Hear yourself become the person your affirmations describe.

Gentle stereo tones

Slightly different frequencies in each ear create a subtle sense of depth. Informed by relaxation research. Requires stereo headphones.

Breathing rhythm

A slow pulse that follows natural breathing patterns. Shifts pace gradually — faster during focus, slower as you fall asleep.

Ambient layer

A warm harmonic backdrop that masks outside noise and keeps the listening experience smooth and uninterrupted.

Grounding tone

A deep, subtle frequency that sits underneath everything. You barely notice it — but it anchors the whole experience.

Your voice (optional)

Your 7 personal intentions, recorded in your own voice. We balance the volume for each phase, add a gentle room effect, and time them across the session for a coherent listening experience. You can also ask someone you trust to record for you.

Self-affirmation

A line of social-psychology research, originating with Steele (1988), examines how short, first-person, value-based statements relate to self-regulation under stress. Brain-imaging work has explored which neural systems engage when people reflect on personally meaningful values. Our 7-affirmation format is inspired by broader self-affirmation literature, though optimal count varies by individual.

Cascio CN, et al. (2016). Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 11(4):621–629. doi:10.1093/scan/nsv136
Falk EB, et al. (2015). PNAS 112(7):1977–1982. doi:10.1073/pnas.1500247112

Own-voice processing

Hearing your own recorded voice is processed differently from hearing someone else's voice. Studies on auditory self-recognition describe distinct attentional and self-referential responses. Recording your own affirmations is the simplest way to keep that personal layer present in the audio — and your voice never leaves your device.

Hughes SM, Nicholson SE (2010). Conscious Cogn 19(4):1124–1134. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2010.10.006

Perspective-taking

Self-distancing research explores how shifting from "I" to "you" or "they" in inner speech has been associated, in laboratory tasks, with small changes in how people regulate emotion under stress. Bandura's foundational work on self-efficacy (1997) describes how belief and behaviour interact in goal pursuit. The Evening Wind-Down — Record Your Voice draws conceptually from these ideas — affirmations spoken in your own voice, woven into a 36-minute pre-sleep audio architecture.

Kross E, et al. (2014). J Pers Soc Psychol 106(2):304–324. doi:10.1037/a0035173
Bandura A (1997). Self-efficacy: The Exercise of Control. W.H. Freeman & Co.

Binaural audio (mixed evidence)

Binaural-beat and isochronic-tone literature has explored whether subtle stereo or pulsed audio can accompany relaxed or focused listening states. A 2019 meta-analysis by Garcia-Argibay and colleagues described mixed but suggestive findings across cognition, anxiety, and pain. The 5-layer audio engine uses gentle stereo tones inspired conceptually by this literature — stereo headphones are required for the binaural layer to reach you at all.

Garcia-Argibay M, Santed MA, Reales JM (2019). Psychol Res 83(2):357–372. doi:10.1007/s00426-018-1066-8

Habit formation

Lally and colleagues (2010) studied how everyday behaviours start to feel automatic with repetition. Their data described an average of approximately 2 months for simple daily behaviors, with wide individual variation reported between 18 and 254 days. Building VōxSōma into your evening rhythm draws on the general observation — consistency tends to matter more than intensity.

Lally P, van Jaarsveld CHM, Potts HWW, Wardle J (2010). Eur J Soc Psychol 40(6):998–1009. doi:10.1002/ejsp.674