"road and the river" by wvs

Lately, in my quest to sleep better, I’ve started listening to the album “Delta Sleep System” by Dr. Jeffrey Thompson, which is two half-hour tracks that you listen to while you’re asleep, and as they loop over and over again, sometimes demonstrating amazing results.

Around 20 years ago, Dr. Thompson developed this audio as a technique to increase the levels of delta wave activity in your brain (the deepest form of sleep). Apparently embedded in the music are tones and pulses and frequencies which, which stimulate this kind of sleep, so listening requires a decent pair of headphones, or a decent set of speakers on either side of your bed, in order to sleep inside the stereo image.

Apparently a “2.0″ version has been recently released, but it hasn’t drawn the same kind of reviews that the original “album” has earned. As for the music itself, it’s very relaxing: percussion free, it’s a deep, dense drone full of synth tones across the musical spectrum. The changes in tone move slowly and carefully, with the occasional “nature sound” filling in the background.

As for my own experiences, I’ve found the music to be unobtrusive enough, that at the very least it serves as a great form of white noise, blocking out the sounds of my apartment neighbors. I enjoy the dense, relaxing nature of the music, and I find it comfortable wearing my earbuds when sleeping. Interestingly, when I “wake up” while listening to music, I actually won’t notice it’s on until I move my head or move around the bed, almost like it’s gotten inside my head.

So would I recommend the “Delta Sleep System” to others? It depends… if you’re dealing with sleep issues, this treatment won’t hurt you, and there’s lots of people out there who have found relief through it. If you don’t have sleep issues, you won’t really gain anything by listening to this while you sleep at night. But, if you’re an apartment dweller like myself, you’ll appreciate it as a nice distraction from things that go bump in the night.

If anything, the world of Psychoacoustics is fascinating, and it just again reminds me of the power of music on the human brain. You’ll find an interesting online discussion of Delta Wave here if you want to find out more.