 Hi everybody! This year we are with you without being with you. Greetings from the tiny little country far up in the north, where it's mostly cold and dark, but right now I believe we have as much sun and warmth as you have in Portland. It's wonderful. The following is a short report about the main work we are doing right now as an association. For those of you who weren't at the conference last year, we'll start with a short summary. The Swedish Flotation Association was founded in Stockholm on January 27 2008. From the very beginning we all agreed on our final goal to try to integrate flotation therapy into the national healthcare system. It's a tough goal, but knowing the potential of floating is well worth all our effort. We have to pass at least three obstacles. One of them is already accomplished. The National Board of Health and Welfare have authorized flotation risk as a method of medical treatment. The next obstacle to overcome is the Government Commission for Medical Evaluation. Very simply put, you can see that this commission works with comparing different methods in curing special diseases. It works like this. We ask them to compare ordinary treatment for lumbago, for example, with treatment with flotation risk. If they find this request interesting, they will do their own research and hopefully the result will be favorable for flotation. In that case, this information will be widely spread among doctors, all kinds of health centers, hospitals, you name it. If we can accomplish this, we have reached our goal. But to succeed with that, we need to be educated and certificated. Therefore, we have started the world's first educational program for tank centers. Education is definitely our priority. It's the key that will unlock a lot of doors for the future. The online course is the first flotation course in the world that will lead to a personal certification. The producers of the course are Professor Trevor Archer of Gothenburg University and subject teacher Anders Hedeen of the Ligné University of Kalmar. Professor Archer has more than 25 years of experience in researching, among other things, reasons for ill health, rehabilitation, and motor and psychological achievements. Subject teacher Anders Hedeen holds a diploma as mental trainer. He has been working for 30 years with mental influence and the learning processes. Together they have been working for seven years on the effects of different influences on our health and behavior. We have made the course web-based, so you can study from home whenever you have the time and energy. And it will cover everything from history to current knowledge, including fundamental knowledge about human influence, supplementary training, the influence of the brain and body, and certification. We are still working on the program, as we have had a lot of both technical hurdles and discussions about the academic level of the course. Any how we are now past the main difficulties and the project is starting to speed up. We have also discussed whether we should make this course available in English. We decided to take a survey from you to see if there is enough interest for us to pursue this. You will find a form on the float conference website that you can fill out if you are interested in seeing this course translated into English. We also have some exciting news. Our researchers have been granted a significant amount of money from the county council in Weremland for new float tank research. Enough money for a PhD candidate to work for four years. The studies will be about GAD, generalized anxiety disorder, together with the non-institutional care and other county council clinics. The treatments will hopefully start in October, as soon as the sanction of ethics is granted. Our researchers have also established co-belaboration with and over medical school in Germany and the Faculty of Medicine in Vienna, Austria. They might also create studies with longer float sessions and also look into finding special groups of patients that will get extra benefits from floating. The Swedish Flotation Association will be working with the researchers on this. We are also working on sharing one of the float tank studies from the Carsta University with all of you. And we have a special message to share from Annette Själgren, one of our researchers here. She is very interested in cooperating with other float researchers around the world and would be happy to be contacted. Her contact info is here and will also be on the float conference website. Of course we will also continue our work with marketing, with our website and all of our other projects, but we consider our work with education and research to be the most important. We are sorry we couldn't be with you this year. We had a great time in Portland last year and we wish you a wonderful day, enjoying life and the inspiring feeling you get while together with so many great floating people, not to mention the local beer. Bye bye.