Latest news with #binauralbeats
Harpers Bazaar Arabia
13 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Harpers Bazaar Arabia
Why Sound Therapy Could Be The Cure-All To The Modern Mental Health Crisis
Modern sound therapy — from baths to app to binaural beats — has exploded in popularity, promising everything from better sleep to reduced road rage. Why are we tuning in now? The term 'nervous breakdown' is no longer used – 'mental-health crisis' is the nomenclature du jour – but I think I had one two years ago. My journey into the psychological night was precipitated by a propensity for clinical depression and catalysed by the death of my father, the loss of two friends to suicide, and my husband's transition into a wheelchair after years of chronic illness. I don't believe that sound therapy cured me. I gradually escaped the darkness through medical intervention from a brilliant Russian psychiatrist who was well worth his exorbitant fee. But throughout my odyssey, I relied on sound-healing tools for comfort. I regularly attended in-person sound baths with a Los Angeles sound-bowl practitioner, Devon Cunningham, which helped me return to the world by lying on a mat in public, surrounded by strangers. At home, I soothed anxiety using a YouTube video with a very long title: 'Sleep Release [Insomnia Healing] Deeply Relaxing Sleep Music * Binaural Beats.' The 'Sleep Release' audio that accompanied me through what Emily Dickinson would call 'a funeral in my brain' was created by a musician from the Netherlands who, like Prince, is simply named Zac. Zac's YouTube channel, @SleepTube, offers a seemingly infinite collection of audio tracks with subtitles like 'Binaural Delta Brainwaves @2.0Hz' to alleviate worry and foster sleep. He has nearly a million subscribers, including one video ('The Deepest Healing Sleep | 3.2Hz Delta Brain Waves | REM Sleep Music – Binaural Beats') that has more than 45 million views. But Zac's free YouTube channel is only the tip of the contemporary sound-healing iceberg. International media music and intellectual-property giant Cutting Edge has launched a wellness division, Myndstream, and is currently partnering on wellness music with producer and rapper Timbaland, as well as on an album with Sigur Rós's Jónsi. In a 2023 interview with Harper's Bazaar, Reese Witherspoon espoused the benefits of falling asleep to binaural beats, and on a recent episode of Amy Poehler's Good Hang podcast, actress Rashida Jones discussed using sound-wave technology to manage road rage. So why has sound healing, which has a 2,000-year history rooted in the singing bowls of Nepal, Tibet, and India, become so popular? What exactly is a binaural beat? And what does it do to our brains? Manuela Kogon, a clinical professor and integrative-medicine internist at the Stanford Center for Integrative Medicine, describes binaural beats as an 'auditory illusion.' 'If you give the brain two different sounds that have different frequencies but are close together – within 30 hertz of each other – the brain is like, 'What the heck? There are two sounds. What am I supposed to do?'' she explains. 'The brain can't differentiate that. It can't say that it's two; it also can't say it's one. It just averages the difference and hallucinates a new sound. It's kind of funny.' The binaural beat may be newly viral, but Manuela points out that they've been around for more than a hundred years. A German scientist named Heinrich Wilhelm Dove discovered them and published a paper about his findings in 1839. Manuela, a self-described 'brain junkie,' has been studying them for decades; she digs out one of her papers from the '90s for me where she states that 'binaural beats have been purported to induce mood alterations, contingent on the beat frequency. Claims range from entraining the whole brain to altering states of consciousness.' Modern sound healing is not limited to binaural beats alone. Modalities include sound baths, guided meditation, tuning fork therapy, vibroacoustic therapy, audiovisual technology, and music therapy, and the espoused results range from mood enhancement, sleep improvement, stress reduction, and relaxation to wilder claims of destroying cancer cells and manifesting wealth. A binaural beat or sound bath has not been proven to cure cancer or make you rich, but the beneficial effects of sound healing, according to Manuela, involve 'modulating physiology, including blood pressure, heart rate, respiration, EEG … altering immune and endocrine function, and improving pain, anxiety, fatigue, and depression and have been extensively studied.' Like many alternative wellness treatments, sound therapy seems to have increased in popularity during Covid. 'We were all stuck at home,' says New York based practitioner Lavender Suarez, author of the book Transcendent Waves: How Listening Shapes Our Creative Lives. 'So how could we get these same healing tools?' A sound-healing practitioner for 10 years and an experimental musician for 20, with an academic background in counselling and art therapy, Lavender uses physical instruments like gongs, often in repetitive patterns that function in similar brain-entraining ways to digital audio fi les. She's wary, though, of the claims tossed around related to sound frequencies. 'When people are prescriptive about sound frequencies, I'm like, hold on. Brain waves and sound waves are not in direct correlation,' she says. 'I think the interest in specific frequencies comes from our culture's obsession with data. We want that single-shot fix that's always been building in the wellness industry. How do we get to things quicker, faster? 'I only have X amount of time.'' The impact of sound on healing may be just as much about the recipient's goals as it is about the healer's design. 'It's more about the intentions you're putting behind these binaural beats when you're listening,' Lavender says. 'When people are listening to these essentially generic audio fi les online, they're taking what they're bringing into it. The creator is trying to steer the intention by saying, 432 Hz for self-love. You go into it thinking, 'Okay, self-love.' But you could listen to binaural beats for sleep and go for a jog.' I spoke with Robert Koch, an official musical partner of the Monroe Institute, which bills itself as 'the world's leading education center for the study of human consciousness' and has extensive programming around sound technology to 'empower the journey to self-discovery.' Robert, who goes by the stage name Robot Koch, is an L.A.-based composer, producer, and sonic innovator who began his career as a heavy-metal drummer. He now embeds signals produced by the Monroe Institute into his compositions. 'I'm my own guinea pig,' says Robert. 'I try these things on myself, and I can tell when something works on my nervous system because I get more relaxed.' Robert sent me a Spotify link to one of his Monroe Institute collaborations, titled Ocean Consciousness. I found the track relaxing and sleep-inducing, though the sirenic voices peppered throughout the piece made me melancholic. Maybe that's the point. 'It's powerful when people write to me about experiences they've had with my music helping them move through something emotional,' says Robert. 'Music isn't just entertainment. It's a language that speaks to the subconscious.' Virginia-based sound therapist and musician Guy Blakeslee works with clients on everything from alleviating anxiety and increasing physical energy to manifesting love and assisting with fertility issues. Guy interviews his clients and then creates personalised 'sonic talismans' using custom blends of sounds, including Mellotron and Nord synthesizer tones, dolphin and whale sounds, honeybee sounds and a heartbeat. 'Have you ever gotten anyone pregnant?' I ask him. 'I have met the baby,' he says. Guy always believed in the healing properties of music, but it wasn't until he was hit by a car and suff ered a traumatic brain injury that he began pursuing music as therapy. 'It was March 13th 2020, and I was unconscious in the hospital when lockdown took effect,' he says. 'I woke up in the pandemic with this brain injury and spent most of my time using music and sound to guide myself through the recovery process. I found that long, sustaining tones were healing and soothing. I went on to get certifi ed through an online course. What I learned was what I'd intuitively discovered in my own recovery.' Musician, heal thyself. My sound practitioner, Devon Cunningham, who has played her singing bowls for Hermès and Dartmouth College and in outreach programs for Los Angeles County, also describes her trajectory from a job in real estate to sound-bowl practitioner as healing. Devon went on a plant-medicine retreat in Ecuador with her 80-something-year-old mother, and it was there that she first began playing the singing bowls. She found that sound healing provided additional benefits for her chronic lung disease. 'The bowls saved my life,' she says. When Devon ordered new quartz-crystal bowls for a residency at Colgate University, she discovered that 432 Hz, had a heightened impact on healing. 'I witnessed people having experiences with these new 432 bowls that I hadn't seen with my 440 Hz bowls. Ever since then, I've been on the 432, and I've seen miracle after miracle.' While Devon's results with the god frequency are experiential, a 2022 study by researchers at University of Florence and Careggi University Hospital that was published in the journal Acto Biomedica concluded, 'Listening to music at 432 Hz is a low cost and short intervention that can be a useful resource to manage anxiety and stress.' Robert Koch composes music with a frequency called the Schumann resonance: a natural phenomenon, also known as the Earth's heartbeat, that has a fundamental frequency of 7.83 Hz. He's also pursuing vibroacoustics, where listeners feel sounds in their bodies. 'Einstein said that music is the medicine of the future,' he notes. 'Vibration. And I think we're just scratching the surface.' I, myself, am no Einstein. Maybe this is why I find Brainwaves – the most popular binaural-beats app in the Apple App Store – overwhelming. Upon downloading the app, I'm asked which goals I hope to achieve, and I'm given an abundance of choices: Body Wellness, Binaural Sleep, Relax and Calm, Spiritual Awakening. Who doesn't want all of these things? I go with Spiritual Awakening and am brought to another page, where my path to enlightenment is broken down into still more categories: Connection with a Higher Power, Fulfillment and Meaning, Self- Understanding and Clarity. As an existentially challenged person, I choose Fulfillment and Meaning, but then I get FOMO and go back to the beginning. Rather than soothing my nervous system, the choices give me more anxiety. This choose-your-own-adventure approach is unsurprising, given that some of the latest sound-healing tools emerged from gaming. SoundSelf, an interactive audiovisual therapeutic, uses video-game technology, vocal-toning biofeedback, and generative soundscapes to induce drug-free psychedelic states. On Zoom, I meet with the audio director for the digital therapeutics company SoundSelf, Lorna Dune, a Milwaukee-based sound designer and electronic musician. Lorna walks me through several experiments with immersive audiovisual tech. First, we tinker with bilateral light signals: a visual version of binaural beats purported to induce brainwave states like theta (associated with relaxation) and delta (emitted during deep sleep). The light signals make me anxious. But to be fair, a lot of things make me anxious. We then play with binaural beats at varying frequencies, and this experiment is much more successful. As we transition from an alpha (alert but relaxed) to theta, I feel a palpable shift to a more serene physiological state. Maybe this is the power of suggestion, but I could stay here all afternoon. 'Just like with binaural beats, you can look at dance music and how when we're all moving together to one rhythm, we synchronise,' says Lorna. She adds, 'Our brain wants to synchronise. It's normal behaviour that we've been displaced from in modern society. But we find it again through festivals and in pop culture. We say, 'Oh, it's something new.' No, it's actually just who we are.' Of course, we can't always be at a rave. Or in a sound bath. 'I'm happy for people to receive care in whatever way they can, as long as it's not detrimental,' says Manuela. 'I'm not like, 'No, don't listen to the YouTube audio.' If that's what's working for you, go for it.' The takeaway, says Robert, is that 'acoustic therapies make people feel better, and it might be as simple as that the relaxation happens through focusing on sound, or associated imagery, rather than stressful thoughts, which most of us have too many of these days.' Two years later, I am still listening to the same YouTube audio from Zac's channel. Sometimes I even sleep soundly.
CNET
21 hours ago
- Health
- CNET
I'm a 42-Year-Old Mom and I Tried 18 Products to Finally Sleep Better. These Are the Ones That Worked
Remember when falling asleep was easy? Even well into my 30s, I could simply close my eyes, take a few deep breaths and gently drift off to dreamland. These days, it takes a carefully curated wind-down routine, an army of sleep aids and the mental zen of a shaman for me to fall and stay asleep. Some nights it's because of the rap-tap-tap of my 4-year-old complaining of a bad dream, or the intermittent cries of my 1-year-old. Other times, it's my laundry list of deadlines or to-dos. Or maybe it's existential dread? Perimenopause? Whatever it is, I'm not alone: A 2022 report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that about one in seven adults had trouble at night for most or all of the previous 30 days. I exercise almost daily, even if it's just an outdoor walk. I eat lots of nourishing, vitamin-rich foods, and drink very little alcohol. These things can set a person up for a successful night of zzzs. But I'm still tossing and turning. If I wanted to go all-in on optimizing sleep, I needed to go further. Like any good writer, I've been investigating. Knowing that good sleep can't be fixed with one magic solution, I've been incorporating some holistic tactics, hoping they'll culminate in one big cure. From air purifiers to red light therapy, THC gummies to binaural beats, here are the options I've tried to (finally) successfully snag a full night's sleep. Meet industry creators, contributors and emerging thought leaders that have paired with CNET's award-winning editorial team to provide you with unique content from different perspectives. Meet our contributors For the home Ever since we lived in Los Angeles, we have become diligent users of air purifiers. We live in North Carolina now and keep up the habit. Researchers at the University of Louisville found that air pollution, a warm bedroom and high levels of carbon dioxide can disrupt our sleep. I started my quest to better sleep by upgrading our bedroom air purifier. The one we'd been using was archaic and had begun making an unpleasant sputtering sound. So I tried the Sans Air Purifier, which is not only whisper quiet but also smarter: It uses medical-grade filtration to capture 99.9% of particles 0.1 micron in diameter, activated carbon to absorb chemicals, odors and gases, and internal UV-C light for protection against pathogens. Maybe this is strange to say about an air purifier, but it also just looks really nice. To run diagnostics to see if it improved our air quality, I started using the Airthings Wave Enhance monitor to track air quality, carbon dioxide levels, VOCs, humidity, temperature and light pollution. The Airthings app gives me real-time updates on air quality, pressure, temperature and more, and remembers past stats for up to a year. This way, I know for sure that I'm falling asleep in an optimal environment. For the body Though I live a pretty healthy lifestyle, I'm also big on supplements. Each morning, I take a Seed DS-01 Daily Synbiotic for gut health, and almost immediately, I noticed positive changes. I had less bloat, more regular you-know and overall greater digestion comfort. It's part of my non-negotiable health arsenal now. I often take a collagen supplement and have tried everything from Spoiled Child liquid collagen to Vital Proteins Grass-Fed Collagen. I find that regular use not only makes my skin and hair look healthier but also helps ease joint pain, which allows the old body to relax come nighttime. Even though I'm only 42, sometimes my body feels ancient (it's exhausting to carry a 22-pound baby on your hip all the time). I've started using Heali Magnesium + Menthol Tape to ease muscle and joint pain, specifically on my elbows and wrists, and reader, you'd be as shocked as I was to know that it actually works. At the first sign of joint pain, I apply tape for the day and by nighttime, my pain is drastically diminished. I'm also a big fan of red light therapy, which has been gaining attention for a while now, and I'm all in on at-home devices like my red light face mask as part of my skin care routine. Red light therapy has been known to help improve skin radiance and tone and diminish the look of fine lines, but its effects may be more than skin deep. Now, I'm using the Clearlight Personal Red Light Tower, which uses both red light (650nm) and near-infrared light (850nm). Near-infrared light may aid in the release of melatonin, support mental health and stimulate cells to produce more collagen, thus assisting in muscle recovery and repair. I use it in the mornings on my body while I do my skin care routine. For the mind Years ago, I swapped my nightly glass of wine for herbal tea, adding a few drops of Elix's Yin Time tincture each night. Yin Time uses a 2,000-year-old Chinese formula that includes ginger, hibiscus flower, reishi, jujube seed and more to calm the mind and help promote restful sleep. I like ElixElix because it uses traditional Chinese herbal medicine to holistically support the body and mind, which is an easy way to give my nightly beverage a healing boost. I like that its formulas are free of alcohol, preservatives and fillers. I find adding just a few droppers of this each night helps me relax. One of my other secrets to sleepy success is a low-dose THC gummy. For me, 2 to 2.5mg of THC (Delta 9 is what's legal here in North Carolina) is the sweet spot to gently usher me from totally overwhelmed to totally chill within the hour. My current favorites are Rose Delights Deep Sleep gummies, which are very subtle. However, I also like Camino Recover gummies, as well as Sleep. When I am in need of a deep sleep, I turn to Urmawm Ursleep gummies, which include CBD, THC Delta 9, Melatonin and L-Theanine, all ingredients that induce a laid-back state. They give me the nudge I need to relax without the psychoactive effects. Understandably, some people can't tolerate or don't want to opt into THC-based sleep aids. My other go-to gummies are the Plexus Worldwide SLEEP gummies. They're made with melatonin and ashwagandha, both common sleep aids, as they can help support healthy sleep patterns and promote balance and overall well-being. These gummies also include lemon balm, which can be calming, and GABA, a naturally occurring amino acid known to support relaxation. Finally, time for bed When it comes to actually slipping beneath the sheets, I have amassed more accoutrements than a museum. Have you ever heard of binaural beats? I had not, but came across them in my research for a peaceful night's sleep. Binaural beats are the phenomenon that happens when we hear two sounds and our brain perceives a third. Research has shown that, depending on the frequency, binaural beats can help alleviate depression and anxiety and aid in sleep. What's unique about SleepVibeSleepVibe is that its device is inaudible and uses very low power. You simply plug it in and place it beneath or near your pillow, and it creates a low-frequency field (less than 200Hz). This delivers binaural beats, which support the brain's natural sleep patterns to help lead you into a restful sleep. Since using it, I've found that I've been drifting to sleep more easily and staying asleep longer. I've also been experimenting with the Soaak app, which uses scientifically backed, clinically proven frequencies to address myriad issues, sleep being just one of them. Soaak offers a curated library of sound frequency compositions to improve hormonal health, reduce depression and anxiety, boost energy and more. I find it especially useful for travel, since it allows you to plug into a frequency anytime and anywhere. I also tried a Chilipad, which is like a mixture of a mattress pad and a heating (or cooling) blanket. This is a fantastic item for temperature-sensitive sleepers, but it comes with a caveat: The Chilipad can be overwhelming. It comes with a multitude of instructions that I won't bore you with (there's a doc, a need for distilled water, a separate cleansing solution, a drain key, tubing and so on). For a busy mom who can barely make time to prepare a simple dinner most days, it felt like way too much setup and maintenance. But once it was set up, it was absolutely fabulous. Feeling cold? Roll over and bump up the temperature a few degrees. Sweaty? Drop the temp down a few degrees and drift back to sleep in the cool oasis of your bed. If you're not put off by the initial setup and monthly care, then a Chilipad is a dream come true for the temperature queens among us. I also started using the Loftie Alarm Clock, an ultra-sleek clock with a soothing, two-phase alarm that helps ease you out of sleep. It has customizable alarm tones, plus volume and day-of-the-week settings. Still, my favorite feature is its variety of soundscapes, including brown, white, pink, gray and green noise, as well as interesting options like "wooden stovetop" (crackling!). I like that it doesn't rely on Wi-Fi, so I never have to worry about an outage. Note that you'll need a Loftie Plus membership to access certain wellness content like breathwork, guided meditation and sound baths, but I find the variety of soundscapes, sophisticated design and customizable clock features is worth the Loftie. Just after I turn out the lights, I turn on my Helight Sleep device (more red light therapy!), which uses a 28-minute patented protocol at bedtime in which it emits pure red light at a wavelength of 630 nanometers for the first half of the routine, then gradually fades out. It works by passing red light through the eyelids to activate photosensitive cells, which trigger a biological response that aids in relaxation. This sounded crazy to me, but I have found it extremely effective before bed. (So effective that I never see the device switch off at 28 minutes; I'm already asleep.) I also love that it's small enough for travel, which is when I find I'm especially in need of help sleeping. A sleep mask may seem like a no-brainer solution, but if you knew how many masks I'd cycled through in the last five years, you'd understand the importance of this one (and also know that I am a fickle sleeper). My past sleep masks never fit quite right, couldn't be adequately adjusted or didn't block enough light -- the list goes on. The Dore and Rose deep sleep mask has an adjustable strap, offers complete coverage and is both ultra soft and easy to wear. It's the comfiest, coziest sleep mask I've tried to date. Little changes can make a big difference The last five years of my life have involved two pregnancies and postpartum periods, two cross-country moves (and one local) and enough work ups and downs to make an acrobat dizzy. The stress, I realize now, was affecting my sleep. I needed to adapt because I'm not the same person I was five or 10 years ago. I shouldn't expect to fall asleep the same way, either. By experimenting with all these adjustments, I'm having longer stretches without waking, dozing off without a million racing thoughts and (usually) waking feeling rested. Is it the placebo effect? That I assume I'll fall asleep more easily, and therefore do? I'll never know. With all these changes, putting a finger on one solution is impossible. Chances are, there's no one thing that's going to solve your sleep woes (unless you're Victoria Ratliff at The White Lotus and rely solely on Lorazepam). But with the right combination of movement and a mindful lifestyle -- and a little help from a gummy (or a red light therapy device inspired by NASA's findings on light wavelengths, whatever) -- you could be heading to Z Town in no time.
