Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
Dr. Peicheng Hu is a researcher from China that studies floatation therapy over there. He’s speaking at the Float Conference this year so Ashkahn decided to take the opportunity to talk to him about the Chinese float industry and some of the differences in the practice as well as the type of research being done out there.
Show Resources
Get your tickets and find out more about speakers at FloatConference.com
Our Free Scientific Research List
Daily Solutions Podcast Episode 81 – Jake and Ashkahn share their experiences at the Chinese Float Conference
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Ashkahn: Okay everyone, welcome to the Daily Solutions podcast. We have a slightly different episode for you today. It’s just me here, Ashkahn, and I actually have a special guest with me, Professor Hu. He is one of our Float Conference speakers. We just did an interview with him over on our Float Conference Podcast. We thought we would bring him on here and Daily Solutions and ask him a little snippet of a question for you guys as well. So welcome to this podcast, Professor Hu.
Peicheng Hu: Yeah, okay. I’m glad to work with you here.
Ashkahn: Yeah. So I came out to China and met you at the conference that your association, The floatation Tank Association of China, put on earlier this year. One thing that I thought was very interesting about learning about float tanks and how they are being implemented in China was this kind of integration with Chinese medicine. Whereas here in the United States we talk about float tanks and Western medicine, but in China there were some lectures at your conference about actually adding different herbs and things like that to the liquid inside the float tanks and some of those things we don’t see as much here in the United States. I was wondering if you could talk about that a little bit, about the kind of way that float tanks fit in with Chinese medicine.
Peicheng Hu: Okay, okay. So why we call this floatation therapy as a Chinese floatation therapy. This is a way to integrate Chinese medicines, you know, factors. One thing is after each of the floatation we give the patients Chinese massage. Because Chinese massage is good for their health. After the each float they have their dress and in the bed, all of the floating therapies, they can do the Chinese massage in that they provide good massage to the patient. This is one kind of factors of why we call the Chinese floating therapy. This is one thing. The second thing is before or after the treatment we give the patient some special liquids. This is in the liquids they can drink, this is what we call pau fu ye. This kind of Chinese drinking including some Chinese medicines. They can drink this medicine, they can drink this water, is very good for their health. So this is second thing.
Third thing why we call the Chinese floating therapy is we put the Chinese medicine into the water. You know, in the waters our traditional floating is magnesium sulfate. But in now, we put hydrogen-rich water into the liquids. I don’t know whether you’re familiar with hydrogen-rich water. This is special water and there are special factories can produce it and we put this kind of things into the same waters, into the floating tanks. This kind of water can antioxidant. You know, antioxidant means they can prevent the cancer. This is a very good method and we include this kind of waters into our floatation liquids, they can produce more and miracle results. I think that this is our special thinking and this is special integration with the Chinese thinking.
Massage and drinking and the more water, I think this is our three kind of new things to this contribution of this floatation therapy. Maybe we can talk more in our Conference and we will introduce our thinking and our doing this kind of things.
Ashkahn: Yeah. This way that you add these things to floating, it seemed to me that usually required the person who was running the float tank to have more training or more knowledge.
Peicheng Hu: Yeah.
Ashkahn: Like they have to come into it with that kind of background of knowing how to do these things.
Peicheng Hu: Yeah, yeah. I think that there is more people, and also in my view, also in the training classes, also I tell the students, “If you are entering into our floating therapy and each of you should have created your new ideas. If you think this is a good method, you also can create it. Your thinking, your method, your specialty, and you can combine the other things.” So my means is I encourage, or I promote more and more people to focus on this floating, and more and more people will focus on this floating and interest on this floating and they can created more things, new things.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Peicheng Hu: Such as, I think, because the people, they are in the water. In the traditional psychotherapy, the face to face and also in the ground, maybe we have some table or desk, this is traditional psychotherapy. But we now, we do the psychotherapy not in the ground way, but in the water. The water then creates like in the mother’s womb, or they are like in the outer space. So this a different thinking, different ways. So I think this is a good direction, maybe they have a new method, a new result, and maybe new things will be happen. So this, I encourage people to do more things, more new things, and give you good ideas also good. We can combine. But the basic thing is safety. The basic thing is scientific and I ask them to do this kind of thing and not only for the money, you should for the develop the science. This is very important. I think so.
Ashkahn: Yeah. Yeah, that’s interesting and I think it’ll be nice to see in a few years, you know, as people experiment with different combinations of floating and these other things. Which things seem to work very well with floating or complement it very nicely.
Peicheng Hu: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ashkahn: Excellent. Well, yeah. Very interesting stuff and very nice to hear about how floating is being used over there. Yeah, thank you for hopping on this podcast, too.
Peicheng Hu: I also thank you for the podcast and thank you for your work, okay.
Ashkahn: Excellent, great. Thank you.
Peicheng Hu: Okay.
Ashkahn: Okay, you guys can listen to Professor Hu give his speech at the Float Conference this year. To get all the information for that and to listen to the full interview with Peicheng Hu, you can go to floatconference.com and we will talk to you tomorrow.
Recent Podcast Episodes
Monthly Budget for Float Centers – DSP 305
Graham and Ashkahn break down the real truth about how closely they watch their budget for Float On on a monthly basis.
The truth is… not much. As it turns out, monthly expenses for float centers don’t have huge variations unlike businesses that rely on retail, for example. Graham and Ashkahn explain they developed a sense for what’s within reason.
How to Sign on Float Ambassadors – DSP 304
Float Ambassadors have been with the industry since the beginning, but gained popularity sometime in the last few years. What are ambassadors and how to float centers find them? When they do find them, how do they get them to represent floating?
Graham and Ashkahn share their experiences with the practice of finding float mavens out in the world and the impact they’ve had on Float On.
How do you Talk about Psychedelics? – DSP 303
It’s no secret that the inventor of the float tank, John Lilly, was also an early psychonaut and used the tank for mental exploration in conjunction with LSD. Not everyone in the float community appreciates this shared history and some actively try to distance themselves from it given the taboo nature of psychedelics.
Graham and Ashkahn share their thoughts on psychedelics and floating and how, as a business, they can be completely separated while still being important, as well as explaining why some people might reasonably decide to disassociate from them.
What About 75 Minute Floats? – DSP 302
Most float centers divide on floats offered between 60 or 90 minute floats, but some split the difference right down the middle and offer 75 minutes. Graham and Ashkahn share their thoughts on this tactic, what they see as the pros, cons, and things to consider when implementing it.
Free Floats for Teachers – DSP 301
Graham and Ashkahn give their perspective on the pros and cons of giving free floats away for teachers. Giving out free floats is the Float On way and giving them to a specific group of people who could really use them sounds like a good idea.
The guys break it down and address some of the concerns any float center may have about running a program like this.
Latest Blog Posts
The Basics of Float Tank Sanitation
Some of the most common questions you’ll get as a float center operator involve the cleanliness of the tanks. This post will be an introduction to some of the most commonplace sanitation methods used in float tanks. These are generally either chemicals that go in the water or devices that attach to your filtration system. We’ll be discussing chlorine, bromine, ozone, UV, and hydrogen peroxide, which accounts for the sanitation methods used on nearly every float tank on the market.
Testing and Maintaining Float Tank Water Quality
Editors Note: This is a revision of a past blog post, updated to reflect the most current sanitation methods and standards
In a perfect world, you could just pour water and salt into a float tank and it would stay pure and clean and fresh and salty forever. In the real world, conditions in the water are constantly changing, so keeping your water safe and clean takes a fair amount of vigilance.
This post covers how we maintain basic water quality in the float tank, except for sanitization methods, which will be covered in their own beastly sanitation blog post. Stay tuned for that coming out next week!
Floating, mental health, and wellness
This post will explore the intersection of floating with the concepts, beliefs, and experiences related to mental health and wellness, with a focus on anxiety and depression. I’ll explore my own story as it relates to floating before diving into the current intersections of floating and mental health, with a look at past, current, and potential opportunities for research and personal growth.
Massage, Acupuncture, and Float Tanks… A Chat with Sandra Calm
We’ve seen lots of float centers that aren’t just float centers.
Many have massage, some offer counseling, some have yoga classes next door. Lots of people start out either by incorporating float tanks into a larger business, or with float tanks only being one of many modalities at their center. Being specialists in floating, Float On has not mastered anything else.
So, to help gain insight into this growing aspect of the industry, we contacted our old friend, Sandra Calm. She started up The Float Shoppe here in Portland with her husband and podcast sensation, Dylan Calm, back in 2011. When they first opened, they had just two float tanks, and slowly added acupuncture, massage, counseling, along with two more tanks. Talk about expansion!
She was more than happy to take some time for the industry to help us understand just what it’s like to run a center with multiple services by answering some questions.