True REST and SoundSelf Layer Ketamine Therapy, Float Tanks and Tech

The founder of the largest float tank franchise in the U.S. is teaming up with a developer of digital sound and light experiences to create what they say will be a series of ketamine therapy centers that offer a new kind of psychedelic healing. 

Nick Janicki, founder of True REST Float Spa, and Robin Arnott, founder of SoundSelf—which creates immersive audio and light technologies—say they plan to open hundreds of psychedelic support centers around the U.S. that package ketamine treatments together with supportive services. The concept builds on True REST’s existing franchise model, with 54 operating float centers and 29 more in development. Janicki and Arnott say they plan to self-fund the project and are not seeking outside investment. 

These proposed centers, which are tentatively dubbed a “Journey Clinic,” will be available to True REST franchise operators who allow a ketamine provider to work out of their float center. Janicki said that float services will be available to patients only in preparation for the therapy and as an integration tool after a therapeutic ketamine experience. He emphasized that floats would not be offered at the same time as ketamine treatment, which Janicki said would be dangerous for patients. The SoundSelf experience will be available during the ketamine therapy as well as for preparatory and integration work, but not during the float. 

Their goal, say Janicki and Arnott, is to create and scale a new kind of therapeutic psychedelic experience that enhances the potential for neuroplasticity and the impact of therapeutic ketamine treatments. In this model, ketamine sessions would be overseen by a medical director who prescribes the ketamine, which would be administered onsite by a nurse practitioner. Patients would receive coaching and float services before and after the experience supported by Being True to You. True REST will launch another service to its franchise operations on May 15 called the “Vitality Suite” which offers infrared saunas and red light therapy to support cellular repair. Janicki says it this offering will be piloted in ten franchise locations.

The Journey Clinic program now under development, which Janicki and Arnott say could cost $4000-$5000 for six months of treatment, would include eight to ten therapeutic ketamine sessions. These would be packaged with floats enhanced by SoundSelf digital light and sound technology which the company says introduces non-ordinary states of consciousness and improved mental well-being. 

Arnott’s newest SoundSelf system combines strobe light glasses with headphones and a microphone, responding to a user’s breath and vocal tones to help facilitate their entry into flow and mystical states. “The whole system is responding to your voice and breath, including the lights,” Arnott says. “So as you tone, the lights intensify and they’re strobing, and the color changes. And as you breathe in, there’s a wash of a different kind of light.”

According to Janicki and Arnott, the ketamine provider for this new service will be Fusion Pharmacy of Santa Clara, Utah via telemedicine. The clinics’ medical director will be Dr. Tim Scott, the founder of Rixa Health. Ketamine treatments would initially be offered through lozenges and nasal delivery systems and prescriptions sent directly to the float facility for safe storage. The founders anticipate clients will need to pay out-of-pocket, though they say they hope the service will eventually be covered by insurance.

High Price Tag 

Therapists who follow the market for ketamine therapies say the proposed pricing structure of $4000-$5000 for six months of treatment will limit who could benefit from the proposed ketamine and digitally-enhanced float service. “My initial reaction is that is a lot of money,” says Julie Holland, a psychiatrist and author of The Ketamine Papers. “Most people I know and work with do not have thousands of dollars to spare for their mental health treatments.”

Kristina Spionjak of HTLH Communications, who formerly worked with SoundSelf, acknowledges that the proposed cost of the sessions will be too expensive for many, but noted that some people are already willing to pay steep prices for ketamine therapies and retreats where psychedelic therapies are offered. “The initiative represents progress in accessibility, but stops short of being revolutionary,” said Spionjak. “At ~$400 per session, this is more affordable than some clinical ketamine offerings or private psychedelic retreats, but it’s still largely out of reach for many. The middle-ground pricing helps position it as a premium wellness service.”

Holland notes that as more people seek forms of psychedelic-assisted therapies, the growth of more expensive treatment options will continue to limit access for many. “Most of the treatment options for people are a lot of money, and it’s too bad for inclusivity and equity that many of the options for many of the people who could benefit are out of reach financially,” she says. Still, Holland supports the expansion of different kinds of services for psychedelic-assisted healing. “I’m all for scaling up, I’m all for there being lots of options for people.” 

Ketamine Providers and Float Franchise Owners

Because of the medical licenses and enhanced insurance that will likely be required by their proposed Journey Clinic centers, Janicki estimates that 25-50% of the True Rest float franchise locations—which are individually owned and operated—will adopt the ketamine offering. He believes True REST is at a growth inflection point, comparing it to franchises like Massage Envy and Orangetheory Fitness, which he says scaled rapidly after proving their model with a foundation of about 50 locations. 

Janicki believes they can grow True REST to 500 centers within 5 to 10 years. “Our vision is to grow True REST from just float tanks to all things that support whole mind-body healing, including psychedelics,” says Janicki. He says he his solidifying protocols, licensing and insurance in the coming months and expects to launch the first Journey Clinics as pilots in Q4 of 2025 with a broader rollout in 2026.

Spionjak says the goal of creating up to 500 centers in 5 years is “ambitious, but not impossible.” She believes that True REST has demonstrated the scalability of float therapy through its current franchises and building on existing infrastructure is an operational advantage. Spionjak argues that demand for such services is present, especially after the pandemic when alternative therapies and self-guided wellness protocols have seen an upsurge. For this proposed service, she says speed of execution, staffing, and quality control will be the key.

Spionjak adds that some ketamine clinics are already beginning to adopt services such as coaching, VR, or breathwork to support patients’ treatment. “We are seeing a wave of non-clinical, state-level and wellness-based models expanding,” says Spionjak. “The most structured precedent is Oregon’s psilocybin program where licensed facilitators, not doctors, lead the sessions in specialized centers.” 

Janicki and Arnott say that their partnership can help scale preparation and integration services alongside ketamine therapy. Within this proposed system, SoundSelf will be used to facilitate every stage of a client’s ketamine treatment. Arnott says he originally developed the technology as a standalone preparation and integration tool. However, he says his first clients began to use it with psychedelic substances and saw strong results. “Turns out, when you combine it with medicine, it vastly deepens the experience of both the medicine and the technology, and it’s a real marriage,” says Arnott. 

Owing to its biofeedback loop, Arnott says SoundSelf takes the dissociative effect of ketamine and re-associates the person with their body in a profound way. He adds that the system helps people prepare for medicine work by training them for the surrender response, particularly aiding those new to psychedelic experiences in navigating non-ordinary states. Arnott says he continues to integrate diverse sources of knowledge for that synthesis. He says he is currently studying with a Guatemalan ayahuasca medicine worker and has recorded their teachings to integrate into SoundSelf sessions. The music in the SoundSelf system is dynamically controlled by an AI responding to the player’s voice and breath while sampling ceremonial instruments.

Arnott calls the pairing of SoundSelf technology with True REST’s ketamine protocol the “ultimate technodelic experience,” referring to a term he coined in his 2012 essay The Technodelic Manifesto after a spiritual awakening at Burning Man. His original aim was to create digital systems that could induce unitive awakenings. That vision, he says, now feels realized as well as expanded through this new partnership.

Providing Transcendent Experiences

While Janicki acknowledges that some clients for the new service may initially need ketamine to treat their depression and anxiety, he says enhanced floating services can provide therapeutic altered states that do not rely on pharmacological intervention. Services such as the Vitality Suite, that do not include ketamine therapy, can potentially help patients taper off the need for medications, says Janicki.

“This isn’t supposed to be something you have for life,” says Janicki, who says he wants to provide experiences that can help people move on from a dependence on medications. “Once people realize they can tap into these states naturally, the idea isn’t to become dependent on any service at all.” 

Janicki and Arnott met over a decade ago, bonding over their shared vision to use technology to turn people inward for psycho-spiritual healing. Janicki says he has a 25-year background in meditation with the Falun Gong, together with marketing all the Shen Yun shows in Arizona for the last 18 years. He says he has also helped Falun Gong refugees fleeing spiritual persecution find asylum in the U.S. In 2008, he came across a video of Joe Rogan describing a float tank experience in which he entered a mandala and had an out-of-body experience. “Chances of him being sober are zero percent,” says Janicki.

After trying a float tank himself and seeing its potential, Janicki took a “giant leap of faith,” quitting his job in business management and funneling close to $250,000 in funding from himself, family, and friends to launch in 2010 a float spa in Scottsdale, Arizona, the first True REST location. After five years, his small business blossomed into a franchise. Around this same time, Arnott built the original prototype of SoundSelf, a virtual reality experience that guides users through a tunnel of visions responding to their breath and voice, designed to help them experience oneness. The technology has since evolved into a light-and-sound experience using strobing lights while the user keeps their eyes closed. 

Over the decade, both of their businesses grew, and they became aware of research showing that floatation could help ease depression and anxiety that some people are now turning toward psychedelic-assisted therapies to help remedy. The two began collaborating, experimenting with each others’ technologies and seeding their future partnership. As Janicki’s company expanded he says that search terms for True REST began to out-number any of the search terms for flotation therapy. By 2018, True REST became the largest float tank spa franchise in the world.

Both Janicki and Arnott say they are drawn to healing practices that help people access mystical states – experiences of unity and divine realization, to which they attribute healing effects. Arnott says that while there are many forms of mystical experiences, “unitive state experiences, where you feel connected to everything, and where you feel your own consciousness grounded in that connection and you are rightly humbled by that has a corrective impact on identity and psychology.” He says these experiences are profound and can have a long-term impact. “Once you’ve had a unitive experience or two, there’s no going back to who you were before, and that’s a relief,“ says Arnott. “That’s why when we targeted non-ordinary states [with SoundSelf], we specifically targeted unitive states.”

Janicki says the goal of their partnership and multilayered healing approach is to provide multiple pathways for people to reach this core realization – where “they realize they’re a spiritual being. They realize they have a divine purpose.”

Janicki and Arnott say they not only want to scale psychedelic healing, but also the lessons they’ve learned from being at the frontier of the wellness industry. After recently attending a ketamine conference together, they said they were struck by how often clinics overlooked the importance of set and setting. With the development of True REST, they hope to evolve the concept of how a highly designed environment can impact the experience of psychedelic-assisted therapy. “The beauty of a franchise, I think — is if it’s a real, genuine community, where we’re all sharing with each other, best practices are going up,” says Janicki.

Arnott says it’s exciting for him to “see this perfect synthesis coming into view and with a brand partner who’s ready to deploy it in the right setting and right combinatorial elements to create that really perfect immersive and technodelic experience.”