I’ve Spent 15 Years Struggling to Get a Good Night’s Sleep—Could Aura Help Me?

I haven’t been a good sleeper for a long time. I often lay awake worrying about what happened that day or what might happen tomorrow. Then, even after I’ve finally fallen asleep, I’ll suddenly wake up and be unable to get back to sleep because my thoughts start racing. I kept hearing that cutting out caffeine, chocolate, or alcohol might help, but truth be told, I really didn’t want to go without them.1

I started taking medications my doctor prescribed to help with sleep. Still, worried about my poor sleeping habits and wanting to make sure I didn’t become too reliant on these medications, she recommended I try improving my sleep hygiene too. Sleep hygiene, of course, doesn’t mean softer sheets or fluffier pillows—instead, it means developing healthier practices around how you prepare to go to sleep. This, she said, would improve my overall health, and could help wean me off prescription sleep meds. I tried some of her suggested behavioral changes such as no screen time before bed, blocking out noise and light, eating well, and exercising, but at the end of the day, I still suffered from insomnia.

So, I decided to try the sleep content on the Aura app, an app that was created by mindfulness experts, psychologists, and therapists to offer personalized listening sessions for mental wellness (including sleep) based on science. It has thousands of audio recordings to help improve sleep and mindfulness that range from meditations to sleep stories to pre-recorded coaching sessions with sleep therapists. Some of the content is also based on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)—a type of therapy that can be used to improve sleep through guided meditations and relaxation techniques designed to help change poor sleeping habits.

I spent a month diving into the app, and I now know what so many others figured out about using this app for sleep: The technology works.

How I Signed Up for Aura

Since the Aura app works on both iOS and Android, you can purchase the app through the Apple App Store or Google Play on your smartphone or sign up from your desktop. I downloaded it on my phone.

When downloading the app, I had the option to do a seven-day free trial, use the basic free version, or pay for the premium version. Since the free version of Aura is quite limited — it’s just one three-minute listening session every two hours—I decided to try the premium version.

Billing was a little tricky. I initially signed up on my computer for the free trial and was surprised that after seven days I was renewed at the yearly rate.

This is how I learned that the option to subscribe to a monthly plan after the trial is only available through an in-app purchase via through the Apple App Store or Google Play. Once you complete your first recommended session on the app, a paywall pops up and there is an option to subscribe to a monthly plan.

On the other hand, the website sign-in for the free trial automatically converts to the yearly plan after seven days. You can see how this lack of cohesiveness could lead to problems.

Once I’d downloaded and paid for the app, I opened it up and was asked to complete a questionnaire so it could learn more about my needs and what issues I was hoping to address so it could devise a personalized plan for me. I said I wanted to sleep better, calm anxiety, reduce stress, and relax.

Then, the app had me select some preferences for what kind of content I wanted. I was able to choose whether I wanted a male or female voice and an accent for the audio content—my accent choices were American, British, Indian, Australian, and many others (however, I didn’t have language choices other than English). I could also choose the ethnicity of my coaches (these coaches offer pre-recorded lessons and exercises to help improve sleep).

I also let the app know that I loved stories for sleep and preferred them to music (although, if you love having music and sounds lull you to sleep, you will find hundreds of choices).

Once I set up my profile, Aura got to work selecting personalized sleep resources for me. This included a sea of sleep content: fables, short stories, meditations, inspirational quotes, and descriptive passages from around the world. In the end, I had hundreds of sleep stories to choose from.

How I Used the Aura App

At first, the app was overwhelming because of all the different types of content it has to help with sleep, but as I started to browse and experiment with the material, using it became more intuitive. The more I used it, the more the app analyzed my preferred selections and personalized my content offerings, weeding through thousands of choices to match my needs.

With the basic premium version (aka not the one with options for one-on-one therapist sessions), I was able to select therapists that specialize in sleep (who walk you through the sleep exercises via pre-recorded talks) and genres of sleep stories that fit me perfectly. I quickly found the content and the diction and cadence of readers that appealed to me. I explored the readers’ voices and exercise lengths and selected my favorites, but I could still try anything I wanted at any time on the app.

There is also a large library of meditations which include guided tracks (where a pre-recorded voice talks you through an exercise) and unguided (where nature sounds or music calms the mind).

My New Nighttime Routine With Aura

On a typical night, I’d start with a therapist-led breathing exercise for three minutes and then purposeful body relaxation for another three. Then I’d nestle down in the sheets for my story.

On several nights, I was lulled to sleep by a baritone reader describing a lush garden or a seaside bay. I always selected stories that were more than 20 minutes just in case I needed more time to drift off. I quickly learned to avoid non-fiction history or fiction stories that were interesting. The best sleep-inducing stories were, well, boring, with a lot of details that did not stimulate thinking.

Combating stress is the central goal of the sleep therapies on Aura, and it worked as advertised for me.

The goal of these exercises is to lower cortisol and adrenaline levels in the body. I feel like mine came down and helped me sleep.

After about five nights, I began to look forward to getting ready to sleep. Using Aura had become part of the nighttime routine. I would brush my teeth, wash my face, and cue it up.

However, I did struggle a bit with the background tracks (music or sounds that can play behind the readings). One odd quirk was that Aura’s music and sounds seemed to follow me through different phone apps, even when I wasn’t on Aura. However, I did, eventually, figure out how to turn off the app’s background tracks and stop them from popping up and playing in other areas of my phone.

Pros and Cons

While I did think there was a learning curve in choosing the sleep content and some of the tech was odd, Aura proved to offer excellent resources that genuinely helped me get a better night’s sleep. With those points in mind, here are my pros and cons.

Final Thoughts

Aura’s many options for sleep help, its expert content and coaches, and its affordability make it a great resource.

It allowed me to stick to what worked for me. For example, I was able to just pick sleep stories to fall asleep. But it’s a fantastic source for those who seek music or sounds and offers an experience that should fit most people’s needs and preferences.

The app is not static. The extensive library grows daily with more therapists and content. Sleep is just one facet of the therapeutic options; coaching and content in other areas, such as meditation and stress management, is also available, which I found very useful.

I’ve read that it takes 80 repetitions to make a habit. Aura quickly helped me find that “hypnagogic” bridge we all must cross: that state between wakefulness and sleep when consciousness dissolves and dreaming starts to creep in. After only a month of Aura, I already felt like I had developed a new habit that was truly improving my sleep hygiene.