Gary 48 hours on, how do you reflect on Saturday? Pretty much the same really, I haven't watched it back, I thought we scored good goals at good times. There's a lot of improvements still to come from us which is a real positive. Delighted with another clean sheet, two already is great for Richard and the battle four. And like to say lots to build on and lots to keep looking forward to so I'm overall pleased to get the first win and especially at home. It settles everybody down and looking forward to Tuesday now. For your first one, your first time winning since your first game in Chelsea? Yeah, yeah, good. That was last season so we just focus on this season but I felt we've done enough possibly against Cambridge to have nicked it. But like to say it settles everybody down now and we concentrate on trying to get the first one away from home now. And you said it's a lot to come, how pleasing is that as well? Yeah, well it's like all the managers up and down the country, I feel that we've all done the same thing, we've all brought new players in and you need time to settle down and to get that time you have to play football matches. The more that we play the better we become and that's the exciting thing because at the moment I've seen as in spells being very good and what we've got to do now is put that together for a longer period to get there of the game. And how has it been that you've fronted two with the firing as well? Massively important for us you know, we were delighted last week when obviously Vaughni got his first one at Grimsby but then to back that up again and not only just the goals, the manner of the goals in the sense of what we'd worked on, what we spoke about was really important that day. And also for Sean Scannell because we were challenging him more this season than ever to break his record in terms of goals scored in the season and assists in the season. So you know from that point of view we're delighted with him as well and obviously we've let Doyla go out on loan, it's important that they all stepped up and they did and you know we've got to build on that like you said. And James and Clayton's relationship obviously it's competitive between the two but personally I think you can tell where Clayton got his goal, the way that James was celebrating with them they seem to get along really well as well. Yeah I don't think it's competitive against each other, I think you pulled the both of them in here and you asked them what's the most important thing and it's obviously the team and they've displayed that you know in training and off the pitch with the lads they're important that it's a team and they'd recognise that but the relationship both on and off the pitch is very good and again it's only going to get better with playing more games and you know they were a handful on Saturday and they're going to be throughout the course of the season. And being free from the goal, how much confidence does that give you ahead of going to a side you haven't scored yet? Well I think it's important that like you say we concentrate on ourselves, it was a wonderful cross from Connor Woods we spoke about getting early deliveries in for them and it's important that the rest of the team provide the service for them you know because they showed on Saturday what they're capable of in front of goal but it's not just that it's their work rate off the ball as well and what they do for the team. The younger ones have no complaints about a work ethic from those two because they set the example straight from the front. Short turn around, how much work can you do between Saturday and tomorrow? Well the staff can do a lot you know we've watched the games obviously throughout the week and yesterday we watched the late and boring game that they had on Saturday and then obviously the work of going today to the players and then obviously we've got to get down there and back on Tuesday. What do you think on the pitch last week ahead of tomorrow? No no, one game at a time you can't get carried away, you can't be looking at that, you've got to treat it like you say we had to deal with the old one game that's out the way now and then we were straight on straight after the game talking about recoveries and looking at Steven's issue. I think on Saturday as well we saw the depth in your squad coming through as Arshay giving game time Amari hope as well. I wouldn't say depth because we only had you know with the injuries that we had we only had two outs so I wouldn't say depth and that won't but I agree with you in the sense of the options that were available and I was delighted that I'd say Shays came out on the pitch. There is first minutes so we're not going to get carried away, we've got to make sure that we look after him because Saturday Tuesday Saturday when that's your first minutes you know we've got to be sensible with Shays. But Amari again we brought him on on Tuesday we played him on his stronger side which he tells me he's not played very often because he likes to play on the left he's right footed so he's playing on the right from now and the work that we did with him on Thursday and Friday a fair play to him he put a shift in and when he came on on Tuesday and caught the eye and so he did the same again and he's got this pace that you know frightens people and he's going to be you know hopefully he can build on that now and show that consistency that we're looking for from him. On Shade I know what we spoke to you in previous weeks you've been really pleased about how he showed up in training.  I want him to play a massive part. He's a wonderful footballer with an amazing talent. I tried to sign him when I was at Blackpool and he came to Bradford but obviously we weren't in a position to compete with the transfer fee but he knows this league. He's been successful in this league several times. I just think he's a great technician. He's a wonderful lad to have around the place. He's just seen him there and he's a funny lad as well and that helps in the environment but when it comes to football on the pitch, on the train pitch he's serious and you know I have to give the fans a massive thank you because the reception that they gave him on Saturday is what we're talking about in terms of relationship. The supporters up and down the country have a massive role to play. If they're quick to get on the players back it's very damaging for it but the flip of that is you see the effect that they can have. He ran on the pitch and with the reception he got I'm sure he was nearly six foot tall which he's now in there. I think it's just as important tomorrow night about those fans. I'm no doubt that they're travelling the numbers and it's a Tuesday night away. It's evening and it's going to be a journey for them but we've seen the backing that they provide for us already. What was Steve and Jofford mentioned in front of goals? No goals in the league yet. They're a tough team. I've watched all their games. They're a fit organised team. You only have to see them on Saturday. They lost two centre halves in the first half and still kept clean sheets. We're aware of the chess that lies ahead but we've got to look to keep on posing our game and getting better and keep providing the front two with the service that we did on Saturday. I've got the word plate written down. It's pretty flex actually. It was a tough day yesterday on the phone but we're getting close with one or two so I think nothing will happen before Tuesday but we're clock ticking. We'll get them registered by 12 o'clock today if we can if not then certainly we'd like to think that we'd have somebody in place by Saturday. And just finally injury wise? We're the same as Saturday. I don't think there's any injuries, fresh injuries from Saturday. So we just have to see how they are when they come in this morning. Thank you. You mentioned looking after Shay and Sean Scannable. Hadn't they come through in the first play? Obviously with Sean there was the big injury that he had last season but he's worked hard for a pre-season. He's getting stronger every time. We keep demanding more from him but you saw the goal we're doing in the world. The doctor of the goal giving him a massive boost of confidence as well and we're looking him to just produce that on a more consistent basis now. We've challenged him with assists and goals and that's a good start for him on it. With Shay, like I say, it's quite funny the situation in the sense of where you look at it because we're in season now and he's played his first couple of minutes. You go all right, that's him back whereas if it was pre-season we wouldn't be doing that. We'll be going right while this next bit of minutes. We've got my mind full of that because we want him available for the remaining game so we're going to be sensible with him for sure. You mentioned after the game on Saturday that James Horne had a bit of a chest infection. A cough? A cough. No, he's fine. I spoke with him yesterday. He was just sensible in the sense of there's a cough from Ryan there. He felt left out there so he doesn't like Vaughnig getting all the attention so he has to put his cough in every now and again. He's sensible. It was 3-0. He knew that the game was more or less over so he came off on that but you try stopping him playing tomorrow. I'll let you do that. I'm not doing that. No, 5-0. Hamstree. He just had a bit of a tight hamstree. He picked up after the game against Cunzi. He was unaware of it and then came in on Monday and it was just a bit tight. He was out on the grass on Friday. He was out on the grass on Friday but we'll see how he is this morning before making a call on tomorrow. Obviously he was there last week. Do you tap into players? Without a doubt. In the meetings that we have you always tap into the players' knowledge in terms of if they've played with any of them or if they've been on loan with them or if they've played for a certain manager. Jordan's made a contribution to that with Robbie, the analyst already. Any insight track must help? You can watch the video. It depends on which way you look at it. No, 100%. The injuries that they had on Saturday to come through that. They'll obviously build on the positives of that just like we will build on the positives of the win. It's about us going there and building on Saturday's performance and the other two performances. We've got to show the battling qualities that we showed away at Grimsby because every time you go away it's a real battle. I'm just thinking back to the time where we've played down there that we've worked for and it didn't seem any bigger to me than any other. It would be a normal game. It would be a typical game where you're going to have both teams going at it for the win. One thing that the league to guarantees you is that there is no easy game and you have to be right at it. That's the message that we'll be telling the players this morning when they come in. Well done for Saturday. Great first win. Clean sheet.  We've got to take the positives from it and build on it. The defence is a very strong start. Definitely. I want better or more from them. I told them that after the game. I'm not going to keep demanding more from them. They're not going to rest on the laurels with me. I'm not going to be sat there telling them that's it. You've got two out of three clean sheets. That's it. You've cracked it. Not at all, I think. There's certain areas still that we can improve on, but I thought we defended a set play as well. We limited the shots. I think we had the shot that hit the post. The rest of it was distance from us. That's good, but there's still other areas with the ball that I feel we can improve as well.


Hey coach, welcome back to the channel. If you haven't yet, make sure you subscribe to stay up to date with all the latest content. At this point, we've pretty much got content going out every 24 to 48 hours, so don't stay stuck with your business. And if you want to reach out to even myself or you want to apply for our sports accelerator, then visit the description below this video. There's going to be a link. Hit the link. You can book a call with us to see if you are a good fit to work with us. Okay, so today I want to share with you guys another success story, another successful result from a coach in American football who we are currently working with in our program, right? So this is a post that we posted a couple of days ago. It was about five or six days ago. So it's a coach in football who has just started up, but he's looking now to run his first clinic and he's already got 40 plus participants in that clinic. So this is the result that he posted in our community, which says getting ready to head out this AM and set up for a clinic. I organized, had the opportunity to bring in a local football coach and strength coach out as a collaboration. Host City is also considering partnering regarding facility for this year at a percent of proceeds, 40 plus participants in for today and have their emails for later training dates that I may offer. Okay, so wanted to share this fantastic result from coach, coach Salvador, who's part of the program, but also share with you three ways that if you are in football and you want to get your your camps or clinics to the next level, these are very three simple ways that you can grow your camps and clinics using a very similar method to how coach Salvador has started his first football clinic. So the first one is referrals. Okay, so something that we teach in our sports accelerator program is we help coaches to set up these clinics or camps one, even once a month or once every two months, so that it brings not just extra revenue into your business, but also you can set it up in a way where if you're working with 10 or 12 clients at the moment, you can offer a camp to them where they might get the camp for free or a discounted percentage. And the incentive is that if they bring a friend who registers onto the camp, then they essentially get the camp for free or a discount. Okay, so give you a very simple example. So this makes sense. If you're currently working with 10 one on one clients and you want to run a specific type of skill clinic during the month, right, you could reach out to your clients and say, right, we're looking to put together a group training clinic. It's going to be happening at this day, this time. If you guys refer a friend who registers onto the clinic, then you guys will be able to come to the clinic for free. So if you've got 10 one on one clients that you're working with, you get them into this clinic and each one of them brings a friend, then essentially that clinic then turns into 20 players. And then the extra 10 who registered and signed up, you get to keep their data and then follow up with them, which is something I'm going to share with you, follow up with them at a later date for any other training services that you may offer. So that's number one, referrals. Now the second one, and it's something that a coach Salvador touches on is he's going to bring in a local football coach and strength coach, right. So the next one is bringing him special guests onto your clinic or camp. So if you are someone that's going to run a clinic that is specific to a certain skill in football, so it might be you're running a clinic for quarterbacks, right. A great way to add more value to your clinics and to get shall we say more hype is potentially bringing in a quarterback from maybe a local high school, it might be a local college. And if you have really, really good connections, it might even be the NFL. So just bringing in someone that has a lot of experience playing in that position or that has a skill that you are selling your clinic. So again, use the quarterback example. If you're looking to run a quarterback clinic, then a great way would be to potentially bring in a guest such as maybe a college quarterback who's currently playing at that level. Now this brings a lot of value because if you're working with high school quarterbacks and you bring in a quarterback that's already at college, then they can provide your players with extremely valuable information for them. And also he can then share with them the journey on how he made it to play at that level. That also gives parents a wow factor as well because when parents come, they see that all coach Leo or coach whoever has bought in a college player, it shows that not only your program is valuable, but also you as a coach, you're well connected within your local community. So the next one would be to add a guest. And again, if you bring in a really good guest, parents love it, kids love it. The chances are when you do your next clinic, they will want to come back and also they will want to bring a friend just because they're expecting you to bring a guest and that just adds a lot more value to players and parents. Right, so that's the second one. Now the third one is something I touched on a little bit at the beginning and it's just having a follow up process in place. So once you have set up a referral and each participant has referred a friend or brought a friend to your clinic, the next bit is now how can we figure out or how can we put together a process where we're following up with those parents to try to sell them on another service that we offer. Okay, so if your current one-on-one clients, they all attend your clinic, they all bring a friend, you've now got 20 players at that clinic, 10 of them aren't current clients at the moment or they aren't in your one-on-one or group training. Right, how can we now find a process where we can call Mrs. Jones, ask for feedback on how they enjoyed the clinic and talk to them about our one-on-one or our group training program that we have. Okay, now the beauty of this is that if they already did a clinic with you, they know what your training is like, they know what your company is like and they will trust and like you a lot more whether if you were just randomly calling them on a cold call for example. Okay, so the fact that they've already taken the time to invest money into your clinic, they've attended the clinic, they've loved the clinic, right, that just builds a lot more trust and a lot more like so that when you reach out to them for a follow-up call on how they found the clinic, did they enjoy it, what's a few things that we can do to improve and also talk to them about your one-on-one or group training and the chances are they might want to do the one-on-one training or your weekly group training because they've already experienced and they've all already invested into your company already. Okay, so you need more help with this if you are a coach in American football. Okay, reach out to us, write description below, you can apply for a call if you are someone that wants to take your business to the next level or if you're looking to start, reach out to us, we speak to coaches every single day, leave our coaches who have clients, coaches who are looking to start. Okay, we have a program at the moment that is adaptable for everyone in in every position. Okay, so thank you for watching. If you haven't yet, make sure you subscribe and I'll see you on the next video.


Rwm wedi bod amser, Gweinwyr, a'n rhaid i'r diwrnod o'r meddwl o'r PHPA. Wrth gwrs, dweud ymarfer yn icynt, fel gyflwgr ar gyfer y geinwyr iddyn nhw mewn dengwyb. Rwy'n mynd i ddweud o gael, lle mae'n gofynol ar y pobl a'u symud o'r grannu'r plan. Mae'n rhan o'r cyfnod o gallu'r bobl i synthenu, ac rwy'n mynd i'n chylo i dda i ffynyddio'n gydig i cefnod? Mae'n hwnnw yn ngwisellt...! Rydym yn ei bod yn ddegwyd yw'r ffordd cyfnodd.  I published some documentation on that and policy on that some years ago and it's amazing the way that people read these things now, they didn't read it at all at that time. But the seminar today is very timely and I commend the institute for assembling a panel of international expertise that I'm sure will give us the benefit of experiences and I want to invite you Mr Chairman to collate the distilled wisdom of the seminar here today to inform our thinking and the initiation of the process tomorrow in cabinet is what it is, the initiation. But over the next couple of weeks I'll be glad to feed in your views and we have to get this right and we won't shatter this probably in our lifetime to get it right. So there are big decisions to be made and we'd appreciate your views. The water supply system in Ireland today is not working to the extent that we would like with over 950 public water supplies producing over 1600 million litres a day to a network of 25,000 kilometres of pipe. Pipe isn't great, water isn't great in places and volumes and quality generally have to be improved. We cannot have the type of household quality and reduction in illnesses and dangers to public health. We cannot have job creation, inward investment without having good quality and volumes of water. The EPA data indicates that some 85% of the population are connected to public water supplies and 8% are connected to group schemes. So we have a lot of connectivity in the public area and the remainder of the population receive their water supplies from private wells. I don't know why they're getting excited about separate tanks then if that's the case. But the water services authorities are responsible directly or indirectly for waste water provision and some 480 adlamorations with a population equivalent of more than 500 and over 500 further adlamorations with population equivalents of less than 500. So the latest report on water quality by the EPA, water quality in Ireland 2007 to 2009 has found evidence of some improvements in water quality but in comparison with other EU member states Ireland has better than average water quality but continued improvements across a range of sectors are needed if Ireland is to achieve our water quality targets for 2015 and 2020 as we require to do under the water framework directive. Achieving these goals and managing this diverse and dynamic sector requires a partnership between a number of particular important actors in the department, obviously local authorities, the group water sector and the EPA as the environmental regulator for the sector. The provision of water services is strategically planned to ensure the timing and scale of investment facilitates economic and other development. In excess of 5 billion in extractor resources have been spent on the provision of water services infrastructure from 2000 to 2010 and in 2011 the government has provided 435 million euro in extractor contributions to the programme and you'll hear in the next few days on which money we have for 2012. I would say that the government has is keen and is aware of the importance of our water services programme and the importance of it in terms of the issues I've just mentioned. Funding the operational costs of water services is a significant demand in local authorities. We're not in a position now to have the type of money that we would like to have in order to at public level for the purpose of delivering on our water services programme so we have to find a new model, new opportunity in order to leverage money from the private sector or from other sources. Because of operational costs now in 2010, 750 million euro, often taken for granted and the programme for government provides for some significant reforms in the semi-state sector through the recently established new era and the restructuring of the water services is a very important aspect to this initiative. The new era is the vehicle for reforming the manner in which government manages its shareholding in certain semi-state companies including reviewing capital programmes from a shareholder perspective and these reform measures are central elements of our plans for job creation and maximise investment to support economic recovery. Now we've, the EUIMF agreement obliges Ireland to do an independent assessment of what's the structure, operation and delivery of our water services into the future. I've just received that particular assessment and have been going through it and we are going to be establishing a new utility and the question that we have to decide whether you have a new company for that purpose or whether you use existing structures in the semi-state or otherwise in order to deliver an entity called Irish Water. So PricewaterhouseCoopers did this independent assessment and the purpose was to examine the existing organisational arrangements and to look at the best assignment of water functions for the future and the assessment is taking account of the lessons that we learned from relevant international organisational models, I'm sure you'll discuss them today, as well as benchmarking some Irish performance data with the experience and other jurisdictions. The Royal PwC were also part as to consider the potential forms of company formation that I've just mentioned. Many of you might have read media reports this weekend about the study. I can confirm that PwC have given me the report, they haven't given me the final report so over the next few weeks we will be getting more data from them and finalising matters in relation to the structure, function, operation and all of the matters that go with delivering our water services programme in a new way. It's a very big decision and certainly we have, as I mentioned earlier, need to get it right. Obviously there will be principles that we will do, you won't need to deliver whatever public services we have known most effectively and efficiently, while at the same time valuing existing experience and as I mentioned it is critical that any new organisational arrangements must harness the expertise and knowledge of the water services provision which has built up in the local authorities over the years. So we have to ensure that the expertise and knowledge is deployed strategically and efficiently to meet the significant challenges of the sector. Compliance requirements remain a priority and the requirements of the water framework directive on drinking water and wastewater regulations must be met and will require continued levels of investment. The first set of river based management plans required under the directive was completed in 2010 and identified significant additional investment in wastewater infrastructure to address water quality issues and catchments and protect drinking water resources. These additional investments were included in the Water Services Program 2010-2012. Unaccounted for water is a huge issue. In some parts of the country, in particular some parts, we have a water averaging problem in terms of unaccounted for water 41%. That's not sustainable. And tackling on economic levels of leakage will therefore continue to require prioritisation. 130 million we're spending this year in order to deal with our National Water Conservation Program. The Water Services Program 2010 envisages that contracts to the value of over 300 million we'll commence during the program period with the emphasis now on rehabilitation of the defect of water mains. There are other significant challenges as well. Dealing with the environmental sustainability issues are also a priority. Our water infrastructure will need ongoing maintenance and upgrading to ensure the integrity of the infrastructure. An increased investment in new treatment plans for drinking water and wastewater combined with rising energy costs and more stringent environment standards and operational costs all means more money. And so, therefore, the present funding model for water services includes three main sources of revenue at the moment, the extractor, the local authority's own resources and income from charging, the non-domestic sector. So we're going to find money elsewhere. We're going to charge by water meter from 2014. We're going to take account of the fact that we will have a new model that may be able to attract in private finance. But there's no getting away from the fact that we need other places to get money because we don't have it in the public capital program or unlikely to have it in the next couple of years. But a well-structured and a regulated organisation model has the capacity to leverage this type of investment and to access funds and to ensure a financially sustainable sector. Water charges will be a fundamental feature of the income stream for that investment for people that want to get involved. Currently Ireland is the only country in the OECD that doesn't charge for water, particularly for domestic householders. And the OECD have also concluded that measuring is unequivocally the fairest way to charge for domestic water usage and it incentivises householders to use water sparing them. I believe that the water charges will can reduce consumption by 20 per cent. But also if we get this right in relation to where we put the water meter, we put it reduced in half a litre. So the government recognises that the introduction of a fair funding model to deliver clean and reliable water is critical to the future economic growth and recovery of our country. The reforms that I've just spoken about and that we're planning far is an indication of our thinking. Independent economic regulation also is going to be a key element of an institutional separation and it also fulfils an important role in the protection of consumer interests. It aims to ensure that investments and prices proposed by regulated water authorities are transparent and consistent with providing efficient service delivery and expenditure. Regulation will therefore ensure that the price paid by consumers is fair and set at the appropriate level to recover the costs of providing the water service. Economic regulation of the water sector will also be a key requirement in order to allow Irish water to raise finance from the markets. It will provide consumers with the reassurance that the charges that are paying are fair and that the services that are getting are delivered efficiently. So Chairman, I want to conclude by thanking people for being here so early this morning for to get this seminar, a very important seminar going. I want to assure you that your knowledge and experience is welcome to the department and come into conclusions about this important matter in terms of the agenda items I've just outlined and I will be looking forward just to Chairman to hearing the result of your deliberations in the next few days. Thank you very much.


What's up, everybody? Jason here from jaspyscasebrakes.com. This is our last little filler here to give away the last four spots in 1819 Prism First Off the Line 1 box break. This is a quick pack break of 1920 Canadian Prism Retail, number 260, random teams. And again guys, you're buying into one pack break of Prism Retail. Randomized customer names and teams distribute the hits out of this one pack. Then at the end of the break, we'll take all 30 customer names and a separate dice for the randomizer. Randomize them and the top four names will win a spot in the Prism First Off the Line 1 box break. So let's do the break first guys. Let's roll it and we got ourselves a two to two four times. One, two, three, and four. Four times. Kim, down two, so Min. Four times here. One, two, three, four. Four times. And again, stick with what you got guys. This will of course just be a quick little pack break. So something with the heats. Chris of the Lakers, you have Palakins here, down with Kyle and Grizzlies down here with Natalie. Alrighty guys, here you go. Rookie, Alan Samologic. There's Garland and Will Chamberlain. All right, let's switch scenes guys and let's get away with the last four spots. So again, let's roll the dice and we got ourselves a five and a four for nine times this time. Good luck. Nine times. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and ninth and final time. All right, four and a five, nine times. Top four, get in. Marcus, Natalie, Lonnie, and Natalie. Wow, there you go. After nine times. Congrats guys. So coming up next now is the break of toe.


It was the day after graduation when all through the place, not a human was seen, except in one space. Holiday had arrived and the students had cleared. The cleaners had gone, so the animals appeared. From their nests and their burrows, on two legs and four, they flew hopped and waddled to see a soccer ruse score. They read learned tomes by Homer and Shakespeare. They went to the bar for hot chips and cold beer. So the animals have gathered at Llewellyn Hall to sing happy holidays to one and to one.


Okay, this is a masterpiece that was created by Sandra. She came to visit us not too long ago actually to paint this, and I think it sums up everything that we're trying to do at the Float Clinic and Research Center. And she captured it so wonderfully there is a ton of symbolism and perhaps next year she could actually give a talk to show all the little secrets she threw into this. But I want to take you through a little bit because I think it talks a lot about what floating does, especially for mental health. So to begin with, you have a floating head, and it's kind of stuck in this forest or trapped in the trees, and that's kind of symbolizing the struggle that people go through when they suffer from any forms of mental illness. And ultimately, what they're trying to do is they're trying to get to this sort of peaceful state of mind, right, a state free of suffering essentially. And in order to get there you have to come through the body, into the brain, but unfortunately there's clouds stuck in the way. And these clouds are kind of like all the thoughts, all the cognitions, all the things getting in the way of reaching that state. And ultimately the person is looking out to the top of the mountain. And this is the journey. How do I get there? How do I get myself well? How do I live life in a meaningful way? And what you find here is you can't go through the land. Remember you've got these clouds here. The only way to reach the top of the mountain is you have to come through the water. And I don't know if you could see this, the very bottom is a person at the top of the mountain holding the sun. And so this is the initial mural that every patient that's going to come through our clinic sees. And really we can't have done this without Sandra. I mean she put this together in a one week period of time having never done a mural of this magnitude before and it turned out wonderfully. So thank you Sandra. But let's talk about this. What's going on in a float? So you come in, you have this float session where your mind expands but then afterwards there's a residue and everyone here knows it. I mean raise your hand here if you felt a post-float glow. See this is great, I'm around my peers. I tell this to my research colleagues, they say a glow? What are you talking about? But everyone knows what it is when you feel it. And it's kind of strange, you know? You're sitting out there at lunch amongst all these Portlanders at Farmers Market, right?  I mean how many people would believe you? They'd think you're nuts.  But this residue is important. It's important because it's doing something beneficial for your mental health. It's putting your brain into a state of equilibrium that it couldn't have achieved otherwise. And I want to study this. I want to understand what's happening in the brain that sort of signifies or correlates with this experience. And so what I'm going to talk about in this presentation really relates to this part of it. Now keep in mind in our first brain imaging study, everyone's being scanned after the float is over. Now if someone in the audience could invent an MRI scanner that could go into a float pool, talk to me because then we could study this part. But for now, this is what we're studying. Now another thing that we have to talk about is the cultural zeitgeist. And this is prominent. In fact, when I was growing up, I don't think it was nearly as bad as it is right now. And the cultural zeitgeist is we need to have constant stimulation. If we don't have our phone with us 24-7, we start panicking. If we get pinged in the middle of the night with a little text where we wake up, we're stumbling for our phone, we're looking at the text. Our brain is wired for all of this stimulation.  By myself? And nothing's there? This sounds horrible. Well, a study came out last year in a very prominent scientific journal. And this is the abstract. Just think. The challenges of the disengaged mind. Timothy Wilson at University of Virginia was the lead author. And here's what it says. In 11 studies, we found that participants typically did not enjoy spending 6 to 15 minutes in a room by themselves with nothing to do but think that they enjoyed doing mundane external activities much more and that many preferred to administer electric shocks to themselves instead of being left alone with their own thoughts. Most people seem to prefer to be doing something rather than nothing, even if that something is negative. So this year, I had the opportunity to go to a conference called the Blue Mind Conference. And Dr. J. Nichols, who's going to sort of close out the conference tomorrow, organized this Blue Mind Conference. And he invited Tim Wilson there, and I was a presenter as well. And I got a chance to meet with Tim and talk to him about this. I said, what were you doing here? He goes, well, we basically had one of our psychology offices, an old psychology building, and the students would come in and they'd just sit in this chair, and that was it. It was like an uncomfortable chair and a table, and you'd just sit there for 15 minutes and you could shock yourself if you wanted. I said, hey, Tim, did you ever consider trying to replicate your experiment inside of a float tank? And he goes, ooh, never thought of that. Well, I think what we know as an industry is this experience of being alone with our thoughts is actually not that aversive. This experience of nothingness that floating provides is actually pleasurable.  Here's from our first study. Remember, we have eight people in the float chair condition and eight people in the float pool condition. And here's the scale that we asked them after their float was over. Okay? I'll take you through this. The question was very simple. Overall, how was your float experience? We didn't want to bias them, so it was a bipolar scale. It could range from extremely unpleasant all the way up to extremely pleasant with neutral being right in the middle. So if you didn't like the experience, if the 90 minutes of being by yourself was aversive, and remember, 90 minutes that's six times longer than the experiment we were just talking about with Dr. Wilson. And what you find is even in the chair condition, where they're not in this very nice warm pool of water, the majority of subjects are finding it pleasurable. This is data right away that says something that there's something wrong with those findings we just saw. And you're going to hear people replicate, or not replicate, but speak about that previous study because it was published in a very prominent journal. And you need to come back at them and say, well, it doesn't replicate when you do floating or even a relaxed chair condition. What's interesting, though, is in the pool condition the amount of pleasure is actually a lot more than the chair condition. Not a single person in either study didn't report at least a little bit above the level of 50, which means everyone at some degree was finding it at least a little bit pleasurable. And I think that's an important point. What you find typically in our current cohort of subjects is about one person in each group did find it somewhat boring. So I think boredom is a possibility. But in terms of, you know, shocking yourself and saying, you know, this is horrible, nobody's talking about that when it comes to floating or even the chair condition. Now what else differs between these two groups? I think this is the big one. This is a measure of serenity that's done on a standardized scale called the Ponus X. And I want you to kind of learn the color code scheme here because we're going to use this throughout today's presentation, all right? So the pool group is always going to be in blue. The chair group is always in gray. And then we ask them to fill out these measures both before they float and after. The before is going to be in this sort of lighter hatch color, and then the after is in the dark shade, okay? So what you clearly see here is after you come out of the pool condition your level of serenity almost comes up to the maximum. And this is a big effect size. It's about a 1.3 when you look at Cohen's D. And that's actually considered a very large effect. And this is a small group of subjects. So serenity is really an important part of the float experience. And what does serenity mean? Well, when you're answering this questionnaire, it's asking you things like how calm do you feel? How relaxed do you feel? How at ease do you feel? I think serenity is really the main aspect of positive affect that floating is tapping into. As an aside note, who here is a Seinfeld fan? So you guys know the episode Serenity Now? Every time I see this graph, I see Frank Costanza saying Serenity Now! So serenity is really, I think, one of the main variables that we're seeing move from pre to post float. And it's not moving nearly as much in the chair condition. Here's another question we ask afterwards. How relaxed do you feel right now from not at all to the most I've ever felt?  But in general, the pool condition is showing a bigger jump in relaxation post float than the chair. This gets a little bit more movement. How refreshed do you feel? And the pool, once again, is quite a bit more than the chair in terms of differences from pre to post float. So when you look at what is characterizing the float experience, at least in the sample that we're studying here, you're seeing changes in things like how pleasant was the experience, how much serenity do you currently feel, how refreshed do you feel, how relaxed do you feel. We also looked at the negative side of things. And what you find is, listen, this is a sample of healthy people. We screen them to be free of any sort of neurological or psychiatric illness. And as a consequence, at baseline, they're all at the floor when it comes to negative affect. Now, if I was studying a group of people with, say, severe anxiety, what you would expect at baseline is somewhere in this vicinity. And so unfortunately, we can't actually measure any changes in negative affect or mood with this sample because they're pretty much at floor right away. We also looked at state anxiety. And once again, you see this floor effect. The pool condition does seem to show a little bit more of a decrement when it comes to post float reductions in anxiety. And you could also ask a very simple question, how stressed or anxious do you feel right now? And once again, the pool condition goes down to basically all the way at the bottom. But once again, it's hard to really tap into anxiety because this is a healthy sample. They're coming into the float experience already stress-free. My prediction is, if we start to look at this in people who have high levels of stress and anxiety at baseline, is you would see dramatic drops. So really, what we're dealing with is a tail of two effects. And I love this picture because it kind of captures it perfectly. You know, on the one hand, you have floating kind of zapping away all the stress in your life, right? And what I find, in fact, is when you bring a lot of stress into the float experience, the effect tends to be even bigger.  Why didn't I do that two days ago? So you clearly have this effect. But in this sample, these are healthy people, so they don't really have much stress to begin with. But what we did find in this sample is the other side of floating, the rainbow side, right? This is the glow. They are finding themselves to have a much higher level of serenity from pre-to-post float. And what's accounting for that in the brain? So we want to begin to understand this in the brain. And in order to do that, we're using fMRI. And there's a task in fMRI known as the monetary incentive delay task. Now, you're in this sort of cramped scanner. And I grant you, this is no float experience. Noisy. It looks like a giant donut.  So it's not necessarily conducive to a post-float experience. It's not something I would say recommend to you after your float go hop in an MRI scanner. But we have a chair group, a control condition, so we could kind of try to account for some of those effects. But the monetary incentive delay task taps into sort of positive affect. It taps into reward. I'm going to take you through what that task actually entails. It always begins with a cue. And with fMRI, you have to have very sort of controlled and contrived paradigms in order to extract what's happening in the brain. So the cue is usually a simple circle or square. But what it actually tells you is you now have the opportunity to win five bucks. And we actually pay people this money at the end. And so by the end of this task, people could win as much as $50. And we'll give them that to them at the very end of the study. So they are incentivized, that's part of the task. But it's really a task of anticipation, right? So you see the cue, and then there's a delay. And after the delay, you see a triangle. And this is really all you have to do in the task.  And if you press the button quick enough, what will end up happening is you could actually win the reward. If you don't press the button quick enough, you won't win anything. And you could change these contingencies. So in some trials, you could win $5. In other trials, it could be, say, negative five. So here, you press the button quick enough, you don't lose any money. But if you don't press the button quick enough, you lose $5. So this task has both reward and punishment. But the important part here is there's an anticipatory period where you have no idea if you're gonna win the money or not. And that's what we're measuring in the brain. It's the anticipation of reward. And there's a specific area in the brain that seems to be acutely sensitive to this anticipation of reward. It's right here. It's a subcortical structure in the ventral striatum known as the nucleus accumbens, okay? And you guys are gonna get used to that name soon because this is a very important structure, I think, when it comes to what floating is doing. And what we find in this task, and this was a study that was done many years ago, it's been replicated in thousands and thousands of people at this point. It's a very popular task to run, is the signal, whether you have a chance of, say, losing $5 or not winning or losing any money whatsoever, or going all the way up to $1. Across the board, it doesn't really do much in terms of activating this region. But when you get to this $5 reward condition where you could really win some money, in anticipation of that win, this nucleus accumbens signal goes way up, okay? So what it's saying is that in anticipation of large rewards, you see this surge of activation in this brain region. And our prediction was that floating would further enhance this reward-related signal, okay? And this is the idea, once again, behind this what might be underlying some of the post-flow glow. Now keep in mind, no brain region by itself works in isolation. Everything in the brain is part of a larger system. It's intimately connected with many other structures, and it's all done in networks. And the network that the nucleus accumbens is connected to is something known as the mesolimbic pathway, all right? I'm gonna take you through this, it's really not hard. Right here in the midbrain, just above the main areas of the brainstem, you have a nucleus called the ventral tegmental area. This is one of the nuclei that produces dopamine in our brain. And it's one of the main dopamine producers. And so the dopamine production happens here. And then it sends its connections all the way up into the nucleus accumbens, where it releases that dopamine, all right? And then from the nucleus accumbens, it has a whole slew of connections that infiltrate the prefrontal cortex, especially this area of the prefrontal cortex known as the orbital frontal cortex, so right above your eyeballs. So it's a three-step pathway. Step one, you have the dopamine being produced in the ventral tegmental area. Step two, it gets released into areas of the ventral striatum, like the nucleus accumbens. And then step three, it communicates into the prefrontal cortex. Now this pathway is extremely important. We've studied this extensively in both humans and non-human animals. And here's what we know. Firstly, it's very rich in dopamine, but not just dopamine. So for example, the nucleus accumbens has tons of opioid receptors, has GABA, has serotonin, but dopamine is clearly one of the main players in this pathway. It's highly involved in reward, and it's highly involved in motivating our behavior. Let me explain what I mean by that. This pathway tends to fire most in anticipation of reward. It was most elegantly demonstrated by a neuroscientist named Wolfram Schultz, who was putting electrodes into monkey's brains right into this area of the ventral tegmental, nuclei, okay? And what he would do is he would give the monkey's juice rewards. And as soon as he gave a little snippet of juice to a monkey, the cells would just start firing and you could hear them clicking away. And then what he started doing is he started pairing a light a few seconds before you would receive the juice reward, right? And what he saw was a complete reversal. Now the cells stopped firing when they received the juice, but started firing a few seconds beforehand when they saw the light. The light was predicting the onset of the reward and now the cells went absolutely crazy. And you could tell this is part of what motivates our behavior. As humans, as any animal species, we're always trying to figure out how to get to the reward. Once we're there it's like, oh, okay, what's next? And this is kind of the human condition, right? We're always striving, we're always struggling to get there, and then once we're there it's like, all right, what's next? And it's because this pathway is constantly driving our behavior to that what's next. It's anticipating reward. Now, what are the implications of that? Well, every single drug of abuse, as you could imagine, would engage this pathway directly. And it doesn't matter if it's cocaine or heroin or marijuana or alcohol, it's going to hit different levels of this pathway. As does natural rewards like food or sex or compulsive behaviors like gambling. I mean, think about anticipating rewards.  The same pathway that the rat has and it's driving the behavior and it keeps the behavior going even if they don't win a reward because what this pathway is doing is anticipating the reward. And then finally, there's been a lot of recent work including work done by Dr. Kyle Simmons who just presented showing that this pathway contains what might be called pleasure centers or hedonic hotspots where when you activate these regions like the nucleus accumbens or an area called the ventral pallidum, you actually enhance the experience of pleasure and that pleasure could be related to say things like eating a nice piece of chocolate cake or having sex or just engaging in social conversation. And so what you find in these pleasure centers or hedonic hotspots especially is they infuse sort of your external experience with this internal feeling of well-being. So I think this pathway is very, very important and my presumption was it was gonna come into play at floating at some level. So I'm gonna show you some data now from the monetary incentive delay task in floaters and let's see what happens in this pathway, okay? First step is you have the ventral tegmental area and that's stage one of this pathway. So what happens in a floaters brain in this small area, this small nucleus that creates dopamine and sends it outwards into the nucleus accumbens? So here it is. Right here you have a cluster of different voxels that nicely sort of corresponds to where you would expect the ventral tegmental area to be and it's showing a high level of activation. Now I just wanna give you a sense of what that means. So the way we do our imaging experiments is our voxel size is about two millimeters. So each one of these little voxels is about two millimeters cubed and if you went in there with a microscope and started counting how many different cells are in that one two millimeter voxel, we're talking about 100,000 neurons in that little space. So this is a cluster of cells of many different neurons that is activating during the monetary incentive delay task in anticipation of winning the $5 reward, okay? And now here's what happens in the different conditions. So once again, remember the color scheme. In blue is the post float fMRI scan, okay? In gray is the post float chair fMRI scan. So remember, blue is the pool group, gray is the chair group, and then immediately to the left of it is the pre float. Remember, everyone gets scanned before they've ever floated before. So that's kind of the baseline. And what you're seeing is in the pool condition, a surge in activation post float in the ventral tegmental area. Whereas in the chair condition, it's the exact opposite. It tends to go down. And the reason I displayed this graph as such is because this is preliminary data. We need to analyze this with a larger cohort of subjects to know that it replicates, but these are big effects. I'm not lying when I say that. And essentially, this is one voxel that's centered at these cross hairs. And then all of these squares are the voxels around that voxel, okay? And what you're seeing is across that whole area of space, the same sort of pattern where post float, you're seeing this surge of activation, whereas post chair, it tends to actually come down. So I think this is saying something about what's happening, and we can't say anything about whether it's dopamine, but given the fact that this is the ventral tegmental area, my presumption is it's probably related to dopamine release. Now, next step of the pathway, nucleus accumbens, right? Take a guess what happens post float in the nucleus accumbens. Just goes crazy. And it's not just the nucleus accumbens. The entire area of the ventral striatum and all the regions around it seems to also have this enhanced level of activation. So here's how it breaks down when you compare it to the chair group. So once again, at baseline, you're not seeing too much activation, but post float, it tends to go way up. And in the chair group, you really don't see much difference between baseline and then post chair. So once again, you're seeing a large rise in anticipation of reward in this mesolimbic pathway, and specifically the nucleus accumbens. I was really excited when I saw this, guys. And I saw this for the first time about three days ago. So I'm still excited. But it's the sort of thing that I was always looking at this chair group to see, you know, is this specific, you know? Maybe they're just relaxed. As I showed you earlier, the chair group found this to be somewhat pleasurable, right? But yet their brain is responding in a very different way than the pool group. And I think this is very specific to floating. Now, the final connection of the mesolimbic pathway goes into the prefrontal cortex. So the question then, what happens there? Well, there's a specific area that it tends to project to, known as the medial orbital frontal cortex. So kind of go right into the middle where your eyeballs are, go back just a little bit, and this is the area right here.  So in the baseline condition, you see actually quite a bit of activation, but post float essentially shuts off. And in the chair group, you really don't see that same sort of decrement at all. So this is curious, I'm still processing it, trying to understand what it all means, but we know that this region is involved in sort of regulating our behavior, right? So for example, if you have a surge of dopamine, the typical thing is to engage in some sort of compulsive behavior and you would imagine that this region is trying to regulate what that behavior is. The fact that this is shutting off post float is interesting. What does that mean? I was speaking to Jim Hefner about this yesterday and he was saying one of the things he finds that when he comes out of a float, he doesn't need to do anything. It's this sort of state of sort of very quiet contentedness where you don't need to engage in any sort of compulsive behaviors, you could just be. And perhaps this is signifying something related to that. We just don't know yet, but very interesting and not necessarily something I would have predicted. So preliminary conclusions from this. Floating appears to modulate activation in the mesolithic pathway during anticipation of reward and specifically it enhances the reward processing and subcortical structures like the nucleus accumbens, but it reduces the processing in prefrontal regulatory regions like the medial orbital frontal cortex. And we'll have to see if that replicates in the larger sample. I think this is gonna be really interesting. Could we take those changes and say serenity and correlate them to the changes in activation in this pathway? And if so, this might be a biomarker that could kind of predict someone's post float glow. So that's something we're planning on doing as we collect more data with this. And I think this has some important clinical implications for drug addiction specifically. And it might provide a plausible mechanism for how floating may help addicts overcome withdrawal symptoms. You know, think about this. We know that what creates craving, what creates your urge to go after a drug is this pathway. It's intimately connected to that. And as you're going through withdrawal, we know that regions like the nucleus accumbens are totally misfiring. So it's no surprise to me that you hear stories like John Lennon stepping into a float tank back in the 70s to overcome his heroin addiction. Well, perhaps what's happening is it's providing a natural enhancement of this pathway, a natural surge in activation in say regions like the nucleus accumbens that gets rid of the withdrawal symptoms that you normally have to experience, say, when you're trying to come off of heroin. And so I think this is really fascinating because it does provide some mechanism by which this may be helping drug addiction. But I also think it provides some mechanism for how it might help people with depression overcome anodonia. We know people who are anodonic, which means things that normally would bring you pleasure and no longer do. We know that people who are experiencing anodonia have dysregulation in the nucleus accumbens. I have a colleague of mine in Germany who's actually starting to do deep brain stimulation where he implants electrodes into the nucleus accumbens of people with chronic depression and starts stimulating them to try to get them out of it. And the big change you see is they become less anodonic. So I think this is also maybe a natural way and much less invasive than putting an electrode in the brain to do this. So this is very exciting to me. I think it has a ton of potential but we once again need to replicate it. So before I wrap up, I wanna kind of give you guys a preview of what's on the horizon. We're doing this fMRI study. We're gonna wrap up this first study this fall but we have a ton of other studies in the works and some of them are a little further down the line. Some of them are happening more immediately. First thing is we still need to analyze the resting state fMRI dataset. Some of you may already know this in the crowd but our brain is percolating all the time, every moment of the day. And we didn't know this really until about 20 years ago when we started doing functional neuroimaging experiments and we kept finding the same set of brain regions that would pop up online when people were doing absolutely nothing. And they called this the resting state network or the default mode.  And we need to analyze that data. I think that's gonna hold a lot of interesting clues to what's happening post-float. There are many fMRI projects still to come and I want to make an announcement. I'm looking for a post-doctoral research scholar to help me with the analysis of the fMRI data. So talk to your friend. If you know anybody who is a post-doc that's computationally savvy, please send them my way and we're gonna do some really interesting research. I'm also, I've started already collecting EEG data during the float. And we could finally see if we could replicate Tom Fine's seminal finding where theta state goes up selectively during the float. Hopefully next year at the conference we'll be able to speak to this question. This is exciting. Where's Shashana Leibner? There she is. Shashana created a very unique connection with the Epsom Salt Council. And the Epsom Salt Council is like kind of, I don't know how to best describe them, but they represent all of the Epsom Salt industry and they're very interested to know what happens to all the magnesium that's sort of floating in that pool of water that you're in and whether or not it's actually getting into your body. Now, I'm actually curious, how many people here think magnesium is getting into your body during the float? Okay, well, there's never been a single study to document this. And this is what's so amazing. You look at years and years of Epsom Salt research but they've never validated whether it's actually getting in and being absorbed into the body. So we've reached an agreement where we're gonna do a very thorough project and take blood and urine samples pre and post float and have people float longitudinally for almost a dozen times and track whether the magnesium levels in blood and urine is going up with the float exposure. And this could be the first study to document whether magnesium really is crossing that skin barrier. So I'm super excited about this study and Shashana was critical in setting this up. Rich Martin's about to speak here. I think as an industry we need to do more bench testing of the efficacy of Epsom Salt and just infecting by itself. And there's some really interesting studies that we could do just to see how well Epsom Salt is able to eradicate various forms of bacteria and viruses. And I think Graham has put together a website where people could donate to this cause and allow us to do the sort of test that we need to hand over to health regulators and say, listen, Epsom salts by itself are doing a lot. And then eventually we could start seeing how other forms of disinfection add to that. We're finally starting to do research with clinical populations, both my colleagues, Dr. Coulson and Dr. Simmons mentioned this, but if we're going to get floating on the map in Western medicine, we have to perform randomized controlled trials. And I think the first one that I want to do and we're already starting to plan for is targeting PTSD. I think the effect of floating on a brain that has been traumatized is profound. And I don't know how many people here know somebody who's endured trauma either early in life or more recently, but I'd be very curious to hear anecdotal stories of how floating has helped them overcome their PTSD symptoms. And the hope is probably next year we'll begin sort of pilot testing the protocol and then maybe two years from now start the RCT, but if we could do a proper RCT, not just in dozens of people, but in hundreds of people, I think we're gonna find some giant effects for how floating could help PTSD. And we've also started another study with eating disorders. And Emily Noren is going to be giving a talk later talking about the effects that floating could have on somebody who, say, suffers from anorexia. And attached to LIBER on the top floor is a whole unit of inpatient, essentially women who are suffering from various eating disorders. And we've already started meeting with them on a weekly basis. We've had all the clinicians there floating so they could see what it's like. And the hope is starting later this year we're gonna have our first set of women with various forms of eating disorder trying out floating and seeing how it affects their body image. So often what happens when you're suffering from an eating disorder is your feeling of your own body is one of complete negativity.  And I've heard many anecdotal stories where people come out of a float and for the first time there's this sort of feeling of self-acceptance. And I see this in males, I see this in females, I don't think it distinguishes. But that would be very interesting if we could actually show systematically that women who co-in with disturbed body images could come out with a more accepting, loving opinion of who they are and what their body is like. And then finally, we're starting some research collaborations with other float centers. We only have two float pools. We're gonna be doing a lot of physiological studies. We're gonna be doing some clinical studies. But if we wanna do large ends we need more float pools and there's places out there that have them. One of which is about to open next week. This is one of the pools that Jim Hefner created in Pasadena and the name of his company is Just Float. And in about two weeks it's gonna open and it will be the world's largest float center. It will have 11 float tanks. And what Jim has done is tremendous. He's paid attention to every single detail whether it be sound or air quality or water temperature or humidity levels and he's integrated it into all of his tanks so you could assure there's gonna be a level of consistency that's unprecedented. And so the hope is we're gonna be able to do much larger scale studies in hundreds of people as we begin these collaborations with other float centers.  I can't tell you if we find even a glimmer of positive effects in any of these endeavors I think we could really make a point in the field of medicine that this is a safe and natural way to go about creating these changes. You don't need drugs. You don't need deep brain stimulation.  And that's what's so amazing about all of this that you could have a post-float glow and it required absolutely nothing. So thank you guys. And this is the laboratory that is the first iteration of the Float Clinic and Research Center and they've done a great job in allowing us to come here this week and present all the data which really was collected in over about a month. So next year we're gonna have a lot more data and I can't wait to present it for all of you. So thank you.