 Hey, what's going on, everybody? It's great to be here. Before I get started, I basically just first want to thank all of you for doing what you're doing, because, you know, especially after talking to a lot of you last night, I just began to understand that, you know, running a float center is really very much a labor of love. You know, it's a lot of effort into it. And it's not always glamorous. And it's a lot of your personal life gets eaten into because it's a small business, you know, and you're always working at it, you're always thinking about it, you're always making it happen. But the reason that, you know, it's so beautiful is that you all are putting the effort into it, you know, sacrificing some of your own times from your energy to keep this thing alive because you know what it's doing for the greater good. You know, you're providing a service for people to transform, you know, to change their lives ultimately. Each and every one of you that own float centers, you know, it can get used to the idea probably, like I don't own a float center, of course, but you can get used to as you see customers going in and out all the time. You think, oh yeah, well they're just doing their float, but what's really happening in their inner lives when they're having that experience is huge. I'm sure, you know, it's easy to lose track of that sometimes. So I just want to say, you know, first of all, thank all of you for doing what you're doing because you're creating a big impact in the world and creating a lot of positive change on all the people that are going through your floats. So I'm going to talk about my history in float tanks first and how that I used the float tank to become an active modality to change some issues that I was having, but first I want to talk about my history with float tanks. So I first became aware of float tanks and probably about 20 years ago or something, about 300 years old, and it was really from reading like books on hippie philosophers like that type of stuff where they would talk about these things and I thought that sounds really interesting because from the time that I was a teenager I was really interested in just poking at my brain, you know, trying to pull and snap my consciousness like a rubber band and see, you know, what's going on in there. Like I'm sure that a lot of you all have done, in fact I know, saw some of you last night, I know that you all have done that because, you know, all of us are explorers. We're explorers of life and of our inner lives and of our world and we want to know just what's going on and the only way that you learn that is if you go inside and get your hands dirty and figure out, you know, an unexperimental level. So I was very interested because of that but in, you know, way back then in the 90s when we were first hearing about these things, they weren't really accessible, you know. There were no beautiful lush float centers like I'm from Austin, Texas. There are places that are just very luxurious and beautiful, giant like entire room size float tanks almost like a New York apartment pretty much that you can get into really amazing stuff. But back then this is a little, situation was different. I'm sure some of the people that have been in the game for a long time remember that. So after I had, you know, the idea I had that I wanted to do a float, I forgot about it for a little while and then one day I thought, you know what, I'm going to check that out. So I googled to see what was going on. I found a place that said that they offer floats. So that's fantastic. So I set up an appointment and I drove across town and it was at someone's house. So just some random person's house. So nice and comfortable. I go up to this front door and I go in there just some, you know, random float purveyor in there. They say coming on side and I say, great. So I go into the living room talking to him for a minute. It's a little awkward. You know, you just don't know someone at all. You go to this random house, you go inside, now you're in their living room all of a sudden. And there's two worse locations. And if you're in someone's house, it can make you less comfortable if you don't know where you're at. The worst one is if they say, let's go into the basement. So fortunately that isn't what they said because there's no basements in Houston. The second worst one is they said, let's go upstairs. So I was like, all right, let's go upstairs and go upstairs. And they're like, okay, so here we go. The float tank is in my bedroom. So now I'm upstairs and they're going to direct me into the bedroom. But they're like, but first, before you go into my bedroom, I need you to take a shower. All right. Okay. All right. All right. Let's do it. So that's all right. Show me where the shower is at. So I go in the shower and it's weird to like just be suds and up and some strange like, I was in my car 10 minutes ago. Now I'm in someone's shower. Like, what am I doing here? So I get out, squeaky clean going there. And they're like, okay, here we're going to my bedroom. Here's the float tank. And now this is again, this is like probably 20 years ago. So the float tank was kind of like a coffin with warm water in it. I'm only always met a cardboard. It was like just this rectangle box kind of death trap looking thing. And I was like, very great. So get in there and they're like, I'll be waiting out here for you. You know, why? Well, your clothes and personal effects are out here. Enjoy, relax. You know, I was okay. So I get in there. But, you know, the thing that was great was that the second I got in there and closed the door, it was like a key turning and like another dimension opening. And I really immediately experienced the palpable effects of flotation. But I think now is a relevant time to ask, why would I put myself in that situation? Why? Why would I go to some weird person's house and take a shower? You know, and it was because, I mean, now I'm hooked on it. I do it all the time. But no, I, it was like, why would it do it? It's because I had terrible anxiety. I had terrible anxiety whenever, ever since I was a kid, you know, because I came from, you know, just the environment I was living from the family, all that stuff. You know, this is, that's a whole other talk. But I will say that I had extreme anxiety. You know, it was a situation where my heart was always racing all the time. My stomach was always in knots. You know, my shoulders were always tight. You know, whenever I was a kid, I would come home. I would try to put my key in the lock of the front door. And sometimes my hands would be shaking so bad that I couldn't get the key in the door because I was so nervous about going inside to discover what was going to be waiting for me, you know. And so as an adult, or as I was just coming to an adult, I realized, I have to, I have to figure this out. Like, I can't live my whole life like this. This isn't normal. And so that's why, you know, I got into meditation first. And then after practicing meditation for a while, this is when I then found the float tank. And I thought, this could help as well. This could be something. So the beautiful part about that first experience in the float tank was that whenever you're going to cultivate the meditation practice, there are a lot of things that you hear about, you know, a lot of states of mind experiences that you hear or read about, but it takes a while and a bit of dedication before you experience them. One of those is being able to look inward to have clarity on what is, you know, the mental formations that are flowing over the cross stage of your consciousness. What are the thoughts that are moving through? How can I become more aware of those and, you know, acknowledge them and engage with them in the moment, as opposed to them seeming like they are what I am and they are controlling me and they are this, you know, immovable force that's inside me. The tank immediately when I closed the door got to that space. I knew it was that space of mine the second I closed it because I had been working towards it. I had gotten flashes of it, but getting in the tank there, it was like, okay, this is it. Now I can actually relax and explore that mental space because in meditation, of course, it's an active practice. But with flotation, you're just receiving. You know, you're just, it's passive. You're just laying down and you're just in there and you're experiencing this state. And so I started, you know, just begin to watch my mind in there. And I noticed that I was just in a perpetual, you know, parasympathetic fight or flight mode. That's what I began to realize is that my anxiety was coming from just being locked into this fight or flight thing where I was just going through life just reacting and reacting and reacting. And I had no agency over really what I was thinking or what I was saying. It was just like everything that was said to me. It was essentially the script of my subjective perception of what reality was. Was it any comment, any experience, anything that I saw, any look, anything was somehow related to me being in trouble or guilty or being threatened or something like that. And so I was just reacting to it all the time. And I began to notice that whenever I asked the question why and what it was and I looked deeper, see that, okay, this is, you know, this state of mind that I need to work through. I need to figure out what the opposite state of mind is and start to get into that space. And so I really started applying the meditation techniques to that and I made it to where I would go to this one particular float place that I talked about and I would go there every couple of weeks, once a month, whenever I could afford it at the time. And I started integrating meditation practices while I was in the tank. And what I found was that applying an integrated approach to a passive thing, which is floatation, with an active thing, which is meditation, really created incredible results. Because while I was in there, the ease of being in that state where boom, the doors closed, you immediately are looking inward and you're aware of the stage of your mind. And then being able to do those meditative practices to then begin to reset and calm the nervous system in the body. And that's the interesting thing about meditation, is that to get into the sympathetic nervous system state, which is the opposite of the fight or flight one, which is basically the rest and digest that's after you eat, that's after you go to the bathroom, after you have sex, whatever it is, you get into that state and you feel calm and warm and relaxed in your body. And so I was doing these things, I was trying to get into that state. And what's interesting is that when you're, I'm sure that people here are experiencing anxiety, we all do. What's interesting is that whenever you are experiencing it, what's happening is that you're in that nervous system state and not intellectually, but physically, your body feels like you're actually in a threatening space. It's reacting as if your environment is threatening, but really you're just waiting in line to get a coffee or something, which actually probably shouldn't be having coffee, you're anxious, but you're waiting in line, you're there, everything's fine, everything's cool, but your body is reacting as if there's a saber-toothed tiger over here looking at his chops, looking at you. And so to get out of that state, you have to then retrain the mind. And so what's great is that the breathing and meditation, the breathing signals to your mind that lets it know that your body is safe. And so I found that in the flotation, while I was doing the meditation practices, that the breathing of the meditation, the visualizations, was a way to then reassure my body and my mind that everything was actually okay on the outside. And that became really, really valuable. And it was wild that after every session I would notice my anxiety go down like 5%, and then I would do it again and another 5%, but it would actually stick because there's a lot of things I would do to try to get some more constructive than others to see if I could get my anxiety to calm down. But they always kind of, it was a yo-yo effect, like a little bit of effect, and then a week later or whatever it was back to normal. But this really stuck. It made it to where I noticed these decreases in long-term resting anxiety over time, the more that I floated. And having experienced meditation before this was really valuable because a cultivation of that witnessed mind of being able to kind of always be aware of what was going on in my mind made it where I was able to observe that change in that process over time and kind of be more aware of it unfolding as opposed to going into the tank and kind of reducing your anxiety and then just one day hitting you and being like, oh, I feel a bit better, you know? So it was very valuable and very interesting to be able to watch that process. Now, you know, what's really interesting is that in Buddhism there are six senses, and we generally of course think about our five senses, but in Buddhism there's six senses, and of course we all know what our five senses are and how those contribute to our experience of reality, right? So if you think about it for a minute, and this might get a little bit weird, but that's what we're here for, right? So if you think about your perception of the world and you have your sight and your smell, your touch, your taste, you're like in this body that's in three-dimensional space and there are all of these, the sense information flowing around, right, outside of your body. So you smell something, it enters your sense organs and goes into your brain, and that's what's called like a mental formation, like a piece of consciousness material arises in the mind, and you have the sensation of smell, same thing with touch and etc, etc. And so the combinations of all of our senses are always sending these signals in through our nervous system and it's creating these mental formations that arise in our mind. Now I think all of us are pretty comfortable because that's just how, you know, our human body is programmed and that's how we experience things and we're used to it, you know, because it's all we've ever known, but the interesting thing is that the sixth sense in Buddhism is thoughts. So they actually say that the actual thoughts themselves are another type of sense and that might sound a little bit odd, but if you think about it, what are thoughts? You know, they are basically scribbled notes that your brain is making about what you're experiencing. They're like writing little suggestions because you are in the, you know, playing the role of you out in the world and your brain wants you to have a good script and it wants you to put on a good performance. So it's writing as much material as it can for you to draw from. The problem is that's one, that can be very overwhelming and the two, here's where the rub is, is that we mistake rising thoughts as something more threatening and authoritative and final than what we experienced coming outside of our bodies because it's coming from inside of us. So that makes it much more personal and therefore it appears to be real and really powerful. So just to break that down a little bit, like if you are in bed in the morning and you're nice and cozy in there and then you pull the covers back and you get a little cold air on the skin, you go, oh yeah, I'm just a little cold from that because it was warm under the covers, cold out there, pull that up, everything's fine. You're like, yeah, I'm cold, I'll go get in the shower, I'll go work out, I'll step outside in the sun, you warm up and then you carry on, right? But if you wake up in the morning and you have this thought, you look in the mirror and you go, oh, that guy's going to fail today. You know, that doesn't go away just like the cold does, right? That sticks with you for days, weeks, months and times, right? And so if you think about that in the same way it really shows how absurd it is that our thoughts have that much control over us because essentially like having a negative thought or an anxious thought that is really arresting your whole body and holding on to it all in mistaking it for something so real and final and permanent and effective is just the same as waking up in the morning, pulling those covers off, filling the coldness and then five hours later when you're running through the park sledding you're like, I am still freezing. I'm still freezing. That thought that I had about the coldness is still with me. I'm really holding on to it, you know, because I experienced it once and I became attached to it and now I'm grasping it for hours and hours. Like we simply don't do that with what we perceive from the outside world. But we do that with our thoughts. And so whenever you can start to see your thoughts in the tank and having an active practice in the tank with meditation is really valuable in this because you begin to see your thoughts for simple, arising pieces of information. You know, your anxieties that you have are just, again, they're just mental formations. They're things moving across the stage of your mind. They aren't you. It's like weather, you know, moving through a state or through a city or something like that. It's just data that's moving, right? Just like when you cut an orange and you smell it, you don't go like, oh, I am an orange now forever. You know, you just smell the orange. You accept it like that was a passing momentary piece of information. And now I'll move on, connected to what's actually here, the true nature of reality. And through flotation and meditation in the tank, you can get closer to that because the opportunity to look inward with the help of the tank makes it to where you're not distracted, having to put in the work to get to that space. So you have such a huge opportunity to be able to really go inward to look at your mind, to understand yourself more deeply, to look at where those things are arising from and really the mechanics of the arising thoughts and mental formations that flow through your mind. And so you can become more comfortable with those from a witness point of view. Being able to just observe with the awareness of your mind, those things, it really makes it to recreate a separation between the thoughts that create anxiety, the reactions that create anxiety, and your actual experience that you're having in life. So that was really how, through that process, how I remapped my relationship with reality. It's because in the beginning, whenever I was young because of trauma, I had this intense anxiety and through the process of meditation and meditating in the float tank, I then was able to remap my relationship with reality because I understood that it wasn't what I was feeling, it wasn't the arising information in my mind that was really what I was experiencing. That what I was experiencing was out here. Like this is what's real. And all of that arising stuff is just information that is no more solid or no more threatening than the cold air that you feel on your skin. So I would just encourage all of you as float tank owners and operators to offer some of those tools to your customers. If you have tanks with speakers in them, maybe offer guided meditations. Maybe offer binaural beats or music or something like that. Maybe a way to expand the business and to create a different diversified form of income is to perhaps offer meditation classes along with the conjunction of floatation. So it's like, hey, here is this evening where we do half an hour of meditation and then everyone goes to do their float. So they're primed and they're in that frequency of space before they even go into the tank so that they can experience what the integrative approach is like. So that's all for my talk. Thank you all for being here. Thank you for doing what you do and I really appreciate all of you for doing great work in the world.