Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
About 15% of people have tinnitus, at least in the United States. It’s one of the most common medical conditions in the country, but most people don’t think about how to accommodate it. Many people who have it don’t even notice it unless they’re in total silence, which adds a particular challenge to float centers.
Graham and Ashkahn talk about their experiences in floating people with tinnitus and how to approach the situation when and if a float becomes problematic.
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: Today’s questions is, “is it possible to float with tinnitus? I’m worried that the silence would be deafening.”
So for those of you who don’t know what tinnitus is, I guess let’s start there.
Ashkahn: Yeah let’s start there.
Graham: So it’s just the constant ringing in the ears that pretty much never goes away.
Ashkahn: And you know, I’ve talked to people with tinnitus and I’ve offered someone with pretty serious tinnitus our free float to try it out before, so we have kind of accounts from a handful of different people, possibly with different levels of severity to their tinnitus.
Graham: Yes. I guess that’s also worth mentioning is, people just have a wide range of how much ringing they have in their ears from, you know, something that they can maybe only hear in the background if they’re in a place like a float tank where usually there’s just enough ambient noise that it’s unnoticeable, to really extreme, where it’s actually affecting their ability to hear other things going on and is constantly a force in their life they need to deal with.
Ashkahn: And I feel like whether the floating experience is enjoyable for them or not, I guess I think depends a little bit on the kind of severity of your tinnitus, because at least with the person I was talking to before, he was at the point where he had to listen to white noise in headphones to go to sleep at night. Like the tinnitus was enough to just keep him up by itself, just during a normal night’s sleep. And he did not have the most enjoyable float experience. Like he said it was super distracting, he was just in there with it, he couldn’t really get away from it. Like it was, the float could not kind of overcome the tinnitus that he was having.
Graham: Yup, and we have at least three of our team at Float On who have tinnitus as well, kind of in different ranges. One of whom also needs static to go to sleep, and my girlfriend Katheryn has tinnitus and it’s sort of different reports that we’ve heard from different people. Everything from, it’s still very present and it doesn’t go away, and they hear the ringing, but it doesn’t distract them. You know, that it’s no more distracting than every day, to yeah, they actually need to play some static sometimes in the float tank, or need to have music in the float tank to not have to listen to that ringing. But there are ways around it even with that extreme kind of version if you have a tank that you can pipe music into.
Ashkahn: Mm-hmm.
Graham: And one of the more interesting ones I guess is, for Kathryn it ranged anywhere from, I wasn’t a problem and felt very much like day to day distracting, so it was fine for hopping in a float, to actually being distracting. So even within the same person some floats can be good with the tinnitus and some floats can be more challenging, which is interesting.
Ashkahn: Yeah I think it really just … I don’t know, maybe like some days are good and some days are bad even, float tanks aside.
Graham: Yep so here’s the deal. Here’s the deal. If you’re floating someone with tinnitus, let them know that … I mean I would say just be very vocal when they get out about whether or not it was a good float for them or not, and just say there’s been mixed reports. And especially if they get out and you’re not planning on playing some kind of noise or music in there, be sure if they didn’t have a good time, I mean first of all offer them a free float to come try it again and just say, “Hey you might want to try it with some white noise or some music in the background during your float and see if that helps.”
Ashkahn: Yeah or offer to give them their money back if they don’t like it. To me it’s one of those things. It’s like, “Yeah I don’t really know how it’s going to be for you, but if you don’t like it I’ll give you your money back.” That’s what I would say.
Graham: Yeah, yeah. So definitely on the customer service side, it’s very manageable. And I don’t think that tinnitus is any reason to turn anyone away. And because I’m selfishly curious about getting more data, I think you should actively actually try to pursue them and let them know that it’s a little bit of a test and you just want to see how it goes.
Ashkahn: Yeah and I’d be curious of the difference between someone floating with or without the white noise in there. Hopefully the white noise, just like it would if they’re trying to go to sleep or something, would be enough to counteract it.
Graham: Yeah just turn on a pump in a neighboring room you know. That’s all I got.
Ashkahn: Yeah I think that’s it, so yeah let us … have them try it out, tell us how it goes.
Graham: Yeah shoot us an email.
Ashkahn: Mixed reports is I guess the answer for this.
Graham: Yeah. Yeah and if you have your own questions, go to floattanksolutions.com/podcast and shoot them along. Studies have actually shown that it does not matter if you suffer from tinnitus for submitting questions to our website. It’s equally satisfying for everybody.
Recent Podcast Episodes
How Marketing Strategies Evolve – DSP 230
Graham and Ashkahn wax nostalgic in this episode tracing back the history of Float On to its origins. They were younger, bright eyed and the world felt full of possibility. How they advertised floating was a whole different beast back then, too. Part of it was how different the industry was, part of it was how different awareness in Portland was, and parts of it were just about Float On still being a young business.
The guys share their successes, lessons, and bold faced mistakes they made along the way in learning how to deal with the idea of filling tanks, as well as some of the constants that have remained throughout the years.
Future Proofing Float Tanks – DSP 229
Float Tanks are expensive. Purchasing tanks can easily end up being half of your opening costs when starting out, so it makes sense to want to purchase tanks that have a long lifespan.
Thinking about which float tank manufacturers might last the longest, though, is probably not the way to think about this issue. For one, it’s impossible to tell what manufacturer is going to be around the longest. What’s more, if anything does break, the vast majority of the time you don’t need to go to the manufacturer to get it fixed in the first place.
Ashkahn and Graham share their thoughts on proper float tank care and the steps any float center owner should take when considering a tank.
How to Run Experiments with Floaters – DSP 228
It’s important to acknowledge that float center owners without a scientific background probably shouldn’t be running experiments on floaters willy nilly. It should also be noted that Graham and Ashkahn aren’t scientists, despite being huge fans of self-experimentation.
There has been a lot of talk recently, however, of float centers collaborating with student researchers to help run experiments, though. Graham and Ashkahn discuss (with a fair amount of levity) what it might take to properly run experiments in a float tank, which they understand is no easy task.
What are Good Plants to Have in a Float Center? – DSP 227
Plants give life, both aesthetically and literally, to any room they’re placed in. The environment inside a float center, however, can be the absolute worst place for certain plants, even ones that would normally be considered fine for your local area.
Graham and Ashkahn pull in Jordan to talk about different plants that thrive in a humid float center environment and some tips on how to take care of them.
Getting Salty With Speakers: Roy Vore – DSP 226
With the Float Conference coming up, Graham and Ashkahn are talking with lots of really smart people who will be presenting this year. It’s not every day that they get to ask molecular biologists questions about float tank sanitation, so they decided to take the opportunity to ask the experts the questions that the industry needs answers to.
Today Roy Vore is taking time to share some of his knowledge about microbiology and water sanitation, along with his work in the pool and spa industry.
Latest Blog Posts
Choosing a Water Heater for Your Center
You may not be surprised to hear that a Float Center is a business which has a hefty water requirement. You may, however, be surprised to hear that the majority of the water demand you’ll be facing day-to-day is going to be in the form of showers and (if you’re doing any laundry on-site) a washing machine.
The factors of energy usage and cost over time should also be taken into consideration when deciding upon your water heater…
Float Fund – NSF Magnesium Sulfate Test Results
I’m happy to announce to first results from the Float Fund testing. This experiment, run through the NSF, was to see how salt water, with no other form of disinfection, actually effected harmful organisms. We ran tests with two different microorganisms, and in this post we’ll talk about how one (Pseudomonas) got its ass kicked by salt-water and how the other one (Enterococcus) didn’t seem phased in the slightest.
If you want to skip straight to the test results, you can download them in their entirety. Since they have a lot of fancy laboratory lingo, we’ll spend the rest of this post breaking down the different aspects of the testing.
Float Memberships and Packages
Customers are great, but getting those customers to commit to returning on a regular basis is even better. There are a few different schools of thought in regards to encouraging return customers, but they’ll generally fall into two main categories, Memberships and Packages.
We’re going to provide a little insight into how to utilize each of them at your center.
Marketing is all About Relationships
Marketing is one of those words that has a lot of different meanings from one person to the next. Personally, I’ve studied marketing in one way or another for the past 20 years. I suppose you can say I’m a marketing nerd (I’ll wear that badge proudly). I even annually budget myself a different marketing conference to go to… for fun.
