People are relying on meditation music, and high-frequency ambient sounds for a relaxing sleep.
It has been a long and tiring day. You have taken a refreshing bath after finishing all the chores. After putting on your loose clothes, you crawl up to the bed like a baby. The moment your head touches the pillow, you feel that all your sleep is vapourised into the air like the hot water in your shower. But you have a cure. You grab your phone and click on your bedtime playlist. Slowly, you sink into a deep sleep.
June Bhattacharya takes the help of meditation music and binaural sound for a good night’s sleep. She said, “I love relaxation music. At night when I need to fall asleep but I can’t, or maybe, my mind can’t calm down on its own. It’s good entertainment for me.”
Binaural means “relating to both ears”. It is an audio illusion where two soundwaves of slightly different frequencies travel inside the human ear and squelch into a perceived new frequency. It gives an impression of a 3D-Stereo sound sensation where a listener feels like they are seeing a live performance with sound coming from different areas.
Prashanth, founder of Ojas Yoga Academy gives sound healing therapy to people. He said,“The sound stimulates the nervous system and calms it down.” Further, he said that hearing the healing music from devices like earphones and speakers take a longer time to get the result than hearing such sounds live. The efficiency also depends on what kind of technology one is using. However, he concluded that the moot point is to get peace so either ‘you’re getting it in your bedroom, or from a meditation guide’.
Sai Keshav, a musician, and a sound healer explained why these sounds bring relaxing effects. Kesav said, “There are specific kinds of frequencies which work on specific aspects of the brain. We try to choose those frequencies which work. They are also called sublime music.”
Kesav said that people go to nightclubs where the music is loud and enjoyable, but when they come back, they feel fatigued or their brain feels heavy. The reason is the volume of the music and the kind of frequencies they produce.They might be entertaining but at the same time tiring for the brain.
“What we try to do with meditation music, firstly we set a very slow pace. The rhythm is extremely slow or there is no rhythm at all. It’s very free-flowing. We try to bring the person who is meditating into a thoughtless state. One of the reasons for anxiety, and depression is because people have a lot of thoughts in their brain that they lose control of their thought process. So, we try to reduce those thoughts and bring the person into a lesser thought,”Kesav added.
Global Drug Survey report states that 72 percent of people use binaural beat therapy to fall asleep and 32 percent to change their mood. A study published in the National Library of Medicine concludes that 62 percent of the respondentsin the study used music to fall asleep.
“Meditation is a way to channelise your energy by bringing your focus on anything that helps. Sometimes it is in a form of music, mantra and guided meditation etc. It works for a few people depending on their faith in it and how they practice it. There aren’t many cons to listening to meditative tracks but the key is to be aware of what kind of emotions and thoughts it is triggering. It is ideal to do research and experiment when starting out on the journey,” said Urvi Shah, counseling psychologist.
A study found that the prevalence of sleep-related disorders is one-fifth of a healthy population. It mentioned changing lifestyle, work pressure, eating habits, etc. as the reasons behind them.
