Duncan Trussell Family Hour - FLOATING with Shane Stott

Episode Date: August 11, 2015

Duncan is joined by SHANE STOTT the founder of Zen Float Company and they talk about the history of floating and the many theories for the weird stuff that happens to you when you use a flotation tank.   This episode is brought to you by WARBY PARKER use offer code "Family Hour" to receive free shipping on your first order.

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It's spring Black Friday savings at the Home Depot, how doers get more done? Hello friends, it is I, Duncan Trussell, and you are listening to the Duncan Trussell Family Hour Podcast. This is my probably 20th attempt at recording the intro to the podcast. I've actually turned on Periscope, so now I'm doing this in front of a live digital audience hoping that in some way this will inspire me so that I actually get a podcast uploaded this week. I missed last week for a variety of reasons, one of them being a brand new addiction to

the incredible video game The Binding of Isaac. I wish that I had some other good excuse for not getting a podcast up, but I've been snorting some of that sweet digital heroin last week, and the end result is I didn't get an episode up, and so I am deeply and profoundly sorry. I'm going to release two this week to make it up to you, my sweet friends. Today's episode is with Shane Stott. Shane Stott is the founder, CEO, and president of Zen Float Company, and these are the people, he is one of the people who produces float tanks that you can, that don't cost the same

amount as Samadhi Tanks. Samadhi Tanks are very, very expensive. They're like $13,000, $12,000 to get one of these, and a Zen Float tank is I think $1,700. These guys are my new sponsors, full disclosure. I've had this float tank for about a month, maybe a month and a half now, and I haven't been talking about it because I wanted to make sure that it wasn't a piece of shit, and I wanted to make sure that it didn't leak, I wanted to make sure that it functioned in the same way that other float tanks that I've experienced have functioned because I'm

not going to tell you guys about something that I'm sponsored by unless it completely works, unless it's completely amazing, and this thing is fucking incredible. I've had to bite my tongue in so many podcast intros because I've been having some of the strangest, most intense, beautiful experiences in this thing, but because it's a float tank and because it's a sitting pool of salinated water in my house, I didn't know if something could happen. I didn't know if all of a sudden something would grow inside of there. I didn't know if over time the thing would degrade, or I didn't know if the heating system

wouldn't work, or the filtration system would break down, or if the thing would fuck up, and so I had to wait to start yapping about it because I don't want to lead you guys in the direction of maybe buying something really expensive that doesn't work very well. But it's been a month and a half and so far the thing has been flawless. You do have to take care of it. It's water in your house. It's 10 inches of water that has 650 pounds of epsom salt in your house. It uses two filtration systems, but you still have to take care of it and there's stuff

you have to do each week, which is to measure the pH level of the water, to make sure that you have enough hydrogen peroxide in the water, and to make sure that you've got enough water in there. It's got to be 10 inches. So there is some upkeep and some maintenance, but I enjoy doing the maintenance. It makes me feel like some kind of weird alchemist as I take care of this pool of water sitting in my house. All that being said, I can't even describe to you how incredible it is to know that at

any point in the day, if I want to, I can slide into a hole in the universe, into a womb. It's like having some kind of womb made out of void material sitting in your house. And it's an amazing thing. I really didn't, in fact, I didn't expect it to be as incredible as it actually, I don't know what I was expecting, but it's a million times more incredible than what I expected. It's one of the most psychedelic things that it is the most psychedelic thing that I have. And it's something that some of the experiences I've been having in there are so outlandish

and bizarre and weird that I feel embarrassed to talk about them. And I talk about one of them during this podcast, and I just want you guys to know that when you hear me talking about it, I'm fully aware of number one, how woo-woo and weird and strange it sounds. And number two, I'm fully willing to write off any experience I'm having is just some kind of neurological response to being encapsulated in complete blackness. I don't, I don't know what actually is going on in there, and I'm very comfortable with the concept that there's no such thing as any external entities, deities, spirits, ghosts,

God beings outside of what exists inside the neurological wiring of the human brain. It doesn't bother me as to quote, and I love quoting this only because I like saying it, to quote the emerald tablet of Hermes Trimestigerius as above so below. And so it doesn't matter to me if everything is just a neurologically assembled reflection of the external universe, or if there is in fact an undiscovered species of hyperdimensional disembodied entities that we have up until this point called angels, aliens, demons, spirits, gods, whatever. It doesn't matter to me if a person's encounter or the relatively consistent reports from

all corners of the globe of people coming into contact with extra dimensional beings is in fact contact with extra dimensional beings or just contact with some deeply embedded subconscious archetypical symbols that are somehow hardwired into the human brain. So that being said, I've had some weird shit happen inside that tank and we're going to talk about it in this podcast with Shane Stott and we're going to dive right into that. But first, some quick business. Today's episode of the Dunkin Trussell Family Hour podcast is brought to you by warbyparker.com. Go to warbyparker.com to receive free shipping on your final choice of frames.

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of you who have been donating to the podcast I don't know what happened but there was a sudden influx of donations just coming out of nowhere to those of you have been doing that thank you very much. I can't believe you're doing that you don't have to do that obviously and it's amazingly flattering that you are donating. There's other ways you can support this podcast to the easiest way that requires no donation is to go to our through our Amazon portal which is located at any of these in any of these episodes go through the portal anytime you're buying anything on Amazon they give

us a percentage of anything that you purchase and it costs you nothing and I am a gigantic fan of Amazon I love it it's amazing to me I don't go anywhere anymore all the everything that I pretty much everything that I buy now is ordered either through Amazon or Instacart which I also use but there's really no reason to go drudging out of your house to buy stuff at a store anymore most of the stuff that you need Amazon's got this really cool thing which is fascinating but pretty badass which is that you can actually subscribe to getting stuff that you are definitely going to run out of like paper towels or garbage bags and you never have to worry about it again for the rest of your life every few weeks or months

or depending on how much you are taking how much you're pooping and you can you'll have to be the you have to figure that out but I keep a schedule above my a little whiteboard above the toilet where I mark every time I do that and then from that I spend a lot of time putting that into an Excel spreadsheet which I send to a team of scientists who then give me an algorithm that I use to order my toilet paper you don't have to go through that trouble you can just guess probably need new toilet paper every month or a few months and Amazon will deliver that straight to your door you don't have to worry about it anymore that great cognitive dissonance that comes most people are afflicted by and it's pretty

brutal to be struggling every day under the incredible weight of not knowing exactly when you're going to need to buy more toilet paper it's driven many people into the madhouse not anymore now you can overcome that awful subjective gravity by signing up for subscription toilet paper by going to Amazon but please go through our portal and bookmark it won't you a giant thanks to all of you in Australia who have bought tickets for my upcoming Australian tour in November tickets have never moved so quickly for any of my shows as they have for these upcoming shows in Australia so thanks you guys for for buying tickets and for those of you who are on in Australia and want to see me and Johnny Pemberton do some stand

up go to dunkintrustle.com and the all the dates are up there so you can get tickets we're very excited about this tour I can't I've never been to Australia before and and it's also in New Zealand as well I've never been to Australia I've never been to New Zealand and I just can't wait to go there very excited to see koala bears kangaroos and highly poisonous jellyfish which I'm sure even if I don't go in the ocean I will get stung by one I hope not I shouldn't have said that I'm not going to get stung by a jellyfish because I'm not going to go in the ocean in Australia or if there if I do go in the ocean I don't know if this is true or not maybe one of you Australian listeners can help me can help alleviate some

of the anxiety I have going over there but from what I've heard many of the beaches in Australia are actually coated with a 17 inch thick coat of protoplasmic poisonous jellyfish gel the entire beach is just this throbbing alien pink veiny thing that if you come within a couple of miles of it shoots barbs into you and your children and you spend several weeks this is what I've heard I've heard that the many of the beaches in Australia are covered in deadly jellyfish and then surrounding those beaches are several blocks of people having seizures from the barbs of the jellyfish that were launched out of them into the people trying to get to the beach is that true or is that just a rumor let me know by going to Duncan

Trussell dot com and posting there today alright there's the there it is thanks for bearing with me guys it is insanely hot in my podcast studio which is an obvious problem that is I've got to figure out how to fix I can't run the AC while doing the podcast because it's too loud but I can't do the podcast if temperatures in the podcast studio have risen to 115 degrees I think that I could cook an egg on my microphone right now so I'll work this out I'll figure it out if any of you out there have any kind of advice on ways to cool a space with a silent air conditioner that doesn't cost a ton of money or doesn't require me to drill a hole into my house please please let me know I it's it's definitely

a gigantic problem and it's gets even worse when I have guests over to interview and they're broiling in here I've got to figure it out I don't want maybe I need to rent an office space but I don't want to do that because I feel like it takes away from what I really love about the podcast which is the intimacy of having people over at your house so help me if you guys know of a way to cool down a space that's silent and isn't going to make me have to do construction work on a home that I'm currently renting I am all ears alright let's get on with this episode today's guest is the founder of the Zen float company you can find out everything you need to know about Zen float tanks by going to Zen float co

dot com and if you're interested in having your own float tank if you enter an offer code family hour you get $50 off your first bag of salt now everybody please welcome to the DTFH Shane Stott Shane welcome to the Dunkin Trussell family hour podcast I just want to say that you have now become one of the great life changers that I've encountered because of this float tank that you brought over to my house dude I'm so glad you're loving it so glad you're loving it before you get going to this chat I just want to say for everybody listening full disclosure I am Shane has sponsored me so I guess you can listen to this and if you're

a cynical asshole think that this is some kind of long commercial just know that even if I wasn't sponsored by Shane I would still be raving about this thing because it is definitely the coolest thing that I have right now so I just want you guys to know that this is not a commercial this is not I'm not doing this to try to promote a product I'm doing this because I have a float tank now and I've been getting into it with some frequency and it is blowing my mind and anything that blows my mind I end up talking about on this podcast sorry about that awkwardness Shane I just wanted to give a disclosure to yes please we like we set up your tank like a month ago and you were all about you know interested in ripping the tank

and if you liked it you wanted to push it but then you held off everything because you wanted to test it for yourself for a long time so I think your listeners should know that that's exactly right yeah I didn't want to yes exactly so I've had this thing for a month I mean I've I don't know how much I've talked about it on the podcast probably a little bit but I definitely have been holding off raving about how incredible the thing has been in the small chance that it would explode or it wouldn't work or some part would break down or whatever and none of that has happened it is just this insane portal into nothingness that is now sitting in my house and so there we go now Shane my first question for you now that I've been in this thing for a month

is what is your theory about what is happening when a person enters a float tank and lays in there for an extended period of time yeah I think well first off I think so much of your body and your mind your mental power goes to just monitoring everything around you so it's like you get it's like you're this computer and you have all these apps open one app is your vision one app is site one app is sound one app is all these things and when you get in a float tank it's almost like you're this computer that can then close down all the apps and run at a faster better speed I feel like your your thoughts better if you're meditating it's deeper it's less interrupted it's it's really powerful and then I also feel like when you're in there for that extended period of time your body

shuts down if you notice that you can it's almost like your body starts to physically go asleep go to sleep but your mind kind of stays alive yes I think it's a really powerful place to be I don't think humans have ever had anything like that and it's just a crazy environment for just more powerful thinking and easier ways to get out and meditate and it's it's just really powerful it's and I think that's an understatement and I you know what you I'm sure you guys have heard people raving about float tanks maybe some of you have actually been in one before but it's I it's indescribable yeah the impact something like that at least the impact it's been having on my life because uh you know when I got it when the the initial thought is this is going to be a

kind of novelty thing like you know this will be cool it'll be interesting but I completely underestimated what it does to you it because it's not just what's happening in there and I you know after a little bit I I'm sure we both have had weird experiences in those things it's the it's can you talk a little bit about the couple of hours after you get out of one of those tanks yeah so for me you get in and everything's turned off naturally um and you're just you go to zero and your mind shuts down and and everything is just I don't know if you'd just say it's nothing but when you get out everything's like really enhanced because you're you haven't had any sense stimulus that whole time and you get out and the sounds and music is crisper and brighter and your

vision everything seems more alive and beautiful and it's it's just like you've you've turned it off and then when you open it back up your senses are more heightened it's it's it's pretty transformative and it's like a lot of the a lot of the benefit comes outside of the tank and in fact most of the benefit comes because when you get that flow habit going which you've probably gotten now that you've had the tank for a month your life starts to transform a bit and it sounds cheesy but you uh you just come from a more calm relaxed place and then and then everything in your life kind of takes a more calm relaxed tone around you and I could swear to god it transforms reality around you when you're out of the tank if that's is that too much it feels cheesy but that's real

no it's not too much at all man it's I mean that's the this thing is like you know I have um so since I've been floating I've been getting into the writings of John Lilly who was the guy who came up with a float tank and that's a really curious story how familiar are you with that guy's stories a little bit I'm familiar that I mean I just wrote a book and I kind of recap what he did how he started floating lightly but when I've read some of his stuff like he has a book programming and meta programming um that was really hard for me he I mean he stretches the mind and and even even when I was reading I was like man this is hard for me to grasp but he's got some really good stuff too uh it's just man it's it's out there it's crazy but you you do you remember the history of

how he came up with it like putting ocean water and the thing at first and you know yes so this is crazy uh the research I did for the book so I don't know if you're familiar with uh Glenn Lee uh he was one he is he's one of the he founded the Samadhi float company okay gotcha and he worked with John Lilly back so John Lilly built a tank in the ocean that was the first place he built it and it was in like the shallow part of the ocean like on a beach um so the water would come in and out and he could he could crap he could urinate he could use the tank and he could float in the salt water um with you know it's total pitch black and as quiet as he could make it so this was this was like he he had what was like a box with a inflow and like how was he dealing with waves coming in

or how was he dealing with I don't I don't totally get it and I know the first float tank was like you uh it was vertical and they would put a chamber over your head to feed oxygen okay got and then and then he went to a laying down in the ocean but what people don't realize is so this guy Glenn Lee who started the Samadhi float company when he found out that John was floating in ocean water he's like well why don't we add so much salt that you know you float even easier and Glenn's the person who took the salt from ocean level to 100 saturation which is tons of freaking salt so a lot of people don't realize that that was one of the big leaps in floating and the float industry and it was made by a guy named Glenn Lee the Samadhi float company

and and I think a lot of people don't even realize there's a history behind floating it's just something you've heard for me it was just something you know something you hear about like they're these tanks that you can go into and they're called uh you know I used to call them isolation tanks yeah that's what they that was the what everyone called them not so long ago but that has shifted right no one's calling them that anymore yeah isolation and sensory deprivation kind of had a taboo and so the whole industry started to just kind of gravitate towards floating like my first website was isolation tank plans but now the word is floating because it's so approachable and friendly and it's just more comfortable and I think it's more descriptive

because the the term isolation tank kind of implies I don't know like solitary confinement or one of those sheds that they put prisoners in and prison movies or it kind of feels negative yeah it feels but it also doesn't feel like what it is because you're it's it's not like your senses are being cut off when you're in that thing at all there's your senses are seem to be being enhanced in some way and it's it's very hard to explain it is hard to explain it's almost like it's almost like you've used your senses in the same way for however old you are so for me you know 32 years and it's like now you're all of a sudden using your senses to feel nothing but you actually feel like your blood pulsing through your body or you feel the like the chills or you feel your mind you just

pick up all these different things I wish I could explain it better but the senses are happening just in a different way but you the so to get back to this string there's a strange thing happened in in our history which is that a guy John Lilly got into his head that he should float in darkness and that there would be something beneficial in that practice and I don't know what inspired him initially do you know what inspired him initially to to build that thing I don't he was he was a was it a neuroscientist a brain researcher and he was a programmer it yeah originally is a programmer yeah and then he's trying to study the effects of no stimulus input on the brain and he was even trying to communicate with dolphins he was

he had he had made connections with other beings from other realms or planets and it right now he was into it yeah he well that's it I mean he he but the contact with so I think most people are not aware of the fact that the creator of the floatation tank thought that he was in direct communication with extraterrestrials yeah and I don't think people know that and it's something people definitely should know because it feels when you're in that thing like you can dev you could definitely use it if you wanted to to make contact with something have you had the experience when you're in those tanks of a presence being in there with you yeah for me I would say it feels like uh I'm super connected and alive and there's energy in there with me but I've never felt like

you know there's some being like a like a person well no it but not a person like okay so the have you smoked dimethyl tryptamine before no DMT yes no I'm so interested in that one though after watching that Joe Rogan documentary I was like holy shit well DMT for me and also mushrooms produces in high enough doses a feeling that I'm being communicated with by some kind of higher intelligence and the communication doesn't come in the form of schizophrenic style voices in the head though I have heard voices in my head once on mushrooms maybe twice a very long time ago yeah but it's more of a kind of compulsion or a sense of something deeper than your thoughts guiding you it's a feeling of being led into certain epiphanies by a kind of force that seems to for

whatever reason want to remain anonymous as it's doing this kind of teaching so I've talked to people who have said well the tank will teach you is what they say the tank teaches you John Lilly thought he was communicating with beings from space and uh you you know you say it's an inner energetic thing but it seems like there's a kind of overwhelming sense that people have when they go into these tanks that they are making contact with something greater than them did you wonder what you wanted it feels like for me it feels like um so like what do you ever have do you ever do you ever think or feel something and your whole body just comes overwhelmed with like a chill scent like the chills and your hairs stand up yes for for me it's like that sweeps over

my body and I feel like I'm connected to the universe like the universe loves me whatever the hell the universe is for anyone it's something out there is like looking out for me and loving me and I feel this feeling sweep over my body and it physically it's sensory and the hairs stand up and it feels good and that's that's the closest I've gotten to anything like that in the tank well that I mean that's it it's just a different version of the same thing and I and it all goes back to how mysterious it is and how strange that for whatever reason floating in water it's been heated to 93.5 degrees in darkness produces a mystical effect uh I yeah I've been reading um this great book by Huxley you guys should check it out I'm sure most a lot of you have already called the

perennial philosophy have you ever heard of this book Shane no so this is really good it's just a book about the where the world religions like the ideas that seem to repeat in all the world religions all the mystical traditions and one of the ideas is the the concept that the self as we understand it is in some way getting in the way of communing with the universe that oh sorry then please go ahead I was gonna say I totally feel that way like I feel like what's happening in a tank is always happening to you but you're so distracted and caught up in your own little human ego scenarios and what everything means and all the thoughts and all the figuring but I feel like that it's always channeling towards you it's only because you get in the

tank that you access it it's like you get in that radio you know it's like a radio amplifier it's what it feels like to me it feels like the communications always there but my bullshit's in the way right that there you go okay so it's like so the tank is kind of functioning as a filtration mechanism that is if you're in there long enough and it definitely seems like you need to be in there for over an hour to me like if I'm not it seems like the things start getting interesting right around the second hour in the tank I that was one of my big mistakes is I floated so much under an hour and I used to float before work and I'd do like 30 45 and then it was even not so long ago I started getting in over an hour and I was like oh I've been missing out because

there is a your body there's like a gear shift as you go longer so anyone anyone floating I'd recommend going more than an hour no it's to me it's two it's like an hour you go in for an hour and it's a bath you go in for an hour and a half and it's like deep deep relaxation and for me hour two that's when I start seeing some weird fucking shit in there man like so far I've been it's like and I look I don't know what it is I saw a lot of it I imagine is stuff that's already been seated into my mind by reading all this other stuff or listening to people talk about it I don't know what it is man but and God forgive me universe and and people listening because now I'm the goddamn burnout talking about seeing aliens in his float tank but I'm not kidding man like I've had

a few crazy things happen to me in there so far what I want to hear well one of one of the one of them is real quick glimpses and again what happened what's happening in there you guys if you've never floated before is you seem to be going into that place right before you fall asleep like you're you're sort of in this liminal place between waking and sleeping your body super relaxed and any of you know that when you're laying in bed right when you're about to go to sleep you start having some pretty weird thoughts and dream states but you're not quite asleep so I'm fully willing to write all of this off as some kind of subconscious symbols or something floating up to the surface because I'm about to fall asleep or at least the skeptical side of

me will do that then unskeptal side of me thinks that it's a goddamn antenna or something for well no because it's like you're so here's here's the thing and I'm sure you guys have heard if you've ever listened to Rogan or Terrence McKenna or any any psychonaut out there me then you've heard the truth which is that we are all in space right now there's no way around that we're in space and and there's an illusion around us right now that we're not in space because we're surrounded by the atmosphere of the planet that we're currently stuck on because of a gravity well as that's the result of the mass of the earth pushing down into the time space continuum it keeps us all stuck to the planet but we're in space if you get rid of the planet in

the atmosphere right now if I could make it vanish in the last few milliseconds before you were ripped apart or died in the vacuum of space you would realize that uh you're you know in space you're in and you're in space literally we're there's no way around the fact that we are in fucking space right so when you get into a float tank uh what's happening is you're weightless and you're you've been given the sense of a reprieve from the effects of being stuck in a gravity well and you've been given a reprieve from photons blasting in your eyeballs and you've been given a reprieve from all the illusions that happen when you're on a planet where there's an atmosphere and now you're in blackness you're floating in blackness right you're in dark you're in blackness so uh

you are now in space and this is where it gets into Timothy Leary's idea of the fact that human beings are meant to colonize space that there's some dormant aspect of our DNA that's waiting to be activated by weightlessness that uh in the same way that a pig when it escapes from a farm and gets into the woods it begins to transform into a bore oh yeah it's pretty cool man those cute little pink pigs man you let them run around in the wild and they grow tusks and turn dark colored and get fierce and big it just activates something yeah for sure oh i thought it was like a breed thing that's crazy and and and Tim Leary talked about the very similar kind of thing and humans the the idea that there's a dormant part of our DNA that the moment we start encountering

weightlessness will begin to be activated and it's like a different circuit of consciousness is what he called it so based on those concepts or based on the idea that we're actually in space that we're meant to be interstellar travelers you could say that when you get into a float tank and experience weightlessness mixed in with the darkness you start activating dormant parts of your DNA and begin to experience these heightened states of consciousness that are waiting for us once we finally manage to colonize other planets or move into interstellar travel you know obviously it's all bullshit hippy theorizing i don't fucking know man but when i've been in that tank i have had a few times god man it's so embarrassing saying this but it's my it's a podcast and i always have told the truth

even if it makes me seem like a complete lunatic i've had several flashes of those fucking gray alien things but like they're like wearing robes and like they seem to be like peering up into like the stars like they're looking at the stars they're not really paying attention to me it's not like they're there it's not like they're aware of me i've seen that i've seen some pretty quick vivid flashes of beautiful like interstellar views like suddenly it'll seem like there's stars inside the thing and then the most insane thing that happened recently the one that got me like that it was so intense that i like came out of the float tank and went stammering to my girlfriend like i can't Jesus you can't say i can't really

but so weird man you guys i almost thought i'm not going to talk about this shit because of you got it uh and ps let me just say you guys this is not on drugs like i'm not taking anything in there like except maybe a little marijuana but i've noticed that it's better when i'm not high that there's more of an effect when i'm not stoned than when i am stoned which is really has been a real shocker for me but the the the weird one was i almost don't want to talk you have to i saw big i saw bigfoot in there man shut up okay i was laying there and like i reached down underneath me and i and it felt i just felt this hairy hairy um thing this mass it was a big foot and we we made love in the tank

oh wow so no what happened was uh i'm laying there and uh obviously you're laying there i'm laying there and i suddenly it just there's a sense of a presence man god i just i'm gonna sound like such a fruit like i well like i never like i don't sound like a fruit all the fucking time what do i do i think i am anyway i so yet i had the sense of a presence the very same feeling of a presence i get on dmt or mushrooms no no substances in my body outside of the residual massive amount of marijuana that's always in there just based on residual stoner effects i hadn't gotten high that day i'm floating in there sense of a presence and a feeling of something being in there in the uh god i'm really diving into the ocean of crystals right now you guys just know

i'm fully willing to say this is my subconscious i'm willing to say this is placebo i'm willing to say it's a projection i don't make any claim that this is some external spirit or something but damned if there wasn't this feeling that the thing was telling me its name was michael and uh yeah but it wasn't talking it was just like that's the sense it's like it seemed kind of excited that i was aware of it uh yeah and then it was like pointing out this like energy block at my heart chakra and it was like compelling me to breathe into that place it is sort of like watch what happens when you just breathe into that so i start breathing into it and it felt like my body was getting stretched like stretched apart or something like i started expanding expanding

expanding and it was just too much and that's when i sat up and was like what the fuck and got out of the tank it was like that really happened to me man and you know maybe it was a dream maybe it was i don't know what it was but god damn it it was one of the more intense psychedelic moments of my life and that was sober entertain sober cold stone cold sober in that son of a bitch so this this michael this is an unknown michael or did you know a michael or something well i know plenty of michaels but yeah this is i mean it wasn't saying like my name's michael let me heal you it's like just this feeling of like a a sense of a being a presence it's a force a thing i don't know what it is man but it was it was definitely happened and as a someone who is my job reports my experience to the

world i gotta say it definitely fucking happened has happened has happened since my theories it's michael jackson that's what i'm thinking i hope not i would suck you you were naked in the tank right shut up that would suck so bad if you just like you get into you finally get your flow tank you're excited because you've heard all these weirdos talk about the crazy shit that happens in them and all that happens is you just see michael jackson it just just floating there in front of you just dancing smiling that would be i would you know what man you would refund your money if that's how it goes you would refund the money if people buy the tank and they see michael jackson in the tank yeah it's scent scent proof whatever

like a recording or something so you here's what's interesting you you are you have you're a float tank manufacturer you're someone who believes in the experience so much that you have you actually prior to starting your business you are building tanks on your own yeah but you you seem to have a more grounded experience in those things totally what's weird is like the the majority of the benefit and the reason i float is like uh it's the relaxation and it's the calm life and it's for me it was panic and anxiety but i just hearing you talk and when i hear like joe rogan and these people go on these crazy adventures in the tank and i've just dabbled in those adventures um it makes me want to go for something deeper and i it makes me wonder if i need substances to get deeper

no i don't think so man you know i i was actually reading john lowley and he was saying that because this experience he was you know it's weird he's kind of mysterious about it he's like i don't even want to tell you what's really gonna happen in there but you know he's he seemed to say at least for the first year or so or six months don't do any substances just get used to how to float can you talk a little bit about that i don't think people are aware of the fact that floating is not something that you the first time you get in there it's it's not you have to learn to float can you talk about it a little bit yeah i mean people people usually get in a tank and they one of the first problems people have is they're like oh what the fuck do i do with my arms and they're

putting them up or down or folding them on their chest and it's they're they're all weirded out and then the next thing you always hear is my head sinks my head's too low or or like their body is keeps tense and they every 10 minutes they go oh what the what the hell you know i'm i'm like flexed my muscles are flexed i'm holding my head a certain way right but there's this after you float two three times you you learn to just let let trust the water i guess is what you would call it but once you trust the water and you believe that you get enough air and you believe that you're not going to fall asleep and turn over then everything starts to really get good because you're just truly relaxed and trusting just like you're i don't know in the womb or something but

in the beginning you're all concerned and it's so weird and and you're for at least for me in the beginning i felt like i was spinning or i felt like i was flipping upside down and you're just sitting there totally still but your brain's grasping for any sort of like orientation it's it takes it takes a little bit of practice it that we always tell people when they go when they want to try floating to float three times that's it's the third time where you're pretty much going to settle in very well you know and enjoy it or more than it took me longer than that really like i it's but every time that you go in you get back it's just it's it's so strange to think that you can get better at laying down in water because it seems like you would just be

naturally be able to do it but you get it's a skill like you start learning how to do it totally a skill we're just i was just talking about this uh with tom wonky he owns the he runs the float cast but he was saying how now like you get used to like hopping in a tank and floating and you can hop in and get to where you like that state of float much quicker but it's like riding a bike like you got to learn how to do it yeah it's almost like for me it's learning to trust just let go trust everything's fine and then you let your brain turn off right and that is a weird because there's another problem with it which is that you're the moment you do start getting into that state whatever it is freak out you freak out yeah dude you it's like it yeah it's like that

comfort and then your body goes push it yes like yeah and then you're out of it and you're like damn it and then you have to work to get back and then for me i'm that holy shit guy for sure because like anxiety is this prone i'm like prone to always checking my status of just how i'm doing and so like my body will let go in that water environment dark in my body's like wait a second are you safe it's isn't it weird man yeah it's really weird because it's like you're it's like you're when you remember when you were learning how to swim and there was like a certain distance from the edge of the swimming pool that you're willing to go mm-hmm before you would i don't know if you're swimming experience but you were always like aware of how far you even if you go out in

the ocean uh and you and you swim really far out you you're always aware where the shore is because you don't want to get so far that you can't see the shore that's way too far out right you get scared and you want to swim back towards the shore well in the same way it's like the float tank puts you in a situation where it's not a shore that you're acutely aware of but it's your personality or your sense of self and when you when you get into this like whatever it is theta state i've heard it called or whatever it is then suddenly you are sort of expanding out past your identity and if you start having those these weird moments of pure relief i mean come on man do you know what i'm talking about like the identity your sense of self it's almost like the

universe is having a fucking muscle cramp or something and it's manifesting is your sense of self do you know what i'm saying i just feel like self is always in my way it's the reason i'm not like more it's the reason life isn't more like floating for me and that's peaceful and calm and relaxing because i've got a story that i'm like it's almost like i'm living a story and i've got bullshit and i've got relationships and i've got everything that gets in the way for me is that's the self gets in the way yes it's a big story that i have for this big person that i've become or who am i what's my story again what am i doing who am i it's it's y'all in the way it's in the way of what for me it's like it's in the way of so it's like i'm always pursuing as a

self right me as a person i'm always pursuing and and want to achieve and become and and have these things in the relationship and get everything just right it's a state of pursuit where like in a float i'm not pursuing anything but the self is a constant state of pursuit for me and i don't know if that's like a mental disorder for me or what but i'm always in pursuit i don't think it's a mental disorder i mean i think it's a mental disorder called being a human i don't think it's a it's a mental disorder in the sense of like a mental illness though you know i just read actually that one in four people will have some form of mental illness in their life so if it was it wouldn't be that big a deal it's just a stigmatized thing but the the uh the the tank

is something that shows you just how much your attachment to your identity gets in the way of of some other state of being and that's where that's where it's a teacher i think that's how it's a teacher because you do you do get these flashes and for me they're really quick flashes of this is it like i'm not here for a second i wasn't there like i don't know what i was but i wasn't there but by the time you're realizing you weren't there you're there again mm-hmm it's crazy it's and it's hard to fully put into words really yeah well i mean it's hard to put into words unless you want to start saying crazy shit like john lily one thing that he said in the book that i was reading and you guys can it's uh i think

it's on kendall and it's pretty it's like five bucks or something it's a real short you read it in like an hour it's called tanks for the memories did you read this one uh i i feel like i might own it but i don't know if i've ever read it well it's pretty crazy man like you really you see just how fucking nuts john lily was and i mean that in the same way that anyone that i love is nuts like he was really smart he seemed incredibly charismatic and one of the things he said that really freaked me out is that when you go into the tank and shut the tank door and lay in there for some given amount of time when you emerge from the tank you're emerging in a completely different universe yeah like i wouldn't explain it exactly that way but uh i mean i i feel like uh my reality

changes is as weird as that is yeah and he's like go ahead no i was just gonna say i i'm like a believer that your your inner state uh goes out into the world and reflects back to you so if i'm all if i'm all fucked up and anxious then the whole world's anxious and the whole world's a panic situation and the environment sucks or uh you just get out of flow everything's calm and peaceful and then all these things happen and life is calm and peaceful even even the same situation that if you're an anxious mind would have felt anxious uh i just feel like the whole thing is a reflection of your inner state that makes sense so man and and you're absolutely right and another thing lily said is that you can go into these tanks with some kind of question an intention uh yeah and and

that there'll an answer might come to you when you're laying in there now before you get into that i'm sure everyone is aware and i'm sure you've heard of the of that of that people have more create more people have more epiphanies in the shower have you heard this yeah yeah for sure so it's like something about this contact with water uh maybe is energizing some part of the mind to produce these epiphanies but i had to go do stand-up and at the comedy store on saturday night and i wasn't really looking forward to it i was kind of like you know resisting the fact that i had to go perform just because i didn't want to drive to i didn't want to drive there and just all like bad wrong thinking so i was like you know what i'm gonna go in the fucking tank before my set

and i'm gonna go in there with the intention of trying to figure out why i feel bummed about going to perform tonight when generally i've on and off most of the time hopefully the best sets happen when you're looking forward to it you know the the best comedy the best anything happens when you're not resisting and you die right so i go into this tank and i'm laying there thinking about this stuff and uh all of a sudden it just all this all these like jokes that i had forgotten that i'd written started coming to me and then like these pieces of a bit that i'm working on started fitting together and i went and had a great fucking set all because of the goddamn tank and and just because of somehow like it cut through all the resistance centered me and put me in a place where i was

able to perform man that's amazing that that happens it is amazing i i do the same thing with like uh so for me i'll go to bed and i'll be like wow you know while i'm sleeping tonight i'm gonna wake up with you know my answer and i just try and give like an expectation to my subconscious and and i feel like the same thing is within a tank so if you if you're working on an issue you just go i'm gonna figure this out you know in the tank and you get in and let let it happen but i believe in the subconscious whether or not it's in a tank you know programming yourself to figure it out it's just it's a powerful tool people should use right yeah and so it's really interesting to me man it's so cool that it's so funny it's really funny you make float tanks you must hear people

tell you these stories all the time right or am i the only lunatic who's reporting this stuff to you no that that's actually the the main reason people float is spiritual exploration and i and i feel like the industry is starting to gather all the people who are floating for you know pain stress athletics anxiety these different things so but the stories and the reason people float right now the current state of the industry is spiritual exploration and it's stuff like this this is it right it's gotta be man i mean i by the way like i i i like working out and going and laying in the water too that feels really great but yeah for me it's a hundred percent some kind of alchemical tool and it's in and it seems that what's weird about it is it just now it just came

into existence like are there any in history are there any history if people done this in the past in some different form are you aware of any other precedent where people have been floating in darkness like this the only other thing i've heard of and admit you might have told me about it was uh like there's there's these people that used to go in caves for a long amount of time and i i have not read up on it but someone recently was just i was in conversation they're like you got to check it out there's these people used to go in pitch black caves for long amounts of time and it would they would have some crazy spiritual exploration that's the only other thing i've heard of that's even similar that's what's weird about it is it's these things have only existed for when when when

when did the first tank when did samadhi tanks hit the market when did that happen i mean look i have the i'm holding the book right now probably like early 70s or something right yeah yeah maybe a touch longer i should i need to know this off the top of my head anyway no you don't that's good oh 54 Jesus so 54 okay so 1954 these things come into existence and they've only been around for this tiny little window of human history and somehow people just are oh most people are aware of them they don't really think about it a lot and there's as far as i'm aware how much research has been put into what's going on in these tanks i mean there's there's been a good amount but not huge numbers of people like not these huge sample sizes but what's crazy

is there's a guy named Justin Feinstein and i talk about him in the book but he has a whole like a whole level of a hospital that is dedicated to float research it's like the first time any any sort of big time funding and studying has been done so he has access to people in the hospital battling like mental illness and that sort of thing to do all out big sample studies of floating so it's coming and i know it's going to get embraced by the healthcare industry and that sort of thing with all the PTSD and anxiety relief so i mean it's it's new i so to answer your question some's been done but not near enough and but it's happening right now so what is his theory is he done is anyone done i don't know how you could possibly do an MRI and those things but has anyone

studied what's happening with yeah a lot of the original researchers they're they uh they were called rest researchers and rest researchers and rested for restricted environmental stimulus therapy or technique but the guys used to uh i don't know if you've seen a picture but guys they would cut holes out of their float tank and they would stick their arm out and they would float and they would measure their blood pressure and uh they're i think it was just blood pressure and something else like stress cortisol levels see that's curious to me uh because it seems like that's going to completely take away from the experience if you got your arm sticking out of your tank yeah you should just google images it's kind of funny but that's what they originally did

but now with technology we we could just strap stuff to people and they could go in and get so much data i just think it's going to be easy at this point yeah i mean it's weird it's just so weird to me that it isn't something that's more it's something that's definitely on the fringe like i feel like a fucking weirdo i've got this float tank sitting in my house it's weird it's really weird man and it's what's else is weird is now when i get in the room where the float tank is my body has an automatic reaction to it like i get this weird like uh it's like a trigger butterfly feeling like whoa are you gonna go in there again i don't know man shit yeah let's do it and and it's like uh it's interesting yeah it's a very very powerful thing so wait your your

relation to your float tank is it right now is it all positive or has it got a bit of like a sphere or oh hundred percent positive i mean if there's a fear it's just the same fear i get when i find myself shoving mushrooms in my mouth it's like a it's not like a negative fear it's just the it's not even a fear it's just more of anticipation anticipate and some you know what man some what's really interesting about it and i haven't cracked the code i don't know why sometimes when i get in there not a single fucking thing happens at all i'm just floating in the water it feels good i get out and that's it i dry off and nothing you know brighter colors every single for sure every single time that i get out colors are brighter uh my senses are more

keyed in and that lasts for about three or four hours i've also noticed my sleep is better if i float oh dude sleep is like across the board everyone sleeps better when they float which is so weird this is why it's just such a mystery man people really need to be studying this more because there are so many parallels with psychedelics like if i take a if i have a good mushroom trip after you know six hours of either laughing really hard or being attacked by elves i'm gonna i'm gonna feel great like colors are brighter i'm gonna feel happier i'm gonna feel more open i'm gonna feel cleansed purified and it's awesome but this there's a very similar effect when i get out of that tank minus the demon attack and so that's something that i would be curious to find out

what is that like it's it's it's not enough just to say well it's because you couldn't see for a little while or it's because you are weightless it's like what the fuck is happening that when you step out of that thing colors are brighter things are more beautiful god damn getting out of that i'm sorry you guys this is not it i'm not trying to i'm sorry if this seems like a sales home shopping network thing i swear to god i'd be raving about this no matter what uh but like getting out of the thing and then walking my dogs for example and it's just this beauty day it's beautiful you realize what a beautiful day what an amazingly beautiful world we're in right now it's so strange that it somehow peels back the callus that seems to grow over our perceptual mechanisms uh if we spend if

we don't if we don't have moments of stillness totally it's like your body's constantly building a tolerance to your life and you get in there and your body lets the tolerance go because it's just not needed there's nothing to tolerate and then you get back out and it's all fresh again yeah yeah it's something like that man but look i gotta say i know that you based on maybe it's because you're running a float company and you're not who knows maybe you actually have been contacted by the aliens and they told you not to talk about it that's part of the deal but man it's so weird to me it's so it's so strange that you are like you've got you you've become like one of the main people in the float industry like you're the first person to build float tanks that people can afford

you know or the or consumer based float tanks where it doesn't have like a somati tanks like 10k right uh 12 yeah worth it worth it i'd say i mean i i think it's like man i don't want to go on and on like with that kind of shit i'm sorry i don't mean to again i i'm i don't want to i don't want to turn people off i seem to seem like i'm trying to sell tanks for you even though you've sponsored me by trading one of these uh but and this is not a commercial this is just me wanting to talk about badass floating is but i want to tell you another thing that i figured out that i haven't tried yet but will definitely work do you know about uh uh cardboard google cardboard no so google cardboard is uh basically they created this like full you can like create your own vr goggles just with

cardboard they created oh yes yes right so your phone slides into this right uh now i know this is something we talked about before but i'm now a hundred percent certain i've because i have cardboard i just haven't done it yet i have an old iphone but you can go like you can now download vr experiences for your iphone mix it in with google cardboard and get a not bad vr experience did you know about this i've i've seen the cardboard version are you thinking about going in the tank with it a hundred percent yeah because the problem with like the the main um vr goggles is that they have wires attached to them the big ones the oculus obviously valves prototype uh i think most of them have wires attached to them and also you know they have gears as shit in there that you

could fuck up with water but if you have an old phone as most people do like if you have an old iphone i haven't tried this yet i should have tried it and then let you know what happens but if you have an old iphone and some cardboard you can print out the or you can order actually pre-built cardboard you could slide your phone in and you could go into a float tank without damaging your phone uh just because you're floating on your back like it's not it's not in the water is not going to go up over your eyes like it's going to stick out and you're not going to damage anything so you could definitely experience virtual reality in a float tank god damn it i'm going to do it after after after the today i'm doing it i want to be one of the first people to as far as i'm

aware i might be the first person to do vr in a float tank i think so did you should post it seriously i don't think anyone's done it well it's that there's an amazing vector between floating and vr that somebody out there whoever out there is listening any kind of tech people out there would make it happen creative floating experience and i will test it out for you and talk about it but it's going to be like that it's something that can mix really well together i think just because especially any kind of vr that involves space floating in space that was just thinking about that like what kind of app would you want what would you want to do with no gravity and no nothing probably flying through space or floating over the because a weird thing will happen for me

when i'm laying there where instead of feeling like i'm laying on my back it'll feel like i'm floating above something looking down so any kind of like flying over a city any kind of thing that makes it appear that the ground is above you that would work too because you're weightless so there really isn't an up or down you know so anything like that would totally work too and then anything to do with sound anything that you can control by moving your head anything that involves like if you where you're looking is where you go so that you only have to be very slight head movements that would work too it'd be way cool way cool so dude you gotta try and let me know yeah i'm gonna try it i'll try it i'll try it right now after after we finish this uh interview i wanted to

talk to you a little bit about where you see the floating industry going like what direction is this going in it seems like there's like a float renaissance happening what do you think is going to happen with this strange industry uh let me let me just talk through it and see if i can figure it out with you um it's like two years ago i was at the float conference my first one and there was like 200 something people and there was a handful of manufacturers and then uh that was two years ago okay and then last year i went and there was way more people and then there was way more manufacturers and all these float tank manufacturers so like there was a handful that didn't even look like they had ever floated before huh so it's it's growing and like the the cash people are you know people

are coming in to make a good business out of it right and that's fine that's just how humans work whatever but it's growing huge uh my thing is like if they can get the science behind it which i know people are working on like guys like Justin Feinstein if they get the science behind it and then it will get embraced by mainstream and get embraced embraced by healthcare and then you've got this giant therapy just like just like a acupuncture a massage it becomes one of these giant holistic therapies that is just a staple or yoga um but it's not quite as easy it's not quite as easy as those other therapies because the naturally you have to have this big tank filled with water but i don't i don't know i i couldn't see this being a fad because it's just it's like uh

it's too it's too beneficial for too many people so i don't see it being like i don't know what's a health fad that came and gone oh i don't know uh i don't know uh hold on let's think of a good health fad that came and went there's so many well like that vibrating thing remember that weird vibrating oh yeah yeah yeah the shake machine like from the 50s yeah yeah so what if this is just a giant water filled shake machine i don't think it is this is not a fucking water filled shake machine man i know that you have to probably enter maybe i'm just a crazy stoner i i'm lucky because i'm a comedian i get to say whatever i want and maybe because you're running a business you don't get to say so much or maybe you just haven't had these experience this is not a

fucking shake machine this is an interdimensional portal that psychonauts should have as a requirement in their house because it's the i mean i haven't done it yet man but just the fact that sitting here is a is a as a as a hole in the universe that i could climb into under the effect of any psychedelic i want without having to worry about driving home and i can stay in there for as long as i want fills me with such a sense of excitement and dread i can't even describe it because i know i'm going to do it one day i know one day i'm going to eat a bunch of mushrooms i'm going to climb in that fucking tank and i don't know what's going to happen to me terrified if you need if you need someone to like sit outside the tank and like make sure you're okay i'll i'll be there for you man

don't worry i have interdimensional beings floating around me at all times so don't worry about that i'm apparently like i have some kind of thing called michael that's nearby all the time dude i'm like i'm telling you man if i keep going in that thing i'm on a direct course with starting my own drum circle and renaming myself a patchy that's so funny i i don't know why but uh so when i originally started floating um it was panic and anxiety right yes and it was meditation for these really daily functional like i need to live and not kill myself so floating helps um and it and then after i kind of got the hang of it and enjoyed it then it was like i was all hung up on you know having these big giant spiritual voyages and they would happen sporadically but the but the real

benefit came regularly as the calm relaxation no anxiety no panic life is good but as you talk it's like i i've i've almost lost some of that spiritual voyager it's weird i mean you make me want to go back because even that this book that i recently wrote for floating it addresses all of the things that aren't even necessarily spiritual exploration so i don't know if this is my place to spread it into that you know into these other benefits i think it's your i think it's good man i i yeah because look no no one's gonna take this shit seriously if every single person who talks about is like there's angels in there man i'm telling you it's like the old telescope minus the telescope bro no one wants no one no insurance company wants to hear about some bathtub for stoners

they and and look i i think that if i had if i had to pick between witnessing some kind of extra terrestrial species gazing off into the void at at the galaxies that exist around us at all time that we can't see because we're being blindfolded by our own optic nerve or having a freedom from anxiety i think i'm gonna take freedom from anxiety man you know what i mean i can watch aliens anytime that i want uh just by turning on the tv there's plenty of sci-fi movies out there maybe they exist maybe they don't but that ever present dreadful sense of not fitting in or feeling at peace in the universe is something i think that afflicts a lot of people and uh if if the tank if if methods

within the tank could be developed that help people overcome that then i think that it could be an incredibly useful tool for people it was it was so big for me but when i think about it like let's say that the car was invented by guys who love racing cars because that's the most exciting awesome intense thing you can do in a car but then you know this car is invented might as well you know drive it to the store might as well go camping might as well make a different car that helps with whatever so i'm wondering if it's like just taking this shape where i mean fundamentally the spiritual expression is why floating exists and and every book you read that's kind of the main theme but when you hear these stories like one of the ladies who bought one of our float tanks

during the kickstarter her name was lin taylor she has fibromyalgia which is a pain disorder and after 10 years of being on all these medications and just suffering she floats and within like two months she's off all of her medications wow i know and then there's this ultramarathon runner who he runs 100 mile an hour or 100 mile outdoor races and he cuts his recovery time from two weeks to one week and there's this guy who was in this firefight he has ptsd he was in the in the army and he gets back he's like a raging alcoholic his life's a mess and then he starts floating and he gets his life together and he's public he speaks publicly with something he couldn't even dream of doing it's so like all these stories are like all this in a tank you know

but but i thought the point was spiritual exploration but it's that's really heading in this big broad mainstream place well yeah and you know man one thing that i i've noticed is that the more you i can actually witness the part of myself that kind of wants to squeeze a goddamn spiritual experience out of everything and you know like the cup that i'm when i'm it's the same thing like when i meditate the best moments of meditation for me have always been when i managed to not have anything that i'm trying to get out of it when i you know when there isn't a reason for doing it or some intention or some lofty goal or i want to fucking channel an alien i want to see the great godhead that all things emerge from but if you just get rid of all that stuff and just sit back

and let go that's where it all happens and that's kind of a paradox i hate it actually yeah because you go in wanting and wanting fucks it up yeah it's not we but that's the way it teaches you because that's the great metaphor isn't it it's like the moment the moment that when you go into a thing whatever it may be with the desire to take something away to grab something or to get paid you know what i mean like when you go into a thing and you want to paycheck whatever that paycheck may be whether the paycheck is like uh making out with some girl that you've had a crush on forever or whether the paycheck is communing with angels or whether the paycheck is whatever it may be then it's almost like the thing will react the universe reacts to you like a boss who you know

paying an employee instead of a friendship level but when you go into the thing in the same way that you go into like hanging out with your best friends whatever the experience may be like when i go to hang out with my friends i'm not doing it for some reason you know like that fucks it all up you know what i mean like if you're with your friends you're like all right guys let's really have fun today it's gonna suck like your friends are gonna be like what are you talking about weird what like yeah come on guys we really need to do this man let's we haven't had a good we haven't had a good time in a while so forcing it you're forcing it and it's like with a podcast it's the same fucking way like when you go into a podcast you're like all right let's really make this one

a blazer though you know that those are not going to be great podcasts and when you go into the tank you know it will show you right away like all right when you're ready to stop trying to direct this experience you can have what you want but that's so tricky isn't it because it's like the how do you how do you get rid of the moment you stop wanting the thing you're going to forget you ever wanted it anyway so weird it's so weird it's so weird do you um have any do you have any plans for making like higher level float tanks are you just going to keep me like in other words like do you ever think about okay here we have float this the tent version now we're going to build more high-tech tanks do you ever think about that are you ever

gonna go yeah yeah we're gonna do something for sure um we we want to make just a we we're gonna stay home float you know but we want to make ones that are easier easier to clean not that they're not that easy anyway i mean they're pretty easy to maintain but we want to have one with a little more rigid of a design so it looks just really solid we want to have a little easier water cleaning we want to have more i i personally love magnetics so i would love for like the door and the pieces that come together all to be more magnetic what am i what do you mean cleaning like i've been now maybe i'm doing something wrong because it doesn't seem that hard to clean at all i just put the strips in and add peroxide when when it needs it it's pretty easy

like one of the things the industry is going towards is um ozone but ozone it has so i used to clean my tank with ozone it's it's just a it's a little machine that injects like pure oxygen air bubbles into your water yeah but it's even easier than like peroxide and and any sort of additives um but the problem is with ozone is it off gases and you're not supposed to breathe it so you don't want that yeah so so what we have works but there's a part of us that is still looking like is there any way we could just have like an external ozonator where you just set it in the doorway and it totally cleans your water in like an hour and then you just do it monthly or something and i don't know man i just throw so i mean i like maintaining the thing now like

there's something in it that's ritualistic and fun you like do all these chemo you know the strength kind of bonds you to it it's weird but it's true man there's something it's like you're there to me as a 41 year old stoner there's something delightful about maintaining a rectangle filled with saline it's saline i just like it it's like fun it like it activates the part of me that always wanted to figure out a manufacturer lsd but knows i never will it's like you know what i mean it's like the it's like this nice chemistry thing that you're doing once a week we're like all right let's check the levels in my tank and it's fun i really like it i wouldn't want to take that away actually i don't think i would you know the only thing i could think that would be cool

to add to the thing would be some kind of led light that you could control from your phone that'd be pretty badass i've actually been thinking about sticking one in myself yeah it'd be nice where if like you wanted the light to come on you could it could come on and it'd be nice we're working on an app too where say you have like a bright idea in the tank somewhere whenever you make noise it just records it so if you start talking it records your great idea well i think you know i think all that stuff's already made for you because it's already most phones have a way to activate them when you talk to them so what that means is that you need to have a something that basically what you whatever it is it should connect with your phone that's the idea it's an app man it's like some kind of app

that you could control the tank from that already uses all the technology that's already there because you most people have an android phone or it's already bill it's already built yeah it's like combining the technology with with phones because again like it seems like the thing that sep is separating your tanks from all the other tanks is that your tanks are drastically less expensive and but because of that it's they're missing some of the things that the super expensive tanks have like the one that i floated in in austin that one you know it it like slight slowly come up in it and it's like it's great and it's badass but that's a 30 000 tank yeah or like when you come to from your float to like music fading in it's kind of cool but the thing with music is

underwater you use transmit music with a thing called like a transducer right yes and it turns a hard surface into a speaker but with no hard surfaces in our tank we've had a hell of a time creating a transducer so right now we just have underwater headphones oh yeah that's cool yeah underwater headphones is fine i mean all that i like yeah that's cool and but yeah i wouldn't want to try the thing about these things i like is they're low-fi and they fucking work and it's cool man it's like yeah it's it's it's like it works like i don't know the thing i was thinking as i was floating i've been floating in there is if suddenly i had a shit ton of money would i buy a really expensive float tank in i thought i'd go ahead you know please go ahead no i just said i

thought about that too like like there there's something about the experience of these crazy spaceship float tanks you know but then every time i really think about it i'm like oh well i'm just going for nothing and this provides it so it'd just be like a i don't know a style statement or something like hey look at my it's like a amazing float tank it's a hippie status symbol it's so funny it's like a burning man status that look at my fucking $40,000 tank yeah but you don't know i get it provides nothing that well i mean i guess it's like you know some of these tanks they have like i don't think it provides nothing it's going to provide like an hd tv in the roof of the ceiling of the thing it pumps oxygen in it's gonna like you know it will provide stuff

but you the question is what do you want what do you want do you want a super expensive float tank or do you want i don't know all the other things that $30,000 can buy you know i i don't know but i don't think i would get i don't think i would end up getting a really nice one neither neither i think the float tends to cool anyway and like as i'm using it i'm always just coming up with like oh the next thing you know right you're such a fascinating entrepreneur in the field that you're working in is so it must be exciting to you it must feel something like a pioneer huh because you're sort of opening up away from for folks who don't have a shit ton of money and don't want to drive places to float can experience it it's so funny it's

like uh i started you know building the tank in my basement and selling the plans and it's and it was the same feeling then only now it's like this crazy amplification where i'm actually providing float tanks that ship around the world and people are getting the experience that way so it's like this little seed feeling of building a tank in my basement just keeps growing and it's turning into something bigger than i can even recognize it's crazy i think it is bigger than you recognize that's we that's something to me that's interesting is i don't think you're quite aware of just what you're giving people uh which is kind of funny to me because it's it's i'm i mean it's one of the more profound experiences i've ever had is having one of these things in my house and you're giving

that you're letting you're giving people who normally would never be able to pull that off either because of their living arrangements you know they don't have a room to put in a giant samadhi fucking tank or because of their money you're giving them a chance to like do it which is pretty wild man you're really accidentally or not so accidentally you're really gonna change a lot of people's pov from these things oh yeah and and it was like uh going through the process of the book and the and the stories and the people and then all the testimonials that we've gathered you know as zen it's like sometimes we sit back and we're like holy shit we're really changing lives like it started as like you know we could do it we could make these tanks we could

you know get some people able to float but now it's like turning into like hundreds of people are changing their lives and it's it's kind of freaking me out to be honest why is it freaking you out just like uh am i am i doing it as good as it can be done you know like every day it's like am i that's how it feels is i guess it comes from a place of insecurity but like i'm in i'm on this in this place where i need to i need to provide this this great thing and i need to keep making it better and i need to deliver for people because i'm it just feels like a privilege i guess you could say i'd be scared responsibility i'd be terrified just running a business that size and then like you know mailing something to people that's so unorthodox it's like because not everybody

it's like that if you see send people any other thing that there's like a common like way to repair it you know what i mean but this is a brand new thing so i'd be weirded out i'd be a little nervous if i knew i had a zillions of float tents out there because what if one pops what if just by bad luck or someone puts it in a room where their cat swipes at it or who knows what that kind of shit would keep would bother me a little bit but it could it could totally happen and then what the original float tank design like we didn't have a lockable door and i started freaking out about kids right imagine a kid dying in a float tank that we made and shipped to someone i would fucking kill myself but you would have to like i don't think people realize because i when i talk

about it with people they're like aren't you afraid you're gonna fall asleep in it and drown it's like if you wanted to drown in one of those things you would have to work to drown like i don't see how you could drown because you can't get under the water no you can't and the effort to flip over and i'm just convinced that it's not going to happen too many people have floated like yeah you there's actually one death in a float tank what yeah and i think i think someone was uh on drugs or some i don't know i don't even know if it's true but i remember someone reaching out and telling me that like i like i needed to know i'm like uh millions of people have floated so man you well you know maybe somebody just decided to leave this dimension

and not come back maybe they just astrally projected too far out and didn't come back or something just stayed i think that's probably what happened who knows i mean that's what lily was into you know this is why this is why john lily apparently at the end of his when he was using these things towards the end he was injecting himself with ketamine yeah ketamine ketamine's pretty awesome actually i've never tried it what's it like ketamine is like so this is like my college days things but you know it's just the animal tranquilizer your microwave it you snored it um but it was like you would get this 20 minute like drunkard feeling but then you would come back to real life and um you would be totally fine in fact you'd feel a little refreshed and it was just the most

man but manageable drug ever and it made things trippy it kind of made like the dimensions and movement and the floor and kind of like uh like a beginning of a hallucinogenic type thing well i mean i mean i think that when you inject it i know that there i know someone actually who is receiving ketamine therapy for his depression and really oh yeah it's a it's a new kind of therapy they think it can actually have a very positive impact on people with chronic endogenous you know massive depression and and what you do is you go into a hospital they inject you with this stuff they give you a big dose i think they zap you out like you're gone for a while and after you do it a few times your depression apparently dissipates there's stud there's research being done in it right now

you guys could check it out but it's interesting that lily caught on to that uh or just thought that there was some kind of benefit from it and i think for him it was probably more along the lines of how the fuck do i deactivate myself like that's what you're getting every time you get in there you just realize like i am like an elephant chained to a pole but the pole is myself and if i could just reduce this like it's like not only am i trapped in the gravity of planet earth but i'm trapped in the gravity of myself and if and in the float tank takes care of the first problem you've got to take care of the second problem and that's what it offers you that's what feels so fascinating about being in those things is you get this sense of like if i could figure this out

and if i could just let go enough then i'll fly like i'll be everywhere at once it sounds so crazy dude i've been having such a battle an internal battle with like um with substances because uh substances for me like they they i can reach a place i normally couldn't reach like so say i needed to sleep and i take something for sleep i get into a better sleep or say i need to relax like especially with anxiety and or anxiety and panic i would take a xanax and i would go into this totally inaccessible state on a pill right and it's not a good habit i'm just saying kind of what it was but what i'm what i'm thinking now is like when i was this is crazy out there but um when i did all the substances and the drugs and the ecstasy mushrooms you know

cocaine all this stuff i was so disrespectful with it like i was totally looking to just be an idiot with my friends yes and now that i'm in a place where i have this calm peaceful environment and i have a float tank like this device to even enhance you know these experiences now i'm going well what would happen if i did the same things with respect to it but it's been 10 years since i've done anything like that and i i'm scared of it well me too i mean i am too i i'm terrified of the concept of going in there on some psychedelic i don't know if you need to i don't think you do when i first when i that was when you when you were helping me set this thing up in the back of my head i'm like i cannot wait to take mushrooms and get in this tank

and then i started doing it and realizing like and and noticing the difference between going in their stone and going in their sober and realizing like it's not it's like you're adding your it's like i'm trying to think of a good way to explain it it's like going to it's like getting a massage while playing death metal or something you know like it doesn't make any it doesn't make any sense at all i'm just it's like two two things that don't it's like don't that they don't they seem like they should go together but they don't necessarily need to go together you don't go ahead or it's like running with weights on or something it's like if the point of the thing is to allow yourself the freedom to merge into everything and you're taking a substance that

has any kind of ego amplification yeah then that's counterintuitive it runs counter to the experience i guess that's what i meant one of the worst floats i've ever had was like i just got in the tank drunk and i was i was so preoccupied with my stupid drunk thoughts like dude what's happening like oh this feels this feels different i think it's different i don't know man i'm hungry and like but it was the worst float and so if i had any advice that don't drink and float definitely don't drink and float that would suck yeah yeah you're gonna i'm not a fan of it these days man i'm really not and i keep you can light it on fire you can light on fire and i've revisited it you know like i've i've revisited booze a few times since i stopped and every single time

it's the result has always been oh i don't like this shit i don't like the way it makes me act i don't like the way it makes me feel the next day and also if you were drinking in a tank you'd have to piss pretty soon you know that's a problem too that is a problem well shane uh how can people find you how can people talk to you about this i know people are going to listen to this and maybe think they want a tank i know you say this but just i want to say it too before you buy a float tank and these tanks have my full endorsement i've been very careful about testing it out to make sure that it works because i know they're kind of expensive and they're going to be a big investment for a lot of people it totally works it is

a wonderful wonderful product but don't compulsively buy one of these things no don't compulsively buy go to a float center a few times yeah i mean you got to know that you're gonna love it right opinion about it yeah go float first make sure it's even something that you want it might not be something that you like at all and that would suck if you spend a bunch of money on the salt and the tank and realize it's just not your thing so here's the go ahead sorry i was gonna say here's the thing too like say you love floating but you want to float but like you know once or twice a month float center is perfect for you i think even three times a month you know the float center fits but as soon as you want to

float on your own schedule whenever you want as much as you want that's the time when you go to home floating but otherwise the a float center experience is nice it's like a spa um everyone takes care of everything for you so it's it's it's what depends on what type of floaty are but there's nothing like being able to float in your home whenever you want however long you want nothing like it it's nothing like it's one of the most insane things to be able to open up the tank and look through that weird entryway into darkness and then climb in the door shuts and you are in nothingness and that is wild man it's really cool i'm going to go get in it right now i'm so it's so i'm so into it i'm so grateful to you for uh sponsoring the show and for letting

me have one of these things man really like i can't thank you enough it's it's had such a positive impact in my life and i'm sure it will continue shane thank you so much for coming on the show how can people get in touch with you for sure so um so getting ahold of me if they're interested in having a float tank in their home zen float co is the company so zenfloatco.com you can research the tank you can look at testimonials you can see what you're gonna get you can get shipping estimates all the above that's the place to go if you want to get a float tank for your home for me uh the thing i'm working on right now is the float book so the the book's called the float tank cure if you go to the float tank cure dot com you'll see the book and that covers all the

stuff that's not as trippy but it's all these crazy benefits that are coming from floating so check out that if you're interested the book launches for the float conference here in like a week on the 11th so check that out if you're interested and then i have all my philosophy shit on my own website shane's dot com i got all sorts of stuff groovy man well thank you so much and i hope you'll come on the show again dude i'd love to and and if you ever want me to come out and check up on your tank or whatever it was so much fun hanging out with you so just yeah that was a blast i will let you know um but it seems like right now it's doing pretty good but we'll see maybe maybe you can you can be one of our uh testers frag version too yes awesome or maybe when

i figure out these vr goggles we can uh somehow figure out a way to implement that into the tank that'd be cool awesome okay cool man i'll talk to you soon shame thanks Duncan thanks for listening everybody and a big thanks to warby parker for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH you can go to warby parker forward slash family hour to get free shipping on your final order of glasses don't forget to bookmark our amazon link give us a nice rating on itunes give yourself a nice rating in the universe we'll be back later on this week with dr drew and fred stohler see you then