TV Dolphins Promote Relaxation

Business Press:

Brenda Burger has devised a method that enables her customers to swim with the dolphins in the middle of the desert.

Owner and operator of the La Quinta Healing Arts spa for more than seven years, Burger recently added a new method of relaxation called Virtual Dolphin Therapy.

Situated in one of the three rooms in Burger’s business in La Quinta, dolphin therapy entails lying on a specially designed, water-filled sound wave table with a flat screen television overhead that projects film footage of a pod of dolphins synchronized with music.

The table was designed by Don Estes, a Santa Monica certified medical technologist, laboratory director and neuroscientist.

“He was giving a lecture in Palm Springs and he showed us some of his inventions, including the sound wave table,” Burger said. “He gave me a therapy on the sound wave table; the vibrations come through the table, and I was blown away by the experience.”

Burger and Estes partnered to incorporate the table into the new form of dolphin therapy. Burger came up with the dolphin therapy idea while swimming in the Bahamas with a pod of dolphins.

Burger wanted to find a way to duplicate the experience for those who were unable to experience it in person, but she did not know how to do it until she met Estes.

“Ten days after meeting Estes I had this epiphany,” Burger said. “I remembered the dolphins and I remembered Don’s table and I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to just watch a pod of dolphins swimming around and enjoy their graceful beauty?’”

“The presence of dolphins just rocks you to a gentle place in your mind, it helps you relax,” she said.

In its present stage, the experience veers more toward relaxation than the sensation of swimming with dolphins, but it does allow the user an opportunity to reach a tranquil state.

“Some people get a massage and I don’t think they’re getting anything out of it,” Burger said. “They’re not enjoying it, they’re not relaxing.”

“The brain has a lot of things to think about. It’s very difficult to turn the brain off,” she added. “You have to give the mind something to do. The traditional method is to have a mantra or focus on a mental image; why not look at a pod of dolphins?”

Burger plans to expand the therapy to allow for greater selection of imagery and accompanying music, including the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and the Machu Picchu ruins of Peru.

Burger is franchising the virtual dolphin therapy in its present and future states for $25,000.

Photo: Dan Elliott.