In case some of you don’t know what a sensory deprivation chamber is I will do my best to explain it, but if you want a more in depth here’s a great website. A sensory deprivation chamber is like a bathtub that closes you in with the water being extremely concentrated with salt so that the person can float. The idea of the chamber is to block out our senses so that all that we can do in the chamber is relax and think. Supposedly the chamber is supposed to relieve stress. There was a recent study done at the Human Performance Laboratory at Karlstad University of 140 participants with long-term conditions related to stress to see if the sensory deprivation chamber actually reduces stress after 12 treatments. The way they measured the stress was by measuring stress related pain and anxiety. The results were generally positive with around a quarter of the participants sleeping better, reducing stress, feeling less agony and feeling less depressed or not depressed at all after 12 treatments. The study confirmed that by using the sensory deprivation chamber, users could improve their sleeping patterns, which could lead to less stress and a better life. The thing that was the most interesting was that even after 4 months after the treatment ended, some participants still felt the benefits.

Even though the study did show promising results that the Sensory Deprivation Chamber reduced stress, I still find it hard to believe that floating in a dark bath can reduce stress. The reason why I find this hard to believe is because most of these stress-related issues are mental issues that could be caused by the way the person thinks. What I think happens is that people go into treatment really believing that it will really help their condition and that changes the way they think which in the end makes them better. The reason why I think that is because I’ve heard many times that stress is how you handle a situation and the way a person views a situation has a huge impact on how they handle it so if they can look at situations differently, then they feel less stress. It seems like a farfetched process but our brains go through much more complicated processes on a daily basis so to me this seems very possible.