Options for offering neck pillows – DSP 141

Finding a good neck pillow for your float tanks can be a surprisingly tricky endeavor. There are endless amounts of flotation pillows designed for swimming or in the bath, but float tanks have very particular conditions and getting the wrong neck pillow can make it, and your float tank, a hassle to clean.

Graham and Ashkahn dish about their experiences with neck pillows and what’s worked for them in the past and offer up some solid recommendations, as well as provide some helpful tips on what to look for when shopping for the ideal neck pillow for your float center.

Float Ease (makers of the Halo)

Foamnoodles.com (makers of pool noodles)

Nekdoodle.com (makers of the nekdoodle)

Spa Ovarium (makers of the head cage)

Listen to Just the Audio

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

Graham: Today’s question is, “How long have you been practicing throat singing?”

No.

Today’s question is, “Pros/cons/feedback received/opinions on different types of head support, i.e. pool noodle versus donut versus something I’ve never heard of.”

Ashkahn: It is a good question. There’s a lot of various neck pillows out there, and the search for the perfect pillow I feel like-

Graham: The golden neck pillow.

Ashkahn: Yeah. It’s been a quest that many float center owners have been on for many years, and at the end of the day, the real answer to this is that people’s bodies are different. They have different shaped heads and different weights of their, I don’t know, brain, more brains than other people or something that makes their heads heavier, and so-

Graham: Thicker skulls I think is the …

Ashkahn: So there really is … There’s not one neck pillow that’s going to be the perfect one for every person.

Graham: Yeah. So we have a default that we keep in our rooms, and then we still keep backups though of, what, like at least three other types?

Ashkahn: Yeah, three, or four. We’ve tried so many different neck pillows. Here’s a few things that I would say are what kind of make neck pillows good-

Graham: And then we’ll get into the specifics. Yeah, yeah.

Ashkahn: Then we’ll get into the specifics. From the actual floater’s perspective, it’s always nice to have something that allows your ears to stay under the water.

Graham: And from the business owners’ perspective.

Ashkahn: And from the business owners’ perspective. Yeah. Mostly because if your ears are above the water, you’ve lost a lot of soundproofing. Huge amount.

Graham: A ton of soundproofing, maybe like you lost 70% of the soundproofing that was actually in that tank.

Ashkahn: Yeah, ears under water really contribute a lot to not hearing noise, everything from voices to you dropping something in the lobby, all that sort of stuff. It really is helped by the fact that people’s ears are underwater. So that, if you have one that’s not buoyant enough to take people’s heads all the way out and keep their ears above, it’s probably going to make sure that they have a better float noise-wise.

Graham: In fact, in so much so that in Float On, if we hear complaints of people hearing sounds, especially people talking, or something more in the vocal range that’s obviously airborne and not vibrational, one of the first things I used to ask them, because we used to use pool noodles, which definitely kept people’s’ ears out of the water, was just, “Did you use a neck pillow,” and almost always the answer was yes because it just does. If you want a disturbing experience in your own float center, definitely float with just your ears out of the water, and you’ll be able to hear so much. It’s really distracting, but the truth is the majority of your floaters don’t experience that because their ears are below. So number one important factor is-

Ashkahn: Ears below.

Graham: … keep your ears below the water. Yeah.

Ashkahn: I’d say the other thing that’s really a nice thing to keep in mind as you’re looking at various neck pillows is how easy it is to clean because you’re going to be cleaning these all the time, and so if they’re in any way porous or have some sort of material on them that absorbs liquid, then you’re going to have a lot of salt you’re going to have to get out of things. It’s going to be hard to properly sanitize over and over and over again. All that stuff is going to make it pretty difficult. I guess kind of along with that is how robust it is because you’re going to be cleaning these things again over and over and over again so if that’s wearing through them pretty fast you’re going to go through a lot of neck pillows. I’ve noticed inflatable ones just didn’t really last that long for us. We would just have to constantly buy new ones because they kept popping.

Graham: Especially inflatable ones, that kind of a little like soft microfiber sort of fuzz. That’s bad in every regard. They held people’s’ ears out of the water. They had little fuzzy thing on them that just collected a ton of salt that was hard to clean.

Ashkahn: Hard to clean.

Graham: They wore down really fast. It was hard to keep the right level of air even in them for a comfortable float.

Ashkahn: So those are the generalities, I’d say, that make a good neck pillow.

Graham: And not slipping out from under your head is a-

Ashkahn: Oh yeah, like actual … Yeah. I guess actually performing as a good neck pillow seems like a good criteria.

Graham: Yeah, but things that will stay under your head in regular water will not in the saltwater just because it’s so slippery.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: Yeah, even with pool noodles they have to be a certain length so the pool noodle doesn’t just shoot off from underneath your neck, right?

Ashkahn: Yeah. I guess not being ridiculous. I mean not just putting a blow-up doll in there to rest your head against. It’s an important factor.

Graham: A little class, although now you’ve said that I kind of want to just, yeah, blow-up arm or something. Maybe not the full doll. Thanks.

Ashkahn: So in terms of specifics, there actually is a float neck pillow made specifically for the float industry.

Graham: And I’m releasing it very soon. It’s going to be this whole doll arm thing that you … It actually feels very much like you’re laying in bed next to someone. It’s just like you’re leaning on their arm.

Ashkahn: Yeah, and it is. It’s the perfect neck pillow. It’s going to be great for everybody’s heads.

Graham: Yeah. Easy to clean, keeps your ears under the water.

Ashkahn: You can grab things with it. It’s an arm.

Graham: Incredibly durable. It’ll] last longer than you will.

Ashkahn: So there’s the Float Halo made by Floatease.

Graham: Shout out to Float Halo.

Ashkahn: Woo.

Graham: It is our default pillow that we use in our rooms too.

Ashkahn: Yeah. So they made them specifically for the float industry. They fit nice under people’s’ heads. They keep people’s’ ears under the water. They’re easy to clean, and so-

Graham: And they’re pretty durable.

Ashkahn: And they’re pretty durable.

Graham: We really have not had to replace too many of them.

Ashkahn: Yeah. So that’s definitely a good one to check out, and …

Graham: And they’re releasing a new model if they haven’t already. I admit I haven’t been back to their website in a little bit of time because they’re so durable. There’s no reason to go back and just peruse because everything lasts for years. So they were going to release a new model that’s extra thick too for extra support. So part of the deal is, and the reason people want to switch neck pillows as well. Sorry, I’m going to get off track. Was there anything else you wanted to say about Floatease?

Ashkahn: No, that’s it.

Graham: Okay, so they’re releasing an extra-thick one for extra support, but that will probably hold people’s’ ears out of the water. So Floatease is designed to give support and has a little hole in the middle so that people’s’ heads don’t move around and all of this stuff that we were talking about, but some people legitimately have fused discs or something where their neck can’t be at an angle where their ears would even be comfortably in the water or sometimes safely in the water, so you do need these alternatives that will hold peoples’ heads a little more rigidly in place and oftentimes out of the water, just basically give them that extra angle, incline on their neck. So that’s not going to be as good for soundproofing. Pretty much if we’re ever giving someone a neck pillow that is not the Halo, we warn them that it might be a little less soundproof because their ears will be out of the water, but the comfort that it provides is … it’s necessary to keep those on-hand for sure.

Ashkahn: I’d say probably the second-best one we’ve found is the … OVarium makes a neck pillow that … It looks kind of crazy. It’s almost like a helmet that you wear, kind of like a Magneto style thing you put on your head.

Graham: We’ll put a picture in the show notes too.

Ashkahn: Okay. Yeah, it wraps around your head. There’s some space for the ears, but it really does a nice job fitting on to your head and really sticking there and supporting you, and it keeps your ears under the water, and despite how weird everything I said sounds, it’s actually decently comfortable and it’s not like an annoying thing to wear or anything like that.

Graham: We have at least one member who requests it every time they come in. Just like, “Hey, can you give me the head cage?”

Ashkahn: So that one is also really nice. I personally really enjoyed wearing it during a float as I was trying it out.

Graham: Yeah, and I think Ovarium actually has a pretty large stock of them too. They’re a little expensive because they’re custom-made, but definitely, yeah, feel free to write to Ovarium and check those out if you want to grab one for your center.

Ashkahn: Yeah. Also decently easy to clean.

Graham: Yep. Yeah. Super easy to clean.

Ashkahn: There’s also a range of products that are made more for pools and spas that … I think Nekdoodle is an example of one, and they come in different shapes and sizes and all that sort of stuff, but the one thing I particularly like about that style is I would say those are the easiest to clean of almost anything I’ve found. They’re actually covered in a latexish-

Graham: I was going to say vinyl kind of material.

Ashkahn: Yeah, something vinyl. Probably vinyl, yeah, like a glossy, vinyl material as opposed to the things like the Float Halo and the …

Graham: Head cage.

Ashkahn: Yeah, that are made of foam but dense foam so that they’re not so porous. This one is actually just slick, and so in terms of cleaning it off it’s probably the easiest. It’s not something that the liquid will even penetrate into. The other ones penetrate a little bit and you do have to squeeze a little bit as you clean them and dry them to really get everything out.

Graham: Yeah, the Nekdoodle also has a lot of surface area, so there’s this other way that neck pillows are used besides just supporting your neck too, which is actually almost like a full-body buoyancy stretching device. So I’ve seen people use the Nekdoodle even just laying kind of-

Ashkahn: Sure.

Graham: … stomach-down, putting their arms across the Nekdoodle and resting their heads on that, and that gives them enough buoyancy that they’re supported on, not a face-down float, but stomach-down in the tank. So those are cool. I’ve also seen people put multiple Nekdoodles on their arm and leg in the float tank for doing some weird stretching.

Ashkahn: It’s like a bed.

Graham: Yeah, yeah.

Ashkahn: There’s also pool noodles has been something that people have been using for a long time because they fit under your neck. Usually you have to chop them to be about two feet long?

Graham: Yeah, two-and-a-half feet.

Ashkahn: Yeah, something like that, and …

Graham: 2.7 feet, I’ll say.

Ashkahn: Those, so yeah about like an inflatable arm’s length is a … Those are nice because if someone is really looking for that extra buoyancy, they do a really good job of supporting your neck, but they keep your ears above the water. They can be a little bit wily. You kind of want them to be that way so they’re generally stable under your head and not slipping out, and they’re probably the hardest to clean of everything we’ve put on here. It’s pretty hard to find pool noodles that aren’t decently porous and require a fair amount of spraying and stuff like that to desaltify.

Graham: Yeah, there’s this whole method where you twist it. You twist the noodle to compress it as you’re running a rag up along it. The old twistify.

Ashkahn: You can tell we’re using these for a long time, but that also breaks them. We have literally a little back room with extra pool noodles that we’d be cutting up every once in a while.

Graham: Pro tip too, if you do have any pool noodles is poke a little hole going through the top of it, and then tie a string going through that, and then you can actually hang it up on a little hook, and you can do a clever little fold it in half and make a more head-shaped …

Ashkahn: Little ring sort of thing.

Graham: Yeah, you put the ring over one end of it.

Ashkahn: Yeah, or you can tie them together and you have little nun-chucks. I’d call that a pro-tip.

Graham: Customers love that tip.

Ashkahn: It is funny. We’ll tell customers if they do seem to like the neck pillows that we have other options, and then it’s like we open this closet and there’s eight different other neck pillows back there, and it really just comes down to some people, they try different ones and they find the one that really works well for them, and it’s different than the one that worked well for other people, and that’s their neck pillow.

Graham: Do we have any that we just don’t recommend or that we had serious issues with?

Ashkahn: I mean inflatable ones we didn’t have a lot of luck with just because … I mean we’d usually half-inflate them because it felt like full inflation was a little too much, but I don’t know. They kept leaking and popping, and we’d go through them a little bit too quickly. Sometimes I find the Nekdoodle specifically got a little tight on the actual neck if you actually wear it, I think like you’d wear it in a pool, so I think you more want to actually just rest your head on that one.

Graham: Yeah, almost more like a Halo.

Ashkahn: Yeah, like then wrapping it around your neck.

Graham: Yeah, I don’t know exactly how to describe them. They’re a foam neck pillow with a vinyl or something covering.

Ashkahn: Oh yeah. I remember those.

Graham: They even had a little tail with a weight going down. It was like-

Ashkahn: It was for bathtubs.

Graham: Oh yeah. It’s like exactly the width of your neck, or a little wider I guess, but not wider than your shoulders, so pretty narrow. It’s a half crescent coming up. It was foam on the inside and then, yeah, covered in … yeah, it had this little weight so that it wouldn’t wander off throughout the bathtub or something like that.

Ashkahn: No, no, no. It was meant to, in the bathtub … We didn’t use it like this, but in the bathtub-

Graham: We just cut off the weight.

Ashkahn: It was meant to sit on one side of the bathtub, and that little part goes over the lip of the tub, and then that metal thing-

Graham: Oh, is that what it was?

Ashkahn: Yeah, it was a magnet too. It’d stick to the back of the tub, and it would keep the pillow-

Graham: Oh, I never got that.

Ashkahn: … actually solidly in location on your tub so you could rest your head on it.

Graham: Oh. That makes a lot more sense than what I was thinking.

Ashkahn: So we cut off the weights, and then sometimes we’d leave them on because the main problem was with these would they would just slip out from under your head real easily.

Graham: Super slippery.

Ashkahn: Almost like leaving the tail stabilized them a little bit we found out after a little bit.

Graham: Yeah, those were just way too … That’s a good … If something’s less than the width of your shoulders and it doesn’t actually have a hole for your head to fit into where it’s going to hold the pillow in place, then you might get this problem where it’s just sliding all over the place and hard to maintain.

Ashkahn: A little too wily. Yeah.

Graham: One other thing that came to mind too as we were talking, which I was very excited about, was we have at least a couple staff members and customers who have used the pool noodles under their spine, putting it lengthwise underneath their spine, and said that that was a really nice stretch as well.

Ashkahn: Oh, that’s crazy.

Graham: Yeah, some kind of pool noodle experimentation going around, but yeah, the extra pressure right along there and buoyancy of that combined just meant that their back they felt like really expanded out. So I’ve heard that from at least two different people that it was a really pleasant way to use a pool noodle in the float tank.

Ashkahn: Cool. I’m going to have to try that out. That’s-

Graham: I can’t wait to hear about it.

Ashkahn: I feel like that’s it. Do you have anything else to say?

Graham: No, no. That was a great answer.

Ashkahn: Yeah, we nailed that one I’m pretty sure. All right, well, if you guys have other questions that you want us to thoroughly and completely answer like we did this, you can hop over to FloatTankSolutions.com/podcast.

Latest Blog Posts