Excerpts from the Article “Flotation and the Nature of Change” by Walter E. Jessen Ph.D. and Psychotherapist

Changes in Self-Definition

Second, since the environment is not impinging on the floater in its normal manner, the self is less automatic in its responses, and therefore in how it chooses to define itself.  Self reference is now perceived in the context of a greater flow of information, changes in experienced body boundaries, emotional trust of the body and the environment (no longer experienced as separate), enhanced relaxation and more positive feelings.  The self is experienced not as something rigid, but as a process that tends to evolve, expand, include new information, ask new questions.  In short, the floater becomes directly aware that the self continues to actively create itself.  That is, freed of boundaries, new and old information may shift from its normal ways of being organized and reveal that the self not only seeks to expand itself in the flow of information, it is an active process of construction.  What we know of the self is not determined as a child, it continues to organize and re-organize based on new information.  It is dynamic.  These notions are similar to Maturana (1988) and other constructivists who view people as active participants in creating their own experiences: their own ways of knowing and becoming are based on their own variant self organizing properties, and that knowing and learning is a total mind-body phenomena.