Want a better night’s sleep? Flotation therapy may help

There’s been a recent boom in people trying flotation therapy, says James Zammit, owner of True North Float in Melbourne. He’s not surprised by this, saying people are cottoning on to both the mental and physical health benefits of the practice.

Associate Professor Vicki Kotsirilos, a Melbourne-based GP and co-author of the textbook A Guide to Evidence-based Integrative and Complementary Medicine, agrees the practice is bursting with benefits.

She says flotation therapy can lead to intense feelings of relaxation for both mind and body and that this in turn can help people feel calmer, sleep better and experience fewer muscle aches and pains.

So what is the practice exactly? According to Float Therapy Australia (a not-for-profit industry association), flotation therapy was developed by neurophysiologist Dr John C. Lilly in the 1950s.

Zammit explains that it involves lying in a tank that contains about 550 kilos of premium magnesium sulphate (known as Epsom salts) dissolved into filtered water which is heated to body temperature. The effect, he says, is that you lose track of where your body ends and where the water starts, making it feel like you’re “floating in space”.

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Kate Engler gets why flotation therapy is so popular. When the 54-year-old stepped inside a flotation tank for the first time about 10 years ago, she was more than a tad hesitant. Worried she’d sink, Kate was relieved to find that she floated like a cork, but then became concerned about being alone for an hour with nothing but her thoughts.

Kate opted to have music playing for the first 10 minutes of her float. After that, she lay in silence. Then she closed the tank, meaning she was bathed in complete darkness. So flotation tanks also function as sensory deprivation tanks, which Kate loves.

But you don’t have to lie in darkness and silence when you float, says Kate, adding that all the tanks she’s gone to let people choose if they want their tank open or closed, or to have music (or other calming sounds) played.