What is the Longest Float Session? – DSP 110

There is somebody, somewhere, that has floated for the longest period of time on the planet. And given how recent the popularity of floating is, it’s likely that the person who floated the longest is alive and that Graham and Ashkahn have met them.

The guys share one of their favorite stories from floaters at Float On, which involves the longest float they’ve ever run. Are you listening Guinness? We’re making history!

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

Graham: And we have a question for you today. I mean, you have a question for us. It is, “what’s the longest time anyone has floated in a tank without getting out, to your knowledge?”

Ashkahn: Without getting out? How do you answer that? I mean they’re in a room by themselves, it’s really hard to know if they’re getting in and out.

Graham: First of all, there’s no Guinness World Record for this.

Ashkahn: Yet.

Graham: Yeah, yet. Wait, were we planning on setting it?

Ashkahn: Yeah, I haven’t told you yet, but-

Graham: Good. So, none yet. How do you monitor whether or not people have gotten out.

Ashkahn: Yeah. I mean there’s the camera feeds.

Graham: Are there hidden cameras in the room? Here’s a stupid tangent. That was a question that one of our customers asked me at one point, was how could we verify that our employees weren’t hiding hidden cameras in the float rooms? When my answer wasn’t to his satisfaction, he refused to come in to float.That was the single most paranoid person I’ve ever talked to. Anyway, he obviously knew about the cameras.

Ashkahn: Yeah, he was right. Paranoid, but right.

Graham: So we know people who have floated with us, who haven’t come out of the rooms, we know that.

Ashkahn: Here’s our record. Someone floated, someone did a 24 hour float with us. Yeah, which is awesome. I mean, he definitely got out of the tank at some point, probably a few times. I mean, we heard the shower turn on a few times over the course of it, and he had to pee at some point. I think it’s pretty hard, unless you’re seriously dehydrated to go that long without having to pee.

Graham: Mm-hmm.

Ashkahn: He never came out of the room, and he took snacks into the room with him in case he needed them, and he said he just didn’t need them. He didn’t get hungry the entire 24 hours.

Graham: He got out, and what he said was he could have stayed in for another 24 hours.

Ashkahn: He got out because we played the music. His float was done, and we had another customer coming in. It was like, “All right, buddy. Time’s up.”

Graham: We know of many things that are a little bit shorter than that, of 12 and 13 hour floats, and even 18 hours, and things like that, but that’s the longest one that I personally know of. I actually haven’t even heard stories from other float tank centers of any longer floats, either by the owners or them. So definitely, feel free to write us in and correct us. We’ll do a whole other episode correcting the longest length of float.

Ashkahn: See, I don’t know in terms of specifically not getting out of the float tank. That’s a really hard thing to answer.

Graham: Yeah, thanks, audience.

Ashkahn: Yeah, jeez.

Graham: Anything else? I guess we could tell the full story.

Ashkahn: So yeah, it was funny. This guy came in, this was some years ago. I was working the shop, it was kind of later in the evening, and this dude comes in, just like walking with a staff in his hand and comes up to the front desk and goes, “I was wondering if I could book a 24 hour float.” I was standing there like, “Absolutely. Boy, have you come to the right place.” So we found a day, and I think I totaled up what all the floats would be, and gave him 60% off or something. I just gave him a really good deal for floating that entire time.

Graham: Which you should totally do if people come in with insane proposals at your float center.

Ashkahn: Oh, yeah. Definitely.

Graham: Absolutely encourage people to float as long as possible.

Ashkahn: So what I found out was his plan was to walk from Portland to the Oregon coast, which is maybe like a two hour drive, right? So, huge walk, and he wanted to do the entire thing without sleeping, in one go.

Graham: So just obviously a very intense dude.

Ashkahn: Yeah, this guy was really into doing things to the extreme. So he told me afterwards that he made it, I think it was 36 hours of walking before he just actually had to pitch a tent on the side of the road and sleep for a minute, and then got back up, continued walking to the coast, to this little shipwreck site that he knew about out there, and then immediately took a bus back to our float center and hopped in for a 24 hour float.

Graham: He got out and said he could have done 24 more hours. There’s the full story. So, if you have any other difficult questions for us, that we might not know the full answer to, feel free to send them our way. Go to floattanksolutions.com/podcast and email them over.

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