 And they said, hey, do you want to come up and do a talk at our conference? I've been floating for years and years, but I didn't think that my current line of research was really in line with what they were doing. I just released this book called Deep, which was looking at the human connection to the ocean from the very surface to the very bottom of the sea. So I told them, I said, what does the deep ocean have to do with floating? And they said, I don't know. That's why we're bringing you up to tell us all. So I thought about it a little more, and I realized that, yeah, there are connections with the ocean and floating. It turns out that our bodies in our blood contains a very similar chemical composition to seawater, and when we immerse ourselves in water, we become almost like another animal. And this is what I was talking about, the mammalian dive reflex, how our blood shunts from our extremities to our core, our heart rate lowers, and all the rest. So after this talk, I got another call the next year, and they said, hey, do you want to come up again for the next conference? I said, what am I going to talk about? I already talked about the mammalian dive reflex and our connection to the water, but once again, I thought about it a little more and realized there was more to the story. So I came up to Portland, Oregon, and talked about magnetoreception, how when we enter water, we are able to heighten other senses that we don't normally have access to on land. So many years went by, and finally in 2018, I got another call from FloadOn. They said, hey, I heard you were working on a book about breathing. Do you want to come up and do a talk? So I was mired in tons of research at this time, and I still had a deadline to hit. But I thought about it, and I thought, maybe this would be good for my mental health to go up to a conference, get out of my office, and start to talk to people. So I came up and did this talk, this talk, which was the lost art in science of breath. So the only thin resemblance to breathing and floating I could think about was to look about how our faces and mouths had changed over time. So the etiology of all these breathing dysfunctions are tied to all these changes in our faces. Well, what does that have to do with floating? Well, it turns out that there is one of the greatest movies ever made, at least the first half of it, Altered States, which has somebody go into a float tank, and he regresses into a primitive human. And it turns out that the older we go back in our evolutionary line, the better breathers we were. So at the end of this talk, I went out into the lobby, and I was drinking like hydrogen water or something. And this guy comes up to me, and he says, that was a really interesting subject to talk about at the float conference. I said, oh, thank you. I was very happy when the talk worked out so well. But he said, no, no, no. That talk sucked because you had a total missed opportunity here. You should have talked about human respiration in a float tank. So I apologized. It never appealed to me or occurred to me that I could have talked about that. I told him, I said, hey, if I ever get invited back here, which is very doubtful, I promise to you I'm going to talk about human respiration and floating, which is what I'm going to talk about today. So specifically breathing and flotation. So all of you know the benefits of floating, right? When we float, we relax the nervous system. It helps to manage pain. We boost our immune function. We can lower blood pressure. We can reduce anxiety disorders. And we can help speed recovery. But if you also look at what conscious slow breathing does and look at the benefits of that, what do you find? You find that you can relax the nervous system by breathing slowly and eliciting that parasympathetic response. You can help manage pain. You can boost immune function. You can lower blood pressure. You can reduce anxiety disorders and you can speed recovery. So what is going on here? Are these two things just identical? Are they coming about fixing these core problems in different ways? Or are they eliciting the same exact responses in our bodies but through different mediums? I couldn't figure this out and I thought about it for a while. So I did what a lot of reporters and journalists do. I started talking to experts in the field and the first person I called was this guy who you may recognize, Justin Feinstein. And he was kind enough to share with me some of the research he had been doing. And turns out that Justin had just released a paper that was being reviewed that was looking at how floating once again offered significant effects in reducing anxiety, muscle tension, blood pressure, and more. Because of course it did. We've known this for a long time. But he also mentioned that when people float, their respiration slows. It's not a huge amount, okay? Maybe a breath or two a minute, but it was statistically significant. And it turns out that long term meditators will breathe more slowly. They will breathe less than other people, so about the same amount. It's not a huge decrease, but it was statistically significant. So if you look at these two things together, they're essentially doing the same thing. But again, why? How is floating affecting breathing? How is breathing affecting the floating experience? We still don't know. Are these compliments of one another? Are they coming together to make this a more pronounced and strong experience for each person who does it? No one really knows. So I thought about it a little more and I realized that something that a lot of people probably aren't thinking about is posture in the float tank. So this is how we used to lay out people when they came to the ICU with COVID. They used to be laid on their backs, respirator in their mouth. They were just able to sit there. And it turns out that this was an extremely bad way of having someone be sitting all day with a serious respiratory condition. Because every time we breathe, this thing called the diaphragm, it's this muscle that sits right underneath the lungs, lowers when we breathe in. And it ascends when we breathe out. What you're going to see here is a very slow, short breath, followed by a very deep breath. And you can see the difference here in these two things. That's what a very deep breath looks like. So doctors realize that having patients on their back, most of that expansion is happening when you breathe in the back. The diaphragm is a back muscle. And when you're lying on your back, you are inhibiting your ability to take very deep, easy breaths. So what did doctors start to do? They started to put people on their sides. And this worked so much better because of course it did. You didn't have that pressure on your back. You were able to breathe more deeply, more slowly, more easily by being on your side. So the ancients have known all about this. Look at any statue of the Buddha, any painting of the Buddha sleeping. And he's always on his side. Even when he's awake and chilling, he's on his side. So when you're floating, yeah, you're on your back, but you're floating in water, so there's no resistance on your back. So just this posture is going to allow you to take deeper, slower, easier breaths. I don't know if anyone has ever done a study in this. I don't think we need to. But I can't imagine someone going into a float tank and breathing very short, stilted breaths and panicking. I don't think you get any very few of the benefits of floating if you're just... I think so many of the benefits tied to floating are tied to this very slow, very easy breathing. We know that there are several hundreds, even thousands at this time, of studies looking at slow breathing, its effect on your heart rate, its effect on your blood pressure, how you think. It changes all of these things. Slow breathing also allows us to take different control of our brain in the way that we are able to put different areas of the brain online more easily. Things work better. So when you float and when you breathe very slowly and calmly and consciously, these two things are just a great compliment for one another. Like the classic peanut butter chocolate, even more so punch and jawn. It's just a marriage made in heaven. So I see as something that you can do if you're not already doing it, is to start to incorporate this slow conscious breathing into the floating practice. You can try this yourself, but you can also use it for your clients. And how you do that is up to you. I think a short video would be helpful to them or some pointers. I know that you don't have too much time. This people are checking in about ready to float. But just to take a few slow, deep and calming breaths is a way to prepare the body and the nervous system and the mind for a float and can allow you to more easily transition into that state of deep relaxation. And one breathing technique I really like and I like it because it's so basic and simple. It's called coherent breathing. And all this is inhaling to a count of about five to six. And exhaling to a count of about five to six. Just like this animation, you can have your clients take one hand, put it on the belly, another put it on the chest and breathe in from the belly to the chest to a count of about five to six and breathe out in that same way, belly to chest back out. Just by doing this for a pattern maybe 15, 20 times while you're showering, preparing to float can really calm you down. So if you listen to how William Hurt was breathing before he transmogrified into a primordial human, I mean listen, it's extremely slow, it's extremely calm, it's rhythmic. So I can't say by just breathing this way, you too will be able to reach this point just to go back in time. But I can say that the science is very clear that you will be able to calm yourself, be better able to take control of your thoughts, be better able to lower your blood pressure. You can turn all of the different waves in your body from those blood pressure waves to your brain waves to the way your heart beats from a state of incoherence, which is like this, to this state of coherence. All it takes is one breath in and one breath out and then you just add water and there you go. Thank you very much.