Crash Hoefler, founder of Float Lab, traces his 15-year journey with sensory deprivation tanks—from managing blues clubs in the '70s to building studios and finally pioneering $40-per-session centers in Venice and Westwood. Their bespoke systems, regulated to avoid liability, safely dissolve stress while enabling magnesium absorption via Epsom salts, sparking debates on consciousness expansion like Hamilton Morris’s Vice documentary experience. Hoefler’s "techno-shamanism" approach—using minimal-light projections or cymatic frequencies—aims to accelerate healing, from PTSD recovery to emotional clarity, as seen with Duncan Trussell’s breakup breakthrough. Rogan warns against societal traps but champions tanks as a tool for resilience, hinting at future UCLA installations and a giveaway contest for his old Samadhi tank. [Automatically generated summary]
And when I pulled my head out, I knew I'm supposed to build deprivation chambers and get other people to do it.
I don't know what is a deprivation chamber or nothing.
I just built a recording studio.
I got no interest.
I'm already doing what I want to do.
I don't need a change of life.
I've quit doing what it was that was holding me up.
So I was on my path already.
It hit me so hard.
And at that moment, I was relieved of all my previous, you know, like I had a, you know, you think back and say, oh, I used to have this, I used to have that.
I'd built empires and then collapse them over the years.
You know, I'd worked, worked, worked really hard.
And then because of too much fun, wrecked it every time, you know.
So I'd been through it.
And at that point in my life, I was thinking, Bummer.
You know, I kept thinking about now I'm starting over again and whatever.
And at the moment when I pulled my hand out of there, this no longer affected me at all.
Well, think about the chain of events that happened, though.
You create that thing.
You improve upon the existing dynamic, the existing design rather, in a substantial way.
You become obsessed with it.
You and I get hooked up.
We make videos about it.
We start putting it out.
You're doing a podcast now.
More people are finding out about it.
More people are opening these centers.
Every time I go to a town...
If it's a town that has a sensory deprivation tank, I get these offers to come stop by and check them out and people say, hey, we started doing it because we heard about it on the podcast.
Because I have a realistic vision of the situation.
And I'm convinced at this point that indeed it is going to work.
And I don't know how it all is going to turn out, of course, but I think that we're having a chance now.
And that's why this situation is so important to me, this disinfection and this electrical and all these features that have to do with health and safety.
Just like restaurants, just like anything else that involves cleanliness.
This is very important.
It's a public service.
And then for you, what's important is that it protects the benefits of this service where all of the negative aspects of it are eliminated with foresight.
And I think that's super important, and I really commend you on that.
And you also have these really fascinating ideas about how to go about that.
I mean, your systems, the cleanliness and all of the ozone, the filters, and the sensitivity of the filters, it's all incredible stuff, incredibly detailed stuff.
Well, it's also been brought to their attention that there's a lot going on right now where people are being investigated for things like the Dr. Oz stuff, where he's got all this weight loss shit that's out there, and all this self-help industry, like things along the lines of isolation tanks.
It could be incredibly damaging if these things become as popular as you and I think they will be, and the filtration systems aren't good, and people have nightmare stories.
And when it's breaking down in action with these other materials, these methanes, like I say, it's creating a plethora of toxic byproducts then that need to be eradicated.
You can't just keep...
That's why you go to these places, they say, hey, how are you switching that water out of there?
And they go, oh, you know, this guy on that thing with the Hamilton's, oh, every four months.
And you're going, huh.
So today...
He says it's expensive.
Don't want to do it.
It's expensive.
Today, you're going to take $800 of your money and throw it down a drain, but yesterday, it was just fine to charge somebody to come in here and stew around in that stuff.
It isn't right.
There should be a regulatory agency that demands You know, a certain level of cleanliness.
You know, the issue is with us, though, is that people, they're going to take that system that we said is for your home, and they're going to put it into a commercial space.
But once that these laws and all of these standards are put into place, then certainly then we might be interested in saying, okay, now here's how it could be done.
That would be less effective, say, than the commercial version.
But first, we're very diligent about is to establish these guidelines in the beginning.
Not to say, oh, well...
Some of our stuff does this or that.
It's like all of it does.
It's certified.
It's perfect as it is now, but the rest of it is like, okay, we could do that, but it wouldn't be what it is that we've taken so much time and effort to get right.
Now, we know all the other components, the less expensive ones, let's say.
Right, but what I'm saying is the only reason why you need all those expensive components is because you're dealing with more than one human being, right?
And do you think that perhaps some of these other designs are made from people that do not have a long-term history, a long-time history in this sort of a business?
Like, they don't understand what's involved.
I remember the thing about the dude who worked for Samadhi.
He had encountered all the bullshit before.
He knew about when engines seized up.
He knew the Assault content was too high and it would fuck with the spa engines.
He knew in advance what it was probably when we talked on the phone, what the issues were.
That spinabout kick where that guy kicks him in the chin.
I watched you walk out on a little clip, and you're walking out on, this is a long time ago, And as you're walking, you don't even stop walking, and you jump around and kick the guy.
I think you kick him in the chest or something, and he goes out immediately.
I mean, it was like it wasn't even...
You didn't even stop walking.
And then that guy from...
What is that show?
There's a Law& Order show.
The bald guy that's like the captain or whatever he is, he was telling the story about you and him.
They're going through New York, and there's these hoodlums, right?
The problem with someone hitting you is it's really hard to see they're going to hit you if they sucker punch you.
By the time you react, you've already been hit.
You know, the reaction times that people have are way slower than action times.
Action times are way faster.
So if someone decides to hit you and you don't see it coming, it can be very dangerous.
And when someone keeps invading your space and they're not listening, they're violent, they're angry, they're spitting your face, they're screaming, if you just let a guy hit you, you know, the first punch is one of the most important aspects of any sort of an altercation.
You get hit, you get hurt, you get damaged, and then someone can fuck you up.
You should always avoid any physical altercation if you can do it.
Any physical altercation, if you can avoid it, please do.
You're always better off.
People, cooler heads prevail, people relax, they calm down.
They calm down and get over a situation that could have resulted in a murder.
I mean, that happens all the time, where it's just like, people escalate, and they get to this point, and they make irrational decisions, and they're super violent, and then they go and do something really dumb.
It happens all the time.
People, they get caught up in their emotions, they get caught up in their anger, they get caught up in their primal chimpanzee rage.
And they just fuck up and they do something terrible.
That's how people who love each other wind up killing each other.
I mean, how could that even be rational?
How could you ever kill someone that you used to love?
And it all boils down to some of the same issues that we were talking about earlier.
People don't have releases.
They don't have a release for their aggression.
They don't have a release for their frustration.
They don't have a release for the energy that their body continues to make.
They have all this food they're taking in their body.
Their body's getting fat because they're not exercising it.
So there's all these imbalances and everybody's uncomfortable and people are agitated.
They're agitated and easily irritated and it's all about personal maintenance and it's all an issue of personal maintenance.
Whether it's by taking yoga classes or what you and I like to do by getting into the tank or what some folks like to do, they just like to go for an evening jog.
I know a lot of people that say that they go for a jog, like Jamie's a big jogger.
You go for a run and it clears your mind.
When it's over, things that seemed so important 20 minutes ago, they don't seem that important anymore.
An hour ago, you were sweating all these different things, and now you're like, in a greater perspective, everything's going to be okay.
I was just caught up in a wave of momentum, of emotions, and anxiety, and oftentimes, you can alleviate a big chunk of those just with physical exercise.
They say that physical exercise is as effective as antidepressants when it comes to making people feel better.
I think that allows the mind to release a little bit or at least come down perhaps when it's The physical situation is requiring more of you, and then your mind is freed up from creating problems to evaluate.
But if it's set up correctly, it's an amazing thing, and it should be something that...
Everyone, at least at one point in your life, recognizes or experiences because I think that it's an alien environment that doesn't exist anywhere else in the world.
If you could take a pill that could give you the experience that you get when you're full blown in the tank, you know that feeling that you get when you're fully relaxed?
When you've completely let go, like an hour in or something like that, where everything is just so chill, and your mind is in this incredible place, and you're essentially just breathing and floating.
When you hit that moment, man, if you could get a pill that could put people in that state, it would be like ecstasy.
People would be trading it in the black market.
They'd be like, this is amazing.
Dude, the feeling it gives you.
The world goes away.
Dude, you don't feel your body.
The world goes away, and you're alone with your mind in an empty room.
You'd be like, whoa.
People would freak out.
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They would be like, that's the craziest drug ever.
People get addicted to fighting with their spouse.
There's a lot of people that just can't help it.
They have these seesaw battles in their relationships where they get mad and yell at each other, and then they recover, and they love each other so much better because of the fact they've gone through this almost...
Fascinating, honest, inquisitive, willing to take chances.
And even if he's incorrect occasionally with some of these ideas, the ones that he's been correct about, it's pretty mind-blowing some of the implications of some of the things that he's discovered.
And with things, we were talking about this on the car ride up here, that Gobekli Tepe situation, where they've discovered this incredible stone ruins from 14,000 years ago, and this is something that they just didn't even know existed before.
They didn't know there was a culture 14,000 years ago that was capable of building something like this.
And because of the fact that it was covered up 14,000 years ago, they're pretty sure that it was built at least that long ago, perhaps even longer.
This is, I mean, pretty much completely agreed upon by all these different scientists.
That at some point, around 12,000 years ago, they covered all of these stone structures.
And it's an enormous stone structure complex of these concentric circles and these weird three-dimensional carvings that are into these stone columns.
They're huge.
They're very intricate, very difficult to do, especially back then when they thought that people were essentially just hunters and gatherers, which is, you know, they didn't think that people had built cities back then.
So 14,000 years ago, someone, or 12,000 plus years ago, someone had had the ability to do this that we were unaware of until this discovery.
And this discovery wasn't even made until, I think, the 90s, 80s or 90s.
Someone found one of these stones and they started uncovering it.
Well, it's just mainstream television, mainstream media, a lot of it's a business, and it's based on the base humans, the amount of numbers.
Look, I've talked to a lot of people that work for paparazzis, that work for TMZ, that work for these people, and they're just regular people.
That are a part of this system that they get some money out of.
And the get some money out of the system exists because people are curious as to what Britney Spears is up to.
They're curious as to how Kanye West is going to deal with Jimmy Kimmel making fun of him.
People just get super obsessed by this stuff and there's a business in feeding that obsession.
So all these people that don't take themselves away from the television and don't get into an isolation tank and don't consciously choose to not inundate their mind with silly nonsense.
Instead, if they just took a broader path, took a wider view, took a more sensible approach to their life, I think we would see less and less of that stuff.
It exists because there's a void, because there's a reason for it.
Maybe if people continue to, you know, get smarter along the course that we looked at earlier in the podcast, not the courtship of Eddie's father, but of Leave it to Beaver.
We look at Leave it to Beaver and then look at things that we see on television today and the sophistication level of the media that we produce, the artwork that we produce is pretty intense.
The growth amount is pretty intense.
So I think that's the evidence that people are becoming more sophisticated overall.
There's still going to be plenty of idiots.
There always will be.
There's always going to be people that resist.
There's always going to be people that are involved in religious cults.
There's going to be people that are ideologues, that have these insane ideologies.
There's always going to be that.
But I think that overall, things are getting more sophisticated.
And that's one of the things about meditation, whether it's TM or whether it's yoga, whether it's going into a tank.
When you're alone with your thoughts, you get an idea of what your thoughts actually are.
If you live your life just acting constantly on the momentum of other people's expectations, of you wanting to be liked by these other people, you can run into a trap.
And you set up a life that you didn't really want.
You're fucked.
You're trapped in this situation where you have a mortgage, you've got credit card bills, you've got student loans you have to pay, you have a bunch of shit going on that you have to continue to feed.
And especially if you have a family and you have to feed them, oh my goodness.
Then you're fully locked in.
You can't take any chances whatsoever.
And oftentimes people make the mistake of getting stuck.
And it is just a tactical mistake, just like it would be a mistake if you got stuck in a video game.
Just like it would be a mistake if you followed a map incorrectly and you got stuck in the woods.
Your life is certainly some sort of a journey.
It's certainly some sort of a journey.
And we have to all be aware that when we're making journeys, we're not going to always make the right steps.
And sometimes you have to back up and try again.
And if you're in a position where you can't back up and try again, you've trapped yourself.
And the system will set out honeypots.
For people to get trapped in.
The system will set out the ideas of retirement, the ideas of the golden years, providing you benefits, providing you a healthy work environment.
Why?
Well, because they want people to work for them.
They don't want people to realize their own dreams and escape.
That's a fucking pain in the ass.
You've got to hire more people and train them.
They want to set it up so that you stick around.
You stick around in some sort of an unsatisfying world.
It's up to you to see that video game problem.
To see that issue as it comes up on the map.
No, no, I think this is a right turn.
To see all the problems that could potentially lay in front of you and calculate your future.
And then also look around at all the people that didn't do it and look at the misery that they're in and learn that you don't want to be like them.
And then look at the people that have kind of taken chances and navigated their way.
What do they do differently than you?
What objectivity do they have that maybe you lack?
What insight into their own mistakes are they willing to delve into that you're not, that you step back and go, you know, I just don't want to look at myself that closely.
But the person who's able to look at themselves the closest is going to get the more rational results.
Did you get, like, when that whole the secret thing was going on, and what the bleep do we know, and people started really getting into the idea of manifesting your own reality with your imagination, did you get a lot more people coming into the tank centers looking for a place to do it?
Yeah, but those are the ones you've got to listen to, man, because all these other people, they're seeing ghosts and shit.
You know, the problem is the scientists are the ones that are analyzing shit and looking for actual results, whereas the people that are really into spirituality and channelers, they're looking to find a very specific result.
And they push on your arm, and they put the little medallion on you, the Tesla medallion or whatever, and they say, oh, you know, this is a Tesla technology.
So, okay.
They put the little wristband, whatever it is.
So, I could never understand how that works.
It doesn't make any sense to me, right?
Right.
So, one day, this guy shows up, and he says, okay, let me try this thing.
So, I have a desk behind me with a towel on it.
So next is a proximity thing.
You've got to be within 10 feet of this thing or something that still has an effect.
Well, if you have an initial investment and you build an X amount of tanks and then you have a place where it makes sense as far as the amount of rent and then you just have them filled all day long, it can be profitable.
I mean, you're not going to be Rockefeller, but you're not trying to do that.
Like, the people that come to you, like, I never hear anybody, I've never once heard anybody go to your thing and go, you know what, Crash was rude, the place sucked, the tanks were expensive.
No one's ever said that.
They always say, oh, Crash is so cool, the place is so nice, I love it there, it's great.
Well, that was his first jaunt, his first real run in the tank.
But his whole thing, that pharmacopoeia show that he does, really was fascinating.
He had a lot of really fascinating episodes, really cool, well-produced episodes where they covered a lot of different kinds of psychedelics, a lot of different kinds of subjects.
This subject, this whole thing where people are getting curious about altered states of consciousness is increasing and growing.
And even more so, this idea that you could do it in something like the tank where it's totally natural and safe and healthy.
You don't have to worry about it.
So I think it's all part of this...
New sort of expanding of our ideas that we're seeing in today's society.
It's an expanding of what do you have in your life?
Which is why I wanted to talk to you about these Crazy screens that you're trying to hook up these tanks with.
This is the thing that Crash was going off about forever, was these screens that would suspend above the tank and emit the lowest amount of light possible so that you only saw the image.
You didn't see the actual screen itself or the border itself.
You just saw the image in front of you and in that sensory deprivation state where the only input that was coming in was what you were catching off the screen and what you were hearing from the program.
That your mind would be way more easily, way more able to absorb the information.
So if you're in a dome now, and you're laying back on your dome, and those tiles are underneath you, so the bottom is waterproof, of course, but you use the lights on the bottom, a projector, or whatever, on the bottom, and you're in a dome, you're laying on your back, and the dome then is all filled in with screens and stuff, and the bottom.
So now you're laying in this thing, and you're flying through space in a dome, the upside, everywhere you look, and then it flips you over, so you think you're flying like this.
They haven't built it for me yet, but I've discussed it with them, and they understand that they can do it based on some testing they've done in a bathtub somewhere.
Okay.
These sensors then, you see as they're connected to you, You input information.
See, that's the other thing, the sensory of what's going out and what's going into you, and then monitoring what occurs based on this input.
This is what that thing's all about.
But, you know, I don't want to get too deep into it because it's kind of like in the future right now.
So your idea is to combine sound with images to essentially tune your body to a different frequency, and that could potentially change the way your body produces cells?
We have a group of people that are willing to give us the money for that.
We have the...
The resources now to complete that in some sort of period of time once we focus back to it.
We've been trying to get this other stuff done so then we can get back to this stuff, but that technology that we have built and patented as well, It's extraordinary.
And that takes this thing to another level.
I mean, this is what it is, and that's why it's so important as well.
These vehicles that we're producing now, not only will they be used for this stuff that we've been talking about here in regards to relaxation and so forth else, it will eventually in the future be used also for other health benefits and learning and A whole array of various Positive features that this thing...
And we discussed it in the previous podcast about just the couple generations between us, the people that lived in the 1940s during World War I, World War II rather, the dropping of the first atomic bomb.
And then people before that, in the 1800s, it's just a few generations.
Well, what we were talking about earlier was meditation.
There's a study, if you Google how meditation changes your brain, a neuroscientist explains.
There was a group of Harvard neuroscientists led by this woman, Sarah Lazar, Who's a PhD, and they were interested in mindfulness meditation, and they reported that the brain structures, they monitored brain structures, change after only eight weeks of meditation practice.
Eight weeks of meditation practice, and your brain starts branching out in a different way.
It starts truly expanding.
Your consciousness, you think of expanding your consciousness as being some sort of an airy-fairy thing.
Well, yeah, I mean, I would like to see what those kundalini masters see when they hit that highest level, because I do believe that they can achieve psychedelic states.
They say that the chamber is the one thing that helps them up.
They're all getting the medication and so forth.
But other than that, they don't really have an option.
This is a thing that would be...
Very appropriate to offer these servicemen and women that come back and have troubles dealing with the framework of their situation when they get back here.
If they had the opportunity to go in there and investigate the Because it's already done.
You can't go in there and erase whatever it was that's bothering you.
But you could go in there and come to terms with whatever it was, realizing it is, it's done, it is what it was, just like any other problem that people go back to.
I mean, at some point, it's up to you to release yourself from that obligation to get upset or feel bad about Something that didn't go right in the past, you know?
It's also directly proportionate to the amount of hardships that people face in life, their ability to face hardships.
You know, and there's a lot of folks that live life on a cushy cloud of marshmallows and bullshit, and then one day something goes wrong.
And I mean, that's why spoiled kids are so sad.
Like a spoiled young boy is one of the saddest things ever.
A young boy that becomes a man and can't take care of himself.
And his dad has to keep on rescuing him.
His dad has to keep on bailing him out of situations and giving him money.
I've met guys like that.
And that is a crippling affliction when they don't have the character themselves to be able to get by in life.
They constantly need someone to help them and bail them out.
Even as a grown man.
I've met guys in their 40s that still need help from their parents.
I'm like, what the fuck, man?
You're never going to get it right.
Because somewhere along the line, they didn't face enough of the adversity to realize that there's some times where you just got to get up and get shit done.
There's some times where you have to fucking pull yourself up and you have to push forward even if you want to stay in bed.
And if you don't do that and you just keep calling on your daddy and your daddy keeps rescuing you, you never develop those tools.
You never develop that ability to recognize what you're doing wrong with your life.
Because you're soft.
You've got to cushion you.
You've got a safety net, a safety net for your safety net.
I have this friend, and she has this friend that she's been friends with for decades, and this poor fuck.
His family's super, super, super wealthy.
Like, unbelievable wealthy.
Billions of dollars.
And he had, not only did he have, he had a trust fund and a backup trust fund.
So he blew through the trust fund, and then he blew through the backup trust fund.
Real estate investments and just disastrous business ventures.
No character.
No discipline.
No ability to stick it out.
But incredible amount of resources.
He had millions and millions of dollars.
Just pissed it all away.
Didn't understand it.
Completely depressed.
And one day he said to her, he said, you know, because she has children as well and she has sons.
He said to her, he goes, whatever you do, do not give your kids money.
Don't give them a fucking penny.
He goes, especially your boys.
Don't give them a penny.
That ruined me.
Don't give them money.
And I was like, wow, that's deep shit.
To be a man like in your late 40s, looking back at your life, this disaster wreckage that you've put forth with the millions you've blown.
Now he has like a retail job.
His parents fucking abandoned him.
I mean, you look at that and you go, whoa, this is wild shit, man.
This guy's just still struggling from the way he was developed, from the tools that were instilled in him at childhood and in adolescence.
Having that safety net just provided him with a way to stay in bed.
Every time things go wrong, every time things feel terrible, you have an opportunity to learn from whatever makes you feel terrible and never allow it to happen again.
And I believe meditation in the tank, which is a more magnified form of meditation.
I think it's more intense.
And I think that you can really get something out of that.
With those sort of ideas in your mind about constant, consistent improvement, and the only thing that you'll allow from yourself is to maintain a certain standard, then consistently try to improve.
We both let people understand what the benefits of these things are, and we both benefit from them as well and are generous with those ideas and spread those ideas to other people.
Just to let them know, man, I'm not making this up.
You can really get better.
Your life can fuck it.
And the people who, if you're perfect right now...