By Sonia Schnee | Posted Monday, December 3, 2018
Has anyone ever asked you, “Do you want to go floating?” If so, you’ve probably asked, “Well, what do you mean by ‘floating?’” Quantum Floats in Bedminster, NJ is a place where you can do exactly as it sounds — float, in a warm, dark, quiet place. If meditation, relaxation, and getting in touch with your innermost thoughts are your kind of thing, it’s worth checking out — and probably different than any other experience you’ve had so far. Enjoy our interview with Quantum Floats owner Ken Kaplan. Learn about what inspired him to start a float center, the various benefits of floating, and enjoy some holiday discounts in the links below.
What's your name, where are you from, and where are you based now?
KEN KAPLAN: I’m Ken Kaplan. I was born in Flushing, New York. My wife Maria and I have spent the last 30 years living in Bridgewater, NJ.
You run both a law firm and a floatation center. Which came first?
I’ve been a corporate (business) lawyer for 30 years. In 2013, my partner Glenn Williams and I co-founded the law firm of Kaplan, Williams and Graffeo – a business law firm based in Morristown, NJ. Shortly after that, my cousin Brian Graffeo joined the firm as a partner.
It may sound cliché, but our law firm is unique in the way we interact with our clients to help them achieve their goals and objectives. As a breed, lawyers are taught to be risk adverse. Lawyers tend to be good at spotting issues, but often shy away from proposing solutions. Lawyers often think it is not their province to step into the role of solution provider, especially when the solution requires that they leave the comfort zone of issue spotting and take on the role of business advisor. That kind of lawyer is a rare breed. The lawyers at Kaplan Williams are solution providers. That search for solutions is the same driving force that led me to open Quantum Floats in 2015. Quantum Floats is a floatation tank center located in Bedminster, NJ.
What is the mission of Quantum Floats?
Our mission is to relieve stress in the community, especially the business community. At first glance, the law business and the float business may seem unrelated. In fact, floating can have a profoundly beneficial impact on business. People engage in the same behavior patterns over and over again. Those patterns are driven by thoughts below the level of conscious awareness. Yet, those thoughts are the primary contributors to whether or not we achieve our goals and objectives. Floating allows a person to examine those deeper thoughts, and the workshops and seminars we offer at Quantum Floats take the floating experience much further by showing our clients how to change those patterns so that they can better express who they are.
How do you want people to feel once they've used your service?
What we try to do at Quantum Floats is help our clients understand that whatever emotions, feelings or thoughts come up for them is self-generated and not caused by forces outside of their control. While we do have to constantly navigate the outside world, we’re in the driver’s seat in terms of how we react to those external experiences. That’s a great thing because once people start to see that, they can start to change their patterns of behavior and get rid of the anger or stress or anxiety they experience. Quantum Floats exists so that people can do just that.
What’s the link between floating and stress-relief?
Floating relieves stress. Our clients often comment that they are more relaxed and that they bring that relaxation with them outside of their float experience to their jobs and personal lives. From a scientific perspective, the relaxation our clients experience has to do with the adjustment of thoughts below the level of feelings. Those deeper thoughts are the ones that generate the stress people experience in their lives. The ability to access and adjust those thoughts is what makes floating such a powerful modality for relieving stress.
For our clients who want to take the experience further, we offer one-of-a-kind workshops and seminars where clients learn how to improve the way they think and communicate, which helps them accomplish the professional and personal goals they set for themselves.
How did you first discover floating? What kind of impact has it had on your life?
My experience with floating has made a huge impact on my life. I first heard about it in 2011 at a business networking event. I figured I’d give it a try. Up to that time, I had tried an assortment of conventional and non-conventional modalities to deal with stress. Most of them helped, but they seemed to fall short of getting to the root cause of the stress. There weren’t many float centers around at that time, but I found a woman who had a float tank in her house. It seemed strange at first because I had never even seen a float tank, and my first reaction was “why would I ever want to spend an hour floating in water?” Yet, after just a few sessions, I knew I was on to something.
Floating is like meditation on steroids. It’s like taking an elevator down to the depths of thought – the very place where our stress arises.
I remember coming out of the float tank very relaxed, and I also remember taking that relaxation with me home and into work. But the experience was still vague to me. I didn’t know what the experience was about, much less what I could do with it to address the stress I was experiencing all the time. I lacked an understanding of how thought works.
Around that time I met John Worthington, who in the early 1970’s opened up one of the very first float centers in the country. John’s an interesting guy. He knows as much about thought as anyone I’ve ever met, and he’s taken that understanding and put it together in a series of workshops and seminars where people can change their lives. I know, that’s a big statement, but it’s true. We hold ourselves back by thought patterns we’ve been running since a very young age. We offer these seminars now at Quantum. I’ll tell you this with absolute conviction that while anyone can learn skills to modify thought, not everyone wants to. It’s work, and the work often involves comes face to face with evasions and denials.
What kind of people are you looking to connect with?
I’m looking for businesses and people that have the conviction and tenacity to make profound changes in their lives.
What words of advice or encouragement would you give to someone who wants to follow a similar passion, or is maybe facing obstacles similar to what you've faced?
I’d tell them that most of the good things in life require hard work and that hard work pays off in rewards. The work we do here at Quantum pays off in rewards in the form of better relationships and in the form of being able to better express who you really are. Sometimes we assume that the people we admire most had an easy path to where they are now. Most often, that is not the case. Successful people have the drive to pick themselves up when they fall, no matter how many times they fall. Those falls are just lessons. It is useful to keep this in mind if you’re the kind of person who wants to improve your life by changing the way you think about things.
What's next on the horizon for you? Do you have any special deals, sales, promotions going on?
We’re running a holiday promotion at Quantum Floats to introduce people to floating. We’re offering single floats and gift certificates at $65 (reduced from $85) and we’re offering a 3-float package for $175 (reduced from $255). We’re also offering $100 off our Introduction to the Art of Rewriting workshop – now $499 (reduced from $599).
Finally, how can people find Quantum Floats online?
You can find us in any of the following ways:
By stopping in at our facility: Bedminster Medical Plaza, 1 Robertson Drive, Suite 13, Bedminster, NJ
By calling to book an appointment or schedule a tour: (973) 782-3227
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/quantumfloats/
On Twitter: @Quantum Floats
On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/quantum_floats/
Or by downloading the “Quantum Floats” app in the App Store or on Google Play.