This week, I’m excited to think that I might just introduce you to a health practice that you’ve never heard of. It’s called “floating.” Well, more scientifically speaking, it’s called sensory deprivation. Maybe you’ve heard of it. Maybe you haven’t. Maybe, like myself, you’ve experimented with it in the past and seen very interesting and encouraging results.

Either way, in this episode, we’re going to talk to one of the experts on sensory deprivation, and learn not only the powerful benefits it can have for your mind and body, but more importantly, how you can actually do it… after all, most of us don’t have massive sound-proof saltwater chambers just… like… lying around. At least, I don’t. We’re also going to talk about everything from Magnesium supplementation to anxiety and depression… we even talk about the possibility of aliens having landed on Earth. It’s a fun episode, and I know you’re going to enjoy it.

In this episode with Shane Stott, we discuss:

• What the heck is “floating,” or sensory deprivation, exactly, and how does a sensory deprivation tank work?
• How Shane got into sensory deprivation as a means to overcome severe and chronic anxiety
• How does sensory deprivation compare to traditional meditation?
• What are the major benefits of sensory deprivation?
• The idea of starting small and validating your entrepreneurial idea vs. diving in head-first
• The ratio of different brainwave frequencies – and the power of theta waves
• The power of learning to function from a very calm, relaxed mindset
• How practical (and costly) is it to have a float tank at home?
• How often does Shane Stott float, and how often should you float?
• Incredible stories of people healing themselves with sensory deprivation tanks
• What are Shane's other health habits and routines?
• Thoughts on why diet soda sucks
• The idea of writing a book because you have to get the information out of your head
• Sleep deprivation, stress, and recurring bouts of depression
• The role of magnesium in sleep and stress reduction, and how it's absorbed trans-dermally
• The problem with topsoil depletion and micronutrient deficiency
• Why Shane Stott believes that aliens have visited earth (!)
• What is the best $100 Shane Stott has ever spent? 
• Which books have most impacted Shane's life?
• Thoughts on the law of attraction
• Personal branding, and how to build a strong internet brand

Resources Mentioned in This Episode on Sensory Deprivation:

• The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
• Our previous episode with cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Hill
• Shane's new book, The Float Tank Cure (Or get a free chapter at TheFloatTankCure.com)
• Calm, a popular and high-quality magnesium supplement (and another option I take)
• Creatine supplements
• Our previous episode with Kickboxing world champion Adi Rotem
• Cosmos by Neil Degrasse Tyson
• Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner's $100M fund to find alien life
• Recommended Books:
  • The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles
  • The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra
  • The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy
  • Essentialism by Greg McKeown
  • How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
  • A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
  • The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss
  • The Four Hour Body by Tim Ferriss
• Shane's home floatation tank company, Zen Float Company
• Shane Stott's personal website
• My new course, Branding You™: How to Build a Multimedia Internet Empire

Favorite Quotes from Shane Stott:

Transcript:

Introduction: Welcome to the Becoming SuperHuman Podcast. Where we interview extraordinary people to bring you the skills and strategies to overcome the impossible. And now here's your host, Jonathan Levi.

Jonathan Levi: This episode is brought to you guys by August Uncommon Tea. As you guys know, I'm a huge tea drinker and personally. I prefer tea over coffee because of its neurotropic benefits. August is a new tea brand based in downtown Los Angeles. They're reinventing tea by creating unexpected blends that excite modern drinkers. So check them out at www.august.la.

Hey there SuperFriends and welcome to this week. Show you guys this week. I'm excited to think that I might just be introducing you to a health and wellness practice that you've never even heard of. It's called floating. Well, more specifically, it's actually called sensory deprivation.

You might've heard of it. You probably haven't or just maybe like me, you've experimented with it in the past and seen very interesting and encouraging results either way. In this episode, we're going to explain to you what the hell it is. And we're going to talk to one of the experts on sensory deprivation and learn not only about the powerful benefits for the body and the mind, but more importantly, how you can practically implement.

Sensory deprivation or floating as it's called into your daily life. After all, I'm betting, most of you guys don't have massive 800-pound saltwater chambers in your basements. So we're going to talk about that. We're going to cover magnesium supplementation. We're going to talk about anxiety. We're going to talk about depression.

We're even going to talk about the possibility of aliens having landed on earth. It's a fun episode and I know you guys are going to enjoy it. So let me introduce you to serial entrepreneur, author, esteemed coach, and floating enthusiastic. Who's making floating more accessible all over the world. Mr. Shane Stotts.

Mr. Shane Stott. Welcome to the show, my friend, how are you doing?

Shane Stott:  Good. Thank you for having me.

Jonathan Levi: My pleasure. You know, I experimented with floating, over a decade ago when I was doing my SATs and I hadn't discovered meditation at the time. So I've found this great way that supposedly improved your brain's performance.

And I did it a few times and it really helped. And then I kind of completely forgot about it. So I'm excited to hear where the kind of hobby, if you would call it a hobby where it's gone in the last decade.

Shane Stott: Wow, 10 years ago. I bet it was really hard to find a float place. Cause I started six years ago and it was impossible.

There was one in Vegas. So that was the closest maybe.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah, I think I was driving about 25 to 30 minutes into the Los Altos Hills. I mean, it's California. So you can always find this new age. Crazy stuff, but I've researched actually here in Israel and I wasn't able to find a convenient one to get to.

Shane Stott: Oh, get out of here. Well, maybe you're a more of a home floater type then.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. So let's dive into that Shane. So I usually start these interviews. I have to admit with a biological background. Sorry, biographical background of individuals. Certainly not a biological background, but you're a bit of a special case because I think if we just launched talking about floating and how you're an expert in it, a lot of people might look at the superhuman theme of the podcast and think that you're literally out there flying or something.

So why don't we start out with a little bit of an explanation of just what floating is for the uninitiated?

Shane Stott: Yeah. Um, let me give you an easy, quick explanation. So floating is essentially a therapy practice where you get in a tank or a chamber. So imagine something say the size of like a camping tent.

That's about the size of it, but in this chamber, it can be hard. It can be soft, whatever it is that holds water and it holds about 10 inches of water. That is your skin temperature. And in this water, there's 800 pounds of salt, literally 800 pounds of the waters, almost like silky smooth. It's so full of salt, but you lay on your back in this water in this chamber and you can't feel the water after a while because its skin temperature in this chamber.

It's also pitch black. So you can't see. Uh, your ears are under the water surface. So you can't hear, so you can't feel, see, hear everything in your floating. They call it. One of the keywords is like sensory deprivation or isolation tank, but it removes all of your senses. So it's this crazy environment for your mind.

And I've used it heavily for meditation and thinking, and people use it for anxiety, PTSD, stress, but it's this new. Crazy therapy that I think once people get over the kind of fear or the weirded out by it, they're finding that there's this huge benefits.

Jonathan Levi: That's awesome. What are some of those benefits?

Shane Stott: So, let me tell you a little bit about how I got into floating. So 10 years ago I was living in LA and I totally had a giant run-in with panic and anxiety, which then led to depression in my life, just collapsed. And I honestly didn't know how I was going to go on with my life, but through this collapse, I found my way into a, well, first off I got in and got therapy and I actually got on medication to help me get everything back to zero, but I found that meditation really helped anxiety. It was just huge. Like when I would meditate, my days were better. And when I meditate for a week, my weeks were better and months were better. And so I found my way from meditating, for anxiety, to looking for easier ways to meditate. I'm not sure if you've ever meditated much, but the distraction is usually the hardest part of meditation.

So. I was browsing and I stumbled upon, you know, here's an easier way to meditate because it eliminates all distractions. So that's how I found my way into floating was through anxiety, panic, depression, but people were using it for stress relief. People are using it for sleep improvement. A lot of athletes are using it.

We just had an NFL athlete get one of our tanks and he uses it for recovery. After practice in the book, I'll tell you about in a little bit, there's an ultra-marathon runner in California and he runs hundred-mile races. And he used to recover in two weeks' time. He was totally broken down like an old man for two weeks.

And now his recovery is about one week, so cut in half, so huge edge in athletics. So, wow. Interesting. Yeah. And I don't think people realize all the different benefits

Jonathan Levi: Sure is now is that recovery speed because of the reduction of stress or because I remember reading that. Just having your body in a natural position, it kind of gravitates to its natural position. There's no pressure anywhere. So you achieve optimal blood flow. I mean, is it all of that or is it mostly the mental?

Shane Stott: It's a few things it's actually mental, physical. So the mental edge is, or the mental issue as you get in and use zone out. And you recover, you can also visualize your recovery or your next race, whatever.

But another couple of things that are huge is so like you said, it's, the water is like almost a zero-gravity environment. So they say that that actually decompresses your spine up to an inch and a half, because once you lay in a zero-gravity environment for an hour and a half, two hours, everything decompresses.

So it's really rigid. I don't know if the words were the rejuvenate too.

Jonathan Levi: It's good for you.

Shane Stott: It's great for you and decompression. And another thing is the, uh, all the Epsom salt, you know, people use the salt Epsom salts to soak even now with, uh, like fads and that sort of thing. And this water holds 800 pounds of that Epsom salt.

So that magnesium is really great for soaking the muscles and recovering the muscles as well. So it hits on a few different angles.

Jonathan Levi: Well, it's a lot like the dead sea, except without all the Russian tourists and the baking hot sun. Right? Yeah. Cool. And it saves me a four-hour drive. So, okay, cool. So you, you got into it because of anxiety and you became an enthusiast.

Walk me through that path because I know you were an entrepreneur running a business before this whole thing, which might have something to do with the anxiety. If I'm not completely misplaced.

Shane Stott: Absolutely. I think entrepreneurs naturally run themselves a little hard and tend to kind of hit the wall a little harder.

But I found my way in the weirdest things as do my original family business and we were doing manufacturing, but when I discovered this floating thing, I just knew that I had to have a float tank. It was really weird. I hadn't done it. And I was going to travel to go float in Vegas, which was like a quick plane ride away.

And then I was like, well, if I like it, then I just got to save even that much more money to get a float tank here. But I ended up just building a tank in my basement, out of like stuff you would get at home Depot and a farm fertilizer tank. I bought a farm fertilizer tank. I get on half and lay in and then I plumbed it with aquarium parts, my framed it, and insulated it like a home.

And I documented the whole thing. I was pretty obsessed about it, to be honest. And then once I had this tank, though, in my basement, I put all the plans online and it was the weirdest thing because that's when I realized there was hundreds of people like me around the world who wanted to float, but there wasn't options.

There wasn't things in their area. And they started buying my plans. I sold them for $20. They would buy my plans, build a tank. My tank that is in my basement, even exists in some float centers around the US like it just took off. And then that's how I ended up meeting my partner for Zen and. Zen is the company where we make the float tanks out of like a flexible canvas material, but it's really, it was organic how it all took off and started.

Jonathan Levi: That's awesome. I love the kind of lean startup business where it really started from just passion. That's how all of my businesses, including this one. I've started. So I always love these beautiful. It really is. It's like if you set out to start a business, you almost inevitably fail at least in my experience, but if you set out to build something cool that you want for yourself, it inevitably ends up being something.

Shane Stott: I totally agree. And I feel like when you start off small and organic and flesh out the idea before you're going big, then it gets like planting a seed instead of taking a pre-grown tree and sticking it in your yard and hoping it works out, it's like starting from a seed point.

Jonathan Levi: Great analogy. That's a really great analogy.

I love it. So, one thing I want to also ask when I was originally getting into this, there was a lot of research about Delta brainwaves and, you know, we've had neuroscientists. On the show who talk about the ratio of alpha and Delta brainwaves and how you want to manage that ratio in such a way and floating was beginning to be explored as one of those waves to really, I believe it increases your Delta brainwaves.

Has there been any research, have you kept on with the research on that?

Shane Stott: Well, I have not kept up on the research on that, but I'm actually, I'm going to take on another project about how people use floating for optimizing themselves kind of like biohacking type stuff. And I'm going to dive into that because I believe in that the brainwave stuff because I know the state that you're in when you're floating is the state right.

Above dreaming. Is that feta?

Jonathan Levi: Yeah, that's the one. Yeah. 

Shane Stott: I compare it to sometimes when I'm sleeping and I'm in that state right before I crashed, I have these big ideas. Cause it's like my brain's filters turn off and I think a little abstract, but that's what it feels like in a tank is you're in the brain part that you're not usually in.

Jonathan Levi: Well, I like that we should really connect you with Dr. Andrew Hill because he's all about measuring the brain. We did an episode on that and I'd be super, super interested to measure the brain, not just in the tank, but a couple of days on, I think that'd be amazing.

Shane Stott: Wow, dude, I would love that series. So if you could connect me, I would love to start getting some data on that.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah, that would be really, really cool. We should do that. We should set that up as a project and then document it along the way on the blog, you know, what does it look like? Day one day, two days three. That would be neat. We should do that. Let's do it. Awesome. Cool. I have you on record saying we're going to do it, so we're going to do it.

All right. So let me ask this, Shane, obviously you've dealt with the anxiety. You sound like a pretty calm, pretty chilled-out guy, even though you're running two businesses. What have been the other lasting effects in your daily life?

Shane Stott: That's a good question. I remember when I first started floating, when I built the tank in my basement, I was floating every day in the morning before work and I call it the state of float.

But you get so comfortable in this way of being when you're in a float tank where everything is totally calm. There's no outside input. There's no barking dogs. There's no cars. Noises sounds buzzes from your phone, but this states that you practice in a tank, I got really good at it and I could draw it out.

In my regular life. So I remember probably a month after I started floating, people at work were like, you're way too calm. This is like really stressful. Why are you so calm? And I was convinced, I am convinced that I've learned that state of float. I know what it's like to be that way. I feel that way. And I can draw it out at any time.

And it's almost like a permanent adjustment you make. Once you kind of learn what that state is for you, but that was one of the big things that stuck with me is just, I had this permanent shift where I realized I could take on anything easier in a calm, relaxed, state, even stuff. When the whole world is exploding and everything's going to hell, you can still draw on that state.

And I feel like you perform better in that state. I feel like anyone would.

Jonathan Levi:  I love that. And I think that you can draw a lot of parallels between that and meditation as you did earlier, but it sounds as if. You say that it's essentially the same thing as meditation just it's much more approachable and much easier to get into. Would you say that?

Shane Stott: Yeah, so people say, Oh, it's supercharged meditation. Well, meditation is meditation, but it. It's easier meditation. Cause I feel like that's one of the challenges of meditation is distraction. So yes, it's easier meditation, but it's the same meditation. Yeah, that's right.

Jonathan Levi: It's also a meditation for me. One of the most difficult things is body posturing actually, you know, getting, I'm not at a point where I can sit for more than 30 minutes in an upright position.

Shane Stott: I usually recline on the couch and I try to get everything right. But I try and not get too leaned back where I fall asleep. So it's yeah.

It's kind of tricky, but in a float tank, I don't fall asleep. I get really close, but it's great. Cause everything's perfect. Like your posture is perfect. There's no. Hard spots, sore spots, warm spots, everything is just gone. It's the perfect environment for it.

Jonathan Levi: All right. So you have me salivating. Now. Now I really want to float, explain to me about this whole home flotation tank. Like how practical is this thing?

Shane Stott: Yeah. So when I was building the tanks in my basement, that's when a guy named William reached out to me and he started asking me all these questions about how do I design it? Why is it like this? What color should this be? What's you asked me all these questions and then.

Next thing, you know, he throws out his idea, this was his baby. And he's like, dude, what do you think about building a tank out of canvas or out of like a flexible vinyl, you know, canvas material. And when he said that, that was it for me, we became good friends. We became partners and it, for a couple of years we developed the tank that we took to Kickstarter, but we wanted to make floating practical.

For anyone, because I mean, right up until we came along, the cheapest you could float was maybe 10,000 bucks, plus a freight bill of a couple of thousand bucks plus good luck getting something like a giant float tank in your house since then options have come down where you can break float tanks down and then rebuild them into our room.

But we just wanted to make the tank that was practical that anyone could have anywhere in the world for a couple of thousand bucks. So. It seems like a scary idea at first to build a canvas flexible tank, but it works perfectly and we water test every tank that goes out, and the tanks are welded. There's no stitching or anything.

It's a total awesome welded waterproof tank. It's crazy what it's made floating so accessible to everyone. Right. Awesome.

Jonathan Levi: So you guys raised 300 grand on Kickstarter for this thing,

Shane Stott: It blew our minds, we didn't know if we were going to raise 10,000 or a hundred thousand and it turns out we raised 300,000.

Jonathan Levi: What was the goal?

Shane Stott: The goal was a hundred amazing. I remember sitting in the meeting before, like the three of us, my brothers, the other partner, Sean and me, Sean and William were sitting there. And like, we don't know if we're going to do seriously 10,000. Or maybe a hundred thousand, but let's just do it anyway. Let's just try.

And we did when they were ready.

Jonathan Levi: So what did people pay for each of these? You said a couple grand more specifically. What does this thing cost?

Shane Stott: Yes. So during the Kickstarter, we had him staggered because we wanted to get it rolling right out of the gate, but I think we sold them for 1200, 1400, 1600 and all said and done, they were about $1,500 on Kickstarter. We've made a lot of improvements. Now there are 1,850. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. And what a lot of people don't realize is so 800 pounds of salt is not cheap. You're going to pay 500 bucks to get that much salt. So that's another added, right?

Jonathan Levi: God forbid you have to move apartments. I imagine you got to dump all that salt down the drain. Hey.

Shane Stott: Well, yeah. You know, it's so valuable where I would consider like putting it in drums and moving it over.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah, fair point. Wow. 500 bucks. I should just go down to the dead sea and take buckets for free.

Shane Stott: One quick thing I got to throw in is that people don't realize salt lasts for over a year. So if you maintain it, you're not changing our water. You're just maintaining your water and salts really sterile. So I've maintained a hot tub and I've maintained a float tank and float tanks are easy compared to like a hot tub.

Jonathan Levi: So, Oh, that's interesting. So every year you got about a $500 expense to replace the salt.

Shane Stott: Yeah. Cool.

Jonathan Levi: And then minor electricity charges, I guess.

Shane Stott: Yeah, mine's coming in at a 25 30 bucks. We've had some people around the world they're paying more, some pay less, but that's about the price.

Jonathan Levi: That is pretty cool. And I guess you need a lot of space to have this thing, nonetheless. So it was basically an empty bedroom commitment.

Shane Stott: Yeah. So it's the tank. The footprint is eight foot by four foot. It's about five feet tall. So people are talking to me. We've had a ton of people in apartments who were putting them next to their bed, but yeah, ideally you'd like to have a room set up for it. Yeah.

Jonathan Levi: Interesting. Okay, cool. So how often do you actually float today with the two businesses you're running?

Shane Stott: Yeah, I flow weekly. I mean, I really used to beat myself up about it because I, at one time I floated daily, but now I'm like, no, I'm a weekly floater and that's fine because like, part of you feels like, Oh, you know, I'm selling tanks, I'm writing books on floating, but it's actually, it's a good rhythm for me.

So I float weekly. A lot of people float a couple of times a week. The people who float for pain, which is one of the biggest new sections, they float daily. Cause it's like medication for them.

Jonathan Levi: Mm. Yeah, I can imagine that.

Shane Stott: Yeah. We have one lady named Lynn Taylor. She was on medication for about 10 years, all sorts of different pain medications.

I mean, she was one of the early adopters of our float tank on Kickstarter. And within two months of having the tank, she got off all of her medications.

Jonathan Levi: So it was back pain kind of thing.

Shane Stott: Fibromyalgia is like a pain disorder where it's full-body pain. Oh, but she floats a daily and she's paying free medication free.

I mean, when I say pain-free light pain, but it's totally changed her life. So now we're diving into like, why are there more Lynne Tailors out there? Cause we got to get the, you know, the tank in those people's hands, help them.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah, absolutely. I love it. Let me ask you this Shane. I mean, you're obviously a very health-conscious guy. What are some of your other health habits or routines?

Shane Stott: So I do the gym to the gym a couple of times a week. That always helps my brain. I go to the gym for my brain, not even my body. I've got a very average body when I'm in the gym, my brain fires better and I have bigger, better ideas and I'm happier.

And it's, you probably know how that feels.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. That's without a doubt, that's one of the things we teach in our super-learning courses. You really, you got to eat well, you got to sleep well and you've got, gotta move. Do totally out of doubt. You have to move.

Shane Stott:  One of the other things I do is I try and just eat generally healthy, but I'm not a health nut I'll pack in a good hamburger, fast food meal once or twice a week.

But overall I try and eat. Healthy. And this is recent for me, but I quit drinking diet sodas. That was my thing. I was like, Oh, it's diet. I can drink all I want, you know, it's good. And it won't affect me. I quit drinking it for a few weeks. And then when I went back to it, every time I drink it, I'd get a headache.

And then the next day I'd wake up kind of irritable and pissed off and. So now I'm realizing that something in diet soda messes with me. So that's one of my things I've kicked recently is I don't know what it is and I love diet Coke, but I'm going to not drink it that much anymore.

Jonathan Levi: It's probably a very wise idea. So you mentioned a book, I think you've written one book or you've written more than one book.

Shane Stott: I've just finished one book. I'm writing another one right now but just finished.

Jonathan Levi: Congratulations as am I actually writing. Awesome. I have a couple of books in the fire, as they say, a couple of bites in the fire.

Shane Stott: After going through it, it's like the best feeling.

It's almost like an elaborate journal. Yeah. I feel like if I wouldn't have pulled it out, it might've got lost in time.

Jonathan Levi: Exactly. So one of the things that really like, I don't know where I picked it up, but. Essentially the idea is you write a book when the knowledge is building up in you and you have to get it out.

You have to get it on paper. Otherwise, it's going to burst, and then you're going to lose it. I like that. Yeah. And I think about that. So I recently started drafting a book on travel and essentially the habits and hacks that I have for travel that how can I survive 34 hours of flying around the world?

Well, I have techniques and I have habits and I'm like, this knowledge has to make it into something it's too much for a blog post. So I started reading a book. I think I might. Continue through with it. I started jotting down some ideas and I think I'm going to go through with it just as a fun side project, completely unrelated to anything kind of superhuman.

Shane Stott: It kinda reminds me of Tim Ferriss's stuff. How he's always like hacking the travel.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. It's a bit of Tim Ferriss. It's a bit of a Jason Bourne. Cool. So tell me about your book. What is it all about?

Shane Stott: Yeah, I didn't necessarily want to be an author. What was interesting is every time someone would ask me about floating, especially with the new company, I'd be like, Oh, go to YouTube.

And what are you dealing with in your life? And they'd go, go stress or this, or sleep or depression or anxiety. And then I'd prefer them in a different way. I mean, it got to the point to me where I was like, why hasn't someone written a book that goes over all of the major benefits and just compile it in a quick read where someone who wants to get familiar with floating could access it.

And that's when the idea for the float tank here, that's the name of the book came out. So right now there's some great books that exist. That's the spiritual realm of floating or kind of more heavy science, but less covering all the different. Aspects. So I just wrote the most approachable mainstream.

Here's the benefits, here's the stories. Here's the science book. And I think you can read it in a few hours if it's 140 something pages, but I wrote the book because it needed to be written. Oh yeah. I started in January and just now I got 700 books delivered on Friday and I've been writing post-its to go in all the books because we're giving them away free at the float conference this year.

It's in Portland. And I think it's on the 14th of this month. Anyway, I just put post-its in all the books. And I'm like, if you love this book and want to help this spread, you know, just leave an Amazon review of the book. Cause that's the only way I can think of to help floating spread is to make it pop up on Amazon more.

Right. Post-it's all weekend.

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. I love it. That's really, really smart. I should do that.

Shane Stott: I had some serious hand cramping and every post it took just 45 seconds and there was, I'm finished with 500. So I don't know.

Jonathan Levi: I'm surprised you're actually shipping the books yourself though. Yeah. You're not going to create space, ship to fulfill the route.

Shane Stott: I am. So we're doing that on Amazon. So this was like a separate deal with the float conference. Ashcan and Graham who run the conference. I just asked them, do you guys think I could get these in everyone's hands at the conference this year? I'll do them free and they're like, yeah, send them over. So I just printed a one print and I'm sending those out, but yeah, it'll be on CreateSpace on Amazon.

Jonathan Levi: Cool. How many people attend this conference every year?

Shane Stott: This year, 500 last year. It was like three something the year before like two is really growing.

Jonathan Levi: 500 post-it notes though.

Shane Stott: Dude, I'll send you a picture. I'm new, a blog post on it, because if it works, then it's a great story. And if it doesn't work, then I just damaged my hand for a whole week.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. Carpal tunnel for nothing. Yeah. That's very, very cool. So the book goes into the practicum, the science, why it works, how it works, all that kind of stuff.

Shane Stott: Yeah. And it's got my story woven through it with anxiety and depression. And so it's cool.

Jonathan Levi: I love it. Now, the anxiety and depression thing, would you say that that's been a permanent cure for you, or is it something where if you miss a couple of weeks of floating that creeps back.

Shane Stott: Creeps back. I used to think I could beat anxiety and depression, but it's very much maintenance it's like trying to beat fatness or something. It's like, you got to just maintain it for the rest of ever. But it's weird because we have a newborn son, me and my wife. He's two weeks old today.

Jonathan Levi: Oh, wow. Congratulations.

Shane Stott: Thank you, man. And he's the love of our life. We're so happy, but we also have not been sleeping much with the lack of sleep and the 500 post-its. I am like feeling those old feelings again, of anxiety and depression. And I know that I have to get to the gym, get in the float tank, eat right sleep, right when I can, and maintain it.

So it's a cure in the sense of, I know what to do when I need it.

Jonathan Levi: That's super interesting. Let me ask you something that just popped into my head because I'm realizing Epsom salts. Are packed with magnesium. Yeah. These ones that you're using, which is very interesting because magnesium is probably the most important mineral.

I don't know if it's a mineral or a metal. I think it's a mineral, most important mineral in the body it's used in over 400, uh, chemical processes or something like that in the body. And most people, 60 to 70% of people it's estimated are magnesium deficient in Western societies. So I'm wondering if that also beyond the meditative and the restorative, I mean, magnesium is really, really well absorbed through the skin, and just realizing that's probably a big aspect of this.

Shane Stott: Wow. Well, there's a guy who still asks you to slow conference and he was all about the, you know, transdermal absorption of the magnesium and how beneficial it is. But I really want to learn more about that. I've got to it's. I mean, it's totally relevant and it makes me wonder, like, what if that's part of the reason it works?

Jonathan Levi: Right. I know Tim Ferriss is so serious about this, that he actually had like a Japanese Epsom salt bath installed in the middle of his house. And we'll sit there in a hot pool of Epsom salt every night before bed.

Shane Stott: Get out, dude. I know it makes you sleepy.

Jonathan Levi: It does. It certainly does it. Magnesium is really important for sleep as well. I take it every night before bed actually.

Shane Stott: Do you just take like a regular magnesium supplement?

Jonathan Levi: I take a balance 300 milligrams. I have all different kinds of bottles that I've picked up. I've forgotten it when I travel. So I have like six bottles going right now. So it depends.

Shane Stott: Is that the stuff that's called Calm?

Jonathan Levi: No, you know, I looked at calm and I looked at the ingredients and it looks at the price and I was like, I can build this stack for a third of the price. So I didn't end up buying it. I have one, that's magnesium, like a Cal-Mag zinc, which is nice. And then I have one that's just plain old magnesium.

Shane Stott:  Dude. I've got to experiment with that.

Jonathan Levi: It's really worthwhile because not only are we not eating enough cruciferous vegetables to really get the magnesium. Uh, huh. But also the ones that we are eating are the products of mass agriculture and all they're putting in as NPK. So our food, at least I believe my opinion, our food is not as nutrient-rich as it would be in the wild are fertilized with decaying corpses.

So yeah, supplement magnesium is actually one of the only things I supplement in terms of nutrition. I mean, I take the beta-alanine and the creatine and the stuff that's not naturally occurring in the diet, but in terms of things. You could argue creatine is, but in terms of things that are supposed to be covered by eating your veggies, magnesium is the only one I take.

Shane Stott: Wow. I'm going to totally get onto that, especially. I want to do the biohacking focus on floating. So that's perfect. Brainwaves.

Jonathan Levi:  Solid blood tests first, right? Because if you're sitting a couple hours in a tank once a week, you're probably getting a good amount of magnesium. It would be interesting to find out.

It also be interesting to know if the absorption through the body, as part of the reason why you have to change the salt every year. Just kind of thinking out loud. I mean, it's probably that it's probably you're introducing contaminants.

Shane Stott: Yeah, definitely a contaminant issue. Interesting though. I'm totally going to look into that.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. I'm all about the magnesium. I had a two-time world champion. Kickboxer named Adi Rotem on the show and I asked her, what supplements are you taking? What are you allowed to take when you're competing at the world championship levels? She's like magnesium. My last fight. I was dancing around the ring.

With my hand up in the air, yelling magnesium because yeah, it's like a super supplement and, uh, and it's so important for so many different processes in the body.

Shane Stott: Oh my God, dude. I've got to dive into this deeply.

Jonathan Levi: It's pretty interesting stuff I will. So we asked you this before we wrap up too quickly.

What is one thing that you believe that most people think is crazy?

Shane Stott: Yeah. So if I had to bet right now that ancient aliens have visited earth, I would probably bet they have. Yeah. Is that certified crazy?

Jonathan Levi: That's pretty crazy. Although I just finished reading all five books of Hitchhiker's Guide to the galaxy.

Yeah. And I have to admit it really got me thinking.

Shane Stott:  Like, can I explain it in a way that makes it seem more normal?

Jonathan Levi:  Yeah, please do.

Shane Stott: Can you see the cosmos with Neil Tyson deGrasse?

Jonathan Levi: I haven't. I started watching it and then I got distracted.

Shane Stott: Okay. So he does this whole thing where he lays out the universe in a calendar year.

And he says, this is, you know, the beginning of the universe. This is where we are now. He's like humans exist in the last, you know, two minutes of this calendar. Yeah, we are, this is how long it is. And he's like the written word and in the last two seconds, and he's like, transportation is in the last, whatever millisecond it's like crazy.

This little, teeny tiny shred on December 31st in the history of the universe. Yep. So my thing is if we're having these leaps and bounds in technology and shreds of seconds in this universal calendar, Then surely somewhere else, the seed of life was planted maybe even a month ago, which would be like a billion years ago.

If this seed existed anywhere else in the infinite universe, then they surely could have gone through technological growth and been able to travel. And so I approach it like a business decision. I'm like, well, the number's infinite worlds, right? The time we're creating technology slivers of microseconds in relatively true term.

That's my thing. I'm like, it's possible. I sound totally crazy. And I.

Jonathan Levi: So, not at all, actually, because Stephen Hawking just announced, I forget with whom else, but they just announced a hundred million dollar fund to help find life on another planet. And Stephen Hawking believes exactly what you said in an infinite universe with an infinite number of worlds.

It's almost infinitely impossible that nowhere else has life been established?

Shane Stott: Absolutely. It feels like a no-brainer to me when I think about the numbers, because we're just one of a billion stars in this galaxy, and this is one of a billion galaxies and that there's infinite galaxies. We only know what time, like the light traveling for billions of years.

That's all we know is a cause that's all we can see, but it's bigger than what we can even see out of billions of light-years. Yeah, exactly. The odds are just too great.

Jonathan Levi: So that's pretty interesting. All right. I did not expect that one, but yeah, I just Googled it. It's Yuri Milner, the Russian billionaire PN, Stephen Hawking are basically putting up a hundred million to search for alien life.

Wow. Which is, I think you're in pretty good company. Honestly. I feel ridiculous. So, all right, let me hit you with the lightning round. Just two, really, really quick questions. What is the most impactful hundred dollars you've ever spent?

Shane Stott: I'm going to say easy. A couple of books, one book I read 10 years ago, the Science of Getting Rich, kind of a cheesy title.

This book I obsessed about and it taught me that all I had to do was believe it and envision it and then go do the work. To get it the act as if it was already there, that book, I just got obsessive about it. And that was, you know, how books happen at stages in your life? Oh yeah. Okay. Well, that was the one I needed to get moving.

And then the next book was for me, the Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, uh, Deepak. And then there's another 30 bucks in a book. The most recent one that I've gotten obsessed about. Was the Compound Effect by Darren Hardy, where I realized that I could absolutely take on anything that exists in the world.

If I do a piece a day. Yeah. So now we're at 30, 60, 90. Let's say that my last book I'm studying this book called the Centralism, but these a hundred bucks, that's the most radical way you could rock your life is find those books for you because man, four books changed everything about my life.

Jonathan Levi: I love it. My next question was going to be what have been the most impactful books in your life, but you nailed it.

Shane Stott: Yeah. What are your books?

Jonathan Levi: So Dale Carnegie, How To Win Friends And Influence People.

Shane Stott:  Oh yeah.

Jonathan Levi: Changed my life pretty dramatically from an early, early age.

Shane Stott: I would throw that in mind too. And I haven't studied it like I should, but man, it's solid.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah, it is really solid. That's one, another one is a New Earth, Eckhart Tolle.

Shane Stott: Oh yeah, I do. When I was going through anxiety and panic, that book really spoke to me. I haven't been back to it since which is weird.

Jonathan Levi:  I love it, it completely reorganizes my priorities in life. Tim Ferriss, 4- Hour Work Week and 4-Hour Body. I think both shifted how I look at work and how I look at fitness and brought me to where I am now.

Shane Stott: Oh, dude, the 4-Hour Work Week had a big impact on me. I had met my wife and she had a job in Australia and I had just stumbled upon that book at the same time. And I went out there for a couple of months.

It prepped me to realize that I could just do what I was doing from anywhere. Right, but it's weird how books land at the times you need them.

Jonathan Levi: Right. Exactly. I am a big believer in that. I'm a big believer in the law of attraction that when you need a lesson, most is when it's going to be delivered to you.

Totally. So let me ask you this, Shane. I know, uh, we've pretty much used up our time and I really do appreciate it. Where should we send people who are interested, want to learn more about your book and this amazing at-home float tank, and what you do? And I know you do coaching, there's a lot going on here. So where do we send people?

Shane Stott: Yeah. So if they are interested in floating, I would point them in the direction of the book. And the book is The Float Tank Cure. So you could go to floattankcure.com. I've given away a free chapter and it will have some of the great articles we pulled out of that. And some of the great stories.

So the Float Tank Cure is the place I would go if you're in shouldn't floating. And if you're beyond interested in floating, and you're thinking about a tank at your home, the startup company we have is Zen Float Company. So it's zenfloatco.com. That's where you'll see our Kickstarter product and all the success and stories we've had with that.

And that product's really changing people's lives. And then me, I'm doing just like a personal branding site. Cause I do the family business. I do the float and I do the book. And so my site is shanestott.com and I write about. What I want to write about on there. It's a lot of like weird philosophy stuff.

I like aliens and no, but it's funny because I started this personal brand site. I write about what I want to write about and I don't think anyone really cares. So I wonder if any of your listeners?

Jonathan Levi: That's awesome. It's actually funny. You say about personal branding because probably by the time this episode comes out, I will have released a course that I've been working on with, uh, Dr. Anthony Metivier, which basically. our target audience, honestly, is guys like you, maybe without the actual business selling products, but guys who've written a book or have a podcast and gals, by the way, have a podcast have an online course, but don't have the whole ecosystem, or maybe have an idea for a book, but are afraid of becoming a brand or afraid of establishing authority and declaring themselves as an authority in something.

So it goes all the way from what is your story? You know, you've told us a very nice story, which by the way, perfectly fits. The formula we recommend to our students. You have to have conflict, you have to overcome challenges. How did you address those challenges? I mean, I don't know if you've been coached on that story, but it's obviously a very compelling one and very strong and speaks to your business and shows how much you believe in what you do and then takes you all the way through.

How do you write a book? How do you make that book into an online course? How do you make that online course into a podcast? How do you set up your mailing list? Like all this good stuff. So I want to send it to you when it goes live and gets your feedback on it.

Shane Stott: I would love to see that and I could definitely use some help right now.

I feel like I could put myself out there and I put what I care about, but I'm waiting for feedback to know where to go.

Jonathan Levi: That's brilliant though. That's also a big part of the strategy.

Shane Stott: Okay, cool. Cause I want people to be like, Oh, we like this. And then I'll give them more of that.

Jonathan Levi: Can we, do you hear that guys? Do you hear that? Superhumans give feedback, give feedback to Shane. Give feedback to me because that's what every entrepreneur thrives on and learns on.

Awesome. Mr. Shane Stott, it has been a pleasure. We will link up everyone to all the resources we've talked about in the show notes from your website to your book, to float tanks and aliens.

Did I miss anything?

Shane Stott: No, you got it all, but thank you so much for having me seriously. It's just been awesome. Chatting with you.

Jonathan Levi: It is my pleasure. Let's be in touch about Dr. Andrew Hill measuring your brain, and we'll be in touch about a float tank. Maybe if I move to a bigger apartment. Oh, for sure. No doubt about the Branding You thing.

Shane Stott:  For sure.

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. Thank you so much. And it's been such a pleasure. Take care.

Closing: Thanks for tuning in to the Becoming SuperHuman Podcast for more great skills and strategies, or for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode, visit www.becomingasuperhuman.com/podcast. We'll see you next time.