FLOATING FOR CREATIVITY

This Float Fact was originally published in January 2023 and has been lovingly updated to reflect what we’ve seen and heard from artists, makers, and curious minds floating at Jax-Zen ever since.

💦 Many people turn to floatation therapy to relieve stress, improve sleep, or ease pain. But one of the most quietly powerful effects of floating is how it can unlock your creativity — not by trying harder, but by letting go. When we remove the noise — literally and figuratively — the mind is free to wander, imagine, and reconnect with creative flow.

🧠 What Happens in the Brain During a Float

In the float tank, sensory input drops away. There's nothing to see or hear. The water is matched to your skin temperature. There’s no smell, no sound, no pressure from gravity. This absence of stimulation allows your nervous system to soften and your brain to shift into a more relaxed, open state. As stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline decrease, your body begins releasing dopamine and endorphins — the neurochemicals associated with joy, well-being, and mental clarity.

Most notably, the brain moves from its usual high-alert beta waves into theta wave activity — the state we usually only dip into during dreams, deep meditation, or the moments just before sleep. In a float session, you can linger in theta for much longer. This is where insight, integration, and creative connections often surface.

Some floaters enhance this experience with Hemi-Sync® sound frequencies or our new guided theta wave float meditation, available in our tanks, which gently guide the brain into a more synchronized, expansive state — where left and right hemispheres harmonize.

📚 What the Research Says

Floatation therapy has been studied for decades as a tool to spark and enhance creativity.

• 1987 – University of British Columbia

  Psychology professors floated, then completed creativity tasks. Six months later, blind reviews found their post-float ideas were not only more numerous, but also more creative.

• University of Vermont

  Using the standardized Guilford score for creativity, floaters again outperformed the control group — showing that sensory reduction enhances ideation and originality.

• 2001 – Swedish Research Center

  Post-float brains showed increased activity in areas tied to imagination, cognition, and personality expression — all essential for creative output.

• 2011 – Jazz Improvisation Study

  Music students were studied before and after floating. Post-float performances showed marked improvements in skill and improvisational creativity.

💭 Beyond Studies: Lived Experience

We’ve heard so many beautiful stories from our float community:

• A painter reconnects with lost inspiration

• A writer moves through months of creative block

• A business owner solves a design challenge without “trying”

• A musician emerges with a new melody playing softly in their mind

Floating creates space for your inner creative voice to come forward — not forced, but invited.

🌿 Tips to Support Creative Flow in the Tank

✨ Float regularly. Like any creative practice, floating builds over time. The more often you drop in, the more easily your mind knows what to do.

✨ Come with a question. Not a demand, but an invitation. “What’s trying to emerge?” “What if I saw this differently?”

✨ Let go. Truly. Don’t try to be creative. Let the stillness do its work. Insight often arrives in silence.

“The best ideas come when I stop looking for them.”

We hear this often — and the float tank is a beautiful place to stop looking, stop scrolling, stop striving… and start listening inward.

💦 Curious to try? Book your float here or call us at 601-691-1697.

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