When I was younger, I thought my dad was nuts.
Don’t get me wrong – I still do (it provides at least one half of the explanation for why I am), but I used to especially think it was nuts when he’d put on these special headphones meant to cancel out environmental sounds via white noise. They were huge and goofy and even though he got them to wear on airplanes, he’d put them on everywhere, embarrassing me.
Now, that I’m 200 years old myself, I can understand how distracting peripheral chatter can be and how that annoyance can raise anxiety til we wanna reach for the Rx bottle.
Since pharmaceuticals and alcohol don’t have the best effect on me – actually, they’re great – for like, the first five or ten minutes. After that, though, my eyeliner streaks down my face as I streak through a church, waving my high heels victoriously in the air with one hand and a stolen aspergillum in the other, anointing the petrified patrons of Jesus lining the pews, all while shouting “Goood evening, commmmmissioner…!!!” at them in a voice that sounds more like David Lynch than Ledger.
So, ya know. I’ve found other things.
Some of them are boring for you. What might be less boring are these things called binaural beats. Basically, you pop on some headphones, and the sounds that go into each ear are different enough to make your brain interpret reality differently. And then you feel a certain way.
Voila! Digital drugs!
They’ve got ‘em for all sorts of feelings you want to redress. What’s more, they’re free on youtube. So, let’s play a game. Grab a partner, and let’s do a single-blind study. You plug their ear holes full of headphones, press play on each of the videos, don’t tell them what it’s supposed to do, and then ask them how they feel after.
Have them read a book or do something productive while they listen to this:
Auditory opium for the pained:
Maybe if your sig. other had a tough day (this one makes my heart start beating slower):
Giggity:
(But if you’ve got that much time on your hands, I say just use them.)
Go forth, try these out, peruse Youtube for others, and then report them back to me.
3 Comments
Velt
I do these exercises to train for freediving & spearfishing called static apnea and walking apnea (basically just holding your breath while still or walking). I’ve found that the slow breathing I use to lower my heart rate before the actual breath-hold has an extremely calming effect in any situation, especially on the slow exhale.
Ashley
Yeah! I’ve seen a thing on that before – when they were training a guy for the SEALS or something. Yeah, the breathing thing is pretty much the easiest calming thing we can do. Speaking strictly for me, insane people tend to be far less good at it.
Now googling “static apnea” to learn more…
Velt
The more you do it, the better you get… regardless of sanity level. Just look at me, I’m pretty bonkers.