Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
The float world is a confusing place. The industry is known to disagree on construction materials, ideal float techniques or frequency, and even the benefits of using a float tank. How does anyone in the float industry know who to trust?
Graham and Ashkahn discuss why the industry often feels like it’s full of misinformation and how it compares to other industries. They also offer solid advice on how to find the best information available.
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Ashkahn: All right. Welcome everybody.
Graham: Hey there.
Ashkahn: This is is the Daily Solutions podcast.
Graham: This is the Daily Solutions podcast.
Ashkahn: In case you were confused.
Graham: Yep. Roll your own-
Ashkahn: And clicked the wrong link-
Graham: saving rolls over there if you have your D20s handy. I’m Graham.
Ashkahn: And I’m Ashkahn.
Graham: And today’s question is, “I have heard conflicting information from different people in the industry sometimes about what seemed like very simple things. How do I know who to trust?”
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: Well, definitely don’t trust us.
Ashkahn: Yeah, that’d be your first mistake.
Graham: Yeah, probably-
Ashkahn: So whatever we tell you here you should believe with a certain amount of a hesitance. Yeah, the world is a complicated place.
Graham: It’s hard out there. It’s tricky.
Ashkahn: That’s the thing. Here’s basically the deal.
Graham: Yeah. No one knows anything about anything.
Ashkahn: Basically.
Graham: Even outside of our industry.
Ashkahn: Yeah. There’s not as much certainty and concrete truths in the world as you may think there are.
Graham: And I’m not even sure about that.
Ashkahn: So with floating, it’s been around for a while, but a lot of the questions that we have coming up around science and research and a lot especially about like sanitation and the equipment and stuff like that, these are tough questions to answer and they’re technical, and they involve chemistry and diseases and stuff like that-
Graham: And a math and writing.
Ashkahn: Yeah. We don’t know. There’s not really a lot of people out there who know a huge insane amount about this stuff because there’s just research that’s left to be done. We just haven’t run of the data and have answers to some of these questions. So with floating it’s like when you get to these kind of rough areas and difficult questions basically you’re at the edge of human knowledge. That’s it. You’ve made it as far as people know things in certain directions with flow tanks, which is pretty exciting. It’s one of the cool things about being in the float industry is you’re kind of like a pioneer. Everyone’s out there just pushing the edge of knowledge a little bit further.
Graham: I find it really cool. Yeah, and when we do run actual research experiments, we’re expanding the base of human knowledge. We’re discovering things that no one knew previously.
Ashkahn: But the frustrating part is sometimes you have real simple questions that just are basic things that you want to do on a daily basis in your float center, and the answers are really complicated, and no one really knows.
Graham: Yeah and you have to pay attention to two guys who podcast in their robes for answers, you know?
Ashkahn: That was your first mistake. So we start looking when we look at floating information, we try to look at other information out there. We look at a recreational water like pools and spas. We look at drinking water, we look at other just chemistry involving Epsom salt. We look at-
Graham: We look at microbes on Mars.
Ashkahn: Yeah, yeah. Literally that is in one of the referenced little analysis of float tank sanitation, and this stuff can get complicated, and it’s not just that we’re trying to translate knowledge from a different field into our own, which is certainly part of it. Part of it is also these other fields don’t have everything figured out. We when we learn about pool and spa stuff like we get to see where their edge of knowledge is too, and it’s closer than you may think.
Graham: That was the thing that really drove home how kind of in the dark we are with a lot of float tanks stuff because and I think in the back of my head before we started going to these multiple aquatic conferences per year and hearing different presentations I thought that as a species, as humans we had more knowledge about things as simple as water that we drink and bathe in, and instead presentations on this new research that’s just coming out where in my head I’m like, “Oh, I really would have thought that we’d have that figured out decades ago,” so yeah, as float tanks being so young and new. Is there that we’re so so far away from it and far away from having dozens and dozens of labs with huge millions of dollars budgets that are running research on these things yearly like pools have.
Ashkahn: In the last conference we were at there was a full day long presentation about basically UV used in pools and the interaction of UV and chlorine, and you would be surprised how much we’re still learning about how that works, and that’s something and we’ve been using chlorine for whatever, like over 100 years, and we’ve been using UV in pools with chlorine for a while and still this presenter up there was presenting fresh new data about the interactions of these things, and everyone was like learning for the first time. And these are like the heads of health departments around the country and in some cases from other countries in the world.
Graham: And you don’t get higher than the person presenting on UV at the time.
Ashkahn: We’ve seen talks about hydroxyl radicals where these people who are like the most knowledgeable people about these things are just saying literally conflicting information, opposite information from one another.
Graham: Yeah. Both PhD scientists, yeah, manufacturers versus scientists who are independent conflicting information it’s-
Ashkahn: And it’s complicated. When we were learning about the chlorine UV stuff, there’s hundreds and hundreds of chemical reactions that can happen when you start adding things like chlorine or when UV has it’s rays affecting different things that changes the molecular structure of things and that chlorine interacts with sweat, and makeup, and pharmaceutical drugs that are in our drinking water-
Graham: Vitamins that you would drink earlier that day.
Ashkahn: That gets puts into it, and we don’t know what all those things do where there’s a result of like 200 different molecules all of a sudden that are in a float tank or a pool or whatever, and we don’t know exactly what each of them is doing. It’s just the level of complexity that happens with some of this stuff goes up real fast.
Graham: And that’s just water sanitation. You start getting into construction and best setups and soundproofing and things like that. There’s only so many systems that you can say for certain how soundproof they are, and even then, if anything is done slightly off in your construction, that can really affect it. There’s so many unknowns, not just the water chemistry is a perfect acute example of how it feels to be on the edge of understanding for all these other aspects too like down to marketing, best ways to fill float centers as a kind of new and thriving industry. We’re also on the edges of understanding what goes into just filling up our tanks and being successful and having longevity, and some of these models that we’re testing we won’t really see how many centers either succeed or don’t succeed for-
Ashkahn: Or what construction materials will hold up for 10 years instead of two.
Graham: Yeah. We’re just nearing the year eight, so if things break down after 10 years and don’t show signs of it beforehand, we don’t even know yet. You know?
Ashkahn: Yeah. It’s just like the more we’ve learned about things, the more I think we’ve realized that the world is a nuanced place. If you’re looking at information, if someone’s telling you something, if it sounds really simple and clear cut and very basic, that should be a warning sign to you. That’s what I’ve learned. If anything just sounds real straightforward, probably there’s more to the picture there and you’re only getting a very simplified part of the story and that’s just the case with all this stuff. There’s just nuance, and asterisks, and exceptions and everything is within the realm of the context around it. It’s very hard to just say things in very concrete simple terms.
Graham: Yeah, and some things are true. There are things that are logically true in the world. They call them on a priori truths. Two plus two equals four. But as our good friend, the philosopher David Hume said, “Those are few and far between” and much more common is just truth we have to derive from whatever we see and witness around us, the environment, and try to put them together, and so again, I just wanted to bring it back to it’s not just float tanks that are a kind of nebulous and don’t have a lot of certainty around them it’s the entire universe, just especially float tanks. In a confusing universe they’re especially confusing.
Ashkahn: So just be careful out there. Keep a skeptic’s eye on where, especially for things like The Float Collective or these other online forums. It’s really easy for information to be-
Graham: For podcasts that are out there.
Ashkahn: Podcasts. We’re a very tight knit community, and so information can get bounced around and parroted very, very easily here because we’re really good at-
Graham: Oh, parroted. I thought you said parodied.
Ashkahn: Parodied? So just because you read something online or read it multiple times, it doesn’t mean that a bunch of people aren’t just saying it because they read it a month ago from someone who said something that may or may not have been totally educated on it.
Graham: Yeah, or something they may have heard from a scientists who also didn’t have the full story or know what they were talking about. Stuff gets passed down and misinformation from the highest levels. There are scientific articles out there that have been keystones of the kind of different progress in fields that are now being unable to be replicated out there. Right?
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: Science makes all kinds of mistakes.
Ashkahn: There’s that big replication project that happened, and they found that, it what was like 40% of their these huge important papers couldn’t be replicated. So yeah, we have problems with solid truth way, way high up the chain.
Graham: Confusing universe. Especially confusing float tank universe. So yeah, I’d say, how do you know who to trust? No one. Do your own thinking.
Ashkahn: Build a bunker. Just get down in there. Get some canned food.
Graham: Yeah, and if you do want to know the truth about anything else, send in your own questions to floattanksolutions.com/podcast, and we’ll tell you how it is.
Ashkahn: Yeah. Man, good luck out there.
Graham: Yeah. Be Good. Be Good.
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.
