Imagine you stopped brushing your teeth every day. They'd decay much faster. The same thing has happened to our inner world, the spiritual and psychological side of us: we've neglected it, and that's why so many of us live with stress and constant pressure. It's hardly surprising, with so many distractions (devices, screens, social media) on top of the financial and social pressure we carry every day.
We use a toothbrush to keep our teeth clean. We need a tool like that for our inner world too: something that helps the mind clear, or at least lets it rest during the day, even for a few minutes.
Intermittent Breathing
The tool I'm presenting today is an exclusive exercise I've been working on for a while. It's called Intermittent Breathing, and it's now available in the latest update of the Okaz app. A session takes about seven minutes, and it combines three mechanisms at the same time.
The first: a precisely timed breathing rhythm
You breathe along with a rhythm, timed to the second, that resembles the human heartbeat. It's there to help you relax faster, get out of the loop of intrusive thoughts, or prepare for sleep more effectively.
The second: music at 528 Hz
The background music uses sound frequencies such as 528 Hz. In 2018, researchers at Juntendo University in Tokyo ran a small study with nine healthy adults. On one day they listened to five minutes of calm piano music tuned to 528 Hz, and on another day to the same music at the standard 440 Hz. After the 528 Hz music their cortisol, the stress hormone, dropped significantly over the following half hour, and they reported feeling less tense and anxious. The 440 Hz music made no clear difference.
To be honest with you, it's one small study, so it can't promise the same result for everyone. It is a sensible reason to choose this frequency, though, and a session lasts about seven minutes, longer than the five minutes in the study.
The third: Triluma
The third is also a sound technique, first described in 1839 by the German physicist Heinrich Wilhelm Dove. When one ear hears a tone and the other hears a slightly different one, your brain hears the difference between them as a gentle pulse inside your head. These are called binaural beats. I went back to the idea, reworked and renewed it, and called it Triluma.
Put your headphones on during the exercise and you'll hear faint, barely audible pulses. Triluma is designed for the zone where alpha and theta brainwaves meet, the rhythms linked to rest and to the drowsy state just before sleep. The headphones matter here: the pulse only forms when each ear hears its own tone.
Here too, the research is mixed on whether these beats actually shift brainwaves. A 2023 review brought together 14 studies that measured brainwaves. Five found results in line with the idea, eight didn't, and one was mixed. So Triluma is designed for that zone, but it doesn't measure what's happening in your brain. You can find out more about it inside the app.
Seven minutes a day
The beauty of this exercise is that it takes only seven minutes a day, yet its effect grows if you keep at it daily. Like a drop of water carving stone over time: not by force, by repetition.
I designed Intermittent Breathing to help you retune your brain to calm, gradually. If you practise every day for about three months, you give yourself a good stretch of time to bring your tiredness and stress down, and for your brain to get used to an easier road to calm, until feeling at ease comes naturally to you.
Research on habits points the same way. In a 2010 study at University College London, researchers followed 96 people as each of them built a new daily habit. It took a median of 66 days for the habit to become close to automatic, ranging from 18 to 254 days. And missing a single day didn't derail the process.
Badges and levels
I know people's patience is short these days, and it's hard to stick with anything. That's why I added a system of badges and levels, like achievements, that shows you where you are on your journey with the exercise. Each new level you reach comes with a simple scientific explanation of what the practice is designed to help with: your brain, your health and your state of mind.
Okaz Premium
All of this and more is now part of Okaz Premium, for a small monthly fee, discounted for six months.
The plan is for the serious only. I don't mean age, I mean maturity of mind: sadly, not everyone is ready to change and work on themselves. That's why, through Premium, I'll share exclusive content on meditation, along with psychological methods and techniques you can understand and apply, so that nobody and nothing can shake you or ruin your day.
Soon, once we have enough subscribers, I'll start a private group for like-minded people who want to invest in their spirit and themselves, and build new relationships in a social setting that's positive and healthy for everyone, something sadly missing from most of our daily lives.
Plenty is free too
If you're not that serious about it yet, or you just want to get a feel for it, most of the content in the app is free, and it includes some really important things, like well-known, researched breathing exercises that are enough to change your life if you use them well. There are also Present Moment Reminders: notifications you switch on that pop up at random moments of your day, so you let go of what's on your mind for a moment and come back to now.
There's a lot more in the details. I recommend you download the app from okaz.io and discover it for yourself.
A note: Intermittent Breathing includes short pauses in the breath. Keep your breathing comfortable and never force it. If you feel dizzy or short of breath, stop and breathe normally. Don't practise while driving or in water. If you have asthma, a heart or lung condition, are pregnant, or get panic attacks, talk to your doctor before you start. And if stress or worry has been taking up most of your day for weeks, talk to a doctor or a mental health professional. This exercise isn't a substitute for that help.