Oxygen is good for breathing

Students had the opportunity to experience the natural high of inhaling pure oxygen at the University Center between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.

SAC promoted the event and commissioned TjohnE, a booking and production company, to bring their mobile oxygen bar to campus.

Atmospheric air contains about 25 percent of oxygen; TjohnE’s mobile oxygen bar packs a 97 percent oxygen intake.

Wade Stack, special events chair for SAC, said the benefits from the oxygen inhalation include an increase in energy, stamina improvement, mind clarity, stress relief and hangover relief.

Casey Troyer is the TjohnE representative that was on campus Wednesday regulating the oxygen bar. Troyer lives in Los Angeles but said he is on the road eight months out of the year. He is currently on a four-month tour with the mobile oxygen bar.

“We’re basically glorified carnies,” Troyer said. “I like the nomadic lifestyle anyway.”

Troyer said that TjohnE employs approximately 20 other people and services about 5,000 college campuses; this is Troyer’s first visit to The U of M.

TjohnE is one of the major suppliers in college entertainment and promotes other traveling events including extreme air, a mobile skydiving apparatus, Thinkfast, a touring game show that pays $200 to $500 in cash to the winner, and ESP, an imaginative tech game that involves guessing what other people think.

“You’re trying to guess what everybody in the audience is thinking,” Troyer said. “You’re trying to see who the best psychic is; it’s a tripped out game.”

Troyer said that he travels alone by van and will cover over 60,000 miles in the four-month tour. His schedule this week includes visits to Boston, Miami, North Carolina, Memphis, Iowa, Oklahoma and Kansas.

TjohnE and its traveling games are the vision of Tim John, a retired executive who boasts his company as “interactive, informative, entertaining.”

“It’s all extreme, high energy, technology,” Troyer said. “There’s always got to be an angle to get students to do it.”

Troyer said the oxygen bar is a form of artificial yoga or meditation.

“We live in an age of instant gratification,” Troyer said. “Most students don’t have the discipline to shut out everything so we have to do it artificially.”

The oxygen is in a liquid form and evaporates as it flows into the tubes. There are several different flavors that participants could choose from. The flavors are each scented differently and participants could change flavors throughout their session. Sex on the sand, eucalyptus, cloud nine, rapture, pleasure zone, and velvet are some of the flavors that TjohnE’s mobile oxygen bar offers.

Troyer said that there are low health risks associated with inhaling the oxygen. They give every participant their own tube to breathe through to prevent the spread of bacteria.

Troyer did say epileptics should refrain because of the colored light rays flashing through the goggles that participants wear. He has never seen anyone get sick from inhaling the oxygen.

In addition to the goggles, participants wear headphones that pulsate vibrations through their ears.

Dawn Sutton, a senior human resources management major, enjoyed her experience at the oxygen bar.

“I feel like my passages are really open,” Sutton said.

Erik Schmidt, a senior education major, also took pleasure in the experience.

“My breathing feels clearer, almost like I just got up from a nap,” Schmidt said.

Troyer took shifts of four students at a time, and each group was hooked up to the oxygen tank for eight minutes. For the four hours that SAC commissioned TjohnE’s services, they paid out approximately $2,000.

Stack said he and other board members went to North Carolina to view the other experiences TjohnE had to offer.

“We’ll definitely be looking into them in the future,” Stack said. “They do a lot of really good stuff. The majority of people have been very impressed.”

William Connor, a freshman music business major, succinctly summarized the way students felt after inhaling the oxygen.

“I feel calm,” Connor said. “I feel good.”