What is a Float Center?
A float center is a business that has one or more flotation tanks available for public use. Float centers have been popping up all over the country and provide some of the best ways to relax away pain, stress, anxiety, and depression. The Flo is a float center located on Allen Street in Buffalo, New York. We strive to provide you with the most relaxing experience that we can.
The Experience:
When one floats in the tank, the senses are freed from all distractions, your mind floats in space and endorphin hormones are released to make you feel good. This enables your body and mind to reach deep levels of relaxations which can be better than getting traditional sleep. This also helps you concentrate on repairing and rejuvenating your mind and body and also increases blood flow. The weightlessness provided by the Epsom salt creates an ideal environment that can help in pain relief, stress relief from the muscular pain and tension. For more information on the benefits of flotation therapy visit our various benefits pages.
Why Now?
Float centers are not a question of why now, they have been around in various forms for over 30 years and research into the benefits and effects of this amazing therapy has been taken place for much longer than it’s been available as a public float center. Float therapy has in recent times become a large part of many people’s health and wellness regimens around the world. Many float centers focus on offering wellness treatments especially those aimed at releasing stress. Stress is a proven contributing cause to many diseases and conditions because of the build-up of stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. The flotation therapies are one of the many alternative wellness regimens.
It relaxes and lets the stress melt away.
Flotation / Sensory Deprivation Tanks
A flotation tank is the piece of equipment that allows this therapy to work. The isolation tank allows us to provide the environment to produce the desired result of the float tank. The water has 1300 pounds Epsom Salt (More Info) dissolved into the water and maintains a temperature of 94 degrees but it is also a way of cutting you off from the outside world. In life, we are often bombarded with external stimulation and also incessant daily background noises and distractions that we hardly spare some few minutes to digest just how much our minds are busy processing.
Our flotation tanks are built by Float Lab Technologies in Venice Beach, California. Float Lab has been building sensory deprivation tanks since 1999. We decided to go with these tanks for a number of different reasons. The first reason being the cleanliness of the filtration process. This process gives our customers a much better experience. Unlike other flotation tanks we do not use ANY form of chemical filtration.
Here’s a video explaining the filtration process of a Float Lab sensory deprivation tank:
What is a flotation tank? Flotation tanks provide a light and sound free environment. The chamber is filled with 14 inches of water and heated to 95 degrees. There is about 1300 pounds of Epsom salt dissolved into the water. We keep the temperature at 95 degrees because that is the surface temperature of your skin.
At our flotation center we have two tanks:
Front Room Tank (1): 8′ long x 4′ wide x 7′ high.
Back Room Tank (2): 8′ long x 5′ wide x 7′ high.
(Yep, you can stand in our tanks, unlike the clam-shell design float tanks)
How is the water cleaned? After each customer, there is a cleaning cycle to cleanse the water for the next customer. This process includes two pool filters, a UV filter, and an OZONE generator. The pump runs at 1000 gallons per minute for 15 minutes. This process ensures that the flotation tanks are in pristine condition for the next customer.
Float Lab’s flotation tanks are the world’s only NSF 50 & UL 1795 certified Flotation tank systems. This means they the only approved for commercial use. Before every customer, each flotation tank is sanitized by a patent pending disinfecting filtration system. This system is certified to produce a minimum 3-Log kill (99.9%) or greater per cleaning cycle without the use of any chemicals.
Crash, the owner of Float Lab and main designer of the floatation tanks is regularly on mainstream podcasts like The Joe Rogan Experience, and on HBO series VICE letting people know what this therapy can do for the public and promoting the science behind it.
Why does a Float Lab Flotation Tank mean a better experience? Most flotation tanks are designed for individuals. These people are using their flotation tanks in the quite of their own home. However that isn’t the case in a “center” setting. At The Flo we wanted to get the best flotation tanks for our customers. When using our flotation tanks you will not experience any sensory input of any kind. Unlike other centers where you can still have that external stimuli. This creates a complete sensory deprived environment that will easily allow you to relax. This relaxation and lack of sensory input can allow your mind to experience deep relaxation. The type of deep relaxation you would experience during a deep meditative state.