June 11, 2013 • 32 mins
Sensory Deprivation Chambers:Fancy a return to the womb? Ready to shut off the world of senses and dive into the inner you? Well, the sensory deprivation chamber awaits you. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Julie breakdown the science of the womb-to-tomb wet box.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
this week we are talking about sensory deprivation. Uh. This
is an interesting stuff that we've we've touched on here
(00:25):
and there in the past, but we are this time.
We are talking about the tank. We're talking about the water.
We're talking about immersing yourself in what John C. Lily
referred to in the introduction to the Beak self as
the womb to tomb wet box, which sounds lovely, right, Yeah,
I want that for myself. But I kind of do
want that for myself, just because I have seen these
(00:47):
wonderful photos of people floating around in the Dead Sea,
which is full of water, right, people live, people with
these beatific smiles on their face. And apparently the salt
content is is makes the water so buoyant that it
feels like this sort of zero gravity experience. So I've
always thought that seems pretty neat. Um, what's the deal
with that? Well, you can have that sort of experience,
(01:10):
albeit in this sort of tomb like coffin. Uh. Well,
I wouldn't. I mean, yes, it is kind of coffin esque,
but I wouldn't, you know, I think of it more
of as a more of a like a space sarcophagus.
You know, there are there are different iterations of it,
and some of them look really slick and very much
like they would be on some sort of spacecraft. And yeah,
(01:31):
like I like to think of, you know, like those
those pods that people you know enjoy hyper sleep then
in the science fiction stories. Exactly right, Um, so this
is you know, this is this idea of the suspended hibernation.
This this idea that we could have a forced shutdown
of our brain without dying, and perhaps there would be
(01:54):
some sort of benefit to it. And there's a long
tradition of studying this, the sensory deprivation which causes this
this forced shutdown. So we're going to discuss some of
that today, and I thought it would probably be helpful
to talk a little bit about, um some of our
other podcast episodes before, particularly Splendid Isolation, when we talked
(02:16):
about what happens when, um, you are isolated and when
your senses are deprived of stimuli, and also touch on
the default mode network. Really quickly because we talked about
this with the science of hallucinogens. We've talked about it
meditation and yoga. This idea that this part of your brain,
the default mode network, is causing that constant shatter buzz
(02:40):
in your brain which can sometimes lead to depression. Yeah,
so let's talk a little bit about the brain and
it's and it's sensory input. I like to think. I
like to think of it this way. I invite everyone
else out there to think of the most media addicted
person in your life. Uh, the person who is just
they're constantly on Twitter, They're constantly uh, you know, checking
(03:01):
their Facebook status, They're they're using four Square, they always
have earbuds in, uh, fingers typing away. They just have
to be connected to all these things. So they're like
they're doing Twitter, they're doing live Twitter updates, while they're
watching some show on t vow. Everything is connected. And
then what happens when you break them away, if you've
ever successfully broken them away from those things, that it
(03:23):
changes them. There's like a shock that goes through their system,
sometimes for the better, maybe sometimes for the worst, but
their sensory input has has has altered, and it has
altered how they feel about the world around them and
how they interact with the world around them. Well, on
a more basic level, sensory deprivation involves robbing the brain
of a lot of its inputs. Our brain is constantly
(03:45):
chewing on stuff. Uh, it's chewing on thoughts, and it's
chewing on all the sensory input that's coming into us.
It's chewing on the sites, the smells, the sounds, the taste,
various other senses that we've just discussed in the path
that are further down the list. But it's it's processing
all this, it's crunching it, it's making sense of the
world around it. And what happens when you cut off
(04:06):
even one or two or three of those senses, well,
you see that chatter go down, specifically in the medial
prefrontal prefrontal cortex, the medial parietal cortex, in the medial
temporal lobes, because this is where uh, most of the
activity activity occurs when you have repetitive thoughts. It's sort
of the cohesive, the center of self, the ego of
(04:30):
the brain. And when you can shut down some of
that stimuli, well, then, as we've seen with meditation or
with some of these studies with hallucinogens and depression. It
gets pretty quiet there, and that is the goal of
some of the sensory deprivation. So, as we've discussed before,
this ties into the basic eye story that ends up
(04:50):
clogging up most of our brains all the time, this
story that we put ourselves at the center off and
it's the constant chatter that's telling you, hey, you're you're
not doing it right, you're doing it wrong, you're really
screwing up this podcast, that kind of thing, and uh,
and then you have to to shut that down in
order to properly focus on anything that's right. So there
are a lot of benefits here for having sensory deprivation
(05:13):
in your life, right, Um, But there is a dark
side to it. And in order for us to really
get to the benefits of plunging yourself into a bunch
of water encapsulated, uh by walls around you, we should
look at the CIA and some past experiments with sensory deprivation. Yes,
I mean, we've discussed before in our episodes Splendid Isolation
(05:35):
some of the the harmful effects of isolation on the
human mind because you can shut off a lot of
these these inputs and have beneficial effects as we were
going to discuss, but also the brain can have a
tendency to sort of chew on itself in these situations. UM.
For instance, prisoners who have who have been isolated for
long periods of time have been known to experience depression, despair, anxiety, rage, claustrophobia, hallucinations,
(05:59):
problem with impulse control uh, and impatability to think, concentrate,
or remember um tonitus, weakening get the immune system, uh,
premature menopause, aggressive behaviors, and prisoners, volunteers, animals. There's a
whole list of dire consequences to shutting oneself off. So
for a long time it's been a It's also been
(06:22):
used as a method of interrogation or even if you
want to use the more um harsh terminology here, soft torture. Um.
What is a way to induce a horrible state upon
upon a human mind without actually resorting to physical violence
and physical torture. Well, you just start shutting off the
(06:42):
sensory input. You put them in a position where, uh,
maybe they're not seeing, they're not hearing. Uh. So some
of the experience were we're looking at involved even even
you're like putting the equivalent of thick gloves on or
cardboard tubes around the arms, so they can't even get
any kind of sensation that way, putting them in a
space that essentially just has room for a bed. In
some cases you see the use of hoods, two heavy
(07:05):
thick hoods that also uh contribute to even more dampening
of sound, or the use of white noise your phones
to to clog the mind with with with just this
constant white noise. Yeah, I mean, essentially what we're talking
about is taking away the chew toys of the mind.
And you just described doctor David Hebb's experiment and he
(07:26):
did this and I believe in the fifties and the sixties.
In one study, he had student volunteers at McGill University
where he was the head of psychology, and he put
them in an air conditioned cubicle, as you said, just
a room enough for a bed. He placed goggles, gloves,
and ear muffs on them, and then he piped in
some white noise. And he had hoped to observe them
(07:46):
for up to six weeks. That's what he thought he
could get out of this. He could see this gradual
deterioration of the mind. But it turns out that those
students lasted for only two days in twenty four hours,
hallucinations begin in in forty eight hours. They suffered a
complete breakdown. And these students, by the way, we're not
primed at all for this experience. Nobody was. In fact,
(08:08):
the students all came in with this idea that they
were going to get a lot of work done. There
was one student who was going to work on a presentation,
so they thought that they'd have this quiet, nice time, uh,
for their mind to really dwell in. But once you
took away from these basic stimulized it was just sort
of wrecked them. Yeah, I believe this was the study
was Originally he was open to conduct it for about
(08:29):
six weeks, and it just did not last that long.
Like you said, we're talking ended up more like a
few days at most with the participants. Yeah. Actually, the
BBC had a documentary called or they have a documentary
called Alone the Brain, Sensory Deprivation and Isolation, and it
recreated Hebb's experiment and it just was pretty awful. In fact,
the person who suffered the most was a comedian who
(08:51):
was so used to this sort of back and forth
of stimuli with his fellow humans that you know, he
was the first to fall apart. Yeah, star of a
comedian of his or her audience and U and it's
gonna are gonna be dire consequences. All right, Well, let's
talk about these sensory deprivation tanks that we encounter today.
If you live in a larger area, chances are there's
(09:14):
at least one that you might be able to find
in your area. I know in the Atlanta area there
seems to be mainly one place to go, I understand.
In New York City even they're only a handful of possibilities.
Some individuals who are really into sensory deprivation make own
their own tanks, and there are people out there who
will sell you one. Michael Crton, by the way, has one.
He had one. He has one. Well he's dead, alright,
(09:36):
he had one. Um though there are various interpretations of
of of what that might might consist of, but in
a sense, he does have one. Now I think I
don't know the details of his burial, but I mean,
you know, defined has Yeah, right, was this re arranged atoms?
But that makes sense? You know, he was. He was
a thoughtful individual. I can imagine him. He probably had
to get an extra big one though he was a
(09:56):
very tall man. I don't know, but I mean, but
apparently this was something that was This is very helpful
to people in the arts, also athletes as well. Yeah,
a lot of the benefits, which we'll get into uh here,
involved benefits to creative individuals who are trying to think
creatively about various tasks, individuals sustained various injuries or bodily trauma,
(10:19):
people dealing with with with depression. Um, if it's coupled
with the right amount of psychotherapy as well. But but
what are we talking about here. Sensory tank is essentially
the dead sea inside of a container. Like we're talking earlier.
The idea that you're gonna have a salty broth to
float in, and the chamber itself is uh is soundproof.
(10:42):
There's no light. You're just floating as if as if
in the womb. Yes, and salty womb. And this is
from the somebody manufacturer. One of the manufacturer of these
tanks says the float tank is a little larger um
than a twin size bed and about chess tie. It
contains ten inches of water to which so much epps
(11:04):
and salts have been added that when you get in
and lie on your back, you are pushed to the
surface so that you float like a cork weight list
as an astronaut in space. Now when they talk about
a lot of salt here, they're talking about eight hundred
pounds of epps and salt in this uh this pool here. Uh.
There is a lightweight door that you can leave open,
or if you want to get rid of the distractions
(11:24):
of noise and light, you can close the door. You
can also put your plugs in, purportedly helped with not
getting the water into your ears. Yeah and yeah, it's
that sound counseling canceling and all I believe. Um and
and also worth knowing you mentioned the door. The door
is not locked. You're not sealed in here like a tomb.
So if you do have a need to get out,
be it physical or or or mental, um, it's it's
(11:45):
easy to do. So okay. So the cool thing about
this though, in case your germophobe, is that between floating sessions,
the water is filtered and sterilized with UV light on
a regular basis and hydrogen brock side is poured into
the water for of course more hygienic. So it's not
like just a giant footpath at a at a cheap
nail salon exactly. So, so if someone peas in the pool,
(12:06):
don't worry about that. I can imagine asking that when
one goes in. You know, is it okay to pee
in the in the isolation chamber in the century deporation chamber.
I dare you. I will not bring it up, but
I mean it might be in the literature when you
sign out. I mean I should have mentioned that I've
not used one of these yet, but but I do
(12:28):
intend to at some point. We both are going to
this yeah, um and uh so so, but we wanted
to go ahead and cover it in the podcast right now,
talk about it, talk about sort of the limited studies
that surround this, and then have the experience for me
to talk about it, and then we can draw in
personal experience. Yeah, we don't want to prime our brains
too much. Um. But anyway, these these things, Uh, they
(12:51):
gained popularity in the sixties and seventies and the eighties
they started to want a bit um, but they have
made a resurgence. Excellent, Yeah, because you did have that
first first real push for the for the sensory deprivation tank,
especially based on the work of John C. Lily. Uh
Dr suit Field will be getting into these guys in
(13:11):
a bit, um, And I guess, like a lot of
these things that you guys out for a little bit
and then people get old, older they may be, and
maybe the isolation tank just becomes a place where restore
some tools. It just sets empty in the backyard and
occasionally you have to explain it to some guests. But
now you have you have people that are rediscovering exactly
what what this uh technology or or methodology can do
(13:35):
for one. Yeah, and well we will dive into the
tank in a moment. We're gonna take a quick break.
When we get back, we will talk about John cy
Lily to be patron saint of LFD and Galpin Science
and I will be right now. All right, we're back,
(14:00):
and uh let's talk a little bit about John C. Lily.
We have discussed him in one episode in detail and
he's coming to time or two since then. Um, well,
now we probably miss him a couple of times in detail.
Because John C. Lily made his name in the field
of electronic brain stimulation. Uh, in the field of dolphin communication,
(14:21):
and in the in the end, in the field of
just progressively crazier and eventually unfunded research. Yeah. Although he
started out being funded by the Naval Institute and by
the National Institute of Mental Health, but as you say,
his studies, his experiments became a little bit more fringe. Well,
of course he lost his funding. But this is someone
who is was steeped in science, at least pure science
(14:46):
in the beginnings, and then it kind of got muddled. Yeah,
I would argue that he never you know, he never
ceased being being a very brilliant, thought provoking man. It's
just in the early stages he was more of a
pure scientist, and his work and his and his curiosity
became more and more esoteric as the as the decades
rolled on, and well in the influence of his own
(15:07):
studies of LSD, which he used himself as a subject
quite a bit. Yeah, generally, Yeah, combining sensory deprivation tank
with a large amount of LSD two to create the
expected results. As he attempted to at times to communicate
with dolphins, and not only dolphins as we know them,
but dolphins as this kind of pan dimensional creature. Remember too,
(15:30):
this is the guy who took a two bedroom house
and he submersed it in water input one of those
female research assistance in with a dolphin and uh, the
dolphin and the female had a sort of relationship. And
I will leave it at that. But so this is
someone who's thinking outside of the box. And the tank. Yes,
now his tank was pretty hardcore. Um. This is you know,
(15:53):
the older day, the early days, the cowboy days of
sensory deprivation tanks, where you you really needed to go
out and build your own design, in your own if
you got exactly what the specs were gonna be. So
temperature regulated, salt filled, soundproof, lightproof tank. Um. And in
this one, you though there was no just sort of
gently floating on top of the water. You were submerged
up to the very top of your head. Yeah. This
(16:15):
is the pre salt one hundred and sixty gallons of water. Yes,
and uh, and so your head is basically encased in
this uh this latex mask, like wrapped in a latex
with these uh, with with these these breathing holes coming
out front from it. It's called a blackout mask. And
it it looked if you imagine something that you might
(16:36):
see and say, you know, a nine inch Nails video
from from the nineties or at some sort of a
fetish club or something that this is about what the
black out mask looking. Yeah, I was thinking about the
gimp from pulp fiction. It looks kind of like a
gimp mask as designed by Dr SEUs. Yes, right, because
that's where the air hose connected to the pump comes
in the susy and pump, I think, or if you've
(16:57):
ever seen anyone receiving some getting some sort of like
Mountain Monster makeup for a movie and they you know,
they put the straws in and they cowed them completely.
It's that level of just wrapping your head up and
cutting off all of the sensory equipment from the outside world,
in addition to being in this lightless soundproof tank and
possibly on LSD. Right. But the nice part of this
(17:17):
is at the water I think you had mentioned is
kept at thirty four degrees celsia's fore degrees franheight, so
it was nice and warm. Yeah, contrary to the description,
there was not a torture method. It was this was
just an inability to again shut down the sensory and
put to the brain, uh, and go on this journey
of self discovery or pan dimensional communication. Yeah. And so
(17:41):
later on though, of course Lily figured out that he
could just fill this tank with a bunch of salt
and have people float to the top. They didn't have
to wear their latex mass because of course people were
bothered by that, and he could still have his experiments. Um.
And also, by the way, this tank was then um
sort of as you described, more of like a sarcophagus,
(18:01):
and then you have no light source and you have
the sort of quietude that you need um to have
the sensory deprivation. Yeah. Now he wrote a lot about
the the womb to tomb wet box and uh and
and and with Lially, like a lot of people who
get into some crazy stuff, it's it's also easy to
just discount him and say, oh, well, that's that's just
a crazy old man and in a tank of water
(18:24):
doing drugs. But a lot of what he said, even
you know, as he went further down the French path,
a lot of it still lines up with what we
know about the one in the Workings of the human mind,
about the default mode network. UM. One quick quote here
from from his book. At the highest level of satory
which people from which people returned, the point of consciousness
(18:44):
becomes a surface or a solid which extends through the
whole universe. It was in this state that I experienced
myself as melded and intertwined with hundreds of billions of
other beings in a thin sheet of consciousness that was
distributed around the galaxy a membrane. So, on one hand,
that does sound like maybe a lot of hippie trippy nonsense.
But this idea of like voices shutting down, a consciousness
(19:08):
becoming like a a single featureless plane, uh, lines up
with a lot of what we know about just having
a calm mind, about calming the mind, about shutting down
the default network. Well, I was thinking about his experience
and then other people's experiences minus the LSD, and how
they all share that sort of overview effect that astronauts
(19:31):
sometimes experience when they look at the Earth UM and
they get that sense of unity and the shedding of
the self, the shutting of the ego. So that's something
that his experience has in common with with a bunch
of other people. UM. But again, most people who have
undergone this sensory deprivation in the tank. Do not have
(19:52):
that experience that he had where he had the conferences
of the three entities or whatever sort of aliens or
other being that came to him. So that probably was
part and parcel of the hallucinogens that he was taking.
But as we've discussed with hallucinations before, there are hallucinations
in their hallucination, their drug induced hallucinations, but there there
are hallucinations produced just entirely by by non um illicit methods.
(20:17):
I'm glad you brought that up. So I just thinking
about that. I was thinking that when you don't have
the stimuli, just like when we talked about lilcution hallucinations,
the brain will make something up UM. So, yeah, you're right,
there are degrees to it and there are sources of it. Yeah.
I was actually looking at two thousand four study that
found it during prolonged blindfolding experiments with cited individuals, they
(20:38):
experienced visual hallucinations. And then there's a two thousand and
nine study from a Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology,
University College London. I would have time that just fifteen
minutes of near total sensory deprivation was enough to trigger
vivid hallucinations in many of its test subjects. So again,
no LSD required when dealing with a sensory deprivation tank.
(20:58):
And that's one of the appeals to some users of it, okay,
is that the anarchic chamber the two thousand and nine study.
I think i'd read the same thing about the fifteen
minute yes Yes, which is a sort of different stimulation
or the lack of stimulation, which we'll talk about an
upcoming episode. But that's interesting to know that's just taking
out that one bit would induce hallucinations. So enter Dr
(21:24):
Peter Suitfeld. Yes, this is another individual who has had
a lot to say and a lot of influence on
our modern understanding of sensory deprivation. UM. He quickly uh
fell in love with the with the with the technology,
the methodology, and it was one of the individuals who
owns his own tank. Well you know too that he
UM When he was a lad in school, he actually
(21:46):
underwent some sensory deprivation UH studies and that's how he
got interested in it himself, and uh so that fueled
his interest in the field, and he received his PhD
from Princeton and had Psychology Departments of Rutgers and the
Universe be of British Columbia, where he ran tank studies
for years in the labs there, and his work has
led him to be a consultant with NASA and the
(22:08):
Canadian Space Agency regarding the effects of launderation, space flights
and monotonous environments. As you can imagine, you know, running
labs and something with UM with this womb to tomb
instrument is going to give you a lot of data
on that, right, because what is the spaceship, but what
is the space station but a kind of sensory deprivation chamber.
(22:30):
You're cut off from the world, You're cut off from
a lot of your senses, and a lot of your
senses are altered in one way or another. So's it's
a great way to study what this is like and
what it will be like. Uh, you know, presumably when
we started dealing with longer term journeys or stays in space. Yeah, um.
Sub field studies have shown that tank sessions can be
used to treat autonomic nervous system problems like chronic pain,
(22:53):
high blood pressure, and motion disorders. Of course, motion is
what it would be really great in space right. Um.
He also aims that the tank shifts our brains focused
from its dominant to its non dominant hemisphere, which has
various benefits. He says in in a Slate article about
floating by Seth Stevenson quote, but God only knows why
hemisphere balance is affected. We can't yet fit a brain
(23:16):
scanner in a tank or get the scanner wet for
that manner. Yeah, that's definitely one of the limitations on
studying the effects of this. Uh, he can't get the
scanner in the tank. Um. But but his work has
has been pretty impressive, and that he has he has
not gone in the direction of communication with dolphin aliens,
but indeed his work has been in it has been
very interesting, and that it has not gone with in
the direction of communicating with aliens, but rather with with
(23:39):
solving some real world problems such as again depression, mental disorders,
chronic pain, chronic pain. And I kept thinking when I
was looking at the information about the non dominant hemisphere,
about how you switch from your dominant your nondominant, about
the neuroscientists, and her name escapes me right now. But
she has that great ted talk. It's called this stroke.
(24:00):
My stroke of insight, and she talks about that whole experience,
about the left and right hemispheres of her brain sort
of dissolving. And it reminded me a lot of what
people are talking about when they say they have this
experience in the tank, this idea that your your brain
is shutting off and that things are sort of melding
(24:22):
into everything else. And so I thought, well, this is
a very interesting experiment of the mind um and it
will be once we can set a brain scanner into
a tank, it'll be great to be able to see
what is going on to sort of corroborate this. But
just in terms of the the relaxation, the stillness of
mind that one can can experience with a sensory deprivation tank,
(24:44):
I found this, uh, this quote from a spiel particularly interesting.
And this is from Embracing the Void by Seth Stevenson,
which is really fantastic Slate article that deals with sensory
deprivation tanks. Highly recommend checking that out. That The quote
is as follows. We had a zen master who is
in my lab once and he asked to go into
the tank for an hour. Most of his life he
had meditated every day for four or five hours or more,
(25:06):
and he thought the depth of meditation he reached in
the tank was on par with a level he reached
maybe once a year in his normal meditation environment, which
is not exactly the middle of times square. He was amazed. Yeah,
and that's again, this is what comes up again and again.
It's this altered state that people are able to achieve.
And in a way, it seems a little bit like
(25:26):
a cheat, right, like, Okay, I'm not gonna meditate, but
I'm gonna go into this tank for an hour and
induce a meditative state and altered state in which, you know,
a lot of my anxiety just melts away and as
a result, you know, this chronic pain I'm experiencing um
or this depression is alleviated. Well, good, I say, you know,
it's a nice cheat. It's a good cheat. Um. But again,
(25:49):
the I don't want to want to say the problem
because it's I mean, it's a problem in the sense
that we don't have really good empirical data yet, like
brain scans to proper a lot of this, But we
do have a ton of psychological studies that keep backing
it up, keep saying that it does have a beneficial
(26:09):
effect on the mind and the body. There's a two
thousand and eight study that was published in Nova dot
E d U. The title is Sensory Isolation and Flotation
Tanks Altered states of consciousness and Effects on well being
and that looked at eight Swedish participants, six of whom
were female and to male age thirty five to sixty nine.
They all had different socio economic backgrounds um they had
(26:33):
various states of employment. Some people were retired from people
were not, but they all complained of depression, burnout, and
chronic pain. And they took these these participants who all
had experience with floating before, because the idea was, let's
just get people in here who can quickly get into
the state and who have had experience with it, and
let's begin to try to figure out these qualitative um
(26:56):
categories that we can begin to rely on to assess
the experience. And they came up with like twenty one
different categories from these really intensive interviews with these eight participants,
and everything from their motivation to float, to the types
of sensory experiences like out of body experiences, level relaxation,
and then to the extent to which it changed their
(27:18):
views on life. And the one thing that kept coming
up over and over again is this altered state. Um,
it's not just about relaxation. It is changing of the mind,
a changing of the mind's patterns. And they say, the
results of the studies showed that floating as a method
generally that I'm quoting here from the paper perceived as
(27:38):
pleasant and comfortable, that actual pain relief may be achieved,
and that very deep relaxation may be attained. Furthermore, we
show that altered states of consciousness are induced during the session.
Examples of experiences during a s C. Altered states of
consciousness are visual imagery, acoustic perceptual phenomena, an altered sense
of time, a changed bodily sense, paranatal experiences right the
(28:02):
womb experiences, and even trans personal experiences. And they said,
and they said that in all of these people, these
were profound life altering experiences. And I couldn't help but
think about those psilocybin yes, yeah, of people who underwent that,
and um, it was it was a huge percentage of
that study who said this was a number one life
(28:23):
altering experience for me, the psilocybin. Yeah. And these were
individuals that in many cases, this is this is coming
after they have you met their their their their mate,
that they've had children, they've had all these various life experiences,
they've lost loved ones to illness or and or death.
But um, but then that they were given the sup
experience that changes the way they look at the world
(28:44):
and it becomes in a way, the defining moment of
their life. Yeah. And and now I'm not saying that
this is apples to apples that floating is like psilocybin,
but a lot of people have said this is a
way to achieve and experience without drugs. Yeah, it also
reminds there was looking at another study of floatation rest
and a applied psycho physiology by Thomas H. Fine and
Rhetoric Bori, and they were they were looking at the
(29:07):
way it can can be used in the psychotherapy and
and they they stressed that you know, you can't just
throw somebody into an isolation tank and expect the results.
That it needs to be paired with with a certain
amount of prepping, a certain amount of pre programming and
and therapy too, so that they'll have the inter with
the right frame of mind and have the right expectations
(29:29):
of it, and that was lining up a lot with
some of these these studies we've looked at where they've
looked at the use of psychedelics and treatment in uh
oh and nicotine addiction in UH in depression, end of
life care, and terminal diseases. Yea. So priming becomes very
important even in this I was thinking about that. I
thought I'm gonna have to do a good amount of
(29:50):
priming before I go in. UM. But I wanted to
mention this little tidbit from an Ionine article called Everything
You Ever Wanted to Do about some free deprivation chambers.
Uh it says that reports of a heightened sense of
introspection and out of body experiences by tank users mirror
those of people with extensive experience and meditation. So you
talked about the end master, and both practices have been
(30:13):
linked to decreased alpha waves and increased theta waves in
the brain. And these are patterns that are typically found
in sleeping states. So again there's this idea that you
are resetting your brain, that you are tinkering with it,
although without the aid of any sort of hallucinogen or substance. Yea.
So there you have it. Uh there is some basic
(30:34):
intro material there for you to the sensory deprivation tank,
what it consists of, how we kind of got here
with it, what some of the studies say, what some
of what some of its more curious historical tidbits happened
to be. And indeed, in the weeks ahead, we're going
to set out to enter the sensory deprivation tanks ourselves. Yes,
(30:55):
and we will make sure to follow up either in
another podcast or video or or I don't know. We're
so we're your dreams the media through through your dreams
as possibility h our new a pandimensional media option where
you can you can tune in directly through our minds
to social media. Thank you have to buy your own
sensory deprivation tank or rent one to actually tune in,
(31:17):
but it's it's worth it. It's like a like a
Google hangout inside your mind. So in the meantime, if
you would like to reach out to us, uh, you
know the various ways of doing it. Certainly, if you
have entered a sensory deprivation tank before and had an
interesting experience there, or even a non interesting experience, either way,
let us know about it. We'd love to hear your
(31:38):
thoughts on this, this particular way of shutting down portions
of the mind and maybe opening up others. You can
find us at the mother Ship at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. You can find us at our
Facebook account, where we're stuff to Blow your Mind. You
can find us on Twitter where our handles blow the Mind.
On tumbler, we are stuff to Blow your Mind on there,
and over on YouTube, we have a channel that goes
(31:59):
by the name Mind Stuff Show. And you can also
drop us a line at below the Mind at Discovery
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how Stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
this week we are talking about sensory deprivation. Uh. This
is an interesting stuff that we've we've touched on here
(00:25):
and there in the past, but we are this time.
We are talking about the tank. We're talking about the water.
We're talking about immersing yourself in what John C. Lily
referred to in the introduction to the Beak self as
the womb to tomb wet box, which sounds lovely, right, Yeah,
I want that for myself. But I kind of do
want that for myself, just because I have seen these
(00:47):
wonderful photos of people floating around in the Dead Sea,
which is full of water, right, people live, people with
these beatific smiles on their face. And apparently the salt
content is is makes the water so buoyant that it
feels like this sort of zero gravity experience. So I've
always thought that seems pretty neat. Um, what's the deal
with that? Well, you can have that sort of experience,
(01:10):
albeit in this sort of tomb like coffin. Uh. Well,
I wouldn't. I mean, yes, it is kind of coffin esque,
but I wouldn't, you know, I think of it more
of as a more of a like a space sarcophagus.
You know, there are there are different iterations of it,
and some of them look really slick and very much
like they would be on some sort of spacecraft. And yeah,
(01:31):
like I like to think of, you know, like those
those pods that people you know enjoy hyper sleep then
in the science fiction stories. Exactly right, Um, so this
is you know, this is this idea of the suspended hibernation.
This this idea that we could have a forced shutdown
of our brain without dying, and perhaps there would be
(01:54):
some sort of benefit to it. And there's a long
tradition of studying this, the sensory deprivation which causes this
this forced shutdown. So we're going to discuss some of
that today, and I thought it would probably be helpful
to talk a little bit about, um some of our
other podcast episodes before, particularly Splendid Isolation, when we talked
(02:16):
about what happens when, um, you are isolated and when
your senses are deprived of stimuli, and also touch on
the default mode network. Really quickly because we talked about
this with the science of hallucinogens. We've talked about it
meditation and yoga. This idea that this part of your brain,
the default mode network, is causing that constant shatter buzz
(02:40):
in your brain which can sometimes lead to depression. Yeah,
so let's talk a little bit about the brain and
it's and it's sensory input. I like to think. I
like to think of it this way. I invite everyone
else out there to think of the most media addicted
person in your life. Uh, the person who is just
they're constantly on Twitter, They're constantly uh, you know, checking
(03:01):
their Facebook status, They're they're using four Square, they always
have earbuds in, uh, fingers typing away. They just have
to be connected to all these things. So they're like
they're doing Twitter, they're doing live Twitter updates, while they're
watching some show on t vow. Everything is connected. And
then what happens when you break them away, if you've
ever successfully broken them away from those things, that it
(03:23):
changes them. There's like a shock that goes through their system,
sometimes for the better, maybe sometimes for the worst, but
their sensory input has has has altered, and it has
altered how they feel about the world around them and
how they interact with the world around them. Well, on
a more basic level, sensory deprivation involves robbing the brain
of a lot of its inputs. Our brain is constantly
(03:45):
chewing on stuff. Uh, it's chewing on thoughts, and it's
chewing on all the sensory input that's coming into us.
It's chewing on the sites, the smells, the sounds, the taste,
various other senses that we've just discussed in the path
that are further down the list. But it's it's processing
all this, it's crunching it, it's making sense of the
world around it. And what happens when you cut off
(04:06):
even one or two or three of those senses, well,
you see that chatter go down, specifically in the medial
prefrontal prefrontal cortex, the medial parietal cortex, in the medial
temporal lobes, because this is where uh, most of the
activity activity occurs when you have repetitive thoughts. It's sort
of the cohesive, the center of self, the ego of
(04:30):
the brain. And when you can shut down some of
that stimuli, well, then, as we've seen with meditation or
with some of these studies with hallucinogens and depression. It
gets pretty quiet there, and that is the goal of
some of the sensory deprivation. So, as we've discussed before,
this ties into the basic eye story that ends up
(04:50):
clogging up most of our brains all the time, this
story that we put ourselves at the center off and
it's the constant chatter that's telling you, hey, you're you're
not doing it right, you're doing it wrong, you're really
screwing up this podcast, that kind of thing, and uh,
and then you have to to shut that down in
order to properly focus on anything that's right. So there
are a lot of benefits here for having sensory deprivation
(05:13):
in your life, right, Um, But there is a dark
side to it. And in order for us to really
get to the benefits of plunging yourself into a bunch
of water encapsulated, uh by walls around you, we should
look at the CIA and some past experiments with sensory deprivation. Yes,
I mean, we've discussed before in our episodes Splendid Isolation
(05:35):
some of the the harmful effects of isolation on the
human mind because you can shut off a lot of
these these inputs and have beneficial effects as we were
going to discuss, but also the brain can have a
tendency to sort of chew on itself in these situations. UM.
For instance, prisoners who have who have been isolated for
long periods of time have been known to experience depression, despair, anxiety, rage, claustrophobia, hallucinations,
(05:59):
problem with impulse control uh, and impatability to think, concentrate,
or remember um tonitus, weakening get the immune system, uh,
premature menopause, aggressive behaviors, and prisoners, volunteers, animals. There's a
whole list of dire consequences to shutting oneself off. So
for a long time it's been a It's also been
(06:22):
used as a method of interrogation or even if you
want to use the more um harsh terminology here, soft torture. Um.
What is a way to induce a horrible state upon
upon a human mind without actually resorting to physical violence
and physical torture. Well, you just start shutting off the
(06:42):
sensory input. You put them in a position where, uh,
maybe they're not seeing, they're not hearing. Uh. So some
of the experience were we're looking at involved even even
you're like putting the equivalent of thick gloves on or
cardboard tubes around the arms, so they can't even get
any kind of sensation that way, putting them in a
space that essentially just has room for a bed. In
some cases you see the use of hoods, two heavy
(07:05):
thick hoods that also uh contribute to even more dampening
of sound, or the use of white noise your phones
to to clog the mind with with with just this
constant white noise. Yeah, I mean, essentially what we're talking
about is taking away the chew toys of the mind.
And you just described doctor David Hebb's experiment and he
(07:26):
did this and I believe in the fifties and the sixties.
In one study, he had student volunteers at McGill University
where he was the head of psychology, and he put
them in an air conditioned cubicle, as you said, just
a room enough for a bed. He placed goggles, gloves,
and ear muffs on them, and then he piped in
some white noise. And he had hoped to observe them
(07:46):
for up to six weeks. That's what he thought he
could get out of this. He could see this gradual
deterioration of the mind. But it turns out that those
students lasted for only two days in twenty four hours,
hallucinations begin in in forty eight hours. They suffered a
complete breakdown. And these students, by the way, we're not
primed at all for this experience. Nobody was. In fact,
(08:08):
the students all came in with this idea that they
were going to get a lot of work done. There
was one student who was going to work on a presentation,
so they thought that they'd have this quiet, nice time, uh,
for their mind to really dwell in. But once you
took away from these basic stimulized it was just sort
of wrecked them. Yeah, I believe this was the study
was Originally he was open to conduct it for about
(08:29):
six weeks, and it just did not last that long.
Like you said, we're talking ended up more like a
few days at most with the participants. Yeah. Actually, the
BBC had a documentary called or they have a documentary
called Alone the Brain, Sensory Deprivation and Isolation, and it
recreated Hebb's experiment and it just was pretty awful. In fact,
the person who suffered the most was a comedian who
(08:51):
was so used to this sort of back and forth
of stimuli with his fellow humans that you know, he
was the first to fall apart. Yeah, star of a
comedian of his or her audience and U and it's
gonna are gonna be dire consequences. All right, Well, let's
talk about these sensory deprivation tanks that we encounter today.
If you live in a larger area, chances are there's
(09:14):
at least one that you might be able to find
in your area. I know in the Atlanta area there
seems to be mainly one place to go, I understand.
In New York City even they're only a handful of possibilities.
Some individuals who are really into sensory deprivation make own
their own tanks, and there are people out there who
will sell you one. Michael Crton, by the way, has one.
He had one. He has one. Well he's dead, alright,
(09:36):
he had one. Um though there are various interpretations of
of of what that might might consist of, but in
a sense, he does have one. Now I think I
don't know the details of his burial, but I mean,
you know, defined has Yeah, right, was this re arranged atoms?
But that makes sense? You know, he was. He was
a thoughtful individual. I can imagine him. He probably had
to get an extra big one though he was a
(09:56):
very tall man. I don't know, but I mean, but
apparently this was something that was This is very helpful
to people in the arts, also athletes as well. Yeah,
a lot of the benefits, which we'll get into uh here,
involved benefits to creative individuals who are trying to think
creatively about various tasks, individuals sustained various injuries or bodily trauma,
(10:19):
people dealing with with with depression. Um, if it's coupled
with the right amount of psychotherapy as well. But but
what are we talking about here. Sensory tank is essentially
the dead sea inside of a container. Like we're talking earlier.
The idea that you're gonna have a salty broth to
float in, and the chamber itself is uh is soundproof.
(10:42):
There's no light. You're just floating as if as if
in the womb. Yes, and salty womb. And this is
from the somebody manufacturer. One of the manufacturer of these
tanks says the float tank is a little larger um
than a twin size bed and about chess tie. It
contains ten inches of water to which so much epps
(11:04):
and salts have been added that when you get in
and lie on your back, you are pushed to the
surface so that you float like a cork weight list
as an astronaut in space. Now when they talk about
a lot of salt here, they're talking about eight hundred
pounds of epps and salt in this uh this pool here. Uh.
There is a lightweight door that you can leave open,
or if you want to get rid of the distractions
(11:24):
of noise and light, you can close the door. You
can also put your plugs in, purportedly helped with not
getting the water into your ears. Yeah and yeah, it's
that sound counseling canceling and all I believe. Um and
and also worth knowing you mentioned the door. The door
is not locked. You're not sealed in here like a tomb.
So if you do have a need to get out,
be it physical or or or mental, um, it's it's
(11:45):
easy to do. So okay. So the cool thing about
this though, in case your germophobe, is that between floating sessions,
the water is filtered and sterilized with UV light on
a regular basis and hydrogen brock side is poured into
the water for of course more hygienic. So it's not
like just a giant footpath at a at a cheap
nail salon exactly. So, so if someone peas in the pool,
(12:06):
don't worry about that. I can imagine asking that when
one goes in. You know, is it okay to pee
in the in the isolation chamber in the century deporation chamber.
I dare you. I will not bring it up, but
I mean it might be in the literature when you
sign out. I mean I should have mentioned that I've
not used one of these yet, but but I do
(12:28):
intend to at some point. We both are going to
this yeah, um and uh so so, but we wanted
to go ahead and cover it in the podcast right now,
talk about it, talk about sort of the limited studies
that surround this, and then have the experience for me
to talk about it, and then we can draw in
personal experience. Yeah, we don't want to prime our brains
too much. Um. But anyway, these these things, Uh, they
(12:51):
gained popularity in the sixties and seventies and the eighties
they started to want a bit um, but they have
made a resurgence. Excellent, Yeah, because you did have that
first first real push for the for the sensory deprivation tank,
especially based on the work of John C. Lily. Uh
Dr suit Field will be getting into these guys in
(13:11):
a bit, um, And I guess, like a lot of
these things that you guys out for a little bit
and then people get old, older they may be, and
maybe the isolation tank just becomes a place where restore
some tools. It just sets empty in the backyard and
occasionally you have to explain it to some guests. But
now you have you have people that are rediscovering exactly
what what this uh technology or or methodology can do
(13:35):
for one. Yeah, and well we will dive into the
tank in a moment. We're gonna take a quick break.
When we get back, we will talk about John cy
Lily to be patron saint of LFD and Galpin Science
and I will be right now. All right, we're back,
(14:00):
and uh let's talk a little bit about John C. Lily.
We have discussed him in one episode in detail and
he's coming to time or two since then. Um, well,
now we probably miss him a couple of times in detail.
Because John C. Lily made his name in the field
of electronic brain stimulation. Uh, in the field of dolphin communication,
(14:21):
and in the in the end, in the field of
just progressively crazier and eventually unfunded research. Yeah. Although he
started out being funded by the Naval Institute and by
the National Institute of Mental Health, but as you say,
his studies, his experiments became a little bit more fringe. Well,
of course he lost his funding. But this is someone
who is was steeped in science, at least pure science
(14:46):
in the beginnings, and then it kind of got muddled. Yeah,
I would argue that he never you know, he never
ceased being being a very brilliant, thought provoking man. It's
just in the early stages he was more of a
pure scientist, and his work and his and his curiosity
became more and more esoteric as the as the decades
rolled on, and well in the influence of his own
(15:07):
studies of LSD, which he used himself as a subject
quite a bit. Yeah, generally, Yeah, combining sensory deprivation tank
with a large amount of LSD two to create the
expected results. As he attempted to at times to communicate
with dolphins, and not only dolphins as we know them,
but dolphins as this kind of pan dimensional creature. Remember too,
(15:30):
this is the guy who took a two bedroom house
and he submersed it in water input one of those
female research assistance in with a dolphin and uh, the
dolphin and the female had a sort of relationship. And
I will leave it at that. But so this is
someone who's thinking outside of the box. And the tank. Yes,
now his tank was pretty hardcore. Um. This is you know,
(15:53):
the older day, the early days, the cowboy days of
sensory deprivation tanks, where you you really needed to go
out and build your own design, in your own if
you got exactly what the specs were gonna be. So
temperature regulated, salt filled, soundproof, lightproof tank. Um. And in
this one, you though there was no just sort of
gently floating on top of the water. You were submerged
up to the very top of your head. Yeah. This
(16:15):
is the pre salt one hundred and sixty gallons of water. Yes,
and uh, and so your head is basically encased in
this uh this latex mask, like wrapped in a latex
with these uh, with with these these breathing holes coming
out front from it. It's called a blackout mask. And
it it looked if you imagine something that you might
(16:36):
see and say, you know, a nine inch Nails video
from from the nineties or at some sort of a
fetish club or something that this is about what the
black out mask looking. Yeah, I was thinking about the
gimp from pulp fiction. It looks kind of like a
gimp mask as designed by Dr SEUs. Yes, right, because
that's where the air hose connected to the pump comes
in the susy and pump, I think, or if you've
(16:57):
ever seen anyone receiving some getting some sort of like
Mountain Monster makeup for a movie and they you know,
they put the straws in and they cowed them completely.
It's that level of just wrapping your head up and
cutting off all of the sensory equipment from the outside world,
in addition to being in this lightless soundproof tank and
possibly on LSD. Right. But the nice part of this
(17:17):
is at the water I think you had mentioned is
kept at thirty four degrees celsia's fore degrees franheight, so
it was nice and warm. Yeah, contrary to the description,
there was not a torture method. It was this was
just an inability to again shut down the sensory and
put to the brain, uh, and go on this journey
of self discovery or pan dimensional communication. Yeah. And so
(17:41):
later on though, of course Lily figured out that he
could just fill this tank with a bunch of salt
and have people float to the top. They didn't have
to wear their latex mass because of course people were
bothered by that, and he could still have his experiments. Um.
And also, by the way, this tank was then um
sort of as you described, more of like a sarcophagus,
(18:01):
and then you have no light source and you have
the sort of quietude that you need um to have
the sensory deprivation. Yeah. Now he wrote a lot about
the the womb to tomb wet box and uh and
and and with Lially, like a lot of people who
get into some crazy stuff, it's it's also easy to
just discount him and say, oh, well, that's that's just
a crazy old man and in a tank of water
(18:24):
doing drugs. But a lot of what he said, even
you know, as he went further down the French path,
a lot of it still lines up with what we
know about the one in the Workings of the human mind,
about the default mode network. UM. One quick quote here
from from his book. At the highest level of satory
which people from which people returned, the point of consciousness
(18:44):
becomes a surface or a solid which extends through the
whole universe. It was in this state that I experienced
myself as melded and intertwined with hundreds of billions of
other beings in a thin sheet of consciousness that was
distributed around the galaxy a membrane. So, on one hand,
that does sound like maybe a lot of hippie trippy nonsense.
But this idea of like voices shutting down, a consciousness
(19:08):
becoming like a a single featureless plane, uh, lines up
with a lot of what we know about just having
a calm mind, about calming the mind, about shutting down
the default network. Well, I was thinking about his experience
and then other people's experiences minus the LSD, and how
they all share that sort of overview effect that astronauts
(19:31):
sometimes experience when they look at the Earth UM and
they get that sense of unity and the shedding of
the self, the shutting of the ego. So that's something
that his experience has in common with with a bunch
of other people. UM. But again, most people who have
undergone this sensory deprivation in the tank. Do not have
(19:52):
that experience that he had where he had the conferences
of the three entities or whatever sort of aliens or
other being that came to him. So that probably was
part and parcel of the hallucinogens that he was taking.
But as we've discussed with hallucinations before, there are hallucinations
in their hallucination, their drug induced hallucinations, but there there
are hallucinations produced just entirely by by non um illicit methods.
(20:17):
I'm glad you brought that up. So I just thinking
about that. I was thinking that when you don't have
the stimuli, just like when we talked about lilcution hallucinations,
the brain will make something up UM. So, yeah, you're right,
there are degrees to it and there are sources of it. Yeah.
I was actually looking at two thousand four study that
found it during prolonged blindfolding experiments with cited individuals, they
(20:38):
experienced visual hallucinations. And then there's a two thousand and
nine study from a Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology,
University College London. I would have time that just fifteen
minutes of near total sensory deprivation was enough to trigger
vivid hallucinations in many of its test subjects. So again,
no LSD required when dealing with a sensory deprivation tank.
(20:58):
And that's one of the appeals to some users of it, okay,
is that the anarchic chamber the two thousand and nine study.
I think i'd read the same thing about the fifteen
minute yes Yes, which is a sort of different stimulation
or the lack of stimulation, which we'll talk about an
upcoming episode. But that's interesting to know that's just taking
out that one bit would induce hallucinations. So enter Dr
(21:24):
Peter Suitfeld. Yes, this is another individual who has had
a lot to say and a lot of influence on
our modern understanding of sensory deprivation. UM. He quickly uh
fell in love with the with the with the technology,
the methodology, and it was one of the individuals who
owns his own tank. Well you know too that he
UM When he was a lad in school, he actually
(21:46):
underwent some sensory deprivation UH studies and that's how he
got interested in it himself, and uh so that fueled
his interest in the field, and he received his PhD
from Princeton and had Psychology Departments of Rutgers and the
Universe be of British Columbia, where he ran tank studies
for years in the labs there, and his work has
led him to be a consultant with NASA and the
(22:08):
Canadian Space Agency regarding the effects of launderation, space flights
and monotonous environments. As you can imagine, you know, running
labs and something with UM with this womb to tomb
instrument is going to give you a lot of data
on that, right, because what is the spaceship, but what
is the space station but a kind of sensory deprivation chamber.
(22:30):
You're cut off from the world, You're cut off from
a lot of your senses, and a lot of your
senses are altered in one way or another. So's it's
a great way to study what this is like and
what it will be like. Uh, you know, presumably when
we started dealing with longer term journeys or stays in space. Yeah, um.
Sub field studies have shown that tank sessions can be
used to treat autonomic nervous system problems like chronic pain,
(22:53):
high blood pressure, and motion disorders. Of course, motion is
what it would be really great in space right. Um.
He also aims that the tank shifts our brains focused
from its dominant to its non dominant hemisphere, which has
various benefits. He says in in a Slate article about
floating by Seth Stevenson quote, but God only knows why
hemisphere balance is affected. We can't yet fit a brain
(23:16):
scanner in a tank or get the scanner wet for
that manner. Yeah, that's definitely one of the limitations on
studying the effects of this. Uh, he can't get the
scanner in the tank. Um. But but his work has
has been pretty impressive, and that he has he has
not gone in the direction of communication with dolphin aliens,
but indeed his work has been in it has been
very interesting, and that it has not gone with in
the direction of communicating with aliens, but rather with with
(23:39):
solving some real world problems such as again depression, mental disorders,
chronic pain, chronic pain. And I kept thinking when I
was looking at the information about the non dominant hemisphere,
about how you switch from your dominant your nondominant, about
the neuroscientists, and her name escapes me right now. But
she has that great ted talk. It's called this stroke.
(24:00):
My stroke of insight, and she talks about that whole experience,
about the left and right hemispheres of her brain sort
of dissolving. And it reminded me a lot of what
people are talking about when they say they have this
experience in the tank, this idea that your your brain
is shutting off and that things are sort of melding
(24:22):
into everything else. And so I thought, well, this is
a very interesting experiment of the mind um and it
will be once we can set a brain scanner into
a tank, it'll be great to be able to see
what is going on to sort of corroborate this. But
just in terms of the the relaxation, the stillness of
mind that one can can experience with a sensory deprivation tank,
(24:44):
I found this, uh, this quote from a spiel particularly interesting.
And this is from Embracing the Void by Seth Stevenson,
which is really fantastic Slate article that deals with sensory
deprivation tanks. Highly recommend checking that out. That The quote
is as follows. We had a zen master who is
in my lab once and he asked to go into
the tank for an hour. Most of his life he
had meditated every day for four or five hours or more,
(25:06):
and he thought the depth of meditation he reached in
the tank was on par with a level he reached
maybe once a year in his normal meditation environment, which
is not exactly the middle of times square. He was amazed. Yeah,
and that's again, this is what comes up again and again.
It's this altered state that people are able to achieve.
And in a way, it seems a little bit like
(25:26):
a cheat, right, like, Okay, I'm not gonna meditate, but
I'm gonna go into this tank for an hour and
induce a meditative state and altered state in which, you know,
a lot of my anxiety just melts away and as
a result, you know, this chronic pain I'm experiencing um
or this depression is alleviated. Well, good, I say, you know,
it's a nice cheat. It's a good cheat. Um. But again,
(25:49):
the I don't want to want to say the problem
because it's I mean, it's a problem in the sense
that we don't have really good empirical data yet, like
brain scans to proper a lot of this, But we
do have a ton of psychological studies that keep backing
it up, keep saying that it does have a beneficial
(26:09):
effect on the mind and the body. There's a two
thousand and eight study that was published in Nova dot
E d U. The title is Sensory Isolation and Flotation
Tanks Altered states of consciousness and Effects on well being
and that looked at eight Swedish participants, six of whom
were female and to male age thirty five to sixty nine.
They all had different socio economic backgrounds um they had
(26:33):
various states of employment. Some people were retired from people
were not, but they all complained of depression, burnout, and
chronic pain. And they took these these participants who all
had experience with floating before, because the idea was, let's
just get people in here who can quickly get into
the state and who have had experience with it, and
let's begin to try to figure out these qualitative um
(26:56):
categories that we can begin to rely on to assess
the experience. And they came up with like twenty one
different categories from these really intensive interviews with these eight participants,
and everything from their motivation to float, to the types
of sensory experiences like out of body experiences, level relaxation,
and then to the extent to which it changed their
(27:18):
views on life. And the one thing that kept coming
up over and over again is this altered state. Um,
it's not just about relaxation. It is changing of the mind,
a changing of the mind's patterns. And they say, the
results of the studies showed that floating as a method
generally that I'm quoting here from the paper perceived as
(27:38):
pleasant and comfortable, that actual pain relief may be achieved,
and that very deep relaxation may be attained. Furthermore, we
show that altered states of consciousness are induced during the session.
Examples of experiences during a s C. Altered states of
consciousness are visual imagery, acoustic perceptual phenomena, an altered sense
of time, a changed bodily sense, paranatal experiences right the
(28:02):
womb experiences, and even trans personal experiences. And they said,
and they said that in all of these people, these
were profound life altering experiences. And I couldn't help but
think about those psilocybin yes, yeah, of people who underwent that,
and um, it was it was a huge percentage of
that study who said this was a number one life
(28:23):
altering experience for me, the psilocybin. Yeah. And these were
individuals that in many cases, this is this is coming
after they have you met their their their their mate,
that they've had children, they've had all these various life experiences,
they've lost loved ones to illness or and or death.
But um, but then that they were given the sup
experience that changes the way they look at the world
(28:44):
and it becomes in a way, the defining moment of
their life. Yeah. And and now I'm not saying that
this is apples to apples that floating is like psilocybin,
but a lot of people have said this is a
way to achieve and experience without drugs. Yeah, it also
reminds there was looking at another study of floatation rest
and a applied psycho physiology by Thomas H. Fine and
Rhetoric Bori, and they were they were looking at the
(29:07):
way it can can be used in the psychotherapy and
and they they stressed that you know, you can't just
throw somebody into an isolation tank and expect the results.
That it needs to be paired with with a certain
amount of prepping, a certain amount of pre programming and
and therapy too, so that they'll have the inter with
the right frame of mind and have the right expectations
(29:29):
of it, and that was lining up a lot with
some of these these studies we've looked at where they've
looked at the use of psychedelics and treatment in uh
oh and nicotine addiction in UH in depression, end of
life care, and terminal diseases. Yea. So priming becomes very
important even in this I was thinking about that. I
thought I'm gonna have to do a good amount of
(29:50):
priming before I go in. UM. But I wanted to
mention this little tidbit from an Ionine article called Everything
You Ever Wanted to Do about some free deprivation chambers.
Uh it says that reports of a heightened sense of
introspection and out of body experiences by tank users mirror
those of people with extensive experience and meditation. So you
talked about the end master, and both practices have been
(30:13):
linked to decreased alpha waves and increased theta waves in
the brain. And these are patterns that are typically found
in sleeping states. So again there's this idea that you
are resetting your brain, that you are tinkering with it,
although without the aid of any sort of hallucinogen or substance. Yea.
So there you have it. Uh there is some basic
(30:34):
intro material there for you to the sensory deprivation tank,
what it consists of, how we kind of got here
with it, what some of the studies say, what some
of what some of its more curious historical tidbits happened
to be. And indeed, in the weeks ahead, we're going
to set out to enter the sensory deprivation tanks ourselves. Yes,
(30:55):
and we will make sure to follow up either in
another podcast or video or or I don't know. We're
so we're your dreams the media through through your dreams
as possibility h our new a pandimensional media option where
you can you can tune in directly through our minds
to social media. Thank you have to buy your own
sensory deprivation tank or rent one to actually tune in,
(31:17):
but it's it's worth it. It's like a like a
Google hangout inside your mind. So in the meantime, if
you would like to reach out to us, uh, you
know the various ways of doing it. Certainly, if you
have entered a sensory deprivation tank before and had an
interesting experience there, or even a non interesting experience, either way,
let us know about it. We'd love to hear your
(31:38):
thoughts on this, this particular way of shutting down portions
of the mind and maybe opening up others. You can
find us at the mother Ship at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. You can find us at our
Facebook account, where we're stuff to Blow your Mind. You
can find us on Twitter where our handles blow the Mind.
On tumbler, we are stuff to Blow your Mind on there,
and over on YouTube, we have a channel that goes
(31:59):
by the name Mind Stuff Show. And you can also
drop us a line at below the Mind at Discovery
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how Stuff Works dot com
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