Mar 6, 2022 By Harry Funk staff Writer hfunk@thealmanac.Net 4 min read

Turn off your mind, relax and float.

John Lennon added “downstream” to his lyrics for the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows.” But atop the salt-saturated water inside of a True REST Float Spa pod, you stay right where you are, in an environment of your choice.

“You can take it to no light, no sound, completely dark for you, if that’s what you want,” Peters Township resident Tonya Winkler said. “You can have music. You can have ocean waves. You can have thunderstorms.”

And, as she’s prone to do, you can drift off to sleep.

“We have three young children at home,” she explained, “so this is nap time.”

Tonya and her husband, Adam, recently opened a True REST Float Spa location, their third in the Pittsburgh area, at 4080 Washington Road in Peters. The acronym in the name of the Coronado, Calif.-based franchiser stands for Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy, which had its beginnings in the 1950s with research by two doctors at the National Institute of Mental Health.

Subsequent research “has reported largely beneficial effects across a range of different stress-related conditions, including hypertension, chronic tension headaches, chronic muscle tension pain in the back and neck and stress-related pain with ‘burnout depression,'” according to the results, published in 2018, of a study led by Justin Feinstein of the Laureate Institute for Brain Research in Tulsa, Okla.

“This study found that a single one-hour session of Floatation-REST was capable of inducing a strong reduction in state anxiety and a substantial improvement in mood in a group of 50 anxious and depressed participants spanning a range of different anxiety and stress-related disorders,” including agoraphobia and generalized anxiety, panic, social anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorders.

For folks who simply are looking to unwind, floating works well, too. Adam said he started doing so primarily for stress relief, sometimes related to his “day job” as a mechanical engineer.

“It does put you in a very good place where you can easily slip into that meditative state,” he reported.

Tonya’s introduction came when she was expecting their youngest child.

“That was the first time that I really started floating, and it was a very pleasurable experience,” she recalled. “You get a lot of the effects of gravity taken off your joints.”

Having become enlightened, the Winklers pursued floating as a business opportunity, opening a Pine Township location in 2018 and a second in Scott Township the following year.

The spas feature pods with interior measurements of eight by six feet, large enough for some of the region’s more sizable athletes who enjoy the therapeutic benefits. The pods are filled with warm water mixed with Epsom salt, at a rate of almost 2.5 pounds per gallon.

“You’re more buoyant in our pods that you would be in the Dead Sea,” Tonya said. “So you’re completely, effortlessly floating.”

One-hour sessions are offered, and for members of the military, veterans and first responders, floating is free on the 11th day of each month.

Following the sessions, an Oasis Room offers “oxygen bars,” dispensers of the essential element featuring oils of various scents.

“A lot of times, folks get groggy,” Adam explained. “So the oxygen is a nice way to wake themselves up before they get back behind the wheel of a car.”

Regarding the cleanliness of the Winklers’ spas, he said that they field the most questions about the pods.

“We keep them clean using a three-stage process,” he said. “We use a five-micron filter, which is smaller than the diameter of a human hair. From there, we run everything through a UV filter and then, finally, we add hydrogen peroxide.”

More cleaning occurs after closing and before opening the next day.

“Every week on Monday, we close down for a deep clean: clean the filter system completely out, clean inside the pods completely down again,” Tonya said. “That way, we stay nice and clean for everybody.”

The Winklers are glad to have a location in their home community after starting elsewhere.

“At the time, we didn’t think that we could make it work and fit, sizewise,” Tonya explained. “Otherwise, we probably would have started in our backyard with the very first one.”