Tired of meditation? Olo's sound holograms offer a scientifically-backed alternative

Olo, a Finnish startup, creates immersive 3D audio experiences designed to relax the mind and body without the struggle of traditional mindfulness practices.
Tired of meditation? Olo's sound holograms offer a scientifically-backed alternative

Startup entrepreneurs wax lyrical about going to the ends of the earth to build a great product. Here's one that actually did. 

The makers of Finnish mental health and wellness startup Olo travel the world to capture the richest sounds available to the human ear, creating a curated global sound collection. Olo's founders have recorded over 1,000 hours of pristine nature sounds, including from remote locations like São Tomé and Príncipe. And it's all for an app unlike any other wellness app on the market.

Easier than meditation

Olo is an app that promises to be easier than meditation. It's the brainchild of composer Markus Pesonen and somatic therapist Catarina Brazao). They create "sound holograms" by weaving field recordings with instruments to produce immersive 3D audio experiences that offer instant relief from stress, anxiety, and mental fatigue. 

If that sounds like a lot of woo, don't worry. I spoke to Pesonen to find out more; trust me, it's interesting. 

Personally, I haven't had much success with meditation apps. I often find them overly distracting – and just as I start to relax, someone begins talking, disrupting the calm.

Pesonen and I share an understanding of the stresses associated with constant travel. He acknowledged that his previous career as a musician, which involved performing 100 concerts a year, took a significant toll on his physical and mental well-being due to the constant travel between airports, venues, and hotels. 

"I realised I have to figure this out. Otherwise, I'll burn out very quickly. And I looked at everything possible: yoga, meditation, neurolinguistic programming, and early biohacking. There were an incredible amount of options."

The problem with meditation apps

Following a career of over 20 years as a sound artist, award-winning composer, and producer, Pesonen moved into creative wellness work that combines sound and nature.

An app seemed the next step. However, as a composer, Pesonen noticed three major things with conventional wellness apps:

"They all try to make you learn meditation, and 90 to 95 per cent of people don't meditate or get into the benefits or habits of meditation. It's just too difficult." 

Second, Pesonen found that the UX in most meditation and wellness apps was "terrible. It's a remote control with a thousand buttons. This leads to choice fatigue. You just scroll the content instead of having a moment that helps you."

Pesonen also raised concerns about content quality. "A lot of these apps have  static rain and a voice actor reading a script; You can just hear that they're not engaged themselves."

Rethinking meditation for the modern brain

Pesonen asserts that meditation was created "thousands of years ago for a different society" where people needed to learn how to focus and be disciplined:

"Now knowledge work is focused on concentration, and you get attention fatigue when you try to do concentration meditation. It's like trying to exercise a very tired muscle. 

With Olo, we don't want to make you try to focus. You focus all day. This is the time to let go and let your mind wander. And that's the neuroscience backing Olo."

The benefits of mind-wandering

According to Pesonen — and science— positive mind wandering is beneficial.

"Examples are shower thoughts or taking a walk. That's when you digest your life and thoughts, and maybe something important will pop up. It is about making space rather than having to shepherd your monkey mind."

The Olo app creates a 3D audio experience. Sounds seem to move around you, creating a more immersive and engaging sensation than traditional stereo audio. It integrates somatic principles, which focus on the mind-body connection. This means the sounds are designed not just to relax you, but to help you become more aware of your body and how you feel. 

This level of immersion aims to engage the nervous system more deeply than traditional sound therapy apps. 

Scientifically proven to reduce anxiety by 60 per cent

The Olo app has been tested and validated by South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences, through a peer-reviewed randomised controlled trial with 53 participants to investigate the impact of Olo on various parameters, including heart rate variability, electrodermal activity, and psychological well-being.

The most striking finding was the magnitude of the effect. While the team at Olo anticipated positive outcomes, the results were significant: a 60 per cent reduction in anxiety levels and a 30 per cent increase in heart rate variability were observed after only 10 minutes of exposure. 

Pesonen sees these outcomes reflected in user feedback, noting:

"After using the app consistently, people shared they fall asleep earlier, reduce anxiety or can stop a panic attack in its early stages. People shared it with their families, and it spread across generations."

From jungles to your ears

While many people have gone quite deep into social media during the last decade, Olo's team has spent time in jungles and in nature recording sound. 

Pesonen explained: 

"We look at the light pollution maps and where it's dark, that's where we go. And we try to really pick places that are significant in their biodiversity and, and we travel there with special microphones that record the sound in 360 degrees, capturing it in all directions. 

Just before the pandemic, team members visited Santo Meo Principe, the second smallest African country, zero and zero longitudes, latitude, 40 per cent endangered species. Recording audio in remote areas is a profound experience. 

"When you're in the jungle, for the first time with a microphone, and it's starting to get dark, the soundscape changes, and your imagination starts to go wild. Bats are flying around you that are the size of small cats. A monkey drops a coconut somewhere behind you, and you just have to be completely still.

But something incredible happens. Your senses get ultra-sharp sharp, and something primal awakens. 

And you experience this, and this is something that people say about Olo, 'Oh, I feel calmer, but I also feel more alert.' It's the wake-up effect of a coffee with the calm of meditation simultaneously. 

And this made me think, oh, that's how we're supposed to feel. There's this middle ground where we are just relaxed but awake."

The company recently launched a new feature, a special AI feature called Olo AI Reflections, an AI trained by a top somatic therapy expert.

It helps you understand what you just experienced during the sound journey. It explains things in a way that connects to how your body feels – things like how your emotions might be showing up in your body. Pesonen sees potential to integrate Olo into wearable tech in the future also. 

Olo differentiates itself by prioritising community building. While many wellness apps focus solely on individual user experiences, Olo cultivates a sense of belonging through physical community spaces in major cities  in multiple cities such as  New York, San Francisco, and LA. These spaces, led by certified guides, foster meaningful connections and drive organic growth through peer referrals.

And,dear reader, I have been giving Olo a whirl, and the description of combining coffee and relaxation is indeed apt. As a chronically poor sleeper like all the women in my family, I'm always seeking new sleep solutions, especially outside of the conventional sleep clinics attached to hospitals, which tend to offer the same old advice. Significantly, I've found Olo has helped me fall back asleep easier upon waking at 3 am. 

Olo's app is free to download, and you can access various soundscapes. For a more intensive, expansive experience, users can upgrade to a premium subscription in the app.

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