Tulsa Veteran 'Floats' Her Way To Better Health

Our lives are filled with all sorts of technical distractions - cell phones, computers, iPads. It's hard to find a moment's peace, but some people are looking at a unique way to disconnect and unplug from that world called flotation therapy.

Jamellia Canady stops by Longevity Effect once a week. After serving 12 years as a legalman in the Navy, she's been struggling with PTSD and is trying to find ways to cope.

"It's really kind of hard - so more in the pain, anxiety, depression, those things that veterans can relate to," Jamellia said.

So besides yoga and massage, Jamellia is giving flotation therapy a try.
 
"We're really restricting all the stimulus that you have, sight, sound, touch and gravity. It's really the only therapy we have right now or that I know of that we've seem main-streamed that take those sensory inputs to the brain and dampens them to a point where the brain can really just be," said Dr. Brandon Washatka, Longevity Effect.
 
Jamellia allowed us to shoot one of her therapies. Normally you float naked, in about 10 inches of water and a 1,000 pounds of epsom salt. You start with light and music and then gradually everything goes dark.
 
"I never wake up to where I actually started so if I lay in the middle of the sphere and I wake up, I'm usually close to the exit door or I'm actually completely turned around," she said.

LeAnne Taylor: "And never knew it?"
Jamellia Canady: "And never knew it. You don't even actually know you were ever asleep."
 
If being inside the orbit might make you a little nervous, there are other options. One is called the wave therapy. It's the same concept, but you're floating inside a shower. 
 
"So when you take away all those environmental stresses and those stimuluses, now the brain can actually just be calm. It's not having to filter and create a response, it can just be. And we find the longer someone is in the tank, in that state, their blood pressure drops, the heart rate drops and that really brings down stress," Dr. Washatka said.
 
And that's exactly what Jamellia is finding. Her sleep is better, she's not as anxious and she believes flotation therapy is the perfect treatment to heal what ails her.