Karen Newell on Sound, Sleep and Meditation

Dr. Mark Leeds [00:01] Karen Newell, welcome to the podcast.

Karen Newell [00:04] Thanks, Mark. It’s great to be back.

Dr. Mark Leeds [00:05] Thank you. So let me introduce you briefly to the audience. You’re the founder, CEO of Sacred Acoustics. Is that correct?

Karen Newell [00:14] Yes, I’m the co-founder of Sacred Acoustics. Correct.

Dr. Mark Leeds [00:18] And Sacred Acoustics is one of my favorite products out there. You create these incredible recordings that treat anxiety, that help people to meditate, to fall asleep. And they really work, but I mean, not only do they work, they’re scientifically proven. I think the last time we met was before the study had been published and now for a long time, we’ve had at least one study published on the efficacy of your recordings.

Karen Newell [00:44] Yes, I can tell you about that. This was a pilot study done by Dr. Anna Yusim. She’s a psychiatrist in a very busy Manhattan, New York City practice. And she started prescribing a certain set of recordings to her patients. And she used the state trait anxiety inventory to measure anxiety levels, both before and after a routine of listening. And those who added a listening routine to their daily routine of listening to these recordings, over just two weeks of listening, they noted a 26% reduction in anxiety. Now in the control group, those were patients in her practice who just continued their regular therapy, but didn’t add the listening routine. And they saw a 7% reduction in anxiety over that same time period. So that’s a big difference, almost 20% extra reduction in anxiety just by listening to these recordings. And she also had other really interesting reports. She measured anxiety using that well-used, reliable form. But people reported other sorts of things. Like you said, there was a medical student who was getting better sleep. She was able to focus better on her studies. And so she was passing her board exams at higher rates. She talked about people who had been in toxic relationships for years, relationships they just couldn’t get themselves out of. And after listening to these recordings, suddenly they had this ability to remove themselves from those toxic relationships. And another interesting fact is the form state trait anxiety inventory, it measures your state anxiety in a given situation, and it measures your trait anxiety, sort of that anxiety that you have as you walk around in the world. And she noticed a more marked reduction in anxiety in the trait anxiety. And so to her, to Dr. Anna Yusim, as a psychiatrist, she knew this was affecting her patients in ways that medication and other types of therapy just weren’t addressing. Now, it’s not the same for everyone. I want to make that clear. Some people do well on different psychiatric medications, but using our recordings to help people get into meditative states, there’s all kinds of research showing that meditation helps people to achieve, you know, greater immunity, lower stress, lower anxiety, all kinds of benefits. And that Western mind, especially those who might be opioid addicts or have other types of problems that you help people with, that we have so much trouble just calming the mind and knowing how to get into that quiet state. So these recordings, they kind of serve, I like to call them training wheels to help us learn how to get into those more relaxed or expanded states.

Dr. Mark Leeds [03:47] Yeah, definitely. Now, there’s a whole world of people that are suffering from what they call iatrogenic injuries, iatrogenically injured people, which means people injured by the medical field. And it’s really like an epidemic. I mean, we talk about the opioid epidemic, the opioid crisis. There’s another crisis probably as big or maybe even much larger. Much larger, it’s not killing people, but it’s putting them into a state of hell on earth. I mean, they’re suffering to an extreme. You know, people that have been on benzodiazepines or other psych drugs, but benzos are the worst. They may have been prescribed by their doctor for years and years, and they’re told these are safe. You know, you’re not going to overdose. They’re not going to kill you can take this safely indefinitely. And they take them for year after year, sometimes decades. And then they find out that these medications are toxic to the brain. They damaged the receptors. They caused what they call toxic encephalopathy. And now we’re just learning. They’ve changed all the warning labels on these medications. We’re learning that they really should only have been used for short-term use and not indefinitely. So these people now have these brain injuries, not something you’d see in an MRI, but they definitely know that they have it. They’re suffering with rebound anxiety. They can’t sleep. They have abdominal pains and gastrointestinal suffering. They call it benzo belly. Some people develop this really horrifying condition, akathisia, where they can’t stop moving. And they feel like they just want to rip their skin away. So I’ve been working with people over the last few years a lot, a lot more than in the past. People that want to taper off of benzodiazepines or they’ve already tapered. Sometimes somebody taper them too quickly because the rehabs aren’t really prepared for this. They say they can do anything and they’ll taper someone in two weeks or a month and it’s way too fast. So now people going through this benzo withdrawal, this protracted withdrawal in some cases, they’re looking for anything to help them get even just a couple hours of sleep. I’ve had the best success. You wouldn’t even believe how well it works. Nobody wants to believe it. Then they try it. They’re like, oh, wow, that actually works. I can’t believe it actually worked. And the big hit that you guys produced is the, I think it’s called the Professional Delta. So, yeah.

Karen Newell [06:18] Go ahead. I’ll comment after you finish.

Dr. Mark Leeds [06:20] Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I want you to, if you could talk about that, they love that Delta Sleep Program. And I think it runs for like 40 minutes. And that’s something that people have been asking for. Like, is there any way to make this play continuously for like eight, nine or 10 hours or something, you know, because then one person says you had to keep waking up in the night and restarting it. But it really works. They just love that program.

Karen Newell [06:41] Wow. Yeah. Well, the whole mind bundle is the collection of recordings that were used in that pilot study I mentioned. And whole Delta professional is one of those recordings. And that is a 60 or 70 minute recording, not just 40 minutes. And it can be played on repeat indefinitely. So this may just be more a factor of the person’s playing ability. For those who have iPhones, any recordings purchased on our website, or they’re also available as in-app purchases, can be played within the Sacred Acoustics app. And within that app, you can set a timer. You could play for eight hours if you wanted to all night long, which some people do use. How interesting that it’s the delta recording. So delta brainwaves are the brainwaves associated when we’re asleep. And so these are not the deepest delta waves. These might be a little bit towards theta a little bit. I think they’re right around three hertz. And zero to four hertz is the delta range. But delta is very relaxing. Almost anyone who listens will, if they don’t fall right asleep, they’ll lull into a space where their body is profoundly relaxed, but their mind might still be aware. Theta frequencies also included in that set are designed for more meditation and a very profoundly relaxed state without falling asleep. But very often we’re trying to achieve that state between awake and asleep. Of course, some people want to just fall asleep, but we can find a lot of fruitful kind of consciousness exploration when we’re in that hypnagogic state between awake and asleep. And that’s where sometimes people, I’m not sure if your patients have shared this with you, but some of our listeners will say that listening to these recordings actually make them feel emotional. And what happens is it seems to trigger anxieties, disease, traumas that haven’t been properly processed that are already in their system. And so for some who have suppressed all of these emotions over time, especially I imagine those who might be on some of those psychiatric medications, this allows them to be released. And once that kind of energy is released from the body, all of these suppressed emotions, then we start to feel some recovery and some relief, maybe from, you know, big, bad mental problems that seem to haunt us. Sometimes they just kind of melt away through listening to these recordings. They seem to be triggered. But more often, that whole delta is used to help people get into those profound states of sleep, which so many of us crave. I know I’m someone who has problems with insomnia myself, and different kinds of methods help, including binaural beats. And so very pleased to know that’s the reporting that’s helping your people the most.

Dr. Mark Leeds [09:39] Yeah, yeah, they love that. I love Theta. That’s my favorite. I’ll play a Theta program. In fact, I realized that this is a thing that works really well for me because I do a lot of writing, a lot of writing articles for our websites. And sometimes I get stuck, you know, I’ll write something, I’ll be like, there’s just, it’s just not right. I need to work on this. And then it just gets me really tired. And I feel bad. I’m like, oh, I’m getting older. I’m just falling asleep. But I found that it’s actually not a bad thing. I’ll work on a project. I’ll work on some writing. And then I’ll go take a nap, maybe on the couch, and put on the theta program. And you’re right. I get into that in-between state. And it’s almost hallucinatory. I remember this one time. Behind my eyelids, I started seeing this almost like an ancient rune with all these hieroglyphics on it. And they were changing really fast. And I didn’t know what it meant. And it was almost like out of a movie. I’m like, if I could just capture this, it’d be like really incredible. And I don’t know what it meant, but just strange things like that. And then what happens is after I’ll wake up and go back to what I was working on. And suddenly I have all these great ideas, like just something came out of that, out of that being in that state.

Karen Newell [10:48] Yeah. And how productive we think sitting in front of our desk is our most productive time. You know, I’m hearing about companies measuring people’s keystrokes to make sure they’re working, but kind of taking a step back and getting in touch with that part of you. Can make you even more productive. And so lots of people will listen for those reasons. Included with that set is also an alpha recording. And we have mixed results on that. Lots of folks do enjoy listening to that for focus and concentration. But some find alpha is also associated with dream sleep. And so some find that alpha kind of triggers those strange images. But sometimes those images are helpful. I’ve also had visions of hieroglyphics while listening to these recordings, mine came down vertically in sort of a film strip coming down. And I didn’t know what they meant either. But afterwards, when I was kind of writing insights in my journal, all kinds of ideas came to me. And so sometimes it’s just symbolic what we’re seeing in those experiences, but it’s really opening us up to sort of receiving information that we can then utilize here and now. And so lots of folks think that meditative experience evolved escaping the here and now, sort of being a hermit in a cave or something and never talking to people. But actually, meditation helps you function in this world so much more efficiently and productively and more happily. When you can get in touch with that greater part of yourself, you’ll find that’s a piece of you that if you haven’t been aware of it, that’s really been missing. And once you’re able to get the toxic substances out of your system with using these recordings, Sometimes people will then follow up with spiritual awakenings and sometimes connection with souls who have deceased. Maybe a long deceased grandmother will show up and resolve some issue of the day that might have been bothering that person. So we like to say everything that happens in those meditative experiences are relevant to your here and now lives. And they can often be dreamlike. Like you said, it’s, you know, lucid dreaming is when you’re sleeping and dreaming normally, but your awareness becomes aware that you’re dreaming. And so you’re having a dream knowing that it’s a dream. And this can be a very useful state as well. But our recordings seem to help people enter that sort of lucid dreaming state from an awake state. Like you said, take time in the afternoon, listen to some theta recordings and, you know, conjure up that lucid dream. It can do a lot for writer’s block, like you said, or maybe if you’re trying to solve a vaccine problem or to do with a relationship or something at work. Really, anything that you’re facing in life can be taken into these meditative states to find solutions and answers. And even if they’re not literal answers, sometimes you come out more prepared to tackle those problems than you had been before. So lots and lots of applications for these recordings, really just depending on the listener and their particular goals.

Dr. Mark Leeds [13:57] Yeah, definitely. Now, one thing when I was recommended, when I recommend to people to listen to these, I tell them, you know, they’re binaural beats and they’re more effective if you listen with headphones. Now, for me personally, I have not found a really good solution for that. You know, I do try, I wear earbuds or I wear headphones, but I can’t fall asleep laying on my back. I have to lay on my side or my stomach. So I will listen to them over, you know, through a speaker. And I have this little speaker that I got on Amazon that I love it because I can put a USB or like a micro SD card in the back with MP3s and play music. And I can carry it around with me anywhere. It’s battery powered. But I guess then you call it isochronic, right? If it’s played over a speaker.

Karen Newell [14:42] Well, our particular binaural beats also include monaural beats. And so every binaural beat producer creates them a little bit differently. Ours can bind them in every single recording. We call it neural helix. Sometimes people will have sort of a brand name for their method. But including those monaural beats does help the isochronic beats come over a one speaker system. And some of our recordings work better than others over a one speaker system. Our cosmic womb recording works the best. It works the best even over an iPhone. And that’s a six hertz theta frequency. Also very, very calming. If your listeners want to try that one out, it’s just beautiful. It was designed for childbirth. And so people at end of life have also been finding it useful to just sort of find their center and become calm. But what were you asking me? You were asking me.

Dr. Mark Leeds [15:37] Oh, about headphones versus a speaker. Yeah,

Karen Newell [15:42] You will get the best benefit using headphones because you’re getting both left and right signals to the ear. And if and I do understand I can’t wear headphones at night either when I’m using them for sleep, or even sometimes it’s just too much. So for meditation to have that sort of physical bother on my head. And so there are some other options. One involves another object on your head, but it’s a fleece band. And so it goes around like this. I found that very, very useful for listening to recordings while I sleep. So you can lay right on it. And inside the fleece band are the earphones. And these are made by a company called Sleep Phones. And they have lots of different fabrics. So that’s one option for those who want to wear them for sleep, but don’t find them to be comfortable. And another option, another option that I did for several years, actually, I lived in a location where there was a traffic signal and lots of traffic on a corner. And I couldn’t believe how loud it was. And so I set up two speakers on either side of my bed and played the recordings. And for several years, I was able to sleep every night without any trouble, even with the traffic noise going on. But that was with speakers. And even at a lower volume, it seemed to make a big difference. These recordings don’t need to be loud in order for them to be effective.

Dr. Mark Leeds [17:06] Yeah. And the interesting thing with binaural beats is that you’re, and that’s, I would assume that’s why it’s more effective is that you’re, it’s almost like a hallucination. That’s how I explain it to people that there is no, that beat frequency that like it doesn’t exist. You know, you have two tones and one in each ear and your brain is actually creating it. You’re not imagining it, but your brain is integrating the sounds and creating that beat frequency that entrains the brain waves.

Karen Newell [17:33] That’s correct. And it’s interesting. I work closely with neurosurgeon Eben Alexander, who’s very familiar with the brain function. And he would say that the beats are actually affecting the lower brainstem. He says that’s the most primitive part of the brain and where consciousness originally arose from. So he thinks that these binaural beats are actually affecting the most primitive part of our consciousness and that’s what’s really helping us to set our other awareness free, right? So it’s kind of counter, the more relaxed our brain gets with this sort of monotonous, repetitive activity of interpreting these binaural beats, the more the other part of us becomes more aware and can kind of, I like to say we can engage with our consciousness, create intention, and that way we can really manage our meditative experiences. But this is a little more advanced. At first, people can just put those headphones on and listen, lie back and listen. Later, you can learn different techniques to really manage your experience more effectively.

Dr. Mark Leeds [18:38] Yeah. Yeah. And I would say someone shouldn’t be disappointed if like the first listen, they’re not floating out of their body or getting magical insights. You know, it’s not, you might just, it might just put you to sleep. It might just relax you a little bit. But, you know, like you said, with the anxiety study, they used it on a regular basis over a period of time. So it did take time for maybe the brain to get used to the effect of it and to learn to get into that state.

Karen Newell [19:02] It does take time. And each of our brain waves are unique. Every person walking around has different brain waves. And I’ve learned that recently that they can be used much like fingerprints. That’s how unique they are from one person to the next. And so we’re all starting from a different foundation. So when we hear the recording, some of us will, very few of us at one extreme will have amazing mystical experience from the get-go. At another extreme, people will merely fall asleep and feel like nothing happened. There’s all kinds of things that can happen in between. I was someone, when I first started listening to these types of recordings, I fell asleep. I didn’t know how to maintain my awareness when the powerful tones were kind of taking me under. And at first, like you said, I loved that. I was getting better sleep. But when I really wanted to kind of interact more and generate experience, I just learned over time how to kind of hover in that space and allow my body to fall asleep, but not my mind. So at first it can be kind of subtle. And some of the clues that I had is I would be laying there thinking, oh, nothing’s happening. Nothing’s happening. And then I would hear myself snoring, just a gentle little sound that made me realize, oh my gosh, my body is still asleep, but my mind is aware. So this is, can be very subtle for some, and it was subtle for me. And yet I still was able over time to cultivate and generate rather amazing experiences. And they’re few and far between, but they’re enough. Once you have one of these big openings, the point is to bring that energy and information into how you live your lives and not continue to escape to those other states. But finding that balance, what that balance is for each person, that’s part of the fun and the trial and error of listening.

Dr. Mark Leeds [20:50] Yeah yeah that actually the thing with the snoring happened to me the other night I yeah I fell asleep and I in my dream I heard like this beautiful like vibrational sound going through my dream and I it woke me up […] yeah so

Karen Newell [21:06] You were having a hypnagogic experience sort of a lucid dream without realizing. It can be very interesting.

Dr. Mark Leeds [21:15] Yeah. Yeah. So, but this is really an incredible tool for people that are, you know, like people who are, have in this state of protracted withdrawal from benzodiazepines and other psych drugs, they often cannot tolerate any medical therapy, you know, like doctors, the first thing a doctor thinks of is what can I prescribe? You know, maybe I should put you back on the benzos, which is something you never want to say to someone who’s been through that. They’re very distrustful of doctors in general, but there’s not much that can help. And there are some medications that may or may not help certain people, but they tend to be very sensitive to medication. And what I found often when I recommend Sacred Acoustics is that they kind of hear it as like, well, that’s great. It’s not going to work for me. And I’ve had that happen with patients where I keep asking every visit, did you try it? Did you try it? Have you listened yet. And they’re like, no, I haven’t tried it. Like, please just give it a chance. And once they give it a chance, they can’t believe that really works. It’s really actually beneficial. They actually finally get sleep. It’s like, why didn’t I try this weeks ago?

Karen Newell [22:19] Yeah, that’s wonderful. You know, speaking of these medications, I went through an experience as a mother when my daughter as a teenager was having a lot of different problems. And she’s 34, 33, something like that now. But back when she was in high school, she was doing self-harm. She was cutting herself and not really having an easy time talking about it with me. And she did end up telling a teacher. And that ended up, you know, forcing her into a facility just like that. I found her in a facility. And all of these doctors, after speaking with her for about 20 minutes, they were like, oh, your daughter’s bipolar, depressed, this, that. And they wanted to prescribe a whole cocktail of medications right from the get go, not a conservative path at all. And I resisted. I said, do you realize my daughter abuses these same medications? She gets them from her friends and abuses them. If I were to give her a whole bottle of several medications, I’m not sure that would be so wise. And I was actually told by one of these doctors, one of these psychiatrists, that he could take me to court, that I was borderline abusing my daughter for not allowing her to have these medications. And I held firm. I did not allow her to have them because I knew she was abusing them. And she was using the doctor to try to get her own supply. Now, it turns out she really did have some anxiety issues over time. But what she told me when she was out of high school, she was 18 or 19 years old, had graduated high school. And she told me, Mom, you were right to not let me have those medications because I did want them to abuse them and to share them with my friends and trade them around. And she had others of her friends who were busy abusing these drugs, and she saw them who had been prescribed them by their doctors. And she saw them just spiral down into these horrible kind of situations, as you say, just the overuse of these medications, especially when they’re using them incorrectly as teenagers. And so now, flash forward to her current life, she is dabbling with some medications to manage her anxiety, but it’s from a completely different perspective. Very conservative, very careful. And so it’s a shame that any of us need to have these medications, but I do know in some cases they work, although I completely agree with you they can be overused and that they should be used only for short periods of time. And my daughter’s doctors now are very aware of that. And so that makes me happy when she’s approaching it from a different kind of standpoint. She will never be on them long term. She knows the damage. And she also uses sacred acoustics recordings somewhat, although I could convince her to use them more. And maybe listening to this podcast, she will be more motivated.

Dr. Mark Leeds [25:22] Yeah, I would, and probably Dr. Yusim would probably agree. And so there are some other psychiatrists out there that are now seeing it that way that the whole thing about a chemical imbalance cause, you know, chemical imbalance where we need these psych drugs, these antidepressants to get our neurotransmitters back in balance. Now they see that is never, that was never true. There was never, they never, they could never measure levels and say you’re out of balance and we’re going to restore them. You know, it’s not like doing an oil change in a car or something.

Karen Newell [25:54] Yeah, I think it was back in the 70s when these drugs, you know, were going to be the promise of the future of psychiatry. And I’m aware of two different psychiatrists, Brian Weiss and Dr. Bruce Greyson. Brian Weiss just used regression, hypnotic regression, to help people deal with pain and things like that, and ended up accidentally regressing people to past live memories. And having those memories actually helped people more than the medications. And so he started a whole practice with helping people to get in touch with their inner self to solve these kind of problems. And Dr. Bruce Greyson discovered in the 1970s, when he started, same as Brian Weiss, when these medications first were, you know, hitting the scene in a big way, he discovered that near-death experiences, people who come close to death but then touch some aspect of the spiritual realm, they would have these amazing transformations after coming back from these experiences. So it seems as though touching that spiritual aspect of ourselves, the part of us that’s beyond our thoughts and emotions in the here and now, our soul, sort of getting in touch with that inner world that we all have and finding out who we are from that perspective, that sometimes is the therapeutic approach that can help us with our deeper problems rather than just a medication that sort of covers it up and takes away the symptom. We’re actually addressing the real issue. And sometimes it’s very elusive, not easy to talk about, especially when they’re deep emotional problems. We don’t understand the words to even explain them. So sometimes just touching those emotions, feeling that spiritual part of ourselves, realizing we’re bigger than just this individual here and now, that is a beautiful way to sort of address therapeutic issues and actually include these kind of things in therapy for different issues. I know Dr. Yusim is wide open to all of the different spiritual techniques that people are open to. And of course, always it’s meeting people where they are. None of this is meant to push people into places they’re uncomfortable with, but start somewhere. Start with that going within, learning how to feel gratitude in the heart. Using the recordings to put that thinking mind aside so that you can really discover who you truly are. That is the kind of therapy that I think might be very, very helpful for people as they’re really addressing all of these challenges. More and more people are finding to be troublesome.

Dr. Mark Leeds [28:40] Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s a really important thing, putting the thinking mind aside, putting it to sleep, letting it relax and letting the real us, the one observing everything, be able to observe and not, it’s our own thoughts that kind of create this downward spiral of things getting worse. When someone’s in that state of heightened anxiety, you start thinking and overthinking. And sometimes people are in bed laying awake, thinking about now things are quiet and now we’re thinking of all of the problems that we’re having and things are bad and my life isn’t what I wanted it to be. And you just, drive yourself into like this worsening state of anxiety that just snowballs and yeah just a person could put on their their headphones or put it on the stereo put on one of these recordings and just just float away with it just listen to the sound let it just take you away there’s no need to like overthink it or say oh it’s not working yet it’s not doing what I thought it would do like you know listen to it if it didn’t do anything listen to it again and go again and again, you know, try different ones. But it really does work. I mean, I’ve, and I’m going to put this podcast on several different places on the main rehab podcast, but I started a new podcast called the benzodiazepine podcast, where we deal with these people that have been injured by medication. And so far, I’ve covered some really interesting topics like stem cell therapy, ketamine therapy, and some other kinds of interesting therapies. But this is finally one that I’ve experienced myself that I know that this works. It’s not only so

Karen Newell [30:18] Much more gentle, more gentle than those other therapies. Right.

Dr. Mark Leeds [30:22] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, those ones on

Karen Newell [30:24] Your own. Yeah.

Dr. Mark Leeds [30:25] Yeah. I mean, you know, there’s there’s medical procedures and medications and things in the medical field. Usually, if they’re effective, they also have pretty bad side effects. Like you have to worry about, you know, if you take a real medication, you take an antibiotic or pain medicine, you take something that’s FDA approved medication. It might help you with something but you also have the other side it’s going to have side effects adverse reactions and then you have the other side of things you know the medical well well the alternative therapies that maybe don’t really do anything you’re not sure if they work or not and now now what you have is something completely different there’s not really any risk to it but it’s definitely highly effective I mean it’s something unique there’s not a lot of things that fit in that in between place I mean I’d say what another one might be aromatherapy and we have a great podcast on aromatherapy. It’s something that has very little downside, but a lot of upside. And now binaural beats, sound therapy, that combination of different kinds of sounds, like you said, the isochronic and the binaural beats blended together with world instruments and things. It really does work. It’s proven and I know it works for me. So I’m happy to like to put it out there for people to hear about it.

Karen Newell [31:37] Well, that’s really great to hear, Mark. I hear stories every day from listeners who are opening up in all different ways. We really are so unique and how wonderful that you focused on this particular audience who really desperately needs help. I know sometimes when you get the side effects from a medication, a doctor will prescribe another medication to manage the side effects, which then comes with its own. And it can get a really quite extreme, the amount of medications that doctors expect us to take. So yeah, how wonderful that you’re, you know, I can create the tones but you’re actually on the front lines with patients, teaching them how to use them. So I really appreciate that you’re helping people in this way. It’s wonderful.

Dr. Mark Leeds [32:20] Yeah. And thank you for answering the question about the repeat. So people, so that might be the way, I think that might be the best way for people to, you know, the easiest way if someone has a, like a smartphone that they can just download the app, they don’t have to worry about MP3s and copying it. Cause I’m kind of a techie. I like, I’m can can copy an mp3 and put it on a usb thing and stick it in my speaker but the typical person you know maybe they have earbuds or whatever does it work with like if you have like the airpods or different kinds of wireless earbuds

Karen Newell [32:49] Yes as long as you’re getting the signal into both ears it’s a matter of comfort and sometimes ambient noise might come through the airpods and earbuds whereas headphones that go around the ears you don’t get as much ambient noise so it’s really just listener preference but as long as you’re getting the signal earbuds are going to work just as well as regular headphones

Dr. Mark Leeds [33:09] Yeah and that one you talked about I tried that once I think it connects but yeah yeah it’s like a bluetooth thing so it’ll work with any phone and you just connect it and yeah it’s like a headband with like soft speakers in it

Karen Newell [33:22] Yes exactly and they do have a bluetooth or a wired option and so there’s so many options out there none of that can be an excuse for not listening, right?

Dr. Mark Leeds [33:32] Yeah, yeah, definitely. But yeah, that’s so far, I’ve had some feedback on that the app seems to be the most straightforward, easy way just to download it.

Karen Newell [33:40] Yeah, if you have an iPhone, our Android version of our app is not as, excuse me, the Android version of our app is not as user-friendly and is not integrated with our website, but the iPhone version is very well integrated. So any recordings purchased on our website, people can access in the app just by signing in with their customer account. And then you’re good to go. Nothing to download. And then you can take advantage of discounts that we offer and bundle pricing that is not available in the app. So there is advantages, you know, pros and cons both ways. But if anyone has any questions about any of this, the technical issues, the what do I listen to, anything at all, you can reach out at sacredacoustics.com through the contact form. And all those messages come directly to me.

Dr. Mark Leeds [34:29] Oh, that’s great. Now, you had mentioned Dr. Eben Alexander. Does he work with you in any capacity as far as like being a medical director? I know that he, I’ve spoken to him. I interviewed him and he told me, you know, he talked about that, the importance of the binaural beat effect and how it works on the brainstem. I mean, that’s incredible. I believe you do work with him. That’s incredible that he has some, maybe has some input into this.

Karen Newell [34:54] Yes. Yes, he is actually a regular listener. He’s listening right now to these recordings upstairs. And he is a huge, huge fan personally. And so he is always talking about this because like you, he knows firsthand how they’ve been effective for him. But he is the, I’ll call him the first beta listener that we have. He’ll listen to any recordings our audio engineer comes up with and offers advice and input and helps us to develop them right along with me and my audio engineer. And he and I together, we actually teach programs together where we help people learn how to get into these expanded states.

Dr. Mark Leeds [35:36] So if people are wondering, is this right for me? World-class Harvard neurosurgeon, one of the top NDE researchers in the world, advocates and listens and benefits. In fact, I remember he told me that the closest he’s able to get to that state of being on the other side, of being in heaven, essentially, is listening to these recordings.

Karen Newell [36:02] Yeah, yeah. He’s able to reconnect, not in the same way as during his near-death experience, that hyper-reality that so many have, but he is able to stay in touch with all of that energy and uses it to improve his life. So it’s a wonderful thing.

Dr. Mark Leeds [36:17] Yeah, and I’m just happy to be able to fall asleep and to wake up and get work done. And I know that my patients are very happy to finally be able to get some sleep. Great, great. So yeah, so thank you. Thank you again. Thank you for joining me. And what’s the best place that people can connect with you and find out more?

Karen Newell [36:37] People can go to sacredacoustics.com and there you’ll find a free download. It’s a 20 minute OM recording, we call it. But if you’re interested in the recordings we’ve been discussing, look for the whole mind bundle. And when the COVID pandemic first started, that is exactly when our pilot study was published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease that showed that reduction in anxiety. And so that prompted me to make these recordings available at a drastically reduced price. And I even include a free option. So there’s no barrier for people who don’t have the resources. You can go there and get these exact recordings we’ve been talking about, that Delta Professional, the Theta are available to all right there on the website. And like I said, reach out through the contact form if you have any questions or concerns. And I myself or a tech support person would be happy to assist you.

Dr. Mark Leeds [37:31] That’s great. Karen Newell, thank you again for joining me on the podcast today.

Karen Newell [37:36] Well, thank you, Mark. It was a pleasure being here and thanks for all you do.