Causes of feeling nauseated in a float tank – DSP 103

Sometimes, very rarely, customers will get out of a float saying they felt really nauseous. Some even feel so bad that they vomit afterwards. What causes this and what can float center owners do about it? Well, sometimes it’s motion sickness, sometimes it’s the temperature in the tank, and sometimes it’s just random happenstance.

Regardless of why it occurs, how you handle it is important. Graham and Ashkahn have some good advice for post-bad float aftercare that’s worth listening to.

Listen to Just the Audio

Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)

Graham: Today’s question is, “why do people get nauseated in the tank sometimes?”

Ashkahn: Yeah, so that happens like one out of like … what would you say a thousand people?

Graham: Yeah I mean when you get up to one out of 1000 it’s hard to tell really whether it’s one out of 1000 or one out of 1100 you know. My human brain’s just not really good at doing this.

Ashkahn: I keep saying is it one out of every 1247 people but coming forward you’re going to experience this. So it’s pretty predictable, and I mean it’s a thing, right? It definitely happens.

Graham: Oh for sure, I mean so there’s the people who have come in who I’ve personally talked to have all shared a certain trait, but I kind of know of a secondary case where people will get nauseous.

Ashkahn: So this is all a nice way of saying we don’t really know but we have some guesses, we got some guesses for you.

Graham: So number one, almost all the ones who I’ve encountered … so this makes me think it’s kind of the more common scenario …

Ashkahn: Yeah

Graham: Are people who also have extreme car sickness.

Ashkahn: Yeah, motion sickness in general.

Graham: Right, motion sickness in general.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: Almost always when I talk to them like oh absolutely I have to have the window rolled down, or I have to be the driver even, I can’t be in the car when someone else is driving.

Ashkahn: That’s the first question to ask when someone comes out when someone comes out.

Graham: Yeah.

Ashkahn: I’m like “oh do you usually get a lot of motion sickness?” and yeah. I can’t really think of someone who said no to that when I’ve been working the shop and asked them.

Graham: Yep, so that’s in my mind kind of one of the main ones, which is also screenable for – which is kind of cool… I mean I don’t screen for it, but one could if they wanted to say “hey do you get extreme motion sickness?”, and if they say yes then you know maybe they’ll kind of get sick in the float tank.

Ashkahn: Yeah and so here’s the theory we have for that, which is that just a lot of the things you’re used to basing your balance on are not really present in the float tank. Like you don’t have any visual cues, which usually helps you keep your balance. You’re kind of lying down, your ears are underwater, like just a lot just about your kind of equilibrium that is being … that is used to referencing stuff that isn’t there in the float tank. And people come out and say this all the time right? Like “I was floating and I just started feeling like I was spinning in there but I wasn’t actually spinning”, or “I was like flipping forwards or backwards”, like those are not uncommon things to hear about peoples float experiences. So I imagine having those feelings and having motion sickness.

Graham: Yep. And the girl who got the most nauseated floating, was also the one with the most extreme motion sickness who I had talked to. Which is really funny, and she said that it’s just every time she drove pretty much she got sick unless she was behind the wheel, and in the float tank she said that … I mean she had to get out after 15 minutes …

Ashkahn: Uh-huh.

Graham: And she said she just felt not even end-over-end so much as like every way, like her body had no sense of up and down, after she was in there it felt like she was just tumbling around in a giant void. It was just super disorienting and she felt motion sick and had to get out. It’s like the most extreme example that I know of.

Ashkahn: Yeah, that’s pretty extreme, I mean like I think someone threw up once at our place because of it.

Graham: Oh for sure.

Ashkahn: Like he had to get out and threw up into the shower.

Graham: Fortunately not in the tanks, I have heard of other places where they’ve, yeah where they’ve thrown up in the tanks.

Ashkahn: Uh-huh.

Graham: But I think the closest we had was someone who actually draped their head and arms outside of the float tank door and threw up out of the side into the shower and that’s like the closest we’ve come.

Ashkahn: Yeah so, that’s not fun for those people.

Graham: By the way if that sounds gross to you, just if you run a float tank center you get used to it. Bodily fluids there that you have to deal with so…

Ashkahn: People throwing up all the time.

Graham: Yeah.

Ashkahn: Everyday.

Graham: Yeah, come just during checkout, you know, while drinking kombucha.

Ashkahn: You ask for their credit card and just …

Graham: So I have a number two situation too.

Ashkahn: Oh right, okay.

Graham: Why, what were you gonna say?

Ashkahn: I was moving forward …

Graham: Next question!

Ashkahn: I’m ready to roll, yeah, cause we’re done here I think.

Graham: So number two, and this came from Kane down at-

Ashkahn: Yeah, Float Matrix.

Graham: Float Matrix yeah, who he says his first time floating he actually threw up after his float.

Ashkahn: Yeah got super sick.

Graham: And he credits that to carrying a lot of tension in his abdomen, and that when he relaxed in the float tank it kind of let go of a lot of that tension, and then when he was standing up at the end, that all just kind of came back and you know, stomach started clenching.

I have heard that from other people, often athletes, or runners or something like that, and I personally store a lot of my tension back in my shoulders for example, but there are people who just store their tension in their abs and their abdomen and I could totally see that. I could understand how, if that somewhere where you’re used to just being tense all the time and having that kind of muscular tightness about it that relaxing then all of a sudden those muscles going back to that tightness could definitely queue you to evacuate your stomach contents, you know.

Ashkahn: Yeah, but that’d be like when you’re getting out of the float tank.

Graham: Exactly, getting out yeah, so not during the float but like at the very end.

Ashkahn: Yeah it’s interesting, I mean there’s definitely some stuff there too about … even Justin Feinstein in his talk at the last conference was talking about, noticing differences in specifically in where people are holding tension and how much they’re holding tension in their muscles and stuff like that, coming in with anxiety as opposed to while they’re floating. I don’t know, it’s one of those things that sounds like we don’t know entirely everything about what could be going on there.

Graham: I mean even the motion sickness thing is, and we’re pretty sure that something that causes it, but I also know people with extreme motion sickness …

Ashkahn: Who don’t feel nauseous.

Graham: Who have come in who don’t feel sick at all! So even that’s a bit of an unknown topic. I guess we didn’t start this with the usual disclaimer of we don’t know what we’re talking about.

Ashkahn: We have no idea!

Graham: We don’t even know why you’re listening to us right now.

Ashkahn: Okay so what do you do when this happens? We know a little bit more about that.

One thing that’s nice, is peppermint tea …

Graham: Oh yeah.

Ashkahn: That can be really relaxing …

Graham: And ginger tea!

Ashkahn: And ginger tea can be really relaxing for your stomach …

Graham: Great to have around.

Ashkahn: So we like to have those on stock in our, kind of tea selection in the case that this does happen, and that usually helps, handing someone a nice cup of peppermint tea and telling them to sit down.

Graham: Absolutely. Having a professional cuddler on hand is nice.

Ashkahn: Just for this moment.

Graham: Yeah exactly, or really any moments of stress. Good for the staff too.

Ashkahn: I usually give them their money back, unless they seem like they really liked it, then I charge them more.

Graham: The float.

Ashkahn: Yeah the float, yeah. Yeah just give them a refund.

Graham: Yeah.

Ashkahn: Like straight up. I mean usually people come up pretty fast, right. Like people come out 15, 20 minutes in …

Graham: For the motion sickness right, yeah.

Ashkahn: If they’re feeling really bad, yeah. Sometimes people may go the whole time and come out and still say they were sitting there fighting motion sickness, and pretty much no matter what I’ll just be like “dude, let me give you a refund, this is not … I don’t want you to have paid to come feel sick, like that’s not the service I’m trying to offer in the world.” And sometimes people are even are hard to convince to take it … I’ve had before. They’re like “no, no it’s my fault”. It’s like “no, no it’s fine. Here, I feel bad, you should have the money back.”

Graham: I usually tell them the story of people who have felt the same thing as well, and really try to convince them to come in for another float.

Ashkahn: Yeah, so that’s the interesting thing, is that most of the time if someone is willing to try it again, it seems to go away.

Graham: Yeah, and I don’t know …

Ashkahn: It decreases, like sometimes it’s still there the next time but it’s less, I mean like talking to Kane you said he just kept floating.

Graham: And he started up a float tank center!

Ashkahn: Yeah, he started up a float tank center!

Graham: So actually often I do tell Kane’s story, and apologies if I got any of the specifics wrong there, and you’re listening to this Kane, and no apologies if I got a lot of the specifics wrong and you’re not listening.

But I’ll actually say that “hey, we know someone who got sick after their first float, and they ended up liking it so much in the future they went on to start an entire float tank center”, and that usually is enough to kind of spur people on to at least be willing to, you know maybe come back again.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: I mean the fact they don’t have to pay for it is great, I’d do the same thing. Yeah full discount, or free float for next time, and that’s all we know.

Ashkahn: That’s it, So that’s the…

Graham: Well let’s talk about overheating a little bit, so I guess I have heard people feeling like they’re getting sick to their stomach or needing to get out …

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: Just from the float tank water being too hot.

Ashkahn: That’s true, that happened to me once, well, so I was really hungover too, and it was just really unpleasant. It was super hot, like it was too hot …

Graham: So we’ll call this an uncontrolled experiment then, right?

Ashkahn: But it did, it made me feel kind of nauseous, and I actually had to get out early cause it was just not an enjoyable experience.

Graham: Yeah, and I mean it’s one of those signs that I think … although keeping your float tank too cool can be an unpleasant experience, being in there and getting cold. Keeping it too hot feels much more of this kind of health risk, and that is, it’s another case where I’ve definitely heard customers report that they end up feeling sick to their stomach is because the temperature seems to be two, or even three degrees too high, kind of passing that 96 point, getting up to 97, 98 degrees or something.

Ashkahn: That’s really, yeah. That’s high, that’s really high.

Graham: Yeah. Well what else do you got for our listeners?

Ashkahn: I don’t know, I think that’s it.

Graham: Alright.

Ashkahn: That’s one of the reasons people get sick.

Graham: And …?

Ashkahn: It really does not happen like super often, it really is not kind of a …

Graham: And I’ll say maybe one out of every 1300 times. Alright, if you guys have your own questions, go to floattanksolutions.com/podcast and send them our way.

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