough for it to begin to have an effect. Many people require several weeks of daily practice before they can reach the state of physical quietness that means success. Many, lacking either faith or discipline, or simply under too much stress, give up rather quickly. In many cases they are so irritated by their apparent inability to learn this “simple” technique that their level of stress has been increased. For some who are already nervous, tense, suffering from a stress-related illness, the idea that they should sit quietly and calm their minds long enough to become deeply relaxed seems a bad joke. Research has shown that a large number of people today lead lives of such habitual tension and chronic low-level stress that they have never in their adult lives experienced true relaxation. It’s not surprising that large numbers of people are unable to reach states of relaxation through self-help techniques: Telling most people to relax is like sending them out in search of a frumious bandersnatch. They’re not going to be able to find it unless they know what it is.
Easy Meditation. For these people, and for anyone interested in eliciting the relaxation response, the floatation tank is the perfect tool. A look through the latest research makes it clear: The floatation tank is the easiest, most rapid, most foolproof and failure-free method of obtaining the beneficial mental and physical effects of the relaxation response yet discovered.
Scientific evidence—mentioning only studies dealing with physiological effects linked with the parasympathetic response—has shown that a single float as short as forty-five minutes can:
Significantly decrease blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen consumption, blood lactate, and muscular tension
Increase production of alpha and theta waves in the brain, and bring about synchronous and symmetrical rhythms throughout the cortex
Increase circulation to the extremities and the gastrointestinal system
Decrease the levels of such fight-or-flight biochemicals as epinephrine, norepinephrine, ACTH, and cortisol.
Some of the most fascinating work in this context is that of neuroendocrinologist John Turner and psychologist Thomas Fine of the Medical College of Ohio. They have done extensive testing of the effects of floating on hormones and other neurochemicals. They discovered that a single float activated the relaxation response, and more importantly, that it did so by very specifically countering the effects of the fight-or-flight response. That is, they found that floating significantly lowered all the correlates of the adrenal-sympathetic arousal state, such as ACTH, adrenaline, and cortisol; and further, that a series of floats increased the effectiveness of the relaxation response. Most significantly, they found that floating had a strong “maintenance effect”—the lowering of adrenal-sympathetic (fight-or-flight) activity went on for many days after the subject’s last float. This led them to conclude, in the words of Turner, that floating “could alter the set points in the endocrine homeostatic mechanism so that the individual would be experiencing a lower adrenal activation state. It would essentially be associated with a greater degree of relaxation.”252 This is striking and significant, since it means that the beneficial effects of floating are not just temporary, but have the effect of altering the metabolism (or homeostatic set-points), essentially damping down the fight-or-flight response, and pumping up the relaxation response.
Since the control center of what Fine and Turner call “the endocrine homeostatic mechanism” is the hypothalamus, another way of stating this is that floating apparently makes the hypothalamus more resistant to stress, and does so for long periods of time. Says Yale biochemist Philip Applewhite, “The hypothalamus brain program that recognizes stress when it comes in over the nerves is certainly a source of variability. Some people may feel stressed when not much has happened to them; they have a low tolerance for stress. For others it may take considerably more stress before the hypothalamus identifies it as such; these people have a high tolerance for stress.”4 According to the research of Fine and Turner, floating “alters the set-point in the endocrine homeostatic mechanism so that the individual would be experiencing a lower adrenal activation state.”252 That is, floating is a way of increasing our tolerance for stress.
What’s fascinating about these studies, and is borne out in my interviews with floaters, is that this extraordinarily deep relaxation is a product of the tank experience itself, not the result of some conscious effort or technique on the part of the floaters. It just happens. Turner and Fine concluded one of their papers with a comparison of floatation with other relaxation techniques:
These [other] techniques have the individual elicit relaxation utilizing some internal strategy with or without external feedback as to the success of the strategy. In contrast [floatation tank] relaxation utilizes an environment to induce relaxation with the individual passively experiencing the process… The controlled repeated experiences of this effortless passive relaxation provided by the [tank] may provide an advantage over these other methods requiring a trial and error approach to the deep relaxation state.74
This “effortless” aspect of floatation is important, because it means that even those people who have never felt deep relaxation, and therefore don’t really know what it is, are enabled to experience the state. It usually happens during the first float, and is unmistakable. Many discover for the first time what it means to release all muscular tension, and they can see how habitually tense they have been; they understand clearly that relaxation is not lethargy or the simple absence of overt stress, but a distinct and beneficial state.
“I never knew!” shouted my friend Courtney as soon as I picked up the phone. An experienced meditator, Courtney is a novelist, intensely involved in finishing his magnum opus, under a lot of stress. I had recommended floating to him, and he’d halfheartedly agreed to try. Now he was excitedly telling me about his first float, “I’d always talked about stress and tension,” he said, “but I never knew how powerful it was, how much energy and strength it’s sapping all the time. I guess I never knew what it felt like not to be tense. There in the tank it all melted and I just started laughing because I suddenly realized how much tightness I’d been carrying around with me all my life, and how incredibly pleasant it is to be free of it. When I got out I realized, my God, there’s no reason I can’t stay like this all the time!”
Judging from current research, it’s evident that on virtually every scale used to assess relaxation, floatation tanks work; not only do they bring about a state of uniquely deep relaxation, but they do so with unmatched speed, safety, and certainty. John Stanley, William Francis, and Heidi Berres, of Lawrence University, undertook a study on the effects of floating on cognitive tasks, comparing the cognitive abilities of three separate groups: a float group, a meditation group, and a control group that neither floated nor meditated but simply sat quietly relaxed in a dark room. Among their interesting results (the floaters significantly lowered their blood pressure and decreased their muscle tension as measured on an electromyograph [EMG]), were the analysis of a subjective relaxation test. All subjects were asked to evaluate how relaxed they were, and the responses showed that floaters considered themselves much more relaxed than the meditators did. The study concluded that the effects of floating “go beyond those of meditation or simple relaxation in a quiet room.”228
What makes the tank such an unparalleled tool for eliciting the relaxation response? One way of answering this question is to refer to Herbert Benson’s list of four essential elements. The first precondition is some “constant stimulus.” As Robert Ornstein points out in his classic study On the Psychology of Meditation, this restriction of attention to a single thing is a characteristic of most meditative practices, such as chanting, repeating a prayer or mantra, staring at a mandala, counting breaths: “It seems that a consequence of the structure of our central nervous system is that if awareness is restricted to one unchanging source of stimulation, a ‘turning off’ of consciousness of the external world follows.” All these “constant stimulus” techniques, Ornstein contends, are ways of “turning off” the external environment, “inducing a central state in the nervous system equivalent to that of no external stimulation.” 171
But rather than inducing a state equivalent to no external stimulation, the tank puts the floater directly into the actual state of no external stimulation. Seen in this way, the various methods by which meditative techniques laboriously attempt to short-circuit the nervous system into “turning off’ external awareness are simply indirect attempts to do what the floatation tank does directly.
Benson’s second essential element, a passive attitude, ignoring distractions, is another state more easily and completely attained in the floatation tank. External distractions are eliminated, and with nothing outside itself to hold on to, the active mind quickly tires and gives up.
Benson’s third precondition for the relaxation response, decreased muscle tonus, is quickly attained in the tank, where reduction of the stresses of gravity and the absence of hard surfaces to cause discomfort bring about a degree of muscular relaxation that is difficult, if not impossible, to match within Earth’s atmosphere.
The fourth essential element, “decreased environmental stimuli,” is self-evident: The floatation tank decreases environmental stimuli as much as is feasible outside of complicated and expensive sensory deprivation environments that are only possible in a specially equipped laboratory setting. Other techniques require dedication, discipline, and often much work before the practitioner is able to elicit the relaxation response at will. Whoever steps into a floatation tank will find the relaxation response activated effortlessly, within minutes.
Another key to floating’s power in activating the relaxation response is that it largely eliminates the overriding cause of stress. What is this cause? Not simply danger, threat, or the need to flee, since even joyful events are stressful. George Mandler, professor of psychology at the University of California, and director of the Center for Human Information Processing, characterizes the essence of stress as interruption, which he describes as “a discrepancy between one’s expectations and the actual evidence from the world,” and a “deviation from the expected.” When such an interruption happens, he says, “whenever an action cannot be brought to completion, whenever a plan is not quite brought to its end,” whenever we interact with reality and find that something is different, our sympathetic system is aroused, and we experience stress.
“From an evolutionary point of view,” says Mandler, “it makes very good sense to construct an organism that reacts significantly and distinctively when the world is not the way it has been in the past. And in that sense the autonomic nervous system doesn’t just have an internal function, it also alerts the organism to something important going on; the world is not the way it was.” 166
The problem is that today the world is almost never the way it was; life is one long deviation from the expected. What Mandler calls interruption has become almost constant, and the result is constant sympathetic arousal, constant stress. But in the tank, the “actual evidence from the world” is eliminated, so there can be no conflict between it and our expectations. There are no actions to be brought to completion, no plans to be brought to their ends. In an unchanging environment, we do not discover that something is different; inside the tank the world is always the way it was. In a state of deep relaxation, in the constant absence of light, sound, gravity, movement, and temperature variations, there are (speaking in ideal terms) no interruptions, no deviations from expectations, no discrepancies between the way things are and the way we intend them to be. There is nothing to cause the sympathetic system to become aroused, and as a result, no stress.