Sleep sounds for people who hate meditating.

Why it works

Some people hear a soft voice say "notice your breathing" and immediately breathe wrong. If guided meditation makes you self-conscious, or bored in the tense way, you do not need to try harder at it. You can decline. There are other ways to get from awake to asleep that involve no technique at all.

This one is a slow swell of noise and a story. The swell happens to rise and fall at about the pace of a calm breath, and nobody points that out. The voice talks about ancient Greece and never about you. You are not the subject tonight, which may be the restful part.

What you are hearing

• Slow swell. Pink noise low-passed at 900 Hz, with a long rise and fall about every ten seconds that never lands in quite the same place twice. It is not a recording of the sea.
• The voice. The first four minutes of Aristotle, the Greatest Philosopher, a Lullable story, in a synthesised voice. It only plays if you bring it in.
• The ending. The preview lasts four minutes. Its last ten seconds are a straight fade to silence, so it never stops abruptly.

For a real recording that runs forty minutes, the Lullable iPhone app has rain, waves, a campfire and plain noise, with no voice and no music.