How does Driifloat work?
How to float?
Step 1 Lean over Driifloat and spread the membrane towards the sides and head end. Grab the front arm for stability and enter Driifloat facing the foot-end.
Step 2 Enter into Driifloat around 50cm from the foot end and sit down holding onto the grab handles.
Step 3 Lie down and make sure the membrane is spread loosely around you.
Step 4 Stretch your legs and arms, relax and experience floating.
The best way to benefit from Driifloat
We’re all different, for sure, but what seems to be working well for us are short half hour sessions, two, three, four times a week.
It’s important to say that Driifloat is not sleeping in any ordinary way. A good night’s sleep is very important and improves the brain performance, mood and health, details like duration or timing vary depending on individual habits, circadian rythm and current demand, and our bodies have abilities to selfregulate. Sometimes however this selregulation process becomes disrupted. Although there can be a causation dispute, for example, do we feel depressed because we cannot sleep well or we cannot sleep well because we feel depressed? One of the best methods to break bad sleep habits is to introduce Driifloat sessions during the day. Powernaps have always been present in society, but more as an exception rather then a regular routine.
Benefits of Naps (National Sleep Foundation)
“Naps can deliver a number of benefits. Brief naps can be restorative and reduce fatigue during the day. After a night of insufficient sleep, a nap may counteract daytime drowsiness. Naps can be particularly beneficial for shift workers who struggle to get enough sleep and yet have to be alert at irregular times. A short daytime snooze may also boost workplace performance. A nap can improve cognitive functions such as memory, logical reasoning, and the ability to complete complex tasks. Some studies have found that physical performance can also improve after napping. Athletes may experience improved endurance, reaction times, and cognitive performance if they take a daytime nap.
Napping may provide other health benefits. One observational study found that napping one or two times a week was associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular problems, such as heart attack, stroke, or heart disease. However, more research is needed to understand the complex ways that the frequency and duration of naps affect heart health.
Napping may also reduce the impacts of insufficient sleep. For example, a small trial found evidence that naps relieved stress and supported the immune system in people whose sleep was limited the night before. Additionally, naps may contribute to the well-being of specific groups of people. For instance, a study of people diagnosed with intracranial aneurysms found that regularly napping was associated with a lowered risk of a rupture of the aneurysm.”
Like a power nap, we recommend sessions of 20 - 30 minutes and this should usually feel right. Your body will re-surface automatically during the float and feel refreshed shortly after leaving the session. In case of more fatigue or stress, maybe from jet lag or having worked very long hours, then 60 to 90 minutes will help to rebalance. Let your body tell you what’s best – this is de-stress and recovery in action.
Typical full night’s sleep pattern:
Power Nap is so benefitial because it occurs across the longest and the most consistent sleep stage, from light sleep through medium to deep sleep.
Everything but ordinary
Floatation therapy is simply incredible. The fact that a concept this simple can cause profound and long lasting results, on very different levels – from improving mood and increasing energy levels to helping to restore metabolic balance in cells and fighting chronic inflammation is incredible. And then the feel of limitless space free of gravity, exceptional.
Traditional wet floatation however has got serious restrictions. Time and cost are only the most apparent, even for most dedicated floaters is obvious that some time in the float tank they spend on accommodating to conditions and have to carefully avoid getting salt water into their eyes.
With dry floatation we also eradicate subjective but strong feeling of claustrophobia and quite common aversion to direct contact with water.
From the experience of Driifloat users, falling in sleep is practically momentary, ends naturally when body regained new power and if accomplished within first sleep cycle (below 90 minutes, most commonly around 30min) it radically changes emotional frame of mind – makes user feel highly energized and refreshed.
What is happening on deeper level ?
Behind visible evidence of overwhelming mood shift, there is something else. Anxiety and stress evaporate. Challenges of real world seem more distant and feel easier to face. Why so ?
There are theories to be yet confirmed that due to decreased gravity experience and lowered sensory input, certain area of the brain automatically switch from fight or flight response to rest and digest and activate various self-repairing functions of body and brain.
And there are long term benefits – the state of reduced stress seems to last much longer, even several days. iifloat is so different?
EG brain waves
Research grade EEG headsets accessible to the retail customers and software developed by talented and curious engineers gave us fantastic tools to start investigation: what makes flotation such an unparalleled treatment ?
We have performed hundreds of sessions with Muse EEG (incredible piece of hardware) with a third party software (mainly Mind Monitor designed by James Clutterback, and new ‘discovery’ - amazingly versatile extension of the previously mentioned, Meditation Monitor by Steffan Iverson)
Our not-so-scientific minuscule scale exploration has driven us to opinion that floatation is perhaps much more radically different from normal sleep than we have expected : it is more like… meditation.
Please have a look at 3 graphs below :
the left one illustrates 85min sleep: all brain waves showing complex looking intertangled pattern what normally signifies busy processes, still not necessarily cognitive (to be honest, neuroscientists only started learning about real meaning of brain waves patterns, it depends on so many complicated factors and far more data from larger population is needed).
Middle graph shows a very steady 50 min meditation : lines synchronized, almost parallel to each other with strong alpha on the top, theta , delta. Beta expressing cognitive awareness and thinking below and on the bottom visibly separated gamma, associated with fast thinking (caveat: what often shows as strong gamma waves on EEG can be a result of facial movement, but even if detected frequency strength combines actual brain waves and face artifacts, low gamma almost certainly signifies deep calmness).
Our right graph shows 30 min floatation session preceded by few minutes of preparation for it what is moving around, hence heavy entanglement. But almost immediately pattern changes, outstretches even further with gamma waves link reduced to almost nothing and whole picture strikingly resembles meditation pattern.
