 An opening. The float experience can be any or all of these. When I taught anatomy I used to say that the deeper you go into the body the more it opens up and interconnects. In the float experience you move from a deep personal process to the universal. Do I dare say to the divine. From isolation you become more interconnected. Can I click this? Okay. Here we go. Excuse me. This is an ancient diagram of energetic pathways in and around the body from Tibet. As you can see in the image and often feel in your body that in some ways we are not bound by our bodies in terms of energy in terms of mind and in terms of spirit. My goal here today is to emplace the float experience on a continuum of somato spiritual practices which are in one sense about breaking down the inner outer dichotomy and to spiritize life. As a structural integrator and educator I work with the body's efficiency or lack thereof in the gravitational field. Our physical relationship with gravity determines whether our experiences will be one of levity and relative ease or tension and dis-ease. The process is to align the energy field with the gravitational field. In an aberrated or misaligned state the body's resources are used inefficiently. Physical injuries, repetitive motion, unhealthy movement patterns, psychological or emotional trauma, mindsets, attitudes and stress all take a toll on our physical structure and our mental and spiritual capacities. The medium in structural integration is the fossil tissue, specifically the collagen molecule and the ground substance. In the interest of time I will just mention that the mechanical forces and forces of the psyche and forces of the spirit can cause misalignment and densification of the fossil tissue creating a restricted environment for function, for support and for information processing. The triple helix is the structure of a collagen molecule. This is a structure which provides great tensile strength and plasticity. If one or more strands on this aberrate you have a compromised molecule, enough of them you have a compromised structure. This shape also represents the triple helix of the self, physical, cerebral and spiritual. And the same process holds true. Either strand aberrates, you have an aberrated self. This firm yet flexible tissue, the fascia, is only one element of what we call the living matrix. Essentially and simplistically the fundamentals of the living matrix are adhesively connected proteins. Nuclear proteins, the RNA and DNA, cytoskeletal proteins, transmembrane proteins, extracellular matrix proteins and all the way to collagen. This from nucleus to skin surface we are interconnected. This is a dynamic, a vibrant and alive component of the organism with vital roles in the moment by moment operation of virtually all physical and physiological processes. Proteins, the engines of life. And the protein lattice, structure, water molecules. This creates a liquid crystal. We are a liquid crystal, which allows us to become a semiconductor of forces and energy. We are porous. In the float tank experience, there appears to be a softening and increased fluidity in the fascial tissue and the matrix. An opening, if you will, which goes all the way to the subliminal. This would account for the sense of well-being via increased physiological processing and the deepening and intensifying of sensory awareness and movement capacity post float. I gathered this information from subjective experience, from dialoguing with people post float and from engaging in manual therapy with people post float as well. Another triple helix functional model is the three brain model. This model helps to conceptualize and to explain what the client is going through while in the structural integration or body work experience, energy work, meditation or the float experience. Essentially, we have the brain hemispheres and the core or the core brain. The left hemisphere is characterized as an organized logical linear entity. This is the home of the verbal linguistic description, the mathematical and sequential sense. It is analytical. It is cause and effect. It is thinking. It is fine motor skills. It is the phase of consciousness. It is focused attention, abstraction and a sense of the local. The core is the body. Moment by homeostatic moment, the body. It is the arbiter of stimulus and action. The core is also the means by which the left and right hemispheres translate cognition into action. It is a control mechanism between the hemispheres and the right hemisphere. The right brain hemisphere is where human beings exist in a nonlinear way. It's about context as opposed to content. It is almost nonverbal. This is where musical and geometrical sensibilities come from and space time consciousness originates. It is the warp or the transition phase of consciousness. It is the edges of awareness. It is metaphoric. It is global. It is holistic. Ian McGilchrist in his book The Master and the Emissary advocates an evolutionary theme of right hemisphere to left hemisphere to right hemisphere progression. This is a very, very hopeful development in which the float experience in an unusually easeful and powerful way can move us into and through that right hemisphere progression. An opening. Possibly a spiritization process. Brain lateralization is a vast and interesting field, far too much to go into here. But the next two images playfully show their superficial differences. Geoffrey Crippall, who's a historian and comparative religion scholar, speaks of the right hemisphere orientation in the relation of the sacred and the psyche which are fundamentally related and the intertwining of culture and consciousness. In the float environment, we enter a quiescent state and the left hemisphere releases its orientation to proprioception and specificity. We naturally drift through the core and into the right hemisphere dominance. It is here, out of gravity, in flow that place becomes space. That there is a flow of symbols and images which often relate to a matricle interconnectedness, nature, the transhuman and the spiritual. Edward Kelly, author of Irreducible Mind, Towards the Psychology of the 21st Century states, what is permitted to cross the threshold is not only filtered and selected and narrowed. It also comes through in a different form. Whether this is a dream, a vision, a symbol, a text, or a drawing. We experience this deep and broad other in hypnagogic images which come to us through the filter of culture and memory, both autobiographical memory and race memory and often in an overtly creative way. This is the beginning or the expansion of Gnostic awareness. By this I mean a direct and immediate experiential knowledge of one's own divinity, spirit and connectedness that cannot be reduced to reason or faith. From Gnostic awareness to a non-self meditation. Once again a vast and potent subject which I will just briefly mention. Meditation is an attentive art. Zen meditation is a relaxed, attentive state. It is to calm the overactive mind and clarify one's impulses and perceptions and open to its spontaneousness. In the words of James Austin it is a time to be, not a time to do. It is an emptying of self-referential mental activities to an opening to more universal themes. In the Christian tradition it is kinosus, the emptying of self, the emptying of one's ecological perception and preconceptions. It is the repetition of no thing which is nothing which is the all. With a cessation of sense the images and symbols produced come to us through cultural, historical, natural and personal filters. It is the realization of an unrealizable real. Excuse me for that. In closing it could be magic, a refined indefinable. It could be science, a refined definable. It could be intuition, a meta-neural continuum. It could be a cosmic breeze wafting the weave. It is the bedrock of the deep pool of meditation. The schema of the prophets, the chemicals of healing, the openings of movements, the thoughts of the originals, the images of the other which are the self. Thank you very much.