Sound therapy for mental wellbeing - the top 5 apps to know
What is sound wellness?
Sound wellness is leveraging the physiological process behind the act of listening, which produces specific chemical signals sent to the brain that in turn promote certain mental states such as enhanced mood and reduced anxiety.
Merely focusing in a mindful way on the sensation and experience of hearing can be an important way to tap into various biological processes that control human mental and physical wellbeing.
For instance, certain brainwaves can influence our circadian rhythm, promoting even a greater mental alertness or indeed relaxation. Similarly, they can also. influence blood pressure and reduce anxiety, based on certain the inputs.
What are brainwaves and how do they relate to mental wellbeing?
There are 5 different types of brainwaves that all vary in intensity. From descending order of frequency: Gamma, Beta, Alpha, Theta and Delta.
The most important ones to think about when controlling mood are Alpha and Theta that both involve relaxation and reflection.
The self regulation of brainwaves (neurofeedback) has become increasingly popular among wellness professionals because of its observable benefits.
These benefits have been seen to tap into the frequencies of certain brainwaves and propagate signals to connect our external body to our internal body by focusing on manipulating brain patterns to affect everything from stress reduction, to sleep promotion, to muscle relaxation and everything in between.
Sound wellness and biophilia (nature sounds)
In the example of sound wellness, biophilic soundscapes are now being utilized in offices and personal spaces with the goal of providing mental clarity, enhancing relaxation, boosting attention span and reducing anxiety levels.
As humans continue to evolve, arguably enlarging the distance between us and nature in the process, the amount of unnatural noise we produce grows with it and yet, our natural body processes don’t seem to be keeping up.
Sound therapy, specifically the new concept (but actually nothing new at all!) of biophilic sounds of nature, have been trying to hack our indoor environments to promote all of these biological processes described above.
A range of new apps and software are available providing individuals and brands access to this new frontier in sound therapy, below we outline the top five to watch.
Moodsonic - biophilic soundscapes
Moodsonic uses sonic engineering and the science of psychoacoustics in order to construct biophilic soundscapes to promote healthier work places, school settings, and overall productivity environments.
This algorithm uses sound technology to create soundscapes that react and adapt to targeted users to promote better productivity and overall mental wellbeing.
These soundscapes are designed around the body’s circadian rhythms in order to help people feel more awake during the daytime, and better fall asleep during night.
The brand announced its launch in early 2020 and is owned by The Sound Company.
OpenEar’s SWELL - sound therapy
Open Ear is a a company run by international DJ Brian D’Souza and a team of music professionals. Their main business is to curate personalized playlists for businesses such as hotels, restaurants, retail stores and spas.
Swell is a sub-division of OpenEar that focuses specifically on spas, gyms and other wellness venues, with the aim of promoting overall levels of health and wellbeing by positively impacting mood.
Swell combines bespoke playlists and compositions with sounds of nature and other calming music as a form of sound therapy.
Based in London, the Swell app was made in order to be more accessible and affordable for people on either an individual basis or as a playlist solution for coffee shops, gyms, even co-working spaces.
https://openearmusic.com/soundwellness/
Mindbreaks - mindfulness sounds
Mindbreaks is a mindfulness app aimed at improving mental wellbeing and mood to increase energy, focus, and reduce user stress.
Delos, the company responsible for this app, focuses on the innate need for humans to be exposed to nature to better feel connected to the natural world. They are also the connected to / behind the WELL Healthy Building Standard and the International Well Building Institute (IWBI), making them a major player in the healthy building and wellness real estate space.
Delos creates a “wellness sanctuary” with Mindbreaks, evidence based products, immersive experiences and other audio content to promote mental wellbeing– for a variety of environments from personal to commercial and everything in between.
https://delos.com/products/mindbreaks/
Endel - wellness soundscapes
Founded by a collection of artists and creatives in 2018, Endel uses AI to create personalized soundscapes to use the body’s circadian rhythm to reduce stress, increase productivity, and improve sleep quality.
Endel uses pentatonic scale and sound masking to make soundscapes that get in touch with various aspects of user’s motion tracking, heart rate, light exposure, blood pressure, and other nervous system responses.
The main goal of this app is to take internal and external cues from the participants and use AI to create optimal environments without any conscious effort from the user.
Myndstream - wellness music
Myndstream is a wellness music company that partners with other music companies to circumvent licensing issues, reducing cost of audio privileges in the process.
A main issue that this company tries to avoid is that organizations, such as spas, pay big prices for a whole catalog of music while they only really use a small percentage of the music.
Thus, Myndstream provides spas specifically with a catalog of wellness music that takes away the need to pay for unnecessary playlists not geared towards mindfulness and mental wellbeing in particular.