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
Are Tankless Water Heaters the Best? – DSP 270
Graham and Jake take on talking about Tankless or “On Demand” water heaters today. They break down a lot of the benefits of them compared to storage water heaters like the fact that they provide a nearly limitless source of hot water, require less energy consumption, etc. They’re not perfect though, and any float center considering one should look closely on how best to implement them. Jake shares some of the pitfalls of them as well as how to maximize their usefulness.
Should Float Centers use Light or Heavy Gauge Studs? – DSP 269
Still no Ashkahn today. He’s taking a couple of post-conference days to himself.
Jake and Graham are on the scene though to answer construction questions, though. Even the straight forward ones, like today. Jake informs us which to choose when doing construction, light or heavy gauge studs when constructing a float center, while getting a little sidetracked when comparing wooden and metal studs.
Construction to Make Your Life Easier – DSP 268
Graham and Jake cover a wide range of construction tips to make running a float center easier. Everything from making sure you have extra storage to installing mop closets with sinks in them for dealing with heavy duty chemicals.
The advice is pretty much a shotgun approach of tips, tricks, and hard lessons learned throughout the years.
Draining Float Tanks into Septic Systems – DSP 267
Graham and Jake tackle the difficulties of draining float tanks and how that process can differ based on different municipalities, different water treatment systems, or whether you’re using a septic system or not.
Water treatment typically involves whole contained ecosystems and highly concentrated epsom salt water can impact that pretty drastically. The guys provide good tips for each type of system and what to be prepared for if you’re operating in a rural area with a septic system.
The Difference Between STC and Decibels – DSP 266
Post-Conference Ashkahn is still out of the recording studio, but fortunately Jake is keeping Graham company in there.
Graham and Jake break down the differences between decibels and STC ratings, two very important to understand when figuring out soundproofing. There’s a lot to digest in this episode, but fortunately the guys keep it easy to understand by providing a broad level overview of the different concepts.
Latest Blog Posts
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #28
Home sweet home! After so many months on the road, it was strange being back here in Portland. We were exhausted, excited, and a little travel weary. The first night back, I slept in my own bed for the first time in three months and the world just melted away.
Having travelled across the United States, I’m reminded of how insular Portland is. We are aggressively fixated on keeping things local. Local beer, ketchup, bikes, pet food, pillows, phone cases… it’s part of our charm. We want to reward people for living here and being a part of the community. It’s so pervasive that, after living here for so long, I kind of forgot that Secret Aardvark hot-sauce isn’t available everywhere, and that most cities don’t even recycle, let alone compost.
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #27
Our northern neighbor – a sister city, of sorts – Seattle is the largest metropolitan area in the Pacific Northwest. It’s the land of Microsoft and Kurt Cobain, and the culture here embraces both simultaneously. It’s tech business professional in the front and rock n’ roll grunge in the back. This blend creates a perfect storm of high energy business life and high energy nightlife, making relaxation a valuable commodity. Floating helps fill the void left by nightmarish traffic and overcrowded restaurants.
Given that it’s so close to home, the float centers in Seattle are a lot more familiar to us. Our visits here were more like a high school reunion than they were like the first day of school. During some of our visits, we were picking up conversations right where we left them.
The Float Tour Blog Issue #26
Vancouver is the largest metropolitan area in Canada, and third largest on the West Coast. It’s a major hub for international trade, with one of the largest ports in the world, giving it a large migrant population, mainly from Asia, the Middle East, and Australia. It’s also been a long-time home to the Canadian film industry, and has even been nicknamed “North Hollywood.” Dozens of film and television productions from major studios film here every year.
Vancouver is very much an international city. It has large boroughs dedicated to varying cultures, including one of the largest Chinatowns in the world. The society here is more receptive to new ideas, always looking for the next big thing; it’s not surprising that floating has blown up in Vancouver as much as it has.
In the last 3 years, 10 float centers have opened up, most of them being larger 4–6 tank centers. The really interesting thing is how they all opened within the same short amount of time about 1 ½ to 2 years ago, within months of each other.
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #25
We finally made it back to the West Coast! We went through the Canadian Rockies and were overwhelmed by the beauty of it all. We drove through hours and hours of winding mountain roads, fertile valleys, and tiny towns so picturesque they looked like movie sets. It was so captivating, in fact, I suspect Graham and Ashkahn may have secretly replaced themselves with robotic doppelgängers to hike throughout Banff.
This post will focus on the smaller communities in B.C. that are bringing floating to new people every day. We also get to visit Canadian manufacturer Pro Float. They’re relatively new to the scene, just opening up earlier this year – another exciting sign of the growth in the industry.
