 Thank you, Ashkan, and thank you, Graham, and all the people that float on for putting this together. It's wonderful to see so many people responding to the siren call of flotation. It's easy to understand the enthusiasm that flotation generates because it has the power to show you a part of yourself that you didn't know existed or had lost sight of. The self-regulation that flotation facilitates helps us to realize that our default state is one of relaxed well-being. The mind and body having no input and nothing else to do can get in touch with each other and come to an agreement to let go of everything and enter our natural default state of deep relaxation. My journey with this technique started in the rest lab of Peter Sudfeld, who you'll be hearing from tomorrow morning, where we investigated use of chamber rest in the treatment of phobias, smoking cessation, weight loss. After I moved to New York City, I established a clinical practice in psychology at the Tranquility Center in Manhattan where I was able to explore flotation as a tool in psychotherapy. Looking over a two-way intercom with patients during their flotation session was like using the ultimate couch. The focus was creating guided flotation experiences with specific therapeutic goals for each individual patient. While continuing this practice, I became involved with research at the Stony Brook University on the effects of flotation on muscle spasticity in those suffering from cerebral palsy. Some patients did so well that I was invited to set up a clinical facility to pursue this out on Long Island. The sensorium center was created to integrate psychological therapy with flotation. It was created in an existing facility alongside physiatry and physical therapy. Here the focus became creating standardized procedures for incorporating flotation into the treatment of chronic pain, depression, and anxiety. Until then, I was elected president of the now dormant International Investigator Society or IRIS following Peter Sootfeld and Tom Fein. In the mid-90s, a number of difficult to understand factors put flotation rest out of favor. As a result, IRIS, the sensorium center where I was, did not survive. Flotation became much less common. Currently I'm working as a psychologist in private practice using many of the techniques that I learned to go along with flotation, such as relaxation techniques, biofeedback, hypnosis, meditation, unfortunately at the moment I don't have a flotation tank. For the most part, flotation rest is available in special flotation centers or spas. Here the population of customers is voluntary, choosing to float for their own personal reasons and paying for it with their own resources. Usually programs are not integrated into the flotation experience because customers are seeking the rest experience by itself. To my knowledge, they're only a handful of clinical facilities utilizing flotation rest but there are some distinct advantages to this type of setup. The population for a clinical facility is much larger because they're not voluntary. These are patients who are referred for specific therapeutic effects and they're seeking relief. So they have a reason to keep on coming. The flotation experience is linked to specific therapeutic treatments and is integrated into regimen with other modalities. The cost sometimes can be covered by insurance and is much more than what a spa usually charges. Then again, the procedure is more involved and must be supervised by a licensed healthcare provider. I'm going to describe the effects of flotation and then elaborate on how each effect has application as a clinical use. The specific benefits of flotation can be delineated in many ways. As a clinician, I view them this way. With the absence of external stimulation, the individual's attention is redirected to internal events, both physical and mental. This change in awareness facilitates the process of self-regulation that leads to relaxation. As the person becomes more comfortable with this change in orientation and mental activity slows down, there's a reduction of anxiety. Through the self-regulation process and perhaps the transcutaneous absorption of magnesium, there's a dramatic reduction of muscle tension. Reduce muscle tension and perhaps the production of beta endorphins caused by deep relaxation produce a reduction in physical pain. A combination of the absence of external stimulation, reorientation to internal events and deep relaxation create a change in consciousness that can range from mild to dramatic. Imagine that a medicine, medication existed that produced all these effects without any negative side effects. It would be a blockbuster for any company that offered it. And it would be used for a very wide variety of therapeutic purposes. Simply having awareness redirected into the physical self can be very therapeutic. First time I floated, I became very aware that I needed to see a chiropractor. My back felt out of alignment. Now awareness of muscle tension and pain or other more subtle sensations can be important internal feedback when accompanied by the proper instruction of what to do about it. Opening up awareness to one's own mental activity in the absence of acting or being acted upon is very much like meditation, except without the effort. With proper instruction, this can be a useful cognitive tool as patients develop more awareness of their own mental process and learn to take control of directing their own attention. Deep relaxation is a vital part of stress reduction because it releases accumulated stress reactions that affects almost every system of the body. The rapid and effortless introduction into a deeply relaxed state is incredibly instructive to the person who has been in stress. Patients often express surprise at discovering how stressed they were prior to floating. One of my patients reported that after returning to work with this newly relaxed perspective, it gave him insights into how much stress was around him. His body was picking up on the stress that was in the environment. There are a lot of other aspects of stress management besides relaxation, such as more effective handling of specific stressors and changing how one appraises an event. And these factors can be facilitated by including instructions during or after the flotation sessions. Of course, deep relaxation has other uses. It has a strong counter, it is a strong counter to anxiety. Since the source of anxiety usually lies in thinking patterns of the patient, flotation can be useful there as well. Viewing one's worries from a deeply relaxed state essentially allows the person to see their problem without the usual heightened emotional experience. Emotional reactions to mental events become buffered during the flotation induced state. This effect is a powerful cognitive therapy tool for working with a variety of anxiety disorders. Patients are able to expose themselves to anxiety provoking thoughts, such as in OCD, phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder. To the point of getting some habituation to that exposure and not having the emotional reaction. Flotation provides significant temporary relief to a variety of physical pain patients. This particularly so when the pain is chronic and has involved subsequent muscle tension as in injuries. It's also effective with pain from inflammatory processes, such as rheumatoid arthritis. I had one case where it was effective with cancer pain. But at the time that the patient was experiencing pain relief, they didn't know they had cancer. Pain relief from flotation is temporary. The duration depends upon the source and severity of the pain. In most cases, there's a lengthening of duration with repeated floats, up to a maximum of a few days. Because of this, many patients in pain are able to reduce their reliance on pain medications. At Stony Brook University, we did research on the effects of flotation on children with cerebral palsy. For this, a therapist stayed in the pool with the child to ensure that their spasticity would not torque them into a dangerous position. The door was open, so it was not rest conditions. Simply a soak in a super saturated magnesium sulfate solution. And significant reductions in muscle tone occurred within 20 minutes, enough to allow the physical therapist to spend time in developing function rather than just focusing on loosening their muscles. The reduction in muscle spasm would last for around 24 hours. Why this didn't get pursued any further than that? I haven't a clue. But it seemed like a pretty good application for a magnesium sulfate bath. When deeper relaxation occurs, mental activity slows down and the individual frequently enters a meditative or trans state. This state can be utilized by a therapist to introduce therapeutic suggestions. In doing hypnotic work, it's important to be able to pace the subject by watching how they're responding when you're normally doing hypnosis. That can't be done, of course, when someone's floating in another room naked. So I discovered that I could use music as a way of pacing myself and the patient would get together on the music. We're both listening the same music and it would help to that pacing part of hypnosis when someone's floating. In addition, I discovered that the music has a number of other uses in the flotation tank that made it quite useful. Facilitating the adaptation to silence. Some people don't like being in silence. So give him a little music at first. I have one guy who came in and he couldn't be there in complete silence. I said, well, what kind of music do you want? Frank Sinatra. So we played Frank Sinatra for him, but gradually gave a little bit more and more space between each song. I like Frank too. Until eventually after several floats, he was floating in complete silence. Instilling a particular motion. You know how emotional music can be. You can bring that emotion into the experience of flotation. And also retrieving specific memories. Sometimes if we're trying to get at some lost memories with a person, you'll find out, okay, how old they were at a particular time and play some music from that particular time. And suddenly in the pool, they're back there. And as I mentioned before, the relaxed state effectively buffers emotions so that even the retrieval of traumatic memories becomes more palatable. This makes flotation a very useful tool in the treatment of PTSD, which is something I think needs to be explored more. Most people find themselves in a very pleasant physical and mental state following the flotation experience afterwards. My own experience is that it is most like the state of mindfulness that follows a mindful meditation, but with even more physical relaxation. It is a very present oriented, relaxed, and open state. It's an ideal time for therapeutic instructions. As long as the instructions are presented in a way that does not disturb the post-float state. Initially stress management patients would be instructed that the state was temporary and that they should watch for physical sensations as their stress returns. They would be told to notice where they felt their stress in their body. With subsequent flotation, they would be instructed to be aware of what was going on when they felt the return of the stress and the thoughts that would go with it. So gradually becoming more and more aware of the process of returning to the non-default state of stress. To have more widespread use, clinical use of flotation. There's some things that we need to consider. Flotation is a very versatile, powerful therapeutic tool that deserves a place in treatment centers and in the minds of healthcare providers and the public. Education is the first requirement to increase awareness of flotation as a therapy. Perennial call for more research using larger numbers of subject is valid. However, there is a lot of literature that most people can't get their hands on. You'll be hearing about some of it. But making that more available, the research that is there, it would be advantageous to establish partnerships with clinical facilities such as hospitals, corporations, associations dedicated to specific disorders and let them know about flotation. In a clinical setting, there's a need for standardized procedures for integrating flotation rest into treatment regimens for specific disorders. With a non-voluntary population, screening needs to be more thorough and rigorous. Monitoring the process will need to pay attention to individual aversions, physical and psychological needs and therapeutic goals. Healthcare providers from specific disciplines are needed to supervise monitoring of this. One of the things that would be really helpful is if somewhere along the line we can establish clinical treatment codes or CPT codes, which stands for Current Procedure Terminology, for flotation. For this to happen, it would have to be done. If we have CPT codes, then we can get medical reimbursement. Of course, it has to be for specific medical healthcare providers. It would be needed before it can be done on insurance. A final consideration for acceptance of flotation rest into clinical settings is the design of the pools. Easy access is crucial and needs to be taken into consideration in a population with physical impairments and infirmities. An easy step-down entrance is preferable. Since this population is not seeking the rest experience, there will be more aversion to being enclosed. So an open room might be preferable. Great strides have been made in filtration and purification systems for flotation, so that we're confident of the sterility. Nevertheless, the fear of HIV, of MRSA, of Staphylococcus from hospitals is very much in the mind of the public. A solution to this might be something like the Austria, the solution that Austria uses. They require that the pool is drained between each flotation and goes into a big tank where it is then filtered and then it flows. You don't throw it away, but you're able to clean the tank out. So in a hospital, this might be the ideal. It's a very expensive system, but it certainly gives the person, ah, this has been filled just for me. This would be the ideal system for a hospital. Now, I'm sure that many of you have little interest in creating a clinical facility. But you've already found out that there are many related wellness services that you're probably incorporating into your centers. And the important thing is to try to integrate those different modalities that you're using, such as meditation and massage, integrate them with the flotation. Think of flotation as an amplifier for any of the modalities that you use with it. So the combination is going to be much more effective on your customers than just one or the other. Now, even though you may not be interested in a clinical facility, one way that any flotation facility can get involved with the clinical use of flotation is through the Fibromyalgia Flotation Project. The last time I spoke on the clinical use in London, we were able to rally enough enthusiasm to do a volunteer-based research project. Flotation centers in five different countries recruited 81 people diagnosed with Fibromyalgia and donated three flotation sessions to each of them. The participants were asked to complete uniform questionnaires regarding their illness and their flotation experience. The data were collected and analyzed to produce some very compelling evidence that flotation rest can have a beneficial impact on Fibromyalgia. The results demonstrated that flotation rest provided significant temporary reduction in pain, muscle tension, stress, anxiety, and sadness, as well as significant increases in relaxation, feelings of well-being, energy, and ease of movement. These were all significant changes. There was also significant improvement in the quality of their sleep. Now, the first phase of the Fibromyalgia Project was a unique and significant achievement. It demonstrates how much can be accomplished with a spirit of cooperation and perseverance that exists in this international flotation community. Given the difficulty of securing funding for research on flotation rest, we decided to continue this process of collaborative research and expand upon it. It takes a mountain of data to attract scientific attention and even more for the attention of the medical community. This promising beginning in treating Fibromyalgia with flotation rest needs follow-up with large numbers of subjects over longer periods of time to explore how far the benefits will go. The medical community is looking for an effective treatment for Fibromyalgia. Currently, a variety of pain medications are the first choice for the doctors of these patients. We plan to accumulate such compelling data that the medical community will not be able to ignore flotation rest. I'm sure that eventually we'll accumulate enough data to get scientific, medical, and public attention to move on to the next stage of seeking funding to conduct controlled studies on this and other populations. In the meantime, we've set up the next phase of the Fibromyalgia Flotation Project which is being run through a website. The website will recruit both people suffering from Fibromyalgia as well as float centers. It will help participants locate the nearest flotation center and allow them to register. The site collects all the data as the participant goes through their float sessions and also maintains their privacy. We hope to have the website translated into several different languages to reach the global flotation community. So, flotation is a powerful, versatile therapeutic tool with effects that can be applied to a wide variety of disorders. While there are a number of obstacles to overcome for us to be able to have a clinical presence, there are several reasons to make these efforts. The population of patients who would benefit is enormous. There are people who would use flotation regularly for the relief that they receive from it. With greater acceptance, we would also receive higher reimbursement rates for its coverage as a therapeutic modality. A final reason for pursuing clinical applications of flotation risk is to reach the largest numbers of people through primary prescribed therapeutic effect and allow them to discover many other benefits on their own so that we have a treatment for a specific program, but the other benefits will open them up so many other ways that we know flotation has. So, conclusion. I reiterate how good it is to see the return of enthusiasm for flotation rest. What took you so long?