Float tanking for true relaxation and soothing muscle fatigue

floating, soothing muscles, improving toxin release, healthy immune system

thoughts before floating

I heard about this nearby Float Tank last night. Already I have an appointment. I'm all for complete relaxation, increasing the levels of dopamine and endorphins in my brain and reducing stress (and zapping the dreaded Cortisol). All of this leads to greater well-being. I'm sure I'll sleep well tonight!

Why float? I love swimming in water, especially floating in the warm ocean. I grew up in Florida and floated most of my childhood in the ocean or my pool. This cooler time of year draws me to my hot tub each evening. But the water is not buoyant. Sounds like true bliss to float with music, dim lights and a completely private and surreal setting. It may be like amniotic fluid.

The float tank is filled with epsom salt (magnesium). I'm a big fan of epsom salt baths because it soothes my aching muscles from yoga. Why does magnesium help?

Here's how it works. Building muscle causes fatigue. Healthy muscles (called "red muscles”) have a reserve oxygen supply, permitting them to contract and relax repeatedly while maintaining cellular respiration which resists muscle fatigue. The myosin protein in muscles causes contraction and relaxation acting as enzymes, which break down ATP molecules (adenosine triphosphate). ATP provides energy so we want to keep an ample supply in our muscles. When ATP is used up too quickly without the oxygen to support it, muscles (called "white muscles") become quickly fatigued with the build-up of lactic acid—an indication that muscle cell oxygen has been depleted.

Magnesium in epsom salts helps by flushing lactic acid build-up in the muscles. Magnesium is an abundant mineral in our bodies and its role in our overall health is important. It can be found in over 300 different enzymes in our body and is vital for activating muscles and nerves, creating energy in the body and efficiently digesting proteins, carbohydrates and fats. Other ways to replenish magnesium are eating organic foods, lowering sugar intake and lowering stress.

(Read more here from my healing series on muscle fatigue)

about the float tank

I went to Float North County. The water is 93.5 degrees and filled with 1,100 pounds of epsom salt which means you float effortlessly. People float to relieve stress, recover from injuries, fight addiction, eliminate chronic pain, etc.

It is said that after 30-45 minutes of floating, your mind starts producing theta brainwaves, which are responsible for that state between waking and sleeping.

reflections after floating

At first I wondered how I'd keep myself company for 90 minutes. I wasn't tired. I began by playing with the lighting and moving around, bouncing lightly off the walls. I found it difficult to relax the back of my neck at first even though I completely trusted that I didn't need to hold it up. The water was only like 1-2 feet deep. The attendant told me that I don't want to get the epsom salt in my eyes, but that wasn't making me tense as I had my towel nearby.

I realized in there that you are faced with yourself, but in a different way than a yoga practice where you get to move the energy around. I felt the tension that I carry around with me in the world. It was highlighted as I put all of my focus on it. Coincidentally, the back of my neck is my latest tense spot in my yoga practice that is holding me back so it's my new focus. Who knew I'd end up in this float tank to fulfill my destiny...

I began to do pranayama breathing—the simple 1:4:2 ratio through my nose. I could hear my breathing. It was soothing. I did this for about 30 minutes. I watched my reflection on the ceiling which was very faint but clear enough. Eventually I felt the need to do some yoga-like poses from side to side, feel some bones crack, etc. Felt great.

I flipped my body around to the other side and was then noticing my hair flowing in the blue light. The next thing I knew I was making mermaid shapes on the ceiling, different swaying motions to see which hairdo I could make in my reflection.

Next time I checked in with myself I realized the tension in the back of my neck was gone. Everything was in slow motion. I was like a blue avatar (from the movie Avatar) floating in the tank. My fingers seemed really long. I could see them on the ceiling. I spent about 5 minutes moving them slowly, checking them out. I was almost motionless.

At this point I realized that I was distracted. I was entertaining myself. I wanted to try to be extra still. I knew I needed to grab my phone for a photo first. I'd relax better after that...

It wasn't until later that I turned the lights out so that it was completely dark. When I tried this at the beginning I didn't like it. The music was only playing for the first 8 minutes. In the dark I stopped breathing through my nose as if I were in a yoga class trying to stay present. I breathed through my mouth. I wasn't sleeping but I was in heaven. 

I finally knew what it was like to completely relax while floating. I didn't want the moment to end.

I'll be back and expand upon my journey.

reactions next day

I woke with a headache. I've known epsom salt baths to be detoxifying, but this concentrated amount and for a long period of time really amplified the process.

Magnesium increases circulatory functions, improving toxin release. Today I will using my juicer often to flush the toxins that are being released, replenish with good electrolytes and minerals, assisting my immune system, hormones and more! I'll start with celery, cucumber, cilantro, lemon, microgreens. And a shot of apple cider vinegar.

My skin feels awesome! I was surprisingly awake later than normal last night, feeling vibrant, but had a deep sleep. I remembered very detailed dreams.

Namaste,

-Robin Ellen Lucas, MA

Respiratory System, Breathing and Meditation

Healing the Total Body: Where Western Anatomy Meets Eastern Spiritual Science

Healing Series, part 6

Read on for more details...

Endocrine System, Aging and Spine Health

Healing the Total Body: Where Western Anatomy Meets Eastern Spiritual 

Healing Series, part 5 

Read on for more details...

Muscular System and Love

Healing the Total Body: Where Western Anatomy Meets Eastern Spiritual Science

Healing Series, part 3



Listen to your heart

Where am I? I sometimes wonder. My heart is the biggest part of my yoga practice. It’s the biggest part of my life, in fact. My physical anatomical heart is affected too. My heightened emotional state increases my heart rate. My yoga helps me reframe my love for myself and others, reversing bad mental, emotional and spiritual habits.

Voices in the subtle body

By moving the secrets I hide in body parts, voices arise spoken through my subtle body. What I hear is not always easy to deal with. I do yoga anyway because I know it’s my path. Whatever I do to open my heart, allowing my heart’s wisdom to speak, is helpful for me.

When it gets too hard and I close up, what stops me from wanting to connect with my heart? I know that to feel the wounds is to release them. Carl G. Jung describes that the,

“Dark night of the Soul sounds like a threatening and much to be avoided experience. There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own soul. One becomes enlightened by making the darkness conscious.”

Creative heart is not a guilty pleasure

Dreams and visualizations come from the open heart space, not a closed place of resistance and internal rebellion. My creative heart is not a guilty pleasure; it is the answer.

The chakra system describes my subtle body: Shoulders are the 4th chakra (Heart Chakra of love), the hips are the 2nd chakra (Sacral Chakra of creativity). My practice is my teacher.

Emotions unlock secrets

Where emotional patterns turn to physical pain and then leave (samskaras burning), I am harnessing this heart pain too—the door to healing. To sit dormant with the anger is only "acting out." Sometimes I keep my composure during my practice and other times I'm emotionally and physically weak.

"Anger is the deepest form of care for another... Stripped of physical imprisonment, anger points toward the purest form of compassion, always illuminates what we belong to, what we wish to protect, and what we are willing to hazard ourselves for." ~David Whyte,

Fearlessly release secrets

This all happens spontaneously because I fearlessly move the body parts that protect my secret, and my breathing circulates it all. Toxins are included with spiritual truths, and they all voice themselves inside me until I break apart. The voice given in this spiritual place I go to is the truth.

When I really feel my emotional heart, my Nervous System relaxes, my subtle body energetically softens and the door to bring love to me opens. Whereas in my “escape”, (fantasy, snide humor, psychological analysis, etc.), I am in denial. Why escape?

Embrace uncertainty

Sometimes paying too much attention to balancing the emotional heart by soothing discomfort should instead be felt as raw emotion for a release. Paying better attention to what the discomfort is saying allows me to learn the important messages about letting go.

Muscle fatigue

With all of this yoga and attention to the emotional heart, next comes muscular pain. It’s an indication of muscle-building, comes up in the form of fatigue, and occurs where we need it most sometimes. I invite the Muscular System into my focus, mainly the voluntary muscles—the ones which contract when stimulated by neurons when I consciously use them to move my leg, arm, etc. and relax by being passive; they are known as the skeletal muscles. I’m also working my involuntary muscles—the ones which work in the walls of the intestines, blood vessels, heart (but I’ll get into this later).

Muscles inflamed with repetition

When I learn a new yoga pose and repeat it daily, this new repetition of certain skeletal muscles are in pain, tightened, and in great need of care. I get monthly deep tissue massages to stabilize the muscle tissue structure—muscle cells separated and wrapped in layers of connective tissue, enclosed in fascia, connected to the bones with tendons.

Muscles contract when I use them, but my feat is to relax them completely after using them so that their contracted state doesn’t build up creating a knot, and touching nerves that trigger unnecessary (and imbalanced) compensations with other muscles. Much of this is reversed and calmed into a stable state after massage.

Fatigued muscles lack oxygen

Why does muscle-building cause fatigue? Healthy muscles (called "red muscles”) have a reserve oxygen supply, permitting them to contract and relax repeatedly while maintaining cellular respiration which resists muscle fatigue. The myosin protein in muscles causes contraction and relaxation acting as enzymes, which break down ATP molecules (adenosine triphosphate). ATP provides energy so we want to keep an ample supply in our muscles. When ATP is used up too quickly without the oxygen to support it, muscles (called "white muscles") become quickly fatigued with the build-up of lactic acid—an indication that muscle cell oxygen has been depleted.

Lactic acid build-up not only causes discomfort but also is delivered to the liver (and too much on this organ causes the Digestive System to overwork). Therefore, I want more red muscles and enough ATP to not only contract muscles but also relax them.

Drinking water flushes lactic acid and toxins

Sometimes I'm told that the TCM pressure points (Traditional Chinese Medicine) on outer top of my feet are sensitive and painful. This points to liver aggravation (eating oily food and extra lactic acid build-up). Drinking a lot of water dilutes this. Drinking water is not good to do before morning Ashtanga yoga, as it makes me spiritually heavier. But drinking water during the day, especially with muscle pain, flushes out the toxins which creates relief; it's become my post-yoga activity.

When I'm most sore, I soak in an Epsom salt bath. Why does this soothe muscle soreness? The magnesium in epsom salts—absorbed through the skin—helps relax skeletal muscles by flushing lactic acid build-up in the muscles. Magnesium is an abundant mineral in our bodies and its role in our overall health is important. It can be found in over 300 different enzymes in our body and is vital for activating muscles and nerves, reating energy in the body and efficiently digesting proteins, carbohydrates and fats. Other ways to replenish magnesium are eating organic foods, lowering sugar intake and lowering stress.

Skeletal System, fears and spiritual grounding: Healing series

Healing the Total Body: Where Western Anatomy Meets Eastern Spiritual Science

Healing Series, part 2

Courage

Courage is daring. I have many fears that I cover with anger in my pursuit to being competent in the world. I work this out in my Ashtanga yoga each morning and throughout the day.

My first fear was walking into the Mysore yoga room on Day One. For many years, I didn’t think that I was good enough (i.e., my yoga poses weren’t going to be good enough, I wouldn’t have the right alignment, my mind was too scattered, I would be judged, etc.).

Bones and ego

Before arriving, it was all about the yoga positions. This begins with the Skeletal System and also the psychological and spiritual Ego. With this focus, or should I say worry, however, there is no place for breathing and going deeper into who I am—the true reason for practicing yoga.

Yoga's skeletal structure

I had been doing yoga for 18 years so my Skeletal System supported me. I know many of the bones and proper alignment, where I’m off and how to compensate.

Skeletal alignment in yoga

I learned by experience about gravity and skeletal alignment in the yoga poses and that we "use muscular force to bring the bones into a position where they carry the load. Once these positions are attained, muscular force is no longer necessary (or greatly decreased)” (Source: The Key Muscles of Hatha Yoga, Ray Long).

The bones on the right side of my body—arm, leg, sternum bone, foot—are all longer; this creates misalignment in yoga but also in living. What has bothered me the most for years has been my neck, as it slowly crunches to the left, also affecting my left shoulder. I’ve gone to a chiropractor for years to get realigned.

Misalignments highlighted

When I first began Mysore, a deeper pose (Supta Kurmasana) in the Ashtanga Primary Series highlighted a minor scoliosis, a lateral deviation and rotational deformity of the spine, in my lumbar spine, which had never bothered me before. Now I had a new area to protect as I felt pain and repetition inflamed it.

Repetition awakens ego

As I kept going daily—in Mysore-style, you practice the same sequence each day, adding on as you go but do not get taught the next pose in the sequence until you master the previous ones—I went into protection mode and analysis mode. I spoke with the teachers, trying to explain for my own discernment. But, I was also protecting my psychological ego because this pain was stopping me from moving on so I needed to provide an explanation for my failures. It was also stopping me from being spiritually present.

My mind was wired on explanation. Ashtanga Mysore-style of yoga can bring up many of the mind and spirit’s impassable issues with its repetition and ritual. I was running into one of them.

Dedication allows skeletal correction

It would be 8 months later, as I went deeper into the latter half of the Ashtanga Intermediate Series that I realized positive skeletal changes occurring in my lumbar spine. Miraculously, one day this correction was so great that I felt taller, pain free, spine more erect throughout the day and even had to adjust the driver’s seat in my car as its regular setting was now putting pressure on my neck. Anatomically-speaking, the cervical spine (neck) is directly related to the thoracic (rib cage range) and lumbar (lower) vertebrae; it is all one spine! This seems obvious, but for me—deep into my analytical yoga practice—it was a revelation.

Cure yourself - spine

Magically, I no longer needed to perform my daily self-chiropractic cervical neck adjustments. I was cured with my yoga practice.

Transformation is sustained change

In my euphoria, I knew that I’d need to keep moving in that direction daily as the Skeletal System has a memory similar to teeth requiring a nightly retainer after orthodontic braces.

“Change leads to disappointment if it is not sustained. Transformation is sustained change, and it is achieved through practice.” ~ B.K.S. Iyengar.

Listen to voice of fear

It was because I let go of the fear (held in that imbalanced area of the lumbar) and trusted the process that allowed the release that the deepest healing occurred. At this point, what I initially experienced as pain in my lumbar spine for many months now felt warm and begged for more extension, movement and access.

Subtle body speaks

It was speaking to me. Its voice was freed when the blockage was removed as my spine elongated and the correction occurred. I listened to its voice and moved on trusting the process.

This wasn't possible until after I let go of my psychological ego that felt I needed to perform in order to move on to the next pose. When I surrendered, I opened physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. 

"Fear is not what you think it is. Fear is not who you are underneath your facade. Fear is not the real you that you must somehow fix or improve or overcome. Fear is a very useful signal along the path to freedom. The stronger the fear, the closer you are to what you are seeking. If you want to stay "safe" (i.e., stuck where you are), fear tells you to stop what you are doing. If you want to be free, fear lets you know you are on the right track, a signal to push ahead in the same irection, to pick up the pace."
~ Cheri Huber, Buddhist teacher

Surrender the ego

Moving on to the next yoga pose in the Ashtanga Intermediate Series—Pincha Mayurasana—identified another alignment (skeletal) bad habit of mine that I need to ransform: I stick my rib cage out when balancing. I learned this soon after my spine adjustment. This unconscious adjustment is related to a fear of falling and therefore not being perfect.

Putting it together, I realize that the spine adjustment straightened me up more to a point where my rib cage counter balance was no longer needed.

Don't cut off the prana

In the subtle body, I would cut off the Prana (or Qi) traveling up my spine when I kept cracking my neck bones throughout yoga class and at home, a habit I performed for years.

I did something similar with my hip bones as I’d move the femoral head bone out from the acetabulum bone because it felt good; but what I did instead was cut off the chance for muscle-toning and ligament stretching in the hip area as a benefit to external rotation. This would later offer the solution to more opening in a pain free manner. This hip habit of mine affected my later poses which involved putting my foot behind my head in the Ashtanga Intermediate Series (and beyond). This effort is all part of calming the nervous system.

Stay with the sensations

When the subtle body is calmed, my spirit is grounded. What gets me to yoga each morning, despite the uphill physical, emotional, spiritual climb? (I won't set my alarm at 5:00 a.m. for anything else). The intense evolution of my spirit...

Found within the discomfort and pain in my body, I’ve grown to feel euphoria as the energies become identified and not just begin to heal emotional patterns (but actually do as samskaras are burned off), subtle forces leading the way. feel pleasure in this suffering—and I am not a pain person—since it is connected now in my brain waves as the path to healing, which is a big turn on to me.

in a time when
it burns out inside
so that
no longer
it lives and breeds
but instead
a twinge, jubilation
in anatomy and subtle channels
vital just for a time
before evaporating
essence no more

© my secret innuendo®