Transcription of James and Amy Harder for the show Read & Relax #273
Lisa Belisle: Today it is my pleasure to have with me in the studio Amy and James Harder, who opened Float Harder Relaxation Center, a three-tank float center in Portland earlier this year. They first learned about floating in sensory deprivation tanks while living in Colorado and realized its potential for improving well-being. Thanks so much for coming in.
James Harder: Thank you.
Amy Harder: Thank you.
Lisa Belisle: I know you’ve had to actually close your center just to come do this with us today, so I feel very special, like, that I’m depriving other people of relaxation out there. Hopefully this will spread the news, and it will make up for the relaxation that a few individual people wouldn’t have gotten for a couple hours.
Amy Harder: We’re happy to be a part of this, and it’ll help get the word out about floating.
Lisa Belisle: Let’s talk about floating. I had the opportunity to float yesterday, and it was really unlike anything that I have done before. I don’t know that many people who have had the opportunity to experience this.
James Harder: As word is getting out, we’re having more and more people come and experience floating, and people are loving it. Inside the float tanks, there’s ten inches of water with 1,000 pounds of Epsom salt dissolved into it, and the water and the air are heated to 93.5 degrees, which is the average temperature of the outer layer of skin, and that makes it to where after a while of laying there, you really have a hard time determining where your body ends and the water and air begin. Inside our tanks, there’s a nice colored light and also some speakers built in, so you can have a nice light, listen to some music, or if you choose to, you can turn it all off, and it’s completely dark, completely silence, and just a great way for your mind and your body to relax.
Amy Harder: It’s really just this unique environment. When do you ever get to lie peacefully suspended, almost weightless? You could have complete darkness, complete silence. It’s just like….
James Harder: Peace and quiet.
Amy Harder: Yeah. No place on Earth.
Lisa Belisle: It seems like this is something that we actually need more and more in this day and age and it’s really, some of it is that we’ve become really connected in a good way, and then also in a way like, “Okay, now we can’t turn it off.” You can’t be connected if you’re in the float tank. I mean, you’re connected, but you’re connected within yourself and your mind and the water, and that’s about it.
James Harder: Right here, a deep self-connection is so important, and like you said, we are so constantly bombarded with stimulation these days. You know, just having your phone in your hand so much of the day, so many people do it. Just putting someone in a float tank for 90 minutes, most people don’t go 90 waking minutes without checking their Facebook or their Instagram. Just that kind of separation from the rest of the world is really great for you.
Lisa Belisle: You were in Colorado when you first experienced floating.
Amy Harder: Yes. We were just looking for a place to have a massage, and we found a spot that had a couple of float tanks, and we thought, “What is this?” We did a little bit of Internet research and….
James Harder: It sounded great. We booked a couple sessions and went down to Denver and tried floating and fell in love with it, and then in 2013 we came back home to Maine to hike the Appalachian trail, and after we finished that we really wanted a place to float, and there was no commercial float center. There were a couple people who have float tanks in their homes that they would rent out when it was possible for them, and we wanted something to make it really accessible to everyone all the time. We started doing some research and worked really hard and saved every penny we could scrounge up and started a float center.
Lisa Belisle: Yeah, your center is really, it’s really impressive. It’s very modern and clean and peaceful and up to date. I mean, I can tell that you’ve put a lot of thought and a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into this place.
Amy Harder: Thank you.
James Harder: A lot of sleepless nights.
Amy Harder: We put a lot of time into it. What we’re trying to do is make floating seem inviting. So many people are nervous to try floating. It’s really just the unknown, once they’re there and they’re in the experience, they’re very comfortable with it. We find that making this beautiful, inviting environment just kind of helps to calm the nerves, when people see the size of float tanks and how everything’s clean and tidy. I think it helps.
James Harder: Cleanliness is such an important factor. Other than people’s concerns about claustrophobia, cleanliness is the next question that we’re always asked. How are the tanks cleaned? Do you change out the water every time? Of course we don’t because there’s 1,000 pounds of Epsom salt in there, so in order to change out the water every time, it would cost a couple thousand dollars for a float, and we could only do three every two days because that’s how long it takes for the salt to melt. In between float sessions, the water does go through a really intense triple filtration process, goes through a UV light filter, an ozone infusion filter, and also a one micron carbon filter. In addition to that, it is treated with hydrogen peroxide for a constant anti-bacterial agent, and with 1,000 pounds of Epsom salt in there, it’s a really inhospitable environment for anything. We take cleaning very seriously. This morning we did our weekly deep clean where we closed down for four hours from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. once a week and scrubbed the walls, the insides of the float tanks, the outsides of the float tanks, every little bit of grout in between the tiles. We take cleaning real seriously there.
Lisa Belisle: Yeah, I think that’s a really, it’s an interesting thing that you’re talking about, that we’re willing to go to the Y and go swimming in a swimming pool or willing to go where everybody else also swims, you know, we’re willing to go the lake where we have algae and fish and other people and the ocean, and yet if you’re going to be in a float tank all by yourself, you want it to be clean.
James Harder: Pristine.
Lisa Belisle: Yeah. You have people before they even go in, like when I went to float yesterday, in the nicest way possible, you made it very clear, people who go in the float tanks, they need to be clean. You ask people not to wear makeup or lotion or any sort of products themselves, and then you actually take a shower before you get in there, and you don’t put anything else on your skin, and once you get in there you’re as clean as you’re going to be. It sounds like it’s really probably the cleanest situation that any of us are actually going to be in anyway.
Amy Harder: Yeah, absolutely. I think that because floating is such a new concept to people, when they first hear about the idea, they don’t naturally relate it to pools or spas. I think the first thing they think of, because it involves Epsom salt, is taking a bath, and you don’t want to necessarily take a bath that somebody else has been in, and they are just unaware of the filtration and all the cleaning that, you know, all the measures that we do to make sure that the water is clean and safe. I think it’s just their initial reactions that it’s bath water.
Lisa Belisle: Epsom salts are really great for health. This is something that I think our grandparents knew about and great-grandparents, and on a regular basis, I tell my patients that they should be doing Epsom salts. I love the fact that if you go to your place, here it is. It’s all ready and you get the benefit of, it’s magnesium salt, and that’s so good for muscles and relaxation and for nerves and skin.
James Harder: Skin and joints.
Lisa Belisle: Exactly.
James Harder: Everything. Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: It’s not just the floating in the water, it’s also the healing power of these salts.
James Harder: For sure. There’s three basic components to why floating is so good for you. The first one is just eliminating gravity. Without the stress of gravity on our bodies, we really have a chance to rest and recover. It helps with natural alignment of the spine, and we don’t realize how much energy our minds and our bodies spend just combating gravity every day. Just to walk around on two feet, you know, we’re constantly dealing with gravity. The next one is a sensory reduced environment. Again, if you turn off the lights and the music inside the tank, and it’s so completely dark, it’s a great way for your nervous system to get a chance to just slow down and not have the fight or flight idea going on. The third one is like you said, the magnesium and the Epsom salt there.
Lisa Belisle: We talked about cleanliness, and claustrophobia is obviously something that people are concerned about. I was able to be in a more of a float room, actually, and I chose that specifically because claustrophobia for me is a little bit of an issue. It’s not huge, but it’s nice that you have in addition to these pods which are basically like giant clam shells, which are somewhere around seven feet long?
Amy Harder: Yeah, the interior dimension’s seven feet by four feet.
Lisa Belisle: Those are already pretty big, but then you also have these rooms, which are like kind of like being in a big closet.
James Harder: Yeah, or kind of like a sauna. The interior dimensions of the float room, it’s eight feet long by four and a half feet wide and seven feet tall. It’s like stepping into a big cube. Yeah, plenty of room for very large people.
Lisa Belisle: I chose it more, I didn’t choose it because of my largeness, although I guess I’m tall enough, but what I liked was I didn’t, just in case I had this weird feeling that things are closing in on me, that I really wasn’t. Your ceiling on that particular room is very tall. I found that, actually, over time, I was able to kind of get used to. I chose darkness, and I was able to kind of get used to the darkness, and you provided, I think you have somewhere around six or eight different types of music that people can choose from or their own.
James Harder: Yep.
Amy Harder: Correct.
Lisa Belisle: I chose the concentration music because I have something I have to work on to write, so I found that that was really also interesting, that I’m still connected with the outside with this music that I’m listening to, but it’s also, there’s really, there’s just me and my thoughts. It must be interesting for you to see people when they go in versus when they come out.
James Harder: It’s really fun.
Amy Harder: It is really fun. People come in, and they’re nervous and curious, and they have lots of questions, and they’re sort of at the regular pace, which is go go go go go, and then they come out of their float, and whether they realize it or not, they almost appear sedated.
James Harder: Lightly sedated.
Amy Harder: Yeah, yeah. They’re just moving slower, they’re telling us about their float, and it’s in this really thoughtful, it’s just at a slower pace. We usually recommend that people sit in the lounge after and have a cup of tea, not just rush right back out into it, kind of reflect on how their body’s feeling after the float and how they’re feeling mentally.
Lisa Belisle: Yeah, and it definitely has that. It is a very kind of soothing environment even outside the float tanks. You have people come in, and they take off their shoes, and the way that you interact is very kind of calming, and you do have the nice homegrown tea….
James Harder: Which we heard about from your podcast.
Lisa Belisle: Which is excellent, which I love because I love tea, so, obviously, if you have the right kind of tea, it’s going to be even be more likely that I’m going to show up and do this again. Then, you also have some lovely books and some very comfortable furniture, and you also have it seemed like really nice people that come in and do this with you.
James Harder: We get so many really cool people. When we moved to Portland, we really didn’t know anyone. We knew a few family members in the area, but other than that, we didn’t know anyone, and we’ve gotten to meet so many friendly, fun people and really feel like part of a community here, and that’s been a lot of fun, walking down the street now and bumping into people that we know and just … It’s really, really great. Floating does attract a really thoughtful group of people. People who want to experienced altered states of consciousness or who want to just better themselves in one way or another, whether it’s physically or mentally. We have a lot of athletes that come and float with us. It’s a great way for recovering after a hard training session and just so many other reasons.
Amy Harder: Yeah, we find that the people that come to float, they really want to be there, so they’re really excited about the experience and it just ends up being a really nice feeling inside the float center. Everybody’s happy to be there.
Lisa Belisle: That’s actually really important, because how often do we get an injury and then feel like, “Oh no, now I have to go to the doctor, and I have to deal with this horrible thing.” You’re talking about, “Okay. Here’s the opportunity to relax and to be healed and to re-center, and I think that to make that conscious decision to give yourself that time is big and not something that everybody wants to do.
James Harder: Most everyone who comes through the door is excited to be there. Occasionally we get someone who may have been tricked or not told what they have been getting into. That’s really fun to watch play out. We’ve had some kind of burly, tough looking guys who have either been brought in by their wife or their daughter, and you can tell that they’re just not impressed to be there, but after their float, they come out and they say, “You know, that was actually really great.” It’s good to just give people an environment that is comfortable and is some place where you can just kind of drop the whole tough guy act and just take care of yourself and enjoy some peace and quiet. Even people who don’t know that they want to float end up realizing that there’s something for them to gain from it.
Amy Harder: We’ve had some people that were really apprehensive and would even look at their partner and say, “Are we here for you or for me?” because it was a birthday surprise or something. They come back on their own after.
James Harder: Those were really fun.
Lisa Belisle: Now you both have a Vassalboro connection. Amy, you grew up there.
Amy Harder: Yes.
Lisa Belisle: James, your grandparents lived next to Amy?
Amy Harder: Yeah, they lived around the corner.
Lisa Belisle: Yeah. So, that’s interesting. I wonder how many people in Vassalboro, when you say, “We created a float center,” I wonder how many people in Vassalboro are like, “Okay. That seems maybe a little less than mainstream, but we’re going to roll with it.” What have people’s responses been?
James Harder: People were really supportive in a strange way. Not unlike Portland, up there, no one had heard of floating. Even when we first moved down here, and we started talking to people about it, maybe one in twenty people would have had any idea what we were talking about, whereas, now, if we told people about floating, it’s usually like one in three or four. It goes, “Oh yeah, I’ve heard of that” or knew someone who’s tried it.
Amy Harder: When we first started talking about floating in Central Maine, the typical reaction was, “What? Why would you want to do that?” Or “Do you think that’s going to be a lucrative business?” They were open to the idea but cautiously so.
James Harder: Which, you know, is part of the reason why we came to do it here in Portland, where there’s a lot of people who are wellness minded. You know, people who are training for marathons and competing in Iron Mans and doing yoga and Pilates and just wanting to take care of themselves. There’s definitely people like that in Central Maine as well, but we kind of wanted to be around a larger population of people with that mindset.
Lisa Belisle: Maybe you can have the Float Harder II center, maybe in the Vassalboro area, once you have been a raging success down in the Portland area.
James Harder: That would be great.
Lisa Belisle: James, you have a background with the army, and, actually, your father was also in the military.
James Harder: Yep. My stepdad was in the army, and my father was in the Navy, and my sister was in the army, and my little brother’s going to enlist in the Navy. We’re a pretty military-minded family. I joined the army straight out of high school, actually finished my senior year of high school in Germany, and it was so much fun to be there, and I joined the army so that I could stay there. I came back to the States for basic training and AIT and then got stationed right back in Germany and did that for a few years and got out and continued traveling around and hiking out in Colorado and back here on the East Cost, just kind of wandering around. Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: When you were doing that, did you have any sense that opening a float center might be in your future?
James Harder: I had never even heard of floating. The biggest thing I thought about wanting to do when I got out of the army, one of my best friends gave me a book about hiking the Appalachian Trail. I read that, and that was what I wanted to do when I got out. I went to work out in Colorado for a while and save same money and then came back to the East Coast and just hiked little sections of it here and there and did some other hitchhiking and backpacking around and had a great summer and then re-met Amy that summer. We had known each other when we were kids but hadn’t seen each other in about a decade. Then we got back together, and then in 2013 we hiked the Appalachian Trail in its entirety together.
Lisa Belisle: What was that like Amy?
Amy Harder: Well, it was one of the toughest things I’ve ever done. I didn’t really even have an interest in doing it. When James and I got together about eight years ago, he was talking about the Appalachian Trail and how it was one of his dreams to complete the whole thing, and I was like, “All right, well, you go,” and then he started saving money for it, and the time was getting close, he was going to be leaving, and I thought, “Well, I want to go.” I mostly did it out of stubbornness, just, like, not wanting to quit. It was fantastic. It turned out to be one of the best summers of my life.
Lisa Belisle: You have a history, then, of doing difficult things together.
James Harder: We do.
Lisa Belisle: Which I think is great. A lot of couples, they don’t kind of test themselves the way that you have already tested yourselves with the Appalachian Trail and now opening this brand new business, which is very innovative. How’s it going so far?
James Harder: It’s great. I think it’s really important to test yourself and to accomplish goals together. We’ve gotten to do a lot of that.
Amy Harder: I think that we learn a lot about how to work with each other through these challenging circumstances that we put ourselves in.
James Harder: It definitely brings us closer. On the Appalachian Trail, we saw each other at the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. I got Lyme’s disease, Amy got a MRSA infection. Got a couple of different things that came down on us, but you know, we helped each other through it and recovered and just kept on going and completed our journey.
Amy Harder: When you see a problem in the future, you kind of look back on what you’ve tackled and it’s like, “We got this.”
James Harder: No big deal.
Amy Harder: Yeah.
James Harder: That said, starting a business was definitely another very trying adventure. It’s been difficult, but we’ve had the opportunity to work with some really great people along the way, like the lender we worked with from Bangor Savings, a score counselor from that organization. We’ve had a lot of support, and it’s been fantastic.
Lisa Belisle: Is it scary to do something that hasn’t been done on this scale in Maine?
James Harder: I think it was initially, but the response already is really positive, and I don’t know, we love it, and we get to float pretty regularly. That definitely helps with our own anxiety and our own stress.
Amy Harder: It was intimidating, but the way we looked at it is that we were just going to put our all into it, make it the nicest experience that we could for people, and give the best customer service possible and hope it works because, I mean, at that point you’re invested.
James Harder: Really, we kind of thought, you know, we were in our early 30s. If this doesn’t work out, we’ve got some time to bounce back from it.
Amy Harder: Yeah. We were pretty unhappy with what we were doing with our lives before, and we figured it could only end up back in that same situation.
Lisa Belisle: That’s a very interesting way to look at it, it can’t get worse, it could just stay the same. That’s a really interesting perspective.
Amy Harder: Although, I suppose it would be worse with the debt.
James Harder: We’d be paying up a mountain of debt.
Lisa Belisle: It’s not going to be worse because it’s going to be very successful, I can tell. Amy, what was your background? You weren’t military.
Amy Harder: No, I got a teaching degree in Connecticut, and then when we moved out west, I thought maybe I could find a teaching job up there, but it was just really challenging to break into that industry, and I ended up never using it, so I was bartending for the past seven or eight years, and it just wasn’t very fulfilling. It’s certainly fun, and it’s fast money. It leads to a flexible lifestyle, but it’s nothing that I wanted to do until I was 40.
Lisa Belisle: It probably helped you with your customer service skills, I would think, because it seems like that’s the type of thing that you have to be very good at if you’re going to be a bartender long-term.
Amy Harder: Yeah. I certainly did learn how to interact with people, and even in their altered states, and keep everything calm.
Lisa Belisle: That’s actually really interesting now that you used to deal with altered states as a result of alcohol, and now you deal with altered states as a result of the magnesium saltwater.
Amy Harder: This is much more pleasant, and it’s not ‘til 3 in the morning.
Lisa Belisle: Right, but you do, I was really impressed with, you have very long hours. What I love is, you can actually book online, so you can see what tanks are available, and you have hours that go, I think, as early as 6 in the morning and into the evening. How late are you open?
James Harder: The last float begins at 8 p.m. and the first one starts at 6. The reason for that is that people love floating at all different times of the day. Some people like to come float before they go to work to kind of start their day in a real centered, positive mindset, and then other people like it at the end of a hard day to just go home and relax after their float and drift off to sleep and everywhere in between.
Lisa Belisle: You’re actually open six days a week.
James Harder: Yep. We’re closed on Wednesdays but other than that, we’re ready to get you floating as much as possible.
Lisa Belisle: You also have, James, a Northern Maine connection. I understand that you were up in the Greenville area over Thanksgiving.
James Harder: We were, yeah. Just outside of Greenville in Shirley, Maine. My grandparents have a camp that they built when I was a kid, and my grandmother and my grandfather have been hunting up there since they built the place. He passed away a couple years ago, and now I get to go up there and go hunting with my grandmother and keep her company out in the woods. It’s been a magical place for me ever since I was a kid playing with wooden swords and amongst the trees to now just getting to spend time with family and relax by the fire. It’s just a great place to be. It’s one of my favorite places on the planet.
Amy Harder: It’s great because there’s very little cellphone reception, so even though we were just there for one day, it was nice to not be dealing with technology and just sit by the fire and kind of slow down a little. It’s funny, we’re offering this sensory deprivation service to the community, but running a business we were finding is so much overload, sensory overload and yeah.
Lisa Belisle: Especially in the early stage where you probably do a lot of the stuff yourself.
James Harder: We try to do as much as possible. Amy’s been doing a lot of the graphic design work, the web development work. We try to do most of the marketing ourselves or work with people, like here at this publication, just figuring it out as we go. Neither of us have any real background in business, so just kind of learning on the fly and having fun with it, but it’s really great to just always have something more to keep learning.
Lisa Belisle: It’s interesting when you describe nature and being in a place where you can sort of let go and relax, and Maine is really known for that. I mean, when you get out of the middle of the city, you really have access to, I wouldn’t say it’s sensory deprivation, but it’s definitely this expansiveness and it’s the same type of thing that you’re describing when you get inside a float tank. They’re sort of two opposite ways of providing them, in nature you have birds and grass and leaves and trees and things like that, and in your float tanks, you have, it’s just the water and the person and the tank itself. I think Maine is a place where people do actually come for this sort of thing.
James Harder: It’s a great way of looking at it. I never thought about it that way. People definitely do like to have the solitude and the relaxed state here in Maine. Yeah. I guess what we offer really goes hand in hand with what a lot of people are seeking.
Lisa Belisle: What are your hopes for the next year as a brand new business in putting something out there in the world? What do you want to see happen?
James Harder: I want to see as many people come in and float as possible, and not just for the financial compensation of it, but just to see the look on people’s faces, and another reason that people come and float with us is for chronic pain relief, and we’ve had people come out of the tank and tell us that right after their floating or during their float or for a couple weeks after is the first time that they’ve been without their pain, and to be able to see that in people is just so wonderful. It makes all the long hours so worth it. Yeah. I want to see a lot of people floating and spreading the word and enjoying it.
Lisa Belisle: Amy, do you think that the teaching background, and I understand that you didn’t use your teaching certificate or background, but do you think that this has had some positive impact on your ability to educate people about floating?
Amy Harder: I think so, in that my customer service skills, I feel like it takes a lot to get somebody through their first float. There is a lot of little details that can make your float much better. For example, just keeping the saltwater out of your eyes and mouth. It’s really not a pleasant experience. Yes, absolutely. We need to educate people on how to float and how to enjoy their float so that they’ll be interested in trying it again to experience the cumulative benefits of floating. Absolutely, my background has helped to shape how we run our business.
Lisa Belisle: If you have any idea that you might want to do this, then probably the best thing to do is to maybe look on the website, maybe give you a call …
James Harder: For sure.
Lisa Belisle: If there are some things that medically might disqualify you, then have that conversation with your health care provider, but it doesn’t sound like there’s too many different things that are going keep people from floating.
Amy Harder: No. Usually, what we tell them if they do have medical questions is that, talk to your doctor, you’re going to be lying in about 1,000 pounds of magnesium sulfate in warm water. We tell them the temperature, and then they can just discuss that with their health care provider and make an informed decision that way, because we’re just people that own float tanks.
Lisa Belisle: As a doctor, there aren’t too many different things that I can think of that would keep people from doing it because it seems like a pretty, even somebody asked me, “Well, what happens if you fall asleep? Will you drown?” I can’t see that happening because you’re so buoyant. It’s like floating in the dead sea. The salt content is so high, and your body would just wake you up anyway.
James Harder: Falling asleep is perfectly safe. Sometimes I get in there and sleep overnight in the float tanks which is really fun. I have crazy dreams, just it’s a great experience. Because you are so supported, if you do fall asleep, you won’t roll over, because there’s nothing to really push off of. You’d really have to try to roll over and if you did roll over, you’re going to get that saltwater in your nose and your eyes, and it’s going to wake you up pretty quick. Inside the tanks we do have a spray bottle full of fresh water for those inadvertent situations, but you can rinse your eyes with that, and you’re all set to go again.
Lisa Belisle: Very good. I hope that people will take advantage of floating and your Float Harder Relaxation Center. We have been speaking with Amy and James Harder, who opened Float Harder earlier this year in Portland. I really wish you all the best. I will be back again looking for those flashes of insight and maybe the chance to cross the country in my own Winnebago. Thank you for coming in and for providing this to us.
James Harder: Thank you.
Amy Harder: Thank you.
James Harder: Thanks for having us.