 Firstly, I'd like to say a huge thanks to Jocelyn Board for inviting me to talk at Float Conference 2020. It's an absolutely huge honour to be able to do that. Now today I'm going to be talking to you about some of my experiences of visuals whilst floating and the science behind why it happens. Now, like all great stories, let's start at the beginning. Now, my first float session was something else. I entered the float tank with childlike curiosity, something I had not felt for a while and I had questions running through my mind like, will I fall asleep? Am I going to enjoy it? How am I going to get the most down my float session? What is actually going to happen? Now, I didn't fall asleep as such but I did enter a deep meditative state akin to NREM sleep and I thoroughly enjoyed it so much so that I became a member there and then. Now, I got the most out of my session by having no expectations and just going with the flow and surrendering myself to the float. Now, apart from feeling totally relaxed, serene and as though a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders, I had an extremely animated and very visual experience with my eyes closed and open. And this included seeing shapes, colours, patterns, faces and symbols. So, this was back in 2010. Since then, I've had varying degrees of visuals whilst floating, travelling through tunnels backwards, hieroglyphics, colours, shapes and even a giant Cheshire cat. A number of people that float with us have also had a range of different visual experiences and this has mainly been different colours and on the rare occasions, some people have seen more detailed visuals. Now, this raises a few questions which I'm going to talk to you about today. Firstly, why don't you sometimes see colours with our eyes closed and open during a float session? Well, those mysterious blobs and patterns that bedazzle the backs of your eyelids during a float are no illusion. What you see is real light and it's coming from inside your eyes. Now, as you settle into your float, close your eyes and begin to enter a deeper state of meditation and you might notice the colourful light show happening inside your eyelids. Suddenly intensify and bursts of bright colours appear across your field of vision. Now, a few seconds later and the colours settle down again. Now, while you might appreciate the floatation entertainment, in the back of your mind somewhere, you're probably wondering what you're even seeing. Well, these strange blobs that you've seen have a name and they're called Phosphines and researchers believe that actual light may play a role but not ordinary light as we know it. This light comes from inside your eyes. In the same way that fireflies and deep-sea creatures can glow, cells within our eyes emit biophotons or biologically produced light particles. And you can see a few examples in the image on the screen. And this also shows the percentage of pattern appearances. Phosphine colours varying from blue to yellow or white for foreground and from black to red, blue or yellow for foreground for background. Now, cellular light emission can be induced or spontaneous. So, induced photon emission can be a delayed luminescence explaining the phenomenon of negative after images or it can be stress-induced luminescence produced by physiological stress. So, in this case mechanical stress, so like rubbing your eyes and that can explain the formation of Phosphines in the eye. Where spontaneous light emission itself is quite interesting and it's classified to actually three subgroups. Number one, thermal radiation, two, bioluminescence and three, biophoton emission. Now, thermal radiation is electromagnetic radiation due to thermal motion. On the other side, we have bioluminescence and biophoton emission and they're both caused by specific non-thermal biochemical and biophysical processes in the cells. Now, bioluminescence is mainly due to enzymatic reactions and non-enzymatic reactions. And this type of luminescence is only observed from a few living species and there's no evidence that we've reported about bioluminescence in a human eye. But we do see biophotonic light inside our eyes in the same way we see photons from external light. Say, Isthaban Bakon, a Hungarian neuroscientist who works at the Vision Research Institute in Lowell, Massachusetts. Biophotons actually exist in your eyes because your atoms constantly emit and absorb tiny particles of light or photons. Now, this photon exchange is just a part of a normal cellular function and your eyes can't tell the difference between photons from outside light and the biophotons emitted by your own atoms. Either way, your optic nerve simply relays these light signals to the brain which must then decide if it accurately accurately represents the real world around you or if it's just a phosphine. Our eyes are actually producing far more biophotons than we end up seeing as phosphines. And almost all of the biophotons you see are the ones both emitted and absorbed by atoms in the retina, the part of your eye responsible for detecting light. So inside the retina we have millions of tiny cells called rods and cones that collect light and convert into electrical signals and these signals travel through the optic nerve to a part of the brain called the visual cortex. It's here that the brain reconstructs an image using the information received from the eyes and when a reconstructed image looks like nonsense the brain is quick to label the image as unreal or in this case a phosphine. Now in 2009 Baccon and Vimal put forward a new biophysical interpretation of this Greek dark noise of rods. It was hypothesized that there is a continuous biophoton emission happening within the retina without any external photonic stimulus. However this changes in the light when the discrete dark noise of rods caused by biophoton emission influences the night vision capabilities as well. Explicitly the discrete dark noise of rods can appear because rods are able to absorb photons produced by lipid peroxidation of adjacent rods and it is also probable that a given rod may absorb its own photon during bioluminescent processes. Photons produced via chemical luminescent reactions which could explain why we can see colors shapes and patterns while our eyes are open in the pitch black darkness of the float tank. Now depending on where phosphines originate it can very taken a variety of shapes patterns and colors different atoms and molecules emit photons of different wavelengths which is why we see different colors. And the same phosphine also within an orderly geometric pattern like a checkerboard may have originated in a section of the retina where millions of light collecting cells arranged in a similarly organized pattern. A researcher has also found that different areas of the brain's visual cortex create certain specific shapes of phosphines as well. Now in the 1950s there was a German researcher Max Noll at a technician university at Munich came up with a classification scheme for phosphine shapes. He studied phosphines in over a thousand volunteers and came up with 15 different categories including triangles, stars, spirals, spots and amorphous blobs. Most phosphines occur spontaneously when the atoms in the eyes exchange their biophotons. So next time you jump into a float pod close your eyes and admire the phosphines. Now that you can appreciate the light show in a whole new way you can just lay back and enjoy the show. So I've discussed a bit of the most common form of float tank visuals with a light show but a small number of us have much more vivid visuals and hallucinations. Now during a float session why is that the case? Alright before I answer that question I thought I would give you a few examples of visual experiences that some of our clients and myself have had over the last couple of years. It's worth noting though that this is not as common as people think it is and some people are more susceptible than others but it's not really truly known why. For example one client stated that they saw a small red dragon flying around inside the pod and others saw the most beautiful cat they had ever seen but they've all been positive experience and very childlike in nature and intriguing in many different ways. Now to date I've had around five extremely visual visual hallucinations during float sessions. So this has been over a period of eight years with around 800 hours of floating which is quite a lot but there is one particular float session that stands out for me and I float in the early evening when music at the beginning end of the session lights off in the tank so I'm not sure exactly how long I was in there before the magic started to happen. So this was the fifth time that something appeared and I knew something was going to happen. I had the sensation of someone shining a bright light on my face so my eyes were closed at the time and the pod light was off with my head away from the lid. So this has happened in previous three visual experiences as well so I was aware of the sign so to speak with the eyes and the pink. I could see the pink of my eyelids with the bright light shining my face and in my mind I knew it wasn't really there but I let it go that thought immediately and then opened my eyes. The first thing I noticed was that I could see the room lights on through the lid of the pod which is really odd. It was over the outline of the top half of the pod was like a force field so imagine the force field around the death star. The lines of the pod were shimmering with some sort of electrical energy and the strangest thing was that the lights in the room were on as well and I know they were off. They were definitely off when I started the float session. I looked down and I could see the shower in the corner of the room as well and I felt as though I was drifting down very slowly through the water and as I was falling I looked up and I could see the walls of the rooms bending inwards. Think inception. The more I fell the more the lights in the ceiling started merging together as the walls literally began folding in on themselves until the lights disappeared and all that was left was darkness. I closed my eyes and the next thing I know the music came back on and it was the end of the session. I have no idea how long the visual hallucination went on for. It may have been 30 seconds, 5 seconds or even a minute I have no idea but time does not seem to exist in the pod and it was definitely the most vivid visual I've had to date and I'd like to add that this was just from a float session and you're probably wondering why I have as well and I had the same thought after the float I thought part of the reason was that my mind accepted it and just went along for the ride. I mean if you start focusing on a visual for too long during a float it will disappear as you're already creating it. There are a few reasons that may explain what has happened which I'm going to explore as well. I mean upon reflection the key aspect with all of these experiences was the fact that I was overly tired prior to the float session in the early days of starting out and working ridiculous hours to get the business up and running combined with the extra stress of maintaining the business at the same time. Floating was much definitely needed and hence a lack of sleep on a number of different occasions. Now it is well documented that a common side effect of sleep deprivation is hallucination as evidenced by but not limited to long-distance swimmers, ultra marathon runners and overly ambitious university students and some float-centilated and now according to one standard researcher at least 80 percent of people will hallucinate if severely sleep deprived and by severe I mean anything from getting only a few hours of sleep in a single night so going for days without sleeping. Now given such a high frequency there must be a physiological basis for those induced visions of things not really there. Well lack of sleep disturbs visual processing which results in the folks perceptions that can manifest as hallucinations illusions or both as I found out so your brain is constantly trying to make up its own reality whether or received actual reality driven input from your senses or not it works because your brain tries to fill in the gaps when sensory stimulation is greatly reduced or in this case removed basically your brain is constantly wanting to find patterns in things so when you have an unstructured stimulus like a uniform field of light light or white noise in your ears or both or nothing at all you'll potentially start to hallucinate because your brain is trying to fill in those gaps convincing itself that it is actually seeing or hearing things that aren't actually there beyond the doubt we see with more than just our eyes and what we see is affected by among other things by how much we have slept which is only part of it this is also the case in a sensory reduced environment in a study called cognitive factors in source monitoring and auditory hallucinations by Morrison and Haddock in 1997 it was actually found that short-term sensory reduction was was found to lead to increases in perceptual disturbances hallucinations and prone participants experienced greater perceptual disturbances than non-prone participants and this results can be interpreted as supporting a source monitoring explanation for the generation of hallucinations in the absence of an external stimuli essentially this just means that these unusual perceptions arise out of an abnormality in the brain's inferencing mechanism such as such that new evidence including sensations is not properly integrated which then leads to false prediction errors in the absence of external stimuli perceptual distortions are presumably internally generated by the individual and in addition are misattributed as external in origin probably due to an abnormality in updating one's experience of the world with this new data and you may be wondering why you know some people can have visuals and never have a deep float experience most others just have a relaxing time in the shadows well obviously there are a number of different factors here some which i've mentioned already are there other factors exclusively to the individual when how can someone best approach their float to increase the chances of having a profoundly deep positive and potentially visual experience now the setting can play a huge part in this as well and setting is comprised of the details of the space that you're in physically so at the float center we have the physical setting which is already set up for you there's a clean space with relaxing music and all the necessary amenities all you really have to do is walk in get in the float room get naked and float so what we are responsible for is how we interact with that space have you arrived in a calm manner or did you rush to get to the center did you have caffeine have you eaten before if you rushed then it can take a lot longer to really get into the session being in a right frame of mind before you arrive will help you to get the most out of your float session and you may have a specific intention you want to focus on for example such as a reflective practice or just a simple intention to relax and just refresh and the biggest difference between those that are deep and potentially visual floats and those that have light floats is mainly the concept of the pod or tank itself and this could be interpreted as a reflection of how one views themselves is it just our physical and mental self that enters a pod or something much much more now there's a great difference in viewing the tank as a large salty bath to help you relax and a microscope to explore the unknown mysteries of consciousness and the key lies in our expectations and these directly influence the outcome even more even more so in an environment that involves our private mental world so the float tank essentially is only a vehicle and you simply have to open yourself to it and there may be a mental resistance or ego boundaries at play that limit the potential of visuals and consciousness exploration if you enter the tank and are only concerned with comfort and psychological security then once you lower the lid you're not only shutting out the outside world you're also shutting out the unknown from your experience by letting go you're potentially inviting significant insight spontaneous moments of no-mind ideas and the possibility of vivid visuals once the physical self is merged with the water only then is the mind truly free to explore and it is the fear of losing firm grip on this situation that holds us back we'll inquire to control and trust in the security of the tank and your mind just go with it and feel the moment what you will experience could well be profoundly significant in many many many ways so when we relax the mind and our fears of losing control which we never really truly had to begin with we then create a space within and without which allows the fresh and vibrant to arise thank you for listening to the talk and i hope you found it very useful