This chapter details specific ways of using the float tank to help lose unwanted pounds. However, since all types of habitual or addictive behavior operate by similar neurochemical and behavioral mechanisms, the techniques discussed here for losing weight are applicable to all other self-destructive or harmful behavior patterns.
The Exploratory Float
The first step toward changing behavior is simply to go for a float. No matter what else happens, the float will deeply relax you. Relaxation is in itself beneficial, working to reestablish psychological balance and physiological homeostasis, with optimal levels of hormones and neurotransmitters. Relaxation not only relieves the stress that causes unwanted behavior, but also increases self-awareness.
Body Awareness. Once you have become relaxed, focus on your body, and become aware of the effect your overeating has had on it. Are you tired? Achy? Do you have sore feet? Consider how carrying around extra pounds uses energy, puts stress on every part of your body. The more intense your physical awareness, the more powerful and long-lasting will be your motivation to do something about it.
Emotional Awareness. At some point your attention will turn inward, your sharply focused awareness moving from your physical state to your mental state. How do you feel? What have you been feeling lately? How are your feelings related to your problem? Does the fact that you are overweight make you feel sad in certain situations? angry? guilty? For the time being, don’t worry about changing anything, just become as intensely aware as possible of how your behavioral problem is linked to your mental state. The clearer your understanding of this link, the longer it will remain with you after you emerge from the tank, and the more likely you will be to try to correct the situation.
Dr. Rod Borrie, who uses float tanks to help his clients change behavior patterns, told me of how increased self-awareness helped one client lose weight: “He was in a very stressful period, both at work and at home, the very kinds of situations that usually triggered his eating, and yet he continued to lose weight. He came to me with some surprise and said, ‘Ordinarily, I would be stuffing myself under this kind of pressure, but each time I get the urge to eat I become keenly aware of how this is related to my feelings, and I’m able to resist.’” That kind of continuing self-awareness is, in part, the key to the maintenance effect of behavioral change through floatation.
Self-Analysis. With the understanding that you are now ready to solve your specific problem, begin to examine it, analyzing it, searching for its causes, its effects. When did you first begin to have this problem? What were the specific events in your life that contributed to it? Think of genetic factors, personal and family history, your current situation. Probably the most effective way to use the tank for self-analysis is to focus on your specific problem, then relax, let go, and allow your mind to find its own way. As you sink into the reverie of the theta state, it’s as if your subconscious mind were on automatic pilot, it tosses up fragments of memory, faces, ideas, words. Only later do the pieces fall into place, and you see that the seemingly pointless childhood memory was actually a significant moment that has influenced your behavior ever since, that while you floated the wisdom of your subconscious mind was working creatively to help you confront and deal with your problem.
Discover Trigger Mechanisms. Addictive and habitual behavior patterns are generally set off and perpetuated by certain environmental stimuli, conflicts, or life pressures. These trigger mechanisms are usually predictable and repetitive, and if we can become acutely aware of them, they can become signals that we are in danger of acting habitually or addictively, and we can then take action to resist the addiction. While floating, we can examine behavior patterns, see ourselves in action, search the past, and identify our personal triggers. Some common triggers are loneliness, boredom, depression, fear, a life crisis, failure, financial pressure, sexual dysfunction, fatigue, and exposure to others who share the addiction.
Understand Motivations and Expectations. In their study of REST weight reduction, Borrie and Suedfeld made the interesting discovery that one of the most significant predictors of success was motivation. “The motivational predictor,” they emphasized, “was the importance of pleasing one’s spouse. The implication is that when one is trying to lose weight for the sake of someone else, even someone very close, there is a poorer chance of succeeding…. In order for the person to have the greatest likelihood of success in losing weight, she must want to do it for herself.” Everybody you know can tell you how important it is for you to lose weight, but unless you truly want to do it yourself, for yourself, you will probably not be successful.
The other significant predictor of successful weight loss Borne and Suedfeld isolated from their statistical analysis was that of expectation: “The expectation variable that predicted weight loss was the amount of difficulty that the subject anticipated she would have in sticking to the program…. Those who felt it would be difficult lost more weight than those who thought it would be easier…. Losing weight is hard work and progress is often disappointing. An early realization of these facts helps one to deal with them. On the other hand, unrealistic expectations of an easy or ‘magical’ solution lead to poor progress.”31
Keeping these ideas in mind as you float, examine your own motives and expectations. If you really do want to break that habit, are aware that you will truly have to make an effort, and are willing to make the effort, then your chances of success are very good.
Setting Goals. Once you have begun to develop your awareness of the causes and nature of your problem, and have determined your motivation and expectations, you can begin to make plans to do something about the problem. If you are overweight, how much weight do you want to lose? Do you want to become thin or simply lose ten pounds? The more specifically you can define your goals, the more likely you are to attain them.
Making Plans. You know now that you want to lose weight, and you have a pretty good idea why; the next question is: How? You have already examined your trigger mechanisms in general. Now watch how they work in specific situations: environmental (talking on the phone, watching TV, going to a party), emotional (loneliness, anger, depression, anxiety), mental (self-defeating thoughts, mental excuses for indulging, self-sabotaging scripts such as “I’m just a fat person at heart”), and specific people (eating or drinking buddies, mothers who insist you eat “one more helping”). Now that you’re aware of the specific circumstances that cause your habitual behavior, make plans to avoid those circumstances, or mentally prepare responses so that you will be able to deal with each situation without falling back on the habitual behavior. Make a clear, systematic plan for your life: From the moment you get out of bed until the time you fall asleep at night, specify how much you are going to eat, when you are going to eat, when you are not going to eat.
This kind of self-exploration is an essential first step toward changing your behavior. However, self-analysis is a never-ending labor, and as soon as possible—perhaps even in your first float—you will want to go beyond self-exploration to self-transformation.
Changing Yourself
The process of actually changing the way you act and think is, of course, the heart of the matter. We have discussed it in earlier chapters under names like unfreezing, changing, and refreezing belief structures; deautomatization; and hypersuggestibility. As we have seen, numerous studies suggest that the float tank is the best tool yet devised for bringing about this transformation of attitude and action. The studies indicate that even people who are normally unreceptive to techniques like self-hypnosis become extremely susceptible to suggestion while in the tank. Suggestions given to someone in the deeply relaxed state of floating are accepted by the subconscious mind and retain their power for weeks, months, even years. (Studies by Suedfeld show a continuing effect more than two years after a single session of restricted environmental stimulation therapy.)
After you have reached a state of deep relaxation, offer yourself positive, forceful suggestions (see the section on suggestions in Chapter Seventeen). The form and content of these suggestions will depend on the self-exploration and self-analysis you have done earlier, and will consist of two different types: general suggestions directed at changing harmful belief and behavioral patterns, and specific suggestions directed toward putting your predetermined plan into action.
General Suggestions Depending on what personal needs your self-analysis has revealed, you might offer yourself such suggestions as: You have great will power; you are quite capable of dealing with various emotional situations without falling back on habitual behavior patterns; you are filled with power and health; you are radiant with divine energy or the grace of God.
Specific Suggestions. Make suggestions to yourself about specific attitudes and behaviors you want to change. You might tell yourself you will eat certain foods that are good for you; you will increase your energy expenditure by walking up and down stairs; you will limit your food intake in certain ways, such as eating in only one predetermined place, eating very slowly, not eating while watching TV; you will act to increase your awareness of the consequences of eating, perhaps by keeping a daily record of calories, weight, and so on.
Visualization. The more clearly you can see an action or situation in your mind’s eye, the more strongly it will tend to become real. As you float, and in conjunction with the suggestions, visualize yourself acting as you want to act. If you are trying to lose weight, hold an image of yourself as you would like to be: slender, with skin taut and smooth, waist narrow, glowing with vitality. Imagine yourself in situations that usually trigger your habitual behavior, and visualize yourself resisting.
Addictive activities cause us to release pleasurable neurochemicals, and one of the difficulties of quitting is that we are left with a limited ability to experience pleasure. So, in addition to visualizing moments in which you resist your habitual behavior, also visualize vivid scenes in which your habit plays no part at all—scenes of yourself living a vigorous, happy, fulfilling life without your habit. This kind of visualization seems to work in several ways: The subconscious mind tends to accept vividly imagined scenes as real, and therefore the visualized behavior can, through repetition, become grooved into your mind as powerfully as if you had actually lived it. Also, since the scene is accepted as real, if you see yourself experiencing pleasurable emotions, your brain will automatically respond by releasing neurochemicals such as endorphins, with the result that you immediately feel very good even as you are floating. These feelings will stay with you, and will help you avoid returning to your habitual behavior.
Tape Recordings Playing tapes is even more effective than giving yourself suggestions, since while you’re floating you have a tendency to become so relaxed that getting organized enough to give yourself a systematic series of suggestions seems to demand immense effort. A taped message, on the other hand, seems to come from everywhere, allowing you simply to relax, accept, contemplate the suggestions being offered, and visualize their being put into action. Suggestions seem particularly effective when combined with background music. The music should be nondisruptive, stately, harmonious, light, melodious, gentle, flowing.
After an exploratory float or two, in which you find out what behavior you want to change, and how to go about achieving that change, write out your suggestions—positive, concrete, vivid—and read them onto the tape as the music plays in the background. Or you might want to have them read by someone whose authority you respect, or whom you love. Read confidently, with feeling. Leave pauses between suggestions—this gives you time to ponder them and to visualize their results. Probably fifteen to twenty minutes of tape are sufficient.
Anyone using the float tank in a systematic program to break a habit will want to schedule floats regularly—at least once every two weeks, more frequently if possible. However, if at any point you are under particular stress, or feel that one of your trigger mechanisms has been activated, you can short-circuit the process with a float. By removing you from stress, relaxing you, giving you pleasure, and enhancing your ability to experience pleasure in everyday life, the float will remove or lessen your need to experience pleasure through your habitual harmful behavior.