Recharging in the Ammortal Chamber

“Now calm your body, clear your mind and set your intention for today’s session. Let’s begin by taking a few deep, slow breaths … the intention will guide how your body and mind interact with the experience.”

These are the first words that a robot named Harry says after a patient stretches out onto a hard, reclined surface equipped with lights, vibroacoustic sound and electromagnetic therapy before a hood of more bright red lights lowers inches above their face as the Ammortal Chamber experience begins. A nasal cannula attached to hydrogen gas is also worn throughout the session.

“The lights are about to turn on,” Harry warns. “So please relax and breathe into it. Shortly after, the lid will lower and your session will begin. I will rejoin you towards the end of your journey. I’ll see you on the other side.”

But “the other side” isn’t death, it’s meant to represent the opposite following a journey through the Ammortal Chamber where five separate therapies are combined in one 25- to 50-minute session with prices ranging from $110 to $190. A full-body, multi-sensory approach” with therapies that include red light and near-infrared, vibrational sound frequency, pulsed electromagnetic field, molecular hydrogen and guided breathwork.

Before the session begins, the client will choose from the “Journey Guide,” which is categorized in a menu of “calming” and “awakening” journeys that include names like “expand,” “envision” and “recover.” Once the journey is chosen, the patient de-robes, relaxing music replaces Harry’s voice, red lights shine and the vibrations begin. At the end of the session, the robot reemerges to tell the client to continue breathing deeply and notice the “warm mix of profound calm and energetic potential and lightness that clarifies and empowers you.”

“A lot of people feel relaxed and like they’ve gotten into a meditative spot, or they’ll feel things moving around in their body … a lot of people feel resilient and happy when they come off this,” said Torie Hart, a vibroacoustic therapist and staff member at The Chiropractor in Whitefish.

At the chiropractic office on Central Avenue, Tim Dudley recently purchased the $160,000 Ammortal Chamber after trying it in Arizona. Three months after he ordered it, an assembly team with the company traveled to his office to install the chamber in Montana, where it remains the only publicly available device in the state. There are roughly 50 Ammortal Chambers nationwide, most of which are in wellness spas with names like “LongevityRx” and “Biowellness Club.”

“After the first time I used it, I noticed a substantial difference that lasted in a feeling of calmness,” Dudley said. “I feel a lot better every time I use it.”

Dudley first heard about the Ammortal Chamber from Chris Kelly, the general manager of the Glacier Range Riders minor league baseball team, who told him it’s gaining popularity in the sports world for its healing properties – although no scientific research has been conducted on the device.

According to Sports Business Journal, several major league baseball players have recently partnered with Ammortal Chamber along with Olympic alpine skier Bode Miller and it’s also gaining popularity among those seeking wellness and longevity.

So far, Dudley says his chiropractic patients are the main demographic who have used the Ammortal Chamber, which primarily consists of middle-aged women who live in Whitefish.

Reasons for trying the chamber vary, Dudley says, but most patients are interested in the red-light therapy, which promotes circulation and skin health for aesthetics. Other patients gravitate toward the pulsed electromagnetic frequency to address joint pain. Some just want to promote general wellness.

“It’s like a big recharging station,” Dudley said. “I hadn’t seen a mainstream healing modality that used sound.”

Dudley in recent years has been practicing modalities like zone healing, a chiropractic technique that balances the brain, along with cryotherapy, which uses vaporized nitrogen to rapidly cool the body and trigger a “cryogenic response.” He also uses vibroacoustic therapy, which “uses frequency to restore health, alleviate pain, achieve deep relaxation and to promote healing.”

Hart says the sound table operates internally and externally, with the patient listening to music through headphones while there’s an additional speaker playing as they lay on a waterbed-like table.

“It transduces through the water in your body and hits a cellular level,” Hart said.

While the National Library of Medicine has concluded research is “too sparse” to connect vibroacoustic therapy to pain management benefits, Hart says some clients use the therapy to promote orthopedic healing following injuries while others hope to achieve a “nervous system reset.”

Dudley says in his 28 years as a chiropractor, he’s always been drawn to nontraditional healing modalities as he searches for methods of deep, long-lasting results.

“I felt that traditional chiropractic work only got me so far,” Dudley said. “It was a little bit of a letdown when I came out of school and I was hoping to heal people on a deep level and I found that I could get results, but I felt like I should have better results. I’ve always thought ‘what can I do to get better results – to literally heal people?’”

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