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What’s the best treatment for Insomnia? Alexa sounds for sleeping.
“Alexa, play Sonic Yogi”
Since the dawn of time, human beings have always been used to sleeping with some form of sound within their hearing range. Wind, rain, and fire have been alongside mankind during both their waking and sleeping hours.
Alexa sounds for sleeping are developed to help you sleep like the old days. Many insomniacs have found their cure by following this habit. How do Alexa sleeping sounds help so much with sleep? Let’s see!
Alexa sounds for sleep?
Alexa Sleep Sounds is an Alexa skill that plays continuous, ambient sounds through your Alexa-enabled devices. These sounds are meant to help you sleep better, meditate, or help your baby sleep!
The sounds can be of a naturally occurring phenomenon, such as wind blowing, a river stream, or even crickets. Some sounds are completely electronic, like white noise. You’ll also find sounds of specific animals, forms of transportation, or home appliances.
Here’s an extended list of our most favorite sounds:
- Thunderstorms
- Rain
- Babbling brook
- Ocean sounds
- Country night
- Seaside sounds
- Box fan sounds
- Rainforest sounds
- Waterfall sounds
- Wind in trees
- Coqui frogs
- Campfire sounds
- Train ride
- Cat purring sounds
- Underwater sounds
- Pink noise
- Forest bird sounds
- Cricket sounds
- Owl sounds
Find more sounds on Amazon.
How Much Do Alexa’s Sounds Cost?
All of the previous sounds are free. You just have to click “Enable” and you’ll be ready to go. If you’re interested, you can pay about $1/month to subscribe to the premium version, which comes with the following perks:
- Access to more sounds
- The ability to combine sounds
- No sound gaps between loops
- Higher quality
How to Use Alexa Sleeping Sounds
You can order Alexa to start playing any sound by simply saying, “Alexa, tell Sleep Sounds to play rain,” or you can replace “rain” with whichever sound you want.
If you still haven’t decided on which sound you want, you can say, “Alexa, open Sleep Sounds.” Alexa will ask you what sound you want to play, to which you would reply, “List sounds.”
If you want Sleep Sounds to choose a sound randomly, say “Play random.” When a sound starts playing, you can navigate through the sounds by saying “Alexa next”, or “Alexa previous” to go back and forth between them.
You can also set a timer for these sounds to play for a specific amount of time. For example, you can simply say, “Alexa, set a sleep timer for 30 minutes” to only play the sound for half an hour.
By default, any sound will play indefinitely until you say, “Alexa stop”.
There are over 45 free sounds and about 125 sounds on the premium version of the application. You can access the premium version by subscribing and paying $1/month.
The Importance of High-Quality Sleep
Numerous research has been done that proves that sleep is of paramount importance. Poor sleep has been proven to negatively affect the following aspects of your health:
1. Body Weight
Studies found that those who sleep between 6–8 hours a night have a better chance of reaching their weight loss goals. Poor sleep has been linked to binge-eating and addiction to calorie-dense foods.
2. Concentration and Productivity
Poor sleep lengthens reaction time and weakens your ability to focus. This can be extremely unsafe if you operate machinery or drive a vehicle.
3. Memory
Sleep is necessary to consolidate memories. This occurs during the REM state of sleep.
Low sleep quality contributes to weakened memory, which is why it’s always recommended to sleep well before an exam!
4. Physical Performance
Sleep is when muscles can repair themselves. Research shows that increased sleep quality is linked to better athletic success. Also, better sleep has been shown to lower the chances of injury and illness in professional athletes.
5. Risk of Chronic Diseases
Poor sleep has been linked to the development of heart disease, diabetes, and may even lead to a stroke.
Experimental sleep restrictions caused people to show symptoms of reduced sensitivity to insulin, which is the hormone that regulates blood sugar levels.
Research has also found a correlation between reduced sleep and obesity since poor sleep affects the region of the brain that is responsible for appetite. Obesity can later lead to all kinds of other issues, such as cardiovascular disease and strokes.
6. Immunity
Sleep helps regulate immunological processes that fight viruses and bacteria. Functional immunity is highly dependent on healthy communication between the immune system and the nervous system, which requires sufficient hours of daily sleep to stay intact.
7. Risk of Suffering From Depression
People with insomnia have a greater chance of developing depression. Chemical changes occur in the brain due to chronic sleep deprivation that can lead to depression.
8. Emotions and Social Interactions
Researchers believe that low-quality sleep adversely affects one’s ability to recognize social cues. Sleep deprivation negatively affects the parts of our brain responsible for empathy, and it impairs our brain’s ability to realize the impact we have on other people.
9. Inflammation
Poor sleep has been linked to increased bodily inflammation. In addition, it has been linked to long-term inflammation of the digestive system, including inflammatory bowel disease.
How Do Sounds Affect Sleep?
Have you ever heard the sound of your alarm inside one of your dreams? Have you then been bombarded by the fact that this was your actual alarm going off in real life and “leaking” into your dream?
Well, our brains never stop analyzing ambient sounds, even in the deepest stages of sleep. But how can some sounds help us sleep while others wake us up? We must first understand the stages of sleep.
Stages of Sleep
- Stage 1: The stage where your body turns from being awake to sleeping.
- Stage 2: A period of light sleep that precedes deeper sleep stages.
- Stage 3: The deep stage of sleep that makes you feel energetic after waking up
- REM Sleep: The stage where dreaming occurs.
The first 3 stages are considered NREM stages.
How Noises Can Lead to Poor Sleep
Back in history, our ancestors needed to adapt a keen sense of hearing. They had to “sleep with one eye open” in order to react rapidly to looming dangers or lurking predators.
Although we don’t have similar dangers in today’s world, this wary trait still performs in full capacity.
Sudden sounds during sleep may wake you up, causing you to sleep in short fragments. Even if those fragments amounted to 8 hours, you’ll still feel lethargic and drowsy after waking up.
Constant noise (like horns honking in traffic or people speaking nearby) may not wake you up. However, they’ll keep you in the lighter stages of sleep, preventing you from reaping the benefits of the deeper stages.
Many of us have sources of noise like these in our rooms, and we should work on getting rid of them to improve sleep quality. Covering these noises with more relaxing sounds is a step in the right direction!
Masking Noises With Ambient Sound
Research has found that masking external noises by using a continuous background sound, such as white noise, can help improve sleep. This is also true with other similar sounds like the ones provided by Alexa.
If you’re looking for even more interesting sounds to help you mask unwanted noises in your room, take a look at our website for a wide range of relaxing audio.
How Ambient Sounds Improve Sleep Quality?
White noise machines became a thing for a reason. Many people have reported giving up sleeping pills for this drug-free alternative. But how exactly do they affect our bodies?
1. Melatonin Release
Relaxing sounds may induce the release of melatonin, a hormone that sets the time of sleep and wake cycles.
2. The Randomness of Relaxing Sounds
Our left brain is responsible for pattern recognition. Regular music is made up of sequences of patterns. The left brain catches these patterns and focuses on them.
When this happens, it can be hard to fall asleep as the increased brain function caused by the occurring pattern keeps it stimulated.
Sound therapy helps the brain get out of the habitual tracking of a pattern since there are typically little to no patterns, harmonies, or melodies in the popular sense.
3. Entraining the Brain Into a More Relaxed State
Brainwave states are a reflection of how we experience and react to everything around us. There are four main brainwave states:
- Beta: Normal functioning state
- Alpha: Meditative state
- Theta: Light sleeping state
- Delta: A state of deep sleep or deep meditation
The hypnotic nature of sound therapy coaxes the brain into the states Alpha and Theta. This helps guide the brain out of the Beta state and towards the deep sleep state, Delta.
Sonic Yogi Music
Our Website provides therapeutic audio content. The tracks are a mix of natural sounds and electronic waves.
Our journey was started by Jonathan Adams, a professional musician who experienced extreme anxiety. He decided to use his profession to overcome this anxiety through a legitimate, science-based approach.
We provide tracks targeted towards the healing of anxiety, stress, trauma, and insomnia. Our tracks are designed using scientific research done on the effects of sound therapy.
I recommend giving our sounds a try if you’re suffering from any of the issues above. You can stream our content on Spotify, Youtube, Soundcloud, Pandora, and InsightTimer.
Conclusion
Alexa sounds for sleeping can help improve your sleep quality. This is because the sounds provided are random and repetitive; they don’t follow a specific rhythm as regular music does.
The same goes for Sonic Yogi’s sleep sounds. They’re specifically designed to help you sleep.
You need to always keep track of your sleep patterns and make sure you get enough good quality bedtime daily, as this will affect various aspects of your life in both the short and long term.
Subscribe to SonicYogi.com for timed meditations, meditation courses, and sleep tracks.