Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
Speaker 1: this week we are talking about sensory deprivation. Uh. This
Speaker 1: is an interesting stuff that we've we've touched on here
Speaker 1: and there in the past, but we are this time.
Speaker 1: We are talking about the tank. We're talking about the water.
Speaker 1: We're talking about immersing yourself in what John C. Lily
Speaker 1: referred to in the introduction to the Beak self as
Speaker 1: the womb to tomb wet box, which sounds lovely, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want that for myself. But I kind of do
Speaker 1: want that for myself, just because I have seen these
Speaker 1: wonderful photos of people floating around in the Dead Sea,
Speaker 1: which is full of water, right, people live, people with
Speaker 1: these beatific smiles on their face. And apparently the salt
Speaker 1: content is is makes the water so buoyant that it
Speaker 1: feels like this sort of zero gravity experience. So I've
Speaker 1: always thought that seems pretty neat. Um, what's the deal
Speaker 1: with that? Well, you can have that sort of experience,
Speaker 1: albeit in this sort of tomb like coffin. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't. I mean, yes, it is kind of coffin esque,
Speaker 1: but I wouldn't, you know, I think of it more
Speaker 1: of as a more of a like a space sarcophagus.
Speaker 1: You know, there are there are different iterations of it,
Speaker 1: and some of them look really slick and very much
Speaker 1: like they would be on some sort of spacecraft. And yeah,
Speaker 1: like I like to think of, you know, like those
Speaker 1: those pods that people you know enjoy hyper sleep then
Speaker 1: in the science fiction stories. Exactly right, Um, so this
Speaker 1: is you know, this is this idea of the suspended hibernation.
Speaker 1: This this idea that we could have a forced shutdown
Speaker 1: of our brain without dying, and perhaps there would be
Speaker 1: some sort of benefit to it. And there's a long
Speaker 1: tradition of studying this, the sensory deprivation which causes this
Speaker 1: this forced shutdown. So we're going to discuss some of
Speaker 1: that today, and I thought it would probably be helpful
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about, um some of our
Speaker 1: other podcast episodes before, particularly Splendid Isolation, when we talked
Speaker 1: about what happens when, um, you are isolated and when
Speaker 1: your senses are deprived of stimuli, and also touch on
Speaker 1: the default mode network. Really quickly because we talked about
Speaker 1: this with the science of hallucinogens. We've talked about it
Speaker 1: meditation and yoga. This idea that this part of your brain,
Speaker 1: the default mode network, is causing that constant shatter buzz
Speaker 1: in your brain which can sometimes lead to depression. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so let's talk a little bit about the brain and
Speaker 1: it's and it's sensory input. I like to think. I
Speaker 1: like to think of it this way. I invite everyone
Speaker 1: else out there to think of the most media addicted
Speaker 1: person in your life. Uh, the person who is just
Speaker 1: they're constantly on Twitter, They're constantly uh, you know, checking
Speaker 1: their Facebook status, They're they're using four Square, they always
Speaker 1: have earbuds in, uh, fingers typing away. They just have
Speaker 1: to be connected to all these things. So they're like
Speaker 1: they're doing Twitter, they're doing live Twitter updates, while they're
Speaker 1: watching some show on t vow. Everything is connected. And
Speaker 1: then what happens when you break them away, if you've
Speaker 1: ever successfully broken them away from those things, that it
Speaker 1: changes them. There's like a shock that goes through their system,
Speaker 1: sometimes for the better, maybe sometimes for the worst, but
Speaker 1: their sensory input has has has altered, and it has
Speaker 1: altered how they feel about the world around them and
Speaker 1: how they interact with the world around them. Well, on
Speaker 1: a more basic level, sensory deprivation involves robbing the brain
Speaker 1: of a lot of its inputs. Our brain is constantly
Speaker 1: chewing on stuff. Uh, it's chewing on thoughts, and it's
Speaker 1: chewing on all the sensory input that's coming into us.
Speaker 1: It's chewing on the sites, the smells, the sounds, the taste,
Speaker 1: various other senses that we've just discussed in the path
Speaker 1: that are further down the list. But it's it's processing
Speaker 1: all this, it's crunching it, it's making sense of the
Speaker 1: world around it. And what happens when you cut off
Speaker 1: even one or two or three of those senses, well,
Speaker 1: you see that chatter go down, specifically in the medial
Speaker 1: prefrontal prefrontal cortex, the medial parietal cortex, in the medial
Speaker 1: temporal lobes, because this is where uh, most of the
Speaker 1: activity activity occurs when you have repetitive thoughts. It's sort
Speaker 1: of the cohesive, the center of self, the ego of
Speaker 1: the brain. And when you can shut down some of
Speaker 1: that stimuli, well, then, as we've seen with meditation or
Speaker 1: with some of these studies with hallucinogens and depression. It
Speaker 1: gets pretty quiet there, and that is the goal of
Speaker 1: some of the sensory deprivation. So, as we've discussed before,
Speaker 1: this ties into the basic eye story that ends up
Speaker 1: clogging up most of our brains all the time, this
Speaker 1: story that we put ourselves at the center off and
Speaker 1: it's the constant chatter that's telling you, hey, you're you're
Speaker 1: not doing it right, you're doing it wrong, you're really
Speaker 1: screwing up this podcast, that kind of thing, and uh,
Speaker 1: and then you have to to shut that down in
Speaker 1: order to properly focus on anything that's right. So there
Speaker 1: are a lot of benefits here for having sensory deprivation
Speaker 1: in your life, right, Um, But there is a dark
Speaker 1: side to it. And in order for us to really
Speaker 1: get to the benefits of plunging yourself into a bunch
Speaker 1: of water encapsulated, uh by walls around you, we should
Speaker 1: look at the CIA and some past experiments with sensory deprivation. Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean, we've discussed before in our episodes Splendid Isolation
Speaker 1: some of the the harmful effects of isolation on the
Speaker 1: human mind because you can shut off a lot of
Speaker 1: these these inputs and have beneficial effects as we were
Speaker 1: going to discuss, but also the brain can have a
Speaker 1: tendency to sort of chew on itself in these situations. UM.
Speaker 1: For instance, prisoners who have who have been isolated for
Speaker 1: long periods of time have been known to experience depression, despair, anxiety, rage, claustrophobia, hallucinations,
Speaker 1: problem with impulse control uh, and impatability to think, concentrate,
Speaker 1: or remember um tonitus, weakening get the immune system, uh,
Speaker 1: premature menopause, aggressive behaviors, and prisoners, volunteers, animals. There's a
Speaker 1: whole list of dire consequences to shutting oneself off. So
Speaker 1: for a long time it's been a It's also been
Speaker 1: used as a method of interrogation or even if you
Speaker 1: want to use the more um harsh terminology here, soft torture. Um.
Speaker 1: What is a way to induce a horrible state upon
Speaker 1: upon a human mind without actually resorting to physical violence
Speaker 1: and physical torture. Well, you just start shutting off the
Speaker 1: sensory input. You put them in a position where, uh,
Speaker 1: maybe they're not seeing, they're not hearing. Uh. So some
Speaker 1: of the experience were we're looking at involved even even
Speaker 1: you're like putting the equivalent of thick gloves on or
Speaker 1: cardboard tubes around the arms, so they can't even get
Speaker 1: any kind of sensation that way, putting them in a
Speaker 1: space that essentially just has room for a bed. In
Speaker 1: some cases you see the use of hoods, two heavy
Speaker 1: thick hoods that also uh contribute to even more dampening
Speaker 1: of sound, or the use of white noise your phones
Speaker 1: to to clog the mind with with with just this
Speaker 1: constant white noise. Yeah, I mean, essentially what we're talking
Speaker 1: about is taking away the chew toys of the mind.
Speaker 1: And you just described doctor David Hebb's experiment and he
Speaker 1: did this and I believe in the fifties and the sixties.
Speaker 1: In one study, he had student volunteers at McGill University
Speaker 1: where he was the head of psychology, and he put
Speaker 1: them in an air conditioned cubicle, as you said, just
Speaker 1: a room enough for a bed. He placed goggles, gloves,
Speaker 1: and ear muffs on them, and then he piped in
Speaker 1: some white noise. And he had hoped to observe them
Speaker 1: for up to six weeks. That's what he thought he
Speaker 1: could get out of this. He could see this gradual
Speaker 1: deterioration of the mind. But it turns out that those
Speaker 1: students lasted for only two days in twenty four hours,
Speaker 1: hallucinations begin in in forty eight hours. They suffered a
Speaker 1: complete breakdown. And these students, by the way, we're not
Speaker 1: primed at all for this experience. Nobody was. In fact,
Speaker 1: the students all came in with this idea that they
Speaker 1: were going to get a lot of work done. There
Speaker 1: was one student who was going to work on a presentation,
Speaker 1: so they thought that they'd have this quiet, nice time, uh,
Speaker 1: for their mind to really dwell in. But once you
Speaker 1: took away from these basic stimulized it was just sort
Speaker 1: of wrecked them. Yeah, I believe this was the study
Speaker 1: was Originally he was open to conduct it for about
Speaker 1: six weeks, and it just did not last that long.
Speaker 1: Like you said, we're talking ended up more like a
Speaker 1: few days at most with the participants. Yeah. Actually, the
Speaker 1: BBC had a documentary called or they have a documentary
Speaker 1: called Alone the Brain, Sensory Deprivation and Isolation, and it
Speaker 1: recreated Hebb's experiment and it just was pretty awful. In fact,
Speaker 1: the person who suffered the most was a comedian who
Speaker 1: was so used to this sort of back and forth
Speaker 1: of stimuli with his fellow humans that you know, he
Speaker 1: was the first to fall apart. Yeah, star of a
Speaker 1: comedian of his or her audience and U and it's
Speaker 1: gonna are gonna be dire consequences. All right, Well, let's
Speaker 1: talk about these sensory deprivation tanks that we encounter today.
Speaker 1: If you live in a larger area, chances are there's
Speaker 1: at least one that you might be able to find
Speaker 1: in your area. I know in the Atlanta area there
Speaker 1: seems to be mainly one place to go, I understand.
Speaker 1: In New York City even they're only a handful of possibilities.
Speaker 1: Some individuals who are really into sensory deprivation make own
Speaker 1: their own tanks, and there are people out there who
Speaker 1: will sell you one. Michael Crton, by the way, has one.
Speaker 1: He had one. He has one. Well he's dead, alright,
Speaker 1: he had one. Um though there are various interpretations of
Speaker 1: of of what that might might consist of, but in
Speaker 1: a sense, he does have one. Now I think I
Speaker 1: don't know the details of his burial, but I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, defined has Yeah, right, was this re arranged atoms?
Speaker 1: But that makes sense? You know, he was. He was
Speaker 1: a thoughtful individual. I can imagine him. He probably had
Speaker 1: to get an extra big one though he was a
Speaker 1: very tall man. I don't know, but I mean, but
Speaker 1: apparently this was something that was This is very helpful
Speaker 1: to people in the arts, also athletes as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of the benefits, which we'll get into uh here,
Speaker 1: involved benefits to creative individuals who are trying to think
Speaker 1: creatively about various tasks, individuals sustained various injuries or bodily trauma,
Speaker 1: people dealing with with with depression. Um, if it's coupled
Speaker 1: with the right amount of psychotherapy as well. But but
Speaker 1: what are we talking about here. Sensory tank is essentially
Speaker 1: the dead sea inside of a container. Like we're talking earlier.
Speaker 1: The idea that you're gonna have a salty broth to
Speaker 1: float in, and the chamber itself is uh is soundproof.
Speaker 1: There's no light. You're just floating as if as if
Speaker 1: in the womb. Yes, and salty womb. And this is
Speaker 1: from the somebody manufacturer. One of the manufacturer of these
Speaker 1: tanks says the float tank is a little larger um
Speaker 1: than a twin size bed and about chess tie. It
Speaker 1: contains ten inches of water to which so much epps
Speaker 1: and salts have been added that when you get in
Speaker 1: and lie on your back, you are pushed to the
Speaker 1: surface so that you float like a cork weight list
Speaker 1: as an astronaut in space. Now when they talk about
Speaker 1: a lot of salt here, they're talking about eight hundred
Speaker 1: pounds of epps and salt in this uh this pool here. Uh.
Speaker 1: There is a lightweight door that you can leave open,
Speaker 1: or if you want to get rid of the distractions
Speaker 1: of noise and light, you can close the door. You
Speaker 1: can also put your plugs in, purportedly helped with not
Speaker 1: getting the water into your ears. Yeah and yeah, it's
Speaker 1: that sound counseling canceling and all I believe. Um and
Speaker 1: and also worth knowing you mentioned the door. The door
Speaker 1: is not locked. You're not sealed in here like a tomb.
Speaker 1: So if you do have a need to get out,
Speaker 1: be it physical or or or mental, um, it's it's
Speaker 1: easy to do. So okay. So the cool thing about
Speaker 1: this though, in case your germophobe, is that between floating sessions,
Speaker 1: the water is filtered and sterilized with UV light on
Speaker 1: a regular basis and hydrogen brock side is poured into
Speaker 1: the water for of course more hygienic. So it's not
Speaker 1: like just a giant footpath at a at a cheap
Speaker 1: nail salon exactly. So, so if someone peas in the pool,
Speaker 1: don't worry about that. I can imagine asking that when
Speaker 1: one goes in. You know, is it okay to pee
Speaker 1: in the in the isolation chamber in the century deporation chamber.
Speaker 1: I dare you. I will not bring it up, but
Speaker 1: I mean it might be in the literature when you
Speaker 1: sign out. I mean I should have mentioned that I've
Speaker 1: not used one of these yet, but but I do
Speaker 1: intend to at some point. We both are going to
Speaker 1: this yeah, um and uh so so, but we wanted
Speaker 1: to go ahead and cover it in the podcast right now,
Speaker 1: talk about it, talk about sort of the limited studies
Speaker 1: that surround this, and then have the experience for me
Speaker 1: to talk about it, and then we can draw in
Speaker 1: personal experience. Yeah, we don't want to prime our brains
Speaker 1: too much. Um. But anyway, these these things, Uh, they
Speaker 1: gained popularity in the sixties and seventies and the eighties
Speaker 1: they started to want a bit um, but they have
Speaker 1: made a resurgence. Excellent, Yeah, because you did have that
Speaker 1: first first real push for the for the sensory deprivation tank,
Speaker 1: especially based on the work of John C. Lily. Uh
Speaker 1: Dr suit Field will be getting into these guys in
Speaker 1: a bit, um, And I guess, like a lot of
Speaker 1: these things that you guys out for a little bit
Speaker 1: and then people get old, older they may be, and
Speaker 1: maybe the isolation tank just becomes a place where restore
Speaker 1: some tools. It just sets empty in the backyard and
Speaker 1: occasionally you have to explain it to some guests. But
Speaker 1: now you have you have people that are rediscovering exactly
Speaker 1: what what this uh technology or or methodology can do
Speaker 1: for one. Yeah, and well we will dive into the
Speaker 1: tank in a moment. We're gonna take a quick break.
Speaker 1: When we get back, we will talk about John cy
Speaker 1: Lily to be patron saint of LFD and Galpin Science
Speaker 1: and I will be right now. All right, we're back,
Speaker 1: and uh let's talk a little bit about John C. Lily.
Speaker 1: We have discussed him in one episode in detail and
Speaker 1: he's coming to time or two since then. Um, well,
Speaker 1: now we probably miss him a couple of times in detail.
Speaker 1: Because John C. Lily made his name in the field
Speaker 1: of electronic brain stimulation. Uh, in the field of dolphin communication,
Speaker 1: and in the in the end, in the field of
Speaker 1: just progressively crazier and eventually unfunded research. Yeah. Although he
Speaker 1: started out being funded by the Naval Institute and by
Speaker 1: the National Institute of Mental Health, but as you say,
Speaker 1: his studies, his experiments became a little bit more fringe. Well,
Speaker 1: of course he lost his funding. But this is someone
Speaker 1: who is was steeped in science, at least pure science
Speaker 1: in the beginnings, and then it kind of got muddled. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would argue that he never you know, he never
Speaker 1: ceased being being a very brilliant, thought provoking man. It's
Speaker 1: just in the early stages he was more of a
Speaker 1: pure scientist, and his work and his and his curiosity
Speaker 1: became more and more esoteric as the as the decades
Speaker 1: rolled on, and well in the influence of his own
Speaker 1: studies of LSD, which he used himself as a subject
Speaker 1: quite a bit. Yeah, generally, Yeah, combining sensory deprivation tank
Speaker 1: with a large amount of LSD two to create the
Speaker 1: expected results. As he attempted to at times to communicate
Speaker 1: with dolphins, and not only dolphins as we know them,
Speaker 1: but dolphins as this kind of pan dimensional creature. Remember too,
Speaker 1: this is the guy who took a two bedroom house
Speaker 1: and he submersed it in water input one of those
Speaker 1: female research assistance in with a dolphin and uh, the
Speaker 1: dolphin and the female had a sort of relationship. And
Speaker 1: I will leave it at that. But so this is
Speaker 1: someone who's thinking outside of the box. And the tank. Yes,
Speaker 1: now his tank was pretty hardcore. Um. This is you know,
Speaker 1: the older day, the early days, the cowboy days of
Speaker 1: sensory deprivation tanks, where you you really needed to go
Speaker 1: out and build your own design, in your own if
Speaker 1: you got exactly what the specs were gonna be. So
Speaker 1: temperature regulated, salt filled, soundproof, lightproof tank. Um. And in
Speaker 1: this one, you though there was no just sort of
Speaker 1: gently floating on top of the water. You were submerged
Speaker 1: up to the very top of your head. Yeah. This
Speaker 1: is the pre salt one hundred and sixty gallons of water. Yes,
Speaker 1: and uh, and so your head is basically encased in
Speaker 1: this uh this latex mask, like wrapped in a latex
Speaker 1: with these uh, with with these these breathing holes coming
Speaker 1: out front from it. It's called a blackout mask. And
Speaker 1: it it looked if you imagine something that you might
Speaker 1: see and say, you know, a nine inch Nails video
Speaker 1: from from the nineties or at some sort of a
Speaker 1: fetish club or something that this is about what the
Speaker 1: black out mask looking. Yeah, I was thinking about the
Speaker 1: gimp from pulp fiction. It looks kind of like a
Speaker 1: gimp mask as designed by Dr SEUs. Yes, right, because
Speaker 1: that's where the air hose connected to the pump comes
Speaker 1: in the susy and pump, I think, or if you've
Speaker 1: ever seen anyone receiving some getting some sort of like
Speaker 1: Mountain Monster makeup for a movie and they you know,
Speaker 1: they put the straws in and they cowed them completely.
Speaker 1: It's that level of just wrapping your head up and
Speaker 1: cutting off all of the sensory equipment from the outside world,
Speaker 1: in addition to being in this lightless soundproof tank and
Speaker 1: possibly on LSD. Right. But the nice part of this
Speaker 1: is at the water I think you had mentioned is
Speaker 1: kept at thirty four degrees celsia's fore degrees franheight, so
Speaker 1: it was nice and warm. Yeah, contrary to the description,
Speaker 1: there was not a torture method. It was this was
Speaker 1: just an inability to again shut down the sensory and
Speaker 1: put to the brain, uh, and go on this journey
Speaker 1: of self discovery or pan dimensional communication. Yeah. And so
Speaker 1: later on though, of course Lily figured out that he
Speaker 1: could just fill this tank with a bunch of salt
Speaker 1: and have people float to the top. They didn't have
Speaker 1: to wear their latex mass because of course people were
Speaker 1: bothered by that, and he could still have his experiments. Um.
Speaker 1: And also, by the way, this tank was then um
Speaker 1: sort of as you described, more of like a sarcophagus,
Speaker 1: and then you have no light source and you have
Speaker 1: the sort of quietude that you need um to have
Speaker 1: the sensory deprivation. Yeah. Now he wrote a lot about
Speaker 1: the the womb to tomb wet box and uh and
Speaker 1: and and with Lially, like a lot of people who
Speaker 1: get into some crazy stuff, it's it's also easy to
Speaker 1: just discount him and say, oh, well, that's that's just
Speaker 1: a crazy old man and in a tank of water
Speaker 1: doing drugs. But a lot of what he said, even
Speaker 1: you know, as he went further down the French path,
Speaker 1: a lot of it still lines up with what we
Speaker 1: know about the one in the Workings of the human mind,
Speaker 1: about the default mode network. UM. One quick quote here
Speaker 1: from from his book. At the highest level of satory
Speaker 1: which people from which people returned, the point of consciousness
Speaker 1: becomes a surface or a solid which extends through the
Speaker 1: whole universe. It was in this state that I experienced
Speaker 1: myself as melded and intertwined with hundreds of billions of
Speaker 1: other beings in a thin sheet of consciousness that was
Speaker 1: distributed around the galaxy a membrane. So, on one hand,
Speaker 1: that does sound like maybe a lot of hippie trippy nonsense.
Speaker 1: But this idea of like voices shutting down, a consciousness
Speaker 1: becoming like a a single featureless plane, uh, lines up
Speaker 1: with a lot of what we know about just having
Speaker 1: a calm mind, about calming the mind, about shutting down
Speaker 1: the default network. Well, I was thinking about his experience
Speaker 1: and then other people's experiences minus the LSD, and how
Speaker 1: they all share that sort of overview effect that astronauts
Speaker 1: sometimes experience when they look at the Earth UM and
Speaker 1: they get that sense of unity and the shedding of
Speaker 1: the self, the shutting of the ego. So that's something
Speaker 1: that his experience has in common with with a bunch
Speaker 1: of other people. UM. But again, most people who have
Speaker 1: undergone this sensory deprivation in the tank. Do not have
Speaker 1: that experience that he had where he had the conferences
Speaker 1: of the three entities or whatever sort of aliens or
Speaker 1: other being that came to him. So that probably was
Speaker 1: part and parcel of the hallucinogens that he was taking.
Speaker 1: But as we've discussed with hallucinations before, there are hallucinations
Speaker 1: in their hallucination, their drug induced hallucinations, but there there
Speaker 1: are hallucinations produced just entirely by by non um illicit methods.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought that up. So I just thinking
Speaker 1: about that. I was thinking that when you don't have
Speaker 1: the stimuli, just like when we talked about lilcution hallucinations,
Speaker 1: the brain will make something up UM. So, yeah, you're right,
Speaker 1: there are degrees to it and there are sources of it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was actually looking at two thousand four study that
Speaker 1: found it during prolonged blindfolding experiments with cited individuals, they
Speaker 1: experienced visual hallucinations. And then there's a two thousand and
Speaker 1: nine study from a Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology,
Speaker 1: University College London. I would have time that just fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes of near total sensory deprivation was enough to trigger
Speaker 1: vivid hallucinations in many of its test subjects. So again,
Speaker 1: no LSD required when dealing with a sensory deprivation tank.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the appeals to some users of it, okay,
Speaker 1: is that the anarchic chamber the two thousand and nine study.
Speaker 1: I think i'd read the same thing about the fifteen
Speaker 1: minute yes Yes, which is a sort of different stimulation
Speaker 1: or the lack of stimulation, which we'll talk about an
Speaker 1: upcoming episode. But that's interesting to know that's just taking
Speaker 1: out that one bit would induce hallucinations. So enter Dr
Speaker 1: Peter Suitfeld. Yes, this is another individual who has had
Speaker 1: a lot to say and a lot of influence on
Speaker 1: our modern understanding of sensory deprivation. UM. He quickly uh
Speaker 1: fell in love with the with the with the technology,
Speaker 1: the methodology, and it was one of the individuals who
Speaker 1: owns his own tank. Well you know too that he
Speaker 1: UM When he was a lad in school, he actually
Speaker 1: underwent some sensory deprivation UH studies and that's how he
Speaker 1: got interested in it himself, and uh so that fueled
Speaker 1: his interest in the field, and he received his PhD
Speaker 1: from Princeton and had Psychology Departments of Rutgers and the
Speaker 1: Universe be of British Columbia, where he ran tank studies
Speaker 1: for years in the labs there, and his work has
Speaker 1: led him to be a consultant with NASA and the
Speaker 1: Canadian Space Agency regarding the effects of launderation, space flights
Speaker 1: and monotonous environments. As you can imagine, you know, running
Speaker 1: labs and something with UM with this womb to tomb
Speaker 1: instrument is going to give you a lot of data
Speaker 1: on that, right, because what is the spaceship, but what
Speaker 1: is the space station but a kind of sensory deprivation chamber.
Speaker 1: You're cut off from the world, You're cut off from
Speaker 1: a lot of your senses, and a lot of your
Speaker 1: senses are altered in one way or another. So's it's
Speaker 1: a great way to study what this is like and
Speaker 1: what it will be like. Uh, you know, presumably when
Speaker 1: we started dealing with longer term journeys or stays in space. Yeah, um.
Speaker 1: Sub field studies have shown that tank sessions can be
Speaker 1: used to treat autonomic nervous system problems like chronic pain,
Speaker 1: high blood pressure, and motion disorders. Of course, motion is
Speaker 1: what it would be really great in space right. Um.
Speaker 1: He also aims that the tank shifts our brains focused
Speaker 1: from its dominant to its non dominant hemisphere, which has
Speaker 1: various benefits. He says in in a Slate article about
Speaker 1: floating by Seth Stevenson quote, but God only knows why
Speaker 1: hemisphere balance is affected. We can't yet fit a brain
Speaker 1: scanner in a tank or get the scanner wet for
Speaker 1: that manner. Yeah, that's definitely one of the limitations on
Speaker 1: studying the effects of this. Uh, he can't get the
Speaker 1: scanner in the tank. Um. But but his work has
Speaker 1: has been pretty impressive, and that he has he has
Speaker 1: not gone in the direction of communication with dolphin aliens,
Speaker 1: but indeed his work has been in it has been
Speaker 1: very interesting, and that it has not gone with in
Speaker 1: the direction of communicating with aliens, but rather with with
Speaker 1: solving some real world problems such as again depression, mental disorders,
Speaker 1: chronic pain, chronic pain. And I kept thinking when I
Speaker 1: was looking at the information about the non dominant hemisphere,
Speaker 1: about how you switch from your dominant your nondominant, about
Speaker 1: the neuroscientists, and her name escapes me right now. But
Speaker 1: she has that great ted talk. It's called this stroke.
Speaker 1: My stroke of insight, and she talks about that whole experience,
Speaker 1: about the left and right hemispheres of her brain sort
Speaker 1: of dissolving. And it reminded me a lot of what
Speaker 1: people are talking about when they say they have this
Speaker 1: experience in the tank, this idea that your your brain
Speaker 1: is shutting off and that things are sort of melding
Speaker 1: into everything else. And so I thought, well, this is
Speaker 1: a very interesting experiment of the mind um and it
Speaker 1: will be once we can set a brain scanner into
Speaker 1: a tank, it'll be great to be able to see
Speaker 1: what is going on to sort of corroborate this. But
Speaker 1: just in terms of the the relaxation, the stillness of
Speaker 1: mind that one can can experience with a sensory deprivation tank,
Speaker 1: I found this, uh, this quote from a spiel particularly interesting.
Speaker 1: And this is from Embracing the Void by Seth Stevenson,
Speaker 1: which is really fantastic Slate article that deals with sensory
Speaker 1: deprivation tanks. Highly recommend checking that out. That The quote
Speaker 1: is as follows. We had a zen master who is
Speaker 1: in my lab once and he asked to go into
Speaker 1: the tank for an hour. Most of his life he
Speaker 1: had meditated every day for four or five hours or more,
Speaker 1: and he thought the depth of meditation he reached in
Speaker 1: the tank was on par with a level he reached
Speaker 1: maybe once a year in his normal meditation environment, which
Speaker 1: is not exactly the middle of times square. He was amazed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's again, this is what comes up again and again.
Speaker 1: It's this altered state that people are able to achieve.
Speaker 1: And in a way, it seems a little bit like
Speaker 1: a cheat, right, like, Okay, I'm not gonna meditate, but
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go into this tank for an hour and
Speaker 1: induce a meditative state and altered state in which, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of my anxiety just melts away and as
Speaker 1: a result, you know, this chronic pain I'm experiencing um
Speaker 1: or this depression is alleviated. Well, good, I say, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a nice cheat. It's a good cheat. Um. But again,
Speaker 1: the I don't want to want to say the problem
Speaker 1: because it's I mean, it's a problem in the sense
Speaker 1: that we don't have really good empirical data yet, like
Speaker 1: brain scans to proper a lot of this, But we
Speaker 1: do have a ton of psychological studies that keep backing
Speaker 1: it up, keep saying that it does have a beneficial
Speaker 1: effect on the mind and the body. There's a two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight study that was published in Nova dot
Speaker 1: E d U. The title is Sensory Isolation and Flotation
Speaker 1: Tanks Altered states of consciousness and Effects on well being
Speaker 1: and that looked at eight Swedish participants, six of whom
Speaker 1: were female and to male age thirty five to sixty nine.
Speaker 1: They all had different socio economic backgrounds um they had
Speaker 1: various states of employment. Some people were retired from people
Speaker 1: were not, but they all complained of depression, burnout, and
Speaker 1: chronic pain. And they took these these participants who all
Speaker 1: had experience with floating before, because the idea was, let's
Speaker 1: just get people in here who can quickly get into
Speaker 1: the state and who have had experience with it, and
Speaker 1: let's begin to try to figure out these qualitative um
Speaker 1: categories that we can begin to rely on to assess
Speaker 1: the experience. And they came up with like twenty one
Speaker 1: different categories from these really intensive interviews with these eight participants,
Speaker 1: and everything from their motivation to float, to the types
Speaker 1: of sensory experiences like out of body experiences, level relaxation,
Speaker 1: and then to the extent to which it changed their
Speaker 1: views on life. And the one thing that kept coming
Speaker 1: up over and over again is this altered state. Um,
Speaker 1: it's not just about relaxation. It is changing of the mind,
Speaker 1: a changing of the mind's patterns. And they say, the
Speaker 1: results of the studies showed that floating as a method
Speaker 1: generally that I'm quoting here from the paper perceived as
Speaker 1: pleasant and comfortable, that actual pain relief may be achieved,
Speaker 1: and that very deep relaxation may be attained. Furthermore, we
Speaker 1: show that altered states of consciousness are induced during the session.
Speaker 1: Examples of experiences during a s C. Altered states of
Speaker 1: consciousness are visual imagery, acoustic perceptual phenomena, an altered sense
Speaker 1: of time, a changed bodily sense, paranatal experiences right the
Speaker 1: womb experiences, and even trans personal experiences. And they said,
Speaker 1: and they said that in all of these people, these
Speaker 1: were profound life altering experiences. And I couldn't help but
Speaker 1: think about those psilocybin yes, yeah, of people who underwent that,
Speaker 1: and um, it was it was a huge percentage of
Speaker 1: that study who said this was a number one life
Speaker 1: altering experience for me, the psilocybin. Yeah. And these were
Speaker 1: individuals that in many cases, this is this is coming
Speaker 1: after they have you met their their their their mate,
Speaker 1: that they've had children, they've had all these various life experiences,
Speaker 1: they've lost loved ones to illness or and or death.
Speaker 1: But um, but then that they were given the sup
Speaker 1: experience that changes the way they look at the world
Speaker 1: and it becomes in a way, the defining moment of
Speaker 1: their life. Yeah. And and now I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: this is apples to apples that floating is like psilocybin,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people have said this is a
Speaker 1: way to achieve and experience without drugs. Yeah, it also
Speaker 1: reminds there was looking at another study of floatation rest
Speaker 1: and a applied psycho physiology by Thomas H. Fine and
Speaker 1: Rhetoric Bori, and they were they were looking at the
Speaker 1: way it can can be used in the psychotherapy and
Speaker 1: and they they stressed that you know, you can't just
Speaker 1: throw somebody into an isolation tank and expect the results.
Speaker 1: That it needs to be paired with with a certain
Speaker 1: amount of prepping, a certain amount of pre programming and
Speaker 1: and therapy too, so that they'll have the inter with
Speaker 1: the right frame of mind and have the right expectations
Speaker 1: of it, and that was lining up a lot with
Speaker 1: some of these these studies we've looked at where they've
Speaker 1: looked at the use of psychedelics and treatment in uh
Speaker 1: oh and nicotine addiction in UH in depression, end of
Speaker 1: life care, and terminal diseases. Yea. So priming becomes very
Speaker 1: important even in this I was thinking about that. I
Speaker 1: thought I'm gonna have to do a good amount of
Speaker 1: priming before I go in. UM. But I wanted to
Speaker 1: mention this little tidbit from an Ionine article called Everything
Speaker 1: You Ever Wanted to Do about some free deprivation chambers.
Speaker 1: Uh it says that reports of a heightened sense of
Speaker 1: introspection and out of body experiences by tank users mirror
Speaker 1: those of people with extensive experience and meditation. So you
Speaker 1: talked about the end master, and both practices have been
Speaker 1: linked to decreased alpha waves and increased theta waves in
Speaker 1: the brain. And these are patterns that are typically found
Speaker 1: in sleeping states. So again there's this idea that you
Speaker 1: are resetting your brain, that you are tinkering with it,
Speaker 1: although without the aid of any sort of hallucinogen or substance. Yea.
Speaker 1: So there you have it. Uh there is some basic
Speaker 1: intro material there for you to the sensory deprivation tank,
Speaker 1: what it consists of, how we kind of got here
Speaker 1: with it, what some of the studies say, what some
Speaker 1: of what some of its more curious historical tidbits happened
Speaker 1: to be. And indeed, in the weeks ahead, we're going
Speaker 1: to set out to enter the sensory deprivation tanks ourselves. Yes,
Speaker 1: and we will make sure to follow up either in
Speaker 1: another podcast or video or or I don't know. We're
Speaker 1: so we're your dreams the media through through your dreams
Speaker 1: as possibility h our new a pandimensional media option where
Speaker 1: you can you can tune in directly through our minds
Speaker 1: to social media. Thank you have to buy your own
Speaker 1: sensory deprivation tank or rent one to actually tune in,
Speaker 1: but it's it's worth it. It's like a like a
Speaker 1: Google hangout inside your mind. So in the meantime, if
Speaker 1: you would like to reach out to us, uh, you
Speaker 1: know the various ways of doing it. Certainly, if you
Speaker 1: have entered a sensory deprivation tank before and had an
Speaker 1: interesting experience there, or even a non interesting experience, either way,
Speaker 1: let us know about it. We'd love to hear your
Speaker 1: thoughts on this, this particular way of shutting down portions
Speaker 1: of the mind and maybe opening up others. You can
Speaker 1: find us at the mother Ship at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. You can find us at our
Speaker 1: Facebook account, where we're stuff to Blow your Mind. You
Speaker 1: can find us on Twitter where our handles blow the Mind.
Speaker 1: On tumbler, we are stuff to Blow your Mind on there,
Speaker 1: and over on YouTube, we have a channel that goes
Speaker 1: by the name Mind Stuff Show. And you can also
Speaker 1: drop us a line at below the Mind at Discovery
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Is it how Stuff Works dot com