Kirsty Allan

Thinking the Float Tank – Friday, August 25, 2023 (Day 2)

Sensory Isolation in Floatation Tanks as a Method of Promoting Psi Phenomena

Speaker Bio:

Kirsty Allan is a post-graduate researcher, undertaking a PhD, in Consciousness Research / Parapsychology with specialism in psi phenomena. Kirsty is also committed to personal transpersonal exploration – and is a personal development guide to others of high sensitivity. Kirsty has a background in psychological therapy, has authored an approach to transforming anxiety into creative will, and developed a membership programme to support the development of highly sensitive people.

Abstract:

In 1969, psychonaut and scientific polymath Dr John Lilly was invited to address the room as a key-note speaker at the Parapsychological Association Convention, in New York. Here in his dinner speech, Lilly suggested that the contents of consciousness, the imagery experienced whilst in the float tank, may be susceptible to extra-sensory influence. Following on from a pilot study by Cooper, Saunders and Hitchman (2020), our team at University of Northampton is exploring floatation as a means of inducing altered states of consciousness, conducive to psi-phenomena. As all sensory input from the outer-world environment has gone from experience, it leaves the floater with only the experience of their inner-world (or ‘inperience’ as Lilly would say). It is here in this state of embodied liminality, that the floater is, in a manner of speaking, suspended from the physical world and focused on the psychical. Floatation is (forgive the pun) potentially a perfect solution for the parapsychologist.