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
Future Proofing Float Tanks – DSP 229
Float Tanks are expensive. Purchasing tanks can easily end up being half of your opening costs when starting out, so it makes sense to want to purchase tanks that have a long lifespan.
Thinking about which float tank manufacturers might last the longest, though, is probably not the way to think about this issue. For one, it’s impossible to tell what manufacturer is going to be around the longest. What’s more, if anything does break, the vast majority of the time you don’t need to go to the manufacturer to get it fixed in the first place.
Ashkahn and Graham share their thoughts on proper float tank care and the steps any float center owner should take when considering a tank.
How to Run Experiments with Floaters – DSP 228
It’s important to acknowledge that float center owners without a scientific background probably shouldn’t be running experiments on floaters willy nilly. It should also be noted that Graham and Ashkahn aren’t scientists, despite being huge fans of self-experimentation.
There has been a lot of talk recently, however, of float centers collaborating with student researchers to help run experiments, though. Graham and Ashkahn discuss (with a fair amount of levity) what it might take to properly run experiments in a float tank, which they understand is no easy task.
What are Good Plants to Have in a Float Center? – DSP 227
Plants give life, both aesthetically and literally, to any room they’re placed in. The environment inside a float center, however, can be the absolute worst place for certain plants, even ones that would normally be considered fine for your local area.
Graham and Ashkahn pull in Jordan to talk about different plants that thrive in a humid float center environment and some tips on how to take care of them.
Getting Salty With Speakers: Roy Vore – DSP 226
With the Float Conference coming up, Graham and Ashkahn are talking with lots of really smart people who will be presenting this year. It’s not every day that they get to ask molecular biologists questions about float tank sanitation, so they decided to take the opportunity to ask the experts the questions that the industry needs answers to.
Today Roy Vore is taking time to share some of his knowledge about microbiology and water sanitation, along with his work in the pool and spa industry.
How Often Does Float On Party? – DSP 225
Ashkahn and Graham have developed a bit of a reputation over the years within the industry as party animals. Anyone who has met them can confirm this to be true. But how often to the throw parties at Float On? What are good occasions for float center parties and how do you throw one?
The guys share their party philosophy and offer some nice tips and tricks for throwing a sensory deprivation shindig.
Latest Blog Posts
Choosing a Water Heater for Your Center
You may not be surprised to hear that a Float Center is a business which has a hefty water requirement. You may, however, be surprised to hear that the majority of the water demand you’ll be facing day-to-day is going to be in the form of showers and (if you’re doing any laundry on-site) a washing machine.
The factors of energy usage and cost over time should also be taken into consideration when deciding upon your water heater…
Float Fund – NSF Magnesium Sulfate Test Results
I’m happy to announce to first results from the Float Fund testing. This experiment, run through the NSF, was to see how salt water, with no other form of disinfection, actually effected harmful organisms. We ran tests with two different microorganisms, and in this post we’ll talk about how one (Pseudomonas) got its ass kicked by salt-water and how the other one (Enterococcus) didn’t seem phased in the slightest.
If you want to skip straight to the test results, you can download them in their entirety. Since they have a lot of fancy laboratory lingo, we’ll spend the rest of this post breaking down the different aspects of the testing.
Float Memberships and Packages
Customers are great, but getting those customers to commit to returning on a regular basis is even better. There are a few different schools of thought in regards to encouraging return customers, but they’ll generally fall into two main categories, Memberships and Packages.
We’re going to provide a little insight into how to utilize each of them at your center.
Marketing is all About Relationships
Marketing is one of those words that has a lot of different meanings from one person to the next. Personally, I’ve studied marketing in one way or another for the past 20 years. I suppose you can say I’m a marketing nerd (I’ll wear that badge proudly). I even annually budget myself a different marketing conference to go to… for fun.
