So It Began…

My personal story of how I entered the world of sensory deprivation float tanks and Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy or REST for healing and wellness.

A typical float tank used for REST (source: wikimedia commons)

Disclaimer: None of the posts in this publication are considered to be medical advice or a replacement for treatments from a medical professional. These stories are personal, self-experimental, and exploratory.

I was diagnosed with Palindromic Rheumatism sometime around 2015. It is a lesser known, somewhat confusing inflammatory arthritis condition that most consider a precursor to Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA).

One way that Palindromic Rheumatism is different from RA is that the autoimmune inflammation of various joints comes and goes over the course of hours or days, starting as a slow build up to a painful peak that then goes away, and more importantly, it does not seem to cause the structural damage that RA often does.

The worst flare-ups are incredibly painful and can affect any part of the body with connective tissues such as toes, ankles, knees and hips of the lower body and the fingers, wrists, elbows, shoulders, neck, and jaw of the upper body. I even had a minor flare in my sternum at one point.

While I have experienced a flare in every part of the body mentioned, the shoulder impacts are by far the most painful and do not respond to medications well…