 Welcome to my home office in Lyons, Colorado. My name is Charlotte Keichel. I'm so excited to be able to speak with you about my floating experience today. I am a nutrition consultant, board certified holistic nutritionist, and a Western herbalist. So I primarily help people with nutrition and herbs, and I have helped myself a lot with floating. So in 2002, I just want to say that my health collapsed, and I could get into the details, but it would be irrelevant. In a sense, my vitality simply went away, and I was left with my fatigue and tiredness and inflammation and had to change everything in order to feel well again. In 2013, I discovered floating, and I dabbled in it. So this was deep into my healing process that I found this tool. And I dabbled in it because after I floated, I would often feel ill. And as a busy mother, I didn't want any more bad days if you know what I mean. But I knew at the same time that this sense of illness was actually a healing response and was a good thing. So the years went by, and it wasn't until I went to a Paleo FX conference in Austin, Texas, and heard the owner of a float tank there speak. And I asked him, you know, how often do you recommend floating? And he said, ideally twice a week, but do what you can, the point being, do it regularly so that your body can expect the experience. So after I heard him give that talk, I decided to start floating weekly. I only did an hour once a week. And that is when I started noticing changes. And, you know, part of my collapse of vitality, if you will, was that I never could think myself out of my depression and anxiety that was being caused by inflammation, right? It was in my body. And so I always felt a little broken in a certain way. And floating really gave me the experience of being able to change my mind through my body and also being able to meditate. I just have never been somebody that could quiet my mind and meditate and just sit still, right? I like moving meditations. Those always work for me, but so does the stillness of a float tank. And we all know the health benefits that meditation confers. And I really feel like the concentrated amount of time you get in a float tank once a week or twice a week really magnifies that. So it's been five years now, roughly, I think, since I've started floating regularly. And that's been fascinating because, you know, in our Western medicine model, right, things are heroic. It's drugs. It's surgery that are going to save us. And sometimes we do need those in life-saving situations. I'm grateful for them. But in our day-to-day experience of trying to feel more alive, what we need are subtle tools. Tools that nudge the body back into balance. And that's what floating is. So as I observe all the things that have changed in my life over the five years of floating, here's what I want to share. Is I was able to come off of sugar. That's a big struggle for people. And it was particularly a struggle for me because my dad ran a sugar company. He was literally vice president of Imperial Sugar in Sugarland, Texas. So I grew up with the early use of stimulants in the form of sugar. And I had asthma, which meant I used a lot of stimulating inhalers and allergy medications. And I was an athlete. So I thought red bulls were good for me. And then I became a mother. And it was like, I need coffee to start my day. So I was also able to remove coffee. Now, the reason I'm lumping sugar and caffeine into the same category is, again, they're both stimulants. And my body needed those stimulants to feel alive. But these subtle forms of addiction take our power away in our life. I used to view addiction as the person on the side of the street who's lost everything, not your alcoholic. And it's just not true. It all exists on a spectrum. And these things that we use every single day can deplete our life force. So five years later, I've been able to remove all sugar. I've removed most carbohydrates from my diet outside of good quality vegetables and appropriate fruit. So I am on a low-carb, high-fat diet, which is also soothing to the nervous system, and I think works really well with floating. And of course, no more coffee. And the most interesting thing that happened is a third piece to this. And I don't want to lose you when I talk about this, but I think it needs to have a voice. And that is I've removed all wireless technology from my life. So we are a cell phone-free home. We have all of our internet wired into the wall. We have corded phones. We don't have any cordless speakers or anything of that nature. Our TV streams the internet, and it's hardwired. So basically, anything that communicates through the air does not exist in my life. And the float tank allowed me to figure that out. So basically, through my floating experience, I realized, through that quiet stillness that you get in a tank, I realized that my cell phone, and soon to discover all of these wireless things we surround ourselves in, was creating a buzzing in my body. Literally, like I'd show up to my acupuncturist and I would say, I'm buzzing. Can you help me? And of course, it would help temporarily, but then I'd be right back on my phone, right back near my Wi-Fi. And so I have a feeling that a lot of people are being affected physically by these technologies. And it's not getting enough attention. And I'm so grateful for just living in the phenomenon of my body. Because I was getting heart palpitations as well. I mean, I could have run back and forth to cardiologists with a number of tests, a lot of money later. But I intuitively knew that something was going on with me and my phone. And I was able to figure that out. Sort of like you would do a food elimination diet to discover food sensitivities, I did a wireless technology elimination lifestyle to figure out what was affecting me and how it was affecting me. But I have the float tank to think for that because the float tank gave me a new sense of normal, a new sense of calm. It allowed me to find that quiet space in myself. And then I could figure out how all these other things were affecting me and then I really didn't need them after all as I found my own essence. I am what you would call, if you have not heard this term, a highly sensitive person. That term comes from a wonderful woman named Elaine Aaron. I highly recommend you look her up in Google. Google her and learn more about her work. We need to know who we are as highly sensitive people. And we're one in five of the population. And I think that floating can be so helpful for us in terms of rejuvenating ourselves. I joke with my husband often that he married me and my nervous system. And so we joke when I go to float every week, you know, I'm just going to take care of my nervous system. And the other thing I wanna share too is that all sorts of objections would come up initially when I would go floating, mainly in the realm of the ego, right? I have so much to do. Why am I gonna go lay in this float tank and do nothing? And I laugh at it now because years have gone by and that objection has sort of passed. Now that really doesn't come to mind when I go into the float tank because I really know I need it. So I guess in the end, what I've learned is that with floating, you can get a lot done in that nothingness. So my invitation to you today is two fold. One is that if floating is new to you, try it. At least try three times. My first float was horrible. I revisited every scary movie I ever saw. It could not be over fast enough. It was the longest hour in my entire life. After that one float passed, I was smooth sailing from the second float on to now I don't even know how many floats I've had. And I wanna say too that I'm up to 90 minute floats. And that has made another, you know, big difference in my experience. So number one float, if you haven't done it at least three times. Number two, do it regularly. Even if it's just once a month and I would actually say this for any healing therapy, any work you do with an acupuncturist, a chiropractor, a massage therapist, someone like me, a nutritionist, an herbalist, whoever you're working with, set that future appointment so that you can live into it. Don't just say, well, I'll do it when I can. Make the commitments and know, you know, your body can know that you're moving in that direction. So in the end, my message is that, you know, we live in a world that wants to force things, right? If it's meant to be, it's up to me and you can do anything. And I just in some ways celebrate that but in many ways reject it because what floating allows is for you to emerge. It allows you to find that quiet space within yourself and life to literally find you versus you pushing through some agenda. So it's a letting go and it's certainly been medicine for my mind, body, spirit and soul and I hope that it can be medicine for you. So I float regularly at the Isolate Float Facility in Boulder, Colorado. I cannot say enough about their facility. I'm not getting anything to say that. I just want you to know that if you ever come to Colorado, Isolate Float in Boulder is definitely the place to go and thank you for your attention and in the spirit of modest mouse, float on. Thank you, bye-bye.