As recommended by the readers of Electric Speed in July 2024

• I've used so many apps! Just last week in Maine I recorded the sound of the ocean crashing on the rocks for 20 minutes. I've been listening to that for sleep and relaxation almost every day since. Highly recommend! —Maria Ciampa
• I was having such a difficult time sleeping and recently switched to the Coop sleep goods pillow for neck support and it’s really comfortable and I’m able to sleep! Really life changing. —Lorraine Martindale
• My favourite app for relaxation and sleep is the mindtrx app. It's a paid app but worth every cent. I get access to paraliminals which I use in the afternoon instead of a nap. If I try to sleep I usually feel more tired afterwards. But after two paraliminals I'm awake and ready to go! I also use one before bed to go to sleep. They have different recordings for various topics and they definitely make a difference too but I mostly use them for deep relaxation. —Miriam B.
• I use this sleep oceans sound video to get to sleep every night. —Alicia Dale
• I have two favorite relaxing sources, both from YouTube.  I don’t know if there are commercial messages or not as we pay a little extra for the commercial free option. 147 Live world cameras: Nice soft jazz background music combined with not-so-famous and famous places around the globe.  Gives perspective about how life goes on everywhere. Space Ambient music: Music reminiscent of the radio show “Music from the Hearts of Space” combined with beautiful graphics of galaxies and planets.
• I use Insight Timer for when I am having trouble falling asleep or have insomnia, specifically many of their yoga nidra meditations. It is very rare that one of them does not soothe me into sleep. This is my favourite. —Alda Sigmundsdottir
• Tansy Forest is a hypnotherapist from London. She has a beautiful deep voice and a wonderful sense of pacing. She mixes stories from her travels with sleep hypnosis techniques. I find her on YouTube. Also on YouTube and Spotify too is Get Sleepy, just lovely enchanting bedtime stories. Lights Out Library on Spotify takes history and science lessons and, with an older female narrator, turns them into bedtime stories. Finally, nobody teaches yoga nidra sleep meditations like Ally Boothroyd on YouTube. —Michelle Raybeck
• Insight Timer has loads of free music, meditations, and storytelling for sleep. Shuteye is a detailed sleep tracker that shows your time spent in each phase of sleep (or sleeplessness) and breathing, snoring, noise data that lets you figure out what helps you sleep better. It wasn’t intuitive to set up and it has a volume glitch, but it’s super interesting. About $40 CAD per year I think. —Carol Vincent
• Favorite Sleep App: Brainwave Advanced Binaural Programs. You have to use it with headphones in order for it to work. In spite of headphones not being the most comfortable things to wear in bed, I’m amazed how quickly this almost always puts me to sleep and keeps me in dreamland. You can set it for different amounts of time and it’s free. —Jim Cartwright
• I use Brain.fm for sleep (it also has a creative working mode, but I don't use that often). It doesn't completely negate my husband's snoring, but it helps. —Hollie
• I’ve found the best sleep aid is one that works with your mind’s natural preferences. Various things have either not worked because I spent the time thinking about them (hard to shut brain off) or work okay until the novelty wears off. I try to follow a simple routine each night (it makes no difference what the routine is, all that has mattered is that it’s the exact, same routine without fail) and I listen to Max Richter’s “Sleep.” It’s 8 hours of music designed for — sleep! A blend of neuroscience and artistry. Other music promoted as ‘sleep’ or ‘relaxing’ music tends to be a) bad, or worse, tinkly, or b) does not understand how sleep cycles actually work. Richter’s one of my favourite contemporary composers so at first I just wanted to listen to everything, but then it helped. I love music, am strongly affected by it, which means I can’t sleep to 90% of it. Podcasts can put me to sleep but I wake up after an hour or so feeling wide awake. Or irritable. The sounds of “Sleep” talk to my brain — it’s like some part of my brain and the music are having a quiet conversation with each other in an adjacent dark corner and the rest of me can check out. —Alex
• My tip for good sleep came from Reddit. I was waking up every night when my feet would get too hot. Then came the covers on/off for hours trying to get comfortable. Reddit recommended putting moisturizer on your feet at bedtime. I was skeptical, but tried it and slept through the night for the first time in years. —Candy Risher
• It's a pretty costly accessory, but the Chilipad cooling system has been life-changing. It fits between the mattress and your bottom sheet, and lets you dial down the temperature underneath you to 60F. Designed for "hot" sleepers, I set it to 70-80ish solely when the temps rise here in L.A. With no a/c, this plus strategically placed fans has made sleep possible again in summer weather. And all winter long, I sleep with it dialed UP to the low 100s, and that's blissful in its own way. —Colleen Wainwright
• Regarding your request for sleep improvement, we use a sound machine from Adaptive Sound Technologies. I love the sound of the ocean, but there are also settings for fireplace, waterfall, meadow, city, rainfall, and more. We bought it in 2012 and still use it today. —Bill Peschel
• I've used the Sleep Machine app on my iPhone for a number of years now (a paid app). It has a lot of nice, looping sounds you can blend together to taste. In addition, I sometimes supplement that with a YouTube channel of "rain on cabin windows" (there are many, many variants), and set my Roku TV on a sleep timer so it stops an hour or so later (leaving just the phone app running). It's a nice way to spatialize a couple of different sound sources in the room, and I'm usually out like a light! —Rodney
• As a longtime chronic insomniac, I've found a few helps: light really matters, so I love my Loftie clock, which I can darken the display on overnight, and which brightens back up on its own when the alarm goes off. A sleep mask makes a significant difference when traveling. And to my great surprise, sleep hypnosis in the Sleepiest app actually works reliably for me. Hypnotherapist Jessica Porter's voice now sends me right off. Sweet dreams! —Heather Dodge Martin
• Sleep suggestion: I am 43 years old. I had occasional night sweats. I learned about the Bed Jet, sent in my $500 for the machine + cloud sheet (various options, depending if a sleeping partner wants to be cooled or not). Now I sleep through the night. Bliss. Thank you, Gen X (and some Boomer) women, who decided not to take it anymore. —Kelly Turner
• The Sleepy Bookshelf ****is basically a collection of free audiobooks (e.g. Anne of Green Gables, Little Women) read aloud by a woman with the most soothing, hypnotic voice ever. She starts with brief mindfulness/relaxation, and then summarizes the previous episode/chapters since you likely fell asleep and missed a bunch. I feel so tucked in and cozy as I listen and drift off... —Sue Prenella
• Yoga Nidra is pretty awesome. You just lie down while someone talks you into a deep state of relaxation. Sometimes it's better than a nap, and often I fall asleep. It's free, too. I use Ally Boothroyd on YouTube. —Lani