Episode 123 Discovering The Power Of Binaural Beats: Interview with Wayne Altman

Chris McDonald: What if I told you about an emerging sound wave therapy that simply involves just listening through headphones, but has the power to help you change your mood and get to sleep easier? You might have heard about Boral beats, but you are totally sure what they are or how they can help your overall wellness.

In today's episode, we'll take a look at exactly what they are, explore how they can benefit your mind and body and best practices for using them. Let's do it. This is Holistic Counseling, the podcast for mental health therapists who want to deepen their knowledge of holistic modalities and build their practice with confidence.

I'm your host, Chris McDonald, licensed therapist. I am so glad you're here for the journey.

Welcome to today's episode of the Holistic Counseling Podcast. Did you know that binaural beats have a wide range of benefits that include helping with sleep, reducing stress and anxiety? And with your focus in this episode, we'll give you a clear picture of what they are. And how they can help you and your clients.

Today's guest is Wayne Altman and he discovered an amazing benefit from binaural beats in his own life and went on to create Melody Clouds, a subscription-based relaxation website and app with 8,000 hour of Bal beats guided meditation. And 17,000 plus audiobooks all designed to relax and educate its subscribers at a price point.

Other services just can't touch. Welcome to the podcast, Wayne.

Wayne Altman: Thank you, Chris. I thank you for very much for having me.

I'm

Chris McDonald: so glad to have you here. So can you share more about yourself and your

Wayne Altman: work? Sure. As far as Bal Beats go or, uh, melody Clouds itself goes last year in May, I had a very good friend who was aware that I have tinnitus.

Or tinnitus, some people call tinnitus, which is a ringing in the ear. It is a, uh, very loud, very obnoxious ringing in the ear. I hear it all the time, and at that point, I had not heard silence in probably 25 years. Wow. Mm-hmm. So from my, my, I'm a veteran and I was with the eighth engineer battalion and there was a lot of explosions, so that caused a ringing in my ear.

So he knew this and invited me to his home and began to play for me, uh, certain tracks of music. This music was real. Kind of crunchy, you know, woo woo, very ethereal, not me, but he said that there were frequencies embedded in that music that may be able to help me with my tinnitus. So I was in. Anything that I could get to solve this issue.

First track didn't work, didn't do anything. Second track didn't do anything, but that third one completely blocked out that high pitched wine, and it really woke me up. I was like, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. What just happened here? Within a week of that encounter, I bought the domain melody clouds.com. I began collecting binaural beats and XiO frequencies that in turn turned to 18,000 audiobooks and growing.

I am currently doing, um, ESOPs fables with a disc jockey that is, is, uh, in the hall of fame. Gary Meyer. So it grew, it exploded into all of these other things. That's

Chris McDonald: huge amount of options for this.

Wayne Altman: Wow. Oh yeah. I was looking at the app today and the way that it works out. It's very easy to find things.

It's, it's really cool. What, what this has turned into. So what exactly are these? Um, so a Boral beat is two frequencies. One going in one ear, one going in the other ear. Your brain cannot process both of those frequencies simultaneously. It creates a third frequency that it can handle. That is the frequency that does all of these, you know, for lack of a better word, miraculous things.

Your brain is an electrical instrument. All of our moods, all of our instructions in the brain are carried by electrical impulse. So if you introduce new electrical impulses, your brain has a way of processing them, and you can find your way to manipulating moods, uh, giving your brain, you know, the ability to capture sleep or to change someone's mood.

We have the ability to block grief with these Boral beats and SIO frequencies. So what does

Chris McDonald: that mean? Block grief

Wayne Altman: is it? So if you have someone that is clinically depressed, you have a way of preventing that crushing grief for someone that depression. Now, it lasts as long as you're listening to the frequency, but it gives them a respite from that.

Have you ever listened to a song and you got very excited about listening or hearing that song? Oh, lots of songs. Yeah. Right. Okay. So it works along those same principles. You introduce these frequencies and it has that ability to, you know, the same as a drug would, uh, create endorphins to, to stimulate your brain, to create endorphins.

And that blocks, that crushing that absence of them is, that is what you're feeling and that crushing that grief.

Chris McDonald: But it sounds like a break for you with a tinnitus to, oh my God. To have that beautiful

Wayne Altman: respite. Yeah. Listen, imagine laying in bed at night. I do two things when I go to try to go to sleep.

Two things. Number one is the tinnitus. Okay, tinnitus. So I hear, I don't hear silence, so it's very hard to go to sleep when you're, you know, hearing this whooshing kind of screeching noise. That's number one. But I also am a mind racer. Meaning I will go to bed, close my eyes and start thinking about it.

But you know, million different things that I have to do or I have done or recreating conversations. So my brain is basically all over the place when once I put headphones in or if I listen to a sulf fio that allows my brain then to kind of click into another mode and go to sleep. I have a. I have a track that will drop me like a sack of potatoes.

I haven't even listened to the 16th second of that song. Within 15 seconds of listening to this, I'm out like a light, and it is glorious when I wake up. Yeah, because without drugs, without taking any kind of medication, I can go to sleep and wake up out of a deep sleep, very

Chris McDonald: refreshed. So it does help to stay asleep then

Wayne Altman: and yes, once I go to sleep, I'm pretty much out.

It's getting to that point. Yeah.

Chris McDonald: Cause I know a lot of therapists listening have clients that experience the sleep issues, and I know that can be pretty pervasive across a lot of clients we see with mental health

Wayne Altman: concerns. Yeah. I've found that even through exercise, even when I was exercising, I get a much better workout.

I get a much better things go. I'm more focused. With some certain tracks. I, I become way more focused. It's like, um, when I go to the gym, you always know who's going there to work out and who's going there to check out the people that are going to check other people out. They've got different music than the people that are going there to work out.

You know, you would take ac, d c, you take some heavy metals, something that really pumps you up to go and get a good workout in. It. This is the same exact principle.

Chris McDonald: So you said the word soo. Did I say it right?

Wayne Altman: Soo, yes.

Chris McDonald: Soo. So what

Wayne Altman: does that mean? So Soo frequencies were, I, I don't use the word discovered, but the observed.

I. Guido Dior. Rezo was an Italian monk in the 11th century. Guido observed that people either, whether they play a musical instrument or whether they don't play a musical instrument, both can still recognize when someone's hit a false note. You or a you and I. For example, if we are walking in, we sit down in an auditorium and someone is.

On stage playing the cello. You and I at the same time would both recognize that that person either is a beautiful cellist or whether that cello needs to be tuned. So that is so fio, that ability that recoil from a negative screeching violin. That is XiO. And you use XiO frequencies very much the same as you use, uh, by nor beats.

The only difference being you don't need headphones with XiO frequencies. You can just play the music and it, and it does the, kind of the same, the same thing. It does it in a different way. The, the frequencies are more very in tune. A singer, so someone who is a, we both experience this, you hear someone who sings.

And they sing beautifully. Everyone in the room is moved by that. Someone that is a okay at singing. Maybe some people like them for other reasons, but not everyone is moved in the same way by someone that is kind of a good singer. True. As a better way of explaining it, I think.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. So I guess as far as science goes, does this like trigger part to the brain or is there any research with that?

Oh

Wayne Altman: yes. Hell yes. I mean, there's, every single day you and I do this research, and I'll tell you how even silent movies weren't silent. You had someone at the front of the theater banging away on a piano. Telling you, manipulating your moods about what you were watching on screen. That is a scientific experiment that is, that is going on.

Okay. The our recognition that music is really what moves people's emotions is done every billions of times, every day. And it started when we were tribes and we were beating on hollowed logs to let the other tribe don't mess with us. We are not to be messed with. And so we would beat on logs and we would sing out to intimidate or to welcome other tribes and to keep them at bay.

And that's exactly what we're talking about here. You use this to manipulate others' emotions, whether you're trying to frighten someone off. Or whether you're trying to sing Happy Birthday and bring people in and make them feel good.

Chris McDonald: I know you mentioned different frequencies with that.

Wayne Altman: Your brain operates the different frequencies to help you in healing in, you know, whatever it is.

Okay. So they've been able to identify, this research has been going on for a very long time, and they've been able to use different frequencies that they've been able to recognize. Give you an example. Uh, 4 32 Hertz. Is sleep. That helps people. They, they measure brain frequencies in a while. People are sleeping.

It's operating in that frequency, that level, uh, 4 32 herz. And if you can get the brain to recreate that while someone is awake, that they're going to sleep or you, have you ever felt like you're walking around like, oh wow. And you had this enlightened feeling. You felt like, oh wow, I just really learned something.

That is nine. 63 herz your brain sending signals out at that hurts that frequency. That's what's giving you that feeling. 9 36. If you can recreate that for someone, they have this enlightened feeling or a spiritual feeling, or let's say that you wanted to keep someone focused. You ever heard of the the term, oh, she's in the zone.

Or he's in the zone. Okay, well that's a frequency that your brain is operating at, and if you can recreate it, you too will be in that zone. You'll be highly concentrated. There will be, uh, your attention will last longer. You'll feel more refreshed when you're done with whatever task. And that's what we're talking about.

Is recreating those moments.

Chris McDonald: So is there other benefits that you've noticed from using

Wayne Altman: these tons? I mean, who doesn't want to get better, more and better sleep? Or who? Who doesn't want to be able to focus? There are times when you're trying to do a task. If you're like me, I mean, I know that it is, works for me all the time.

That is a, I have highly technical tasks that I need to complete, and I need to be able to focus for longer periods of time. So in order to do that, I will use this technology to focus my thoughts, focus my energies until that task is complete. And that way I don't need to take breaks as often. I'll take Chris, I have truck drivers that are calling me and emailing me, telling me, Hey, listen, I feel.

I can drive 40% further and feel more refreshed at the end of that drive, which is beneficial to you and me because they're not falling asleep at the wheel. They're not distracted while they're driving. And it's making people safer when you're focused on your driving as opposed to thinking about all kinds of other things.

Chris McDonald: And how is it set up in your app? Will it be like, let's say you have anxiety and you wanna relax. Is it set up for certain issues

Wayne Altman: and. On the app, if there's a task that you want do, let's say you want to go to sleep, you're gonna be given a choice of several different frequencies, several different pieces of music for you to go to sleep by, or let's say that you want to focus.

It's all on the website as well. It's all very clearly marked what frequency that is. So if you wanted to go, you know, outside of melody clouds, you'd be able to find those frequencies that work for you. Listen, we're here to serve people. We're here to help people. Because I

Chris McDonald: imagine if you're trying to get to sleep, you probably don't want one that's gonna give you energy

Wayne Altman: and No, I mean that.

Exactly. Right. Right. And listen, by the way, one of the reasons that I know this works, or one of the things that really made, because I'm a very skeptical person, and one of the things that really made me think about this was the fact that my friend did not give me one track. And it worked. He had to find something that worked for me, the exact same thing that my doctor had to do when I had, uh, you know, something wrong with me.

I, if he gave me medication and I took that medication and it did not have the desired effect. He had to do what? He had to re-prescribe another medication. And that's exactly what we're talking about here. Because if every piece of music did what it is you wanted it to do, then it wasn't the music doing it at all.

Right? So you have

Chris McDonald: to account for our individual differences.

Wayne Altman: Of course, we are all different. You are going to react differently to these tracks. Than anyone else that's using the app, and that is in amazing to me what our differences

Chris McDonald: are. So you recommend, so if somebody had your experience, let's say they try one for sleep and it didn't work, that they just keep rolling and try something else.

Wayne Altman: Try another one. Exactly. Very few pe. As a matter of fact, I haven't met anyone yet, but I would imagine that there are people this will not work for. I can imagine that now, I don't know. I don't know how that would manifest. Itself. But what I do know that it, I have not run into that yet. I have had people, my own friend group, tell me that this was hogwash and that I needed to, you know, find something else to do with my time until I sat down with them and said, okay, look, I care enough about you.

That I'll have this argument. And then we went through and they then were like, whoa, that was crazy. What did you just play? You know? What is that go? What's going on? Exactly. And sure enough, we found the frequencies that did have the desired effect

Chris McDonald: for them. So the first time that somebody listens to this, sometimes it can have that positive effect then too.

Wayne Altman: Oh, for for sure. A great deal of time. Not every time, but a great deal of the time. The first track I play for someone, they feel that exact effect that I predicted, they would feel. That's amazing. This is not something that is kind of sorta even, even to the point of I'm, I have ahead of me right here on a whiteboard.

All of the frequencies. That we're concentrating on with melody clouds right now, and one of them is spiritual order. The feeling that you are safe and you are spiritually, you are okay, and it doesn't matter what religion you practice. This is not about that. What it is, what it mean is everyone of us have felt at some, you know, some time that they weren't, they were unsure.

They didn't know what was, you know what? Playing this, this is one track that's. Seems to have an effect on pretty much everyone, that it's 8 52 hertz. It is a very strong calming, relaxing feeling. Okay, everything spiritually, everything is okay. You can be in pain. Now look, there is uh, 2 85 hertz and 1 74.

Those are for people that are experiencing pain, and there are several. Of those frequencies and that is a hit. That's one that is a definite hit and miss. We gotta find the frequency for you because you're experiencing a certain type of pain or you're a certain type of person. So have

Chris McDonald: you seen people with chronic pain?

Has it helped people that you

Wayne Altman: know of? Oh, for sure. And, and they're, they're using a lot of these in memory work and P T S D. We're working with veterans organizations right now and we're getting a lot of very, very positive feedback from people who are using this. Look, I am not someone that tells you don't take medications, medications, pills, drugs are so, this is a complimentary, they're, they are a miracle on, on their own.

If you do not even use this, an absolute miracle of science. What I am saying is I've had people come to me telling me that they've taken 10 to, uh, 12 Benadryl in order to get to sleep. That is a misapplication of medication. I would much rather give you a frequency that would help. That has the only side effect is the sleep that you're going to be having.

Than I would tell someone, all right, here's a handful of NyQuil or some type of Benadryl or whatever. Go knock your liver out. Yeah. Cause I know

Chris McDonald: you mentioned trauma and P T S D, there's a lot of therapists that listen. They work with that. A lot of clients experience that. So in your experience with the veterans, is it, has it been safe with P T S D.

Wayne Altman: Not only that, we, we have people all the time w wishing to partner with us because of this. Number one of, you know, I've made this very affordable. I've made this very affordable. We were talking about this before. This was not something that I ever intended. Okay? The, I'm gonna get. Wildly rich. I'm wildly wealthy doing this is not the point.

I've put my money where my mouth is so people can say what they want, but they've come to me and I am very interested in helping as many people as I possibly can, and I do believe in it wholeheartedly. I've seen the results of someone. Who finds those frequencies that really sent to relax them and work with them.

And I see what the benefit of that is. And I get email every week from people who have experienced this and th thank me, they say, Hey listen. Very rarely do I get an email saying, Hey look, I'd like my money back. This is absolutely, I haven't, I didn't find anything. No. And, and the largest button, I wanna say this, the largest button on our app, we have an iOS and a Android app.

The largest button on that app is the unsubscribe button, and it is very easy for you to find. There will be no arguing. Uh, you don't wanna do this. Not hidden. I don't want your money, so I'm probably the only person. With an unsubscribed button that takes up half the page. I mean, you don't want it, you know, I don't wanna bother anybody.

Chris McDonald: So you're going into this to really with that, I guess the ethics too, of wanting to help people and certainly, yeah. Not take advantage of people suffering.

Wayne Altman: And that is not in my nature, number one, not in my nature to do Number two, I found it personally offensive before I went into this. I started seeing what else was on the market.

People come to me a a lot in this business or that business. I own other businesses and they say, well, you know your competition. You know, to me, I look at it like, okay, there's a hamburger on the menu of every restaurant you walk into. Everyone sells hamburgers in their restaurant. Does that mean that McDonald's is in trouble or Burger King or In and Out or Five Guys or Fat Burger or, you see what I mean?

Water burger. Yeah. There every, there's a million hamburger restaurants as well. So I am not afraid that I, I want people to, to have what it is that makes them feel better, that that's going to help them get through life.

Chris McDonald: Yeah, yeah. Makes sense. Especially if it's helped you

Wayne Altman: too. And I became a very big believer in this.

Like I said, the first time someone ever third track, but the first time someone ever put the headphones on me and let me listen to this, I took action. I mean, yeah, that's how much I believed in. I was like, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. I need a domain. Let's, uh, let's get this rolling.

Chris McDonald: So if somebody wants to focus, so do you just turn it on like while you're working or do you do it before?

Like how do you

Wayne Altman: do it? So, okay. Depends on what you're gonna do. If they're gonna do a Boral beat, then yes, you put your EarPods or whatever the, the earphones in. If it's a Boral beat, it's the easiest way to administer a Boral beat if it's a SOO frequency. You don't, you can, you can actually, we did this experiment.

You can actually affect a whole room full of people or the majority of the people in the room. I just wanted to test it out. I got a speaker, put it on my phone. Everyone in the room was very focused on what they were doing, and I looked at my wife. Interesting. I was like, Hey, we gotta do this every single day.

And that includes my three daughters. By the way, everybody got very focused on what I was like, this is kind of crazy. You know? Yeah.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. Cause I'm just thinking about D h adhd. I have a lot of ADHD clients and they struggle. We try to come up with ways for helping with focus and I'm just wondering if that, that self, I can never say that word.

Self aio

Wayne Altman: Self. Yeah. If

Chris McDonald: that would be helpful. It's a fun word. It is a fun word. Yeah. So that probably could help them too. Hmm. Of

Wayne Altman: course. And look, I keep going back to, you want science. Here's, this is how we know that this works. If you and I, we go into a church, let's say we're gonna go to lunch, and I said, look, I gotta stop into my church.

It's a very large cathedral. There's a, uh, dirge, uh, uh, playing on the organ without even looking at one another. You and I would know voices get lowered. We enter into a very reverential mood. Unless you're a complete jerk and you're totally unaware of yourself, then that's sometimes that's happening.

Okay, but, but you become very respectful and very spiritually attuned to your environment. Let's say that you, you know, say, look, this was a very cool idea. I'd like to take you across the street. I go to church across the street and that church is a very praise mu, the praise music people are singing hands over their head is a completely different type of experience.

But we go from one to the other and we match. The mood of both. Does that make sense? Yes. In other words, or if you hear a song that you really enjoy and you say, oh man, that's my jam, and you get very excited. This is what I'm talking about. There's no better way to represent the science of this than those things that happen to all of us.

Chris McDonald: And I think everybody's, like you said initially too, just we all hear music, and music changes our mood in general. And these are different frequencies made for this. And so who, who makes the frequencies?

Wayne Altman: Well, those frequencies are well known and they, they can be laid over the top of any track of music.

Which I'm just kind of giving a little bit of insider information here very shortly. Melody Clouds is going to have a way for you to deep dive into your track list on your phone and listen to the music that you like listening to and overlay the over that music, these Boral beats and SIO frequencies.

So we'll have the ability. If you don't like the music that I am putting forth on Melody clouds, you will still have the ability to put it over any Taylor Swift, any Ed shearing, any, whatever music it is you listen to. Yeah. That's so cool. You have the ability to put these on top of that and feel the benefits and get the, uh, benefits of that.

As it stands right now, this is, I'm beginning to under learn. This is a very tall order. It's a very hard thing to be able to do, um, when most people are listening to music through their. Phone and you know, it, it's, it's not as easy as you would think, but it's coming. We're very close to being able to, to do that for people.

Chris McDonald: So from what you've said too, it just sounds like this is another form of sound healing. For

Wayne Altman: sure. Yeah, for sure. And look, listen, here's another thing. Okay. You ever see the movie Wally? No. Okay. Wally was about a little robot and the, the earth was very dirty and we left. People left the earth. They went into space and they left this little robot in charge of cleanup of the planet for an hour and 40 minutes.

There was no dialogue in that movie at all. No one spoke to anyone else. The robot didn't speak and for an hour and 40 minutes yet, little kids put their hands in their laps. 3, 4, 5 year old children and adults, but watched that movie, wrapped Attention, didn't take their eyes off the screen and watched that movie, and it was a huge hit for Pixar.

The reason for that is because of the soundtrack. You felt every single emotion in that movie. Because of the music. You were happy when he was triumphant. You were, uh, sad when he met with some struggle. You felt very, uh, your heart warmed when he found another robot to fall in love with. All of these emotions happened with no one saying a word to one another for an hour and 40 minutes.

And then there was words. But how in the world did you get children, tiny, small children, to sit there and watch this movie, tears streaming down their face, totally manipulating their moods during that period of time with no dialogue at all? Yeah, that sounds phenomenal. Right. It was, you gotta watch that movie by, yeah.

Yeah.

Chris McDonald: I've never seen it. It's really awesome. Awesome. So what's the takeaway you could share with therapists that, in case you wanna talk to them more about the Bal Beats and any other words of wisdom with that?

Wayne Altman: Well, you know, I would say this just in the wor, in the term therapist, obviously there's a desire to help others.

No one would enter into therapy that didn't care about the outcome, so therefore you owe it to whoever it is you're treating to exhaust all methods of treating that person. I, I would say you'll really take a dive and really find out what this has to offer. And Melody clouds is priced the way it is purposely.

We really are about helping people. And trying to help individuals overcome, be sharper, be more spiritual, all of those things that they, you know, really makes us who we are.

Chris McDonald: So what's the best way for listeners to find you and learn more

Wayne Altman: about you? So, melody clouds.com is the website. You can learn all about it.

There's a place on there where all of the frequencies are there. So depending on what y. It is you want to accomplish. Those frequencies are laid out for you in a very easy format. If you wanna contact me directly, and a lot of people do, it's Wayne Altman melody clouds.com and I am very happy to engage with anyone if they have any questions or anything like that.

Our apps. Are on the iOS melody clouds and on the, uh, Google Play Store, the same Melody clouds. And so that's really, that's where we are. Yeah. And we'll have

Chris McDonald: all that in the show notes for listeners to, to get as well. But thank you so much, Wayne, for coming on the Holistic Counseling podcast

Wayne Altman: today. I would wanna mention that.

Yeah. Melody Clouds is 2 99, $2 and 99. Yeah, I

Chris McDonald: saw that. That's amazing.

Wayne Altman: I wanna mention to people for 60 days, 60 days, I'm offering people. Try me out $2 99 cents. Try it out. It's $5 and 99 cents a month after that. So we're at about a quarter to a third of what other services are charging. We're also bringing in, we have lullabies.

Uh, for small children. So if you're putting a child to bed, there are no boral beats orio in those. However, they're cut at a much longer track because the, the science for this is when a child is swaddle and feels safe and goes to sleep with music playing and wakes up in the middle of the night to that same music, playing in the same environment, they have a tendency to learn their first skill.

As a human being, and the first skill you learn as a human being is how to self soothe. Self soothing is so important. New mothers, new parents. That is something that we are offering to people. Hey, look, let's get that first skill out of the way very quickly. And the feedback we're getting has been tremendous.

Yeah,

Chris McDonald: that's great. Perfect. And thank you listeners for being here today and supporting the podcast. If you wanna join me and other holistic therapists who as excited about deepening their knowledge of holistic modalities as you are, come on over and join my Facebook group, the Holistic Counseling and Healthcare Group.

In this group, you can ask those burning questions about how to integrate your modality into sessions and any other ways you need support. The link for this group is in the show notes, and once again, this is Chris McDonald sending each one of you much light in love. Till next time, take care. The information in this podcast is for general educational purposes only, and is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are giving legal, financial counseling, or any other kind of professional ad.

If you need a professional, please find the right one for you.