The Science of Sleeping Great
8 full hours of sleep. It is ever elusive but mandatory. Seemingly impossible or even worse, unnecessary.
People claim to need less sleep as they get older, but they aren’t sleep experts. Adequate restoration isn’t achieved from inadequate sleep. Like our iPhone’s when half charged, we operate more effectively fully charged.
Without adequate sleep our bodies do not function at homeostasis. This results in an array of symptoms much more complex than just “feeling tired.” They include an up-regulated central nervous system, resulting in delayed neural function, poor focus, and coordination. A Weakened immune system. A vulnerable respiratory system. A compromised digestive system. Inability to repair your cardiovascular system, and an endocrine system that is over producing what we don’t need and under-producing what we do need. A lot of us regularly experience these side effects but are unaware. However, we do notice the optimizing effects of the rare “good night sleep.”
A good night’s sleep or restorative sleep eases our brain into a slow rhythmic state known as the theta wave state. We then fall deeper into the delta sleep state, further slowing brain activity and eliminating the militating external stimuli that burden our equilibrium. During the delta wave state our central nervous system is deeply down – resting our, “fight-or-flight”, sympathetic nervous system while activating our, “rest-and-digest”, parasympathetic nervous system. We then begin deep restoration preparing us to fire on all cylinders the next day. This sounds too complex. How can I achieve this by tossing and turning for 5-6 hours? Unfortunately, you can’t! Therefore, float therapy adds massive value to our lives.
Floating frees us of anxiety, physical pain, impaired cognition, and lethargy. Whether we float randomly once a month or routinely twice a week, the physiological occurrence is the same. The pod is a shortcut to achieve the exact states of deep restorative sleep. We experience a point of zero gravity and complete external stimuli elimination. An occurrence that can’t truly be achieved outside the pod. The almost always unanimous outcome of any float is that your sleep will be positively influenced. It could happen one of two ways. One, you drift off into the delta wave state in the pod and get obviously needed sleep. Or your endocrine and nervous systems reset giving your body a greater capacity to sleep outside the pod. Over time floating will only enhance the quality of sleep you get. Repeated floating alters your baseline of the endocrine homeostatic mechanisms. So regardless if you are lacking in the quality and quantity of your sleep floating will always assist in both. Consistently floating gives us the opportunity to get what we don’t have or enhance what we do have.
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