Sculpture Dedicated to True Value of Floatation Therapy

As a pain management specialist for over two decades, I have seen how pain can change and manipulate a person’s brain, behavior and being. Despite my best efforts to practice what I preached, my own chronic pain was a distraction and the source of significant physical and emotional disability. Chronic pain was a primary catalyst for the eventual expression of my multiple sclerosis.  The combination of these issues played games with my brain and my body. 

Coincidentally at this time,  I discovered floatation therapy which lightened both my physical and emotional burden.  One of the most remarkable benefits of floating is how effortlessly it allows for a state of internal reflection and focus.  It’s like meditation on steroids.  I’ve spent numerous hours floating atop 10” of super salty skin temperature water, visualizing the reduction and elimination of both pain and lesions in my brain and spinal cord.  During this time of deep inner reflection to heal myself, it brought me to some realizations about myself, my surroundings, my emotional health, my relationships with others, gaining clarity on my purpose, my goals, future and direction. 

One such result is that floating encouraged my transition towards retirement from clinical chiropractic and acupuncture to that of helping others through providing floatation therapy services to others in need.

                                                                 Internal Focus by Lee HAZELGROVE
                                                                                    The FLOAT ZONE

In July 2017, the week of my retirement, I was visiting the United Network For Organ Sharing, here in Richmond, VA. Within this beautiful modern, life saving facility are artistic displays from local artists.  As part of the exhibit, there was a ceramic sculpture hanging on the wall, entitled “Internal Focus”.  It spoke to me. And in one moment, it captured years of thoughts and visualizations and emotions -  tears, pain, joy, excitement, and hope.  It reminded me of my relationship and journey with the float tank. I immediately purchased the sculpture with the intention of displaying it at The Float Zone.  

Internal Focus, by Lee Hazelgrove, now hangs in the entry of The Float Zone as a dedication to all who come to float with the hope they too will find relief, calm, focus, direction, awareness, and the healthy state that naturally follows.  

Beginning in February, 2018, The Float Zone will be featuring the work of local artists that too have been inspired by floating.

-Dr. David Berv, Chief Experience Officer, The Float Zone

Floating For Golf Performance?

For the avid golfer, it’s never too early to think about the best ways to improve your golf performance.  The road to lower scores and better golf may not lie in your biggest Bertha, but more in the way you address the game through physical means, including your posture.  The key to better posture and better golf may be found within a creative new method to improve your golf-specific muscle memory which involves a gravity defying technique.

Since the beginning of the Tiger era, those in the industry knew there was an edge by focusing on the physical side of golf and by 2010 golf fitness became a household term. Embracing the physical side of golf is crucial, especially if golf is your passion and playing well is important.  Demonstrating poor posture anywhere from address to finish can have a greater impact on your game than your high dollar clubs or fancy golf ball and can be responsible for almost any swing fault.  Common examples of poor golf postures are roundedness in the shoulders with a hunched mid and upper back, a protruding chin/head, or excessive spinal curves as seen from the profile view. 

Proper posture for a golfer requires one to have the ability to maintain static postures, as well as through a range of motion, called dynamic posture.  Attaining and maintaining these proper golf postures requires a balanced approach of stretching tight muscles and strengthening weak muscles, which is beyond the scope of this blog. However, muscular re-education, which is often the hardest concept to grasp, may be facilitated within something called a float pod.  

A float pod or float tank is a fiberglass, 9’x5’ eggshell shaped tub, with a hinged lid. Inside the pod is 175 gallons of skin temperature water (94 degrees) in which a half ton of epsom salt (magnesium sulfate) is dissolved. The effect is that you are effortlessly buoyant. It is called floatation therapy, floating, or R.E.S.T. (restricted environmental stimulus technique). Golfers can use floating to leverage their game by working on postural subtleties, while floating face up for an hour - defying gravity.  Why not? If professional athletes and Olympians are floating for performance, it must be doing some good.

The pod itself is located in a private room with a shower.  You shower, then climb in and make your way onto your back, face up.  To enhance the experience of weightlessness and to play with additional sensory input, you can choose to close the pod lid or to keep it cracked, turn off the pod light or leave it on, listen to ambient music or float in silence.  The combination of the skin temperature water and the salt saturation literally makes you feel like you are in a cloud.

Without any physical pressures related to gravity as when standing, sitting, or lying, floating affords a unique place to experiment with positions and postures that are hard to find when gravity is involved.  This type of sport-specific posture practice makes it much easier to find these same postural adaptations in your daily routine and on the golf course.  

Here’s what you want to do while floating for golf performance: First, while in the face up floating position, begin to draw your breastbone or sternum toward the roof of the pod.  Your shoulders automatically depress. Experiment with subtleties of this action and how your muscles adapt to that position. Explore how it feels to consciously control your shoulder blade without gravity. Now, experiment with your hands by your sides and slowly begin turn your palms toward the sides of the pod and back toward your body and feel the lower shoulder blade muscles engage.  Next, tuck your chin slightly. This will give the feeling of an elongated spine. Any and all of these movements should also free up your ribcage and allow easier breathing.

Enjoy the novelty of being able to find these golf performance positions while in the anti-gravity state of floating. Chest up and out, shoulders back and hands pull down towards floor, chin tuck. Sounds almost like a golf lesson for those who embrace golf fitness…  

Importantly, before getting out of the pod, visualize your perfect golf posture.  Then after your float and once dressed, take a minute and try to repeat those same chest, shoulder, arm and chin actions while sitting, standing, driving and eventually while holding a golf club through static and dynamic postural movements.  Try stepping outside the box this season and float your way to better golf performance.

Dr. David Berv is a certified chiropractic sports physician, retired golf teaching professional and owner of The Float Zone, a float center in Richmond, VA.

For more on golf performance and floating, contact Dr. David Berv : david@myfloatzone.com

Floatation Shows Promise for Brain Injury Awareness

Read This If You Have Lost Your Mind (or have a brain injury)

Floatation therapy shows promise for brain injury.  Brain research is a rapidly developing field, but there remains much that we do not understand about how the brain operates. Traumatic brain injury and concussion are significant disabilities involving a large age range. Identification and treatment for traumatic brain injury ("TBI") and concussion is currently in a state of development and awareness, largely influenced by growing scrutiny in the National Football League and the U.S. military. 

Seth MacFarlane brilliantly uses humor in a recent Family Guy episode - "Stewie gets a concussion" - to demonstrate how lingering side effects ( disorientation, mood disorders and various sensory disturbances) essentially become an individual's “new normal.”

A Richmond, VA individual who is currently suffering from a TBI lifestyle, echoes the sentiments of Family Guy’s concussion episode, when she recently stated, “I already knew the world doesn't like talking about matters of the brain - things like brain injury, recovery, rehab, mental health, addiction, suicide, trauma, sensory disorders, cognitive function, etc”… This brings home the sentiment of MacFarlane’s poking at the way in which the big, political business of professional sports, as well as our own military has played a key role in furthering this hidden epidemic from mainstream consciousness.  

Regardless of the increasing awareness of TBI, we are just beginning to understand the depths of the brain and how to repair it.  Further, because of the extent, quantity and quality of symptoms that vary from person to person, there is no consensus on the best method in which to treat TBI induced migraine, visual and auditory hallucinations, mood disorders, executive functioning, sleep disorder, and much more with a tried and true treatment - especially when many who suffer a TBI don’t even realize they have a TBI for many months after their original trauma.  Misdiagnosis happens. Some with TBI think they are just depressed. Anxious. Forgetful. Some get lost in the “system” and emerge without a concrete therapeutic direction.

Unfortunately, TBI not only affect those with the brain injury, but their family and friends.  It takes a unique understanding, compassion and patience from loved ones.  It can be incredibly frustrating for both parties and the affects of friendships and family can be catastrophic.      

As a sports chiropractor having studied the brain and central nervous system, as well as learning concussion, return to play (and work) protocols, I have long understood the devastating impact that concussive forces can have on the brain and its control of both the body and mind. I have worked with professional athletes and seen how concussions can interrupt a career.  

Being a float center owner with a neuro-musculo-skeletal lens, it has opened up a window in my mind as to a whole new world of possibility for those suffering with the effects of mild TBI and TBI. In my time in the sports medicine world, there were often days and months when particular conditions such as fibromyalgia, disc herniations or a complicated pain referral pattern would pervade the schedule.  It made me pay extra attention and often gave pause for reflection on making sure to consider other tandem treatment options that may leverage the healing process.  In my growing expertise in the floatation therapy world, I am noticing that many are seeking out floatation as a way to leverage their healing process. Some float in combination with physical therapy.  Some float in combination with counseling, massage, energy work, medications, functional medical approaches, exercise therapy, acupuncture, and much more.  Floating appears to assist any TBI therapeutic mind/body approach.  But floating, like the brain is still not well-known. 

Floatation or restricted environmental stimulus therapy ( R.E.S.T. ), involves effortlessly floating face up in a private room, in an oversized fiberglass tub that is filled with 10” of skin temperature (93-94 degree) water and saturated with 1000 pounds of Epsom salt (Magnesium Sulfate).  The premise is to remove routine environmental and physical stimulation, such as light, sound, and gravity.  You can choose to modify the level of sensory restriction by leaving the lid of the pod open or closed, being in complete darkness or leaving the light on, complete silence or listening to ambient music.  Regardless, you are floating effortlessly and your brain likes it.  Our brains spend a lot of time processing our orientation in space, as well as sights, sounds, walking, driving, digital imagery and more. We never unplug.  R.E.S.T. gives the brain a chance to rest. Through the peculiar sense of brain rest and rejuvenation that occurs with floating, it would stand to reason that what Norman Doidge, MD discusses in his bestselling books on neuroplasticity, or the brain's ability to rewire itself, could apply directly to floating. And this may be key in unlocking some of the secrets of the brain and how to heal itself.  

Case studies are currently being done at The Float Zone in Richmond, VA  which take into account physical, emotional, neurological and psychological aspects of individuals currently coping with traumatic brain injury of various duration and disability.  In one such case study, the subject is a 39 year-old female dentist with a moderate-severe traumatic brain injury following a major motor vehicle accident 14 months prior.  Symptoms include fatigue, brain fog, confusion, depression, anxiety, sleep disturbance, headaches and other, directly related to her brain injury.  She has not found any treatment or combinations of treatment that have been remarkably helpful. The case study observes effects of floatation therapy upon various physical, emotional, neurological and psychological aspects. The results are encouraging.  Click here to read the abstract: https://bit.ly/2Orv3Iv For the full case study, contact Dr. David Berv ( see below).

The rapidly emerging industry of Floatation Therapy, along with the growing interest and awareness of concussion and TBI is bound for a positive collision course, for the greater good of the brain injury community.  Floatation and R.E.S.T. may help to pave the way for an improved integration, cooperation and communication between medical and alternative medical treatment services. If you or someone you know has a TBI, floatation should seriously be considered.  If you or someone you know is a mind/body healthcare provider of any type, R.E.S.T. should be on the radar. 

For more on floating and concussion/TBI, contact Dr. David Berv at The Float Zone: david@myfloatzone.com   www.myfloatzone.com

Typical Float pod in private room with shower

Floating favors faulty foot mechanics

As our physical activity patterns change seasonally, the beginning of spring inspires a myriad of movements dormant during the winter.  Akin to spring training in sports, we all have our own ways of warming up our muscles and minds for our favorite outdoor activity. For most, this includes more walking, running, and cycling at various combinations of speeds, grades, and directions.  Tennis anyone?  

Rarely, does anyone think about evaluating their sense of foot stability and balance prior to beginning a season of (sport-specific) activity. It is precisely this oversight that can lead to issues like plantar fascitis, shin splints, achilles tendonitis and a variety of collateral muscular and skeletal issues.

A lack of proper 1-legged balance implicates the entire rest of the body from a structural standpoint. Especially during walking and running, there is a transfer of movement up the body, from the ankle to the shin, knee, leg, pelvis and spine, including the neck. This gives way to compensations in multiple ways, including stability, mobility and muscular balance far distant from the lower legs and feet - including those with both flat feet and high arches. Yes, your headaches and shoulder pain could be coming from your feet.

Improving your sense of 1- legged balance is the simplest and most effective exercise you can do to improve your gait and overall functional body mechanics. Proper pedal balance is also the keystone to athletic performance. It is the best way to reduce injury and may likely prevent that next ankle sprain. 

Test your balance by simply standing on one leg with your eyes straight ahead and lift the other leg so the thigh is parallel to the ground. How long can you stand without faltering and/or falling? (Be near something solid to hold if needed).  If you still think you have a good sense of balance, try each leg as above, with eyes closed. It will be very obvious which side needs some help.  

The corrective exercise only takes seconds per day and is exactly like the test. Simply stand on one leg while lifting the other and looking straight ahead - not at the floor. It is harder without shoes. You can even do this discreetly at the water cooler or grocery store line by simply shifting most of your weight to one side and barely making floor contact with the other foot. Try variations of this with eyes open and closed (use caution with eyes closed).

If you have or are currently suffering with foot problems or regional body pain caused by faulty foot mechanics, floatation therapy can help. Floating involves a 9'x5' fiberglass pod with a hinged lid, that sits in a private room with a shower. It is filled with 10" of skin temperature water (160 gallons) and saturated with 1000 pounds of medical grade epsom salt. You effortlessly float face up (like a cork), for an hour and emerge feeling different in body and mind. When you are in the anti-gravity state of floating, it is very easy to move your feet, knees, hips and shoulders through ranges of motion that you can't while weight-bearing. Further, you absorb Magnesium through the high concentration of Epsom salt (Magnesium sulfate). This is soothing for the muscles and assists many other body systems. Floating affects regions of the brain that promote rest and repair as well as the areas that process the perception of pain. Floating also helps to restore balance to the muscular and skeletal structures that may have compensated with excess physical stress, due to issues with the feet. You feel good all over after a float.

Floatation therapy is excellent for providing a strong mental balance to combat stress, anxiety and sleep-deprivation. So, as you begin your athletic endeavors this season, take a moment and work on your sense of balance to improve and protect your overall musculoskeletal health. And take comfort in knowing that floating and foot mechanics are friends.

For more on foot mechanics and floating, contact Dr. David Berv at The Float Zone:  david@myfloatzone.com   

Example of pod in which you effortlessly float to assist Physical and mental well-being

Controlled Breathing Leverages Floating

Deep breathing makes for better floating

BREATHING AND FLOATING?

Most of us are not aware of it.  It goes on even while we sleep. We often hold it.  But we can’t live without doing it constantly.  When was the last time you paid attention to your breathing?

Most of us unconsciously take short, shallow breaths during our waking and sleeping hours. This tends to gather tension in your neck and shoulders.  Shallow chest breathing has been associated with TMJ issues, poor digestion, low back pain and even decreased athletic performance. 

Many health and wellness practices such as meditation, martial arts and yoga use breathing as a keystone. Professional athletes like tennis players and golfers use their breath to harness power through a purposeful exhale at impact. 

Health practitioners such as acupuncturists encourage their patients to belly breathe while receiving treatment, which helps the flow of internal energy. Many have learned how to use their breath in this way, to diffuse pain. 

Have ever tried to consciously pay attention to your breathing for any length of time? Challenging.  Have you ever gone snorkeling and heard your breath under water? And then you realize you don’t hear it anymore. Then it comes back. And you realize, that once you are aware of it, you can control it.  You can slow it down. Keep it quiet, rhythmic.  This is actually a familiar sensation to those who have floated - you might know it as floatation, float therapy or restricted environmental stimulus therapy. 

While floating, it is easy to become aware of your breath and use it as a meditative or pain distracting focus.  You can easily transform short, shallow breaths to become deep and expansive. Your breath can help you to enter the dream-like state that many experience while floating. It is both common, easy and helpful to experiment and manipulate your breathing patterns.  Slow, relaxed inhales and exhales.  Floating is the perfect place to practice and learn how to harness your breath, then apply it to your day to day routine to manage stress, focus and pain.   After all, when you are effortlessly floating face up in an oversized fiberglass tub filled with 10” of skin temperature water and saturated with 1000 pounds of Epsom salts, you breathe distinctively different then when sitting, standing or lying down on a surface.  

Floating makes you a better breather. And this leads to a better float experience. A better float experience will enhance your life in many ways. Breathing is a good thing. 

For more on breathing and floating, contact the author, Dr. David Berv:  david@myfloatzone.com