If you’ve scrolled through WellnessTok lately, you’ve probably seen a few videos about how certain sounds can affect and change your mood: One of the biggest is “brain flossing,” the TikTok name for bilateral stimulation, where sound moves back and forth between your left and right ears to help clear your head. Calm is hopping on the “brain flossing” trend with a new in-app feature called Shift, which is built entirely around bilateral audio.
Shift is Calm’s new section of the app built entirely around bilateral audio. Instead of scrolling through a library, you pick how you want to feel and press play: Focus, Release, Uplift, or Sleep, each with its own custom track. There’s also a 7-day guided program and 20+ extra tracks, including an exclusive remix of “The Record Player Song” by Daisy the Great, the version that went viral on TikTok. And people are clearly into it: according to Calm, bilateral audio had more than 110 million listens on the app in the past year. And, currently, Google searches for bilateral audio are up more than 5,000% in the past year, according to a press release from Calm.
And while bilateral audio and brain flossing are all over TikTok, it’s not as new as it sounds: therapists have used bilateral stimulation since the late 1980s as part of EMDR, a therapy that helps people process stress and trauma. And while building Shift, Calm worked with EMDR-certified consultants. So, the feature takes a therapy-focused technique and designs it for everyday use on your own.
Use Shift To Press Play On A Mental Reset This Semester
As a grad student in the thick of deadlines and several projects, it can feel like my mind is being pulled in a million directions at once, and finding any kind of balance is a challenge. Using a resource like Shift by Calm can help you stay in a state of “calm.”
Here’s how you can use each of Shift’s states around your schedule: Reach for Focus before a study session or when the afternoon library slump hits, and Release after a long day, a tough exam, or a stressful group project meeting. Uplift works as a quick reset before class or before heading out, while Sleep helps you wind down when your mind (or your dorm) won’t switch off. And if you want to build a habit, 7 Days of Shift is an easy one to start during midterms.
Here’s how to get Shift on Calm
Shift is available now for Calm Premium subscribers in the U.S. To try it, download Calm from the App Store or Google Play and subscribe to Premium for $79.99 a year. But on the days when your mind feels like it’s going in a million directions, a few minutes with your headphones might be exactly the reset you need.