Sleep Help by HealthJourneys app for iPhone and iPad

This guided imagery to promote healthful, restorative sleep is the most popular and widely-used guided meditation by mind-body pioneer Belleruth Naparstek. The first track is a brief, 3-minute introduction; the second is 27 minutes of soothing, immersive, sleep-inducing guided imagery; and the third is the music by itself, which plays for 30 minutes and then, unless you tell it otherwise, will quietly continue to repeat, so as not to awaken you with silence.

This audio program has been found effective for insomnia, nightmares, difficulty falling asleep, interrupted sleep and for help with napping. Shown to improve everything from everyday sleep problems to the night terrors of posttraumatic stress, it consistently gets rave reviews.

Belleruths narrative creates a rich atmosphere of protection, safety and support, generating images that are powerful enough to successfully crowd out internal brain chatter and calm a hyper-alert state of mind. It was even found effective for our troops downrange. Steve Kohn’s exquisite, calming music draws mind, body and spirit down into deep, restful sleep.

This app has exceptional sound quality and is designed as a smooth, clean, fast Apple style player, where you can scroll, touch and gain immediate access to the segments you want.

Other advantages: it consumes minimal bandwidth; it now comes with a sleep timer which will turn the player off after an interval of your choosing; it has a wake up assistant that will rouse you by playing 30 seconds of either music or beeping (and, unlike an actual alarm clock, it will not keep hounding you after those 30 seconds are over); it comes with a flexible repeat button that allows you to manually replay the audio mid-track, post-track and at the end of the program; there is a rewind button that will rewind continuously when held down; as mentioned earlier, it defaults to keep playing the third track of music by itself, so as to not inadvertently wake you up when by stopping (but you can press it to shut it off); and it comes with a host of proven tips on how to upgrade your sleep efficiency.

Remember, when the icons for the wake up reminder, sleep timer or repeat button are lit blue, this indicates that the function is on. When it turns white, it is off.

Thanks for your patience as we continue to tweak and improve Sleep Help. Please rate this app and tell us what you think. As you can see, we really do listen and adjust this product based on your feedback. Sweet dreams!