“Deep in the eastern slopes of the snow-capped Andes Mountains lies a mystical region largely untouched by humanity….”
Imagine a soothing voice speaking softly as listeners close their eyes and settle into their bed.
“Tonight we will explore a place that seems to exist outside of time, where tropical jungles and grassy highlands exist in perfect harmony.”
Are you paying attention? Actually, it doesn’t matter. The story only aims to do one thing: put the listeners to sleep.
According to the CDC, some 70 million Americans struggle with chronic sleep problems. To remedy this, many adults are bringing back a childhood staple: the bedtime story. The above excerpts are from a 45-minute story on the Calm subscription app.
Many of the more than 2,500 meditation apps on the market offer nighttime relaxation aid. Dozens of podcasts, such as Sleep Cove, and online video channels, including Soothing Pod’s YouTube channel, are simply there to lull adults into a deep sleep.
These aren’t your kids’ bedtime stories: adult stories tend to be longer, descriptive, meandering, and without the moral arc often found in children’s books. Celebrities like Michael Bublé and Idris Elba give their voice to these soothing stories.
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One genre of these bedtime stories stands out for adults: travel stories. Nearly a third of Calm’s 300 bedtime stories (which have been listened to more than 450 million times) are about travel, especially adventure travel. About 45 percent of the bedtime stories on the Breethe app (which has been downloaded more than 10 million times) are travel-related. Earlier this year, half of the top 10 bedtime stories had a travel theme.
Why do travel stories so reliably put listeners to sleep?
On the train to slumberland
Bedtime travel stories are usually an audio narration of a journey, often in the present tense, as if we are placed there next to the narrator. It could be a day in the therapeutic waters of Bath, England. Or it could be a visit to the remote and mountainous kingdom of Bhutan. Or an imaginary journey full of images to ‘see’ the Northern Lights in Norway.
Listeners can take part in cruises on the River Nile, sailing trips to Sri Lanka, arduous pilgrimages such as the Camino de Santiago, hot air balloon rides over Cappadocia, Turkey, or road trips along Route 66. See the article : ESPN-on-ESPN Crime: Colleagues Shoot Anonymously on Adam Schefter. The stories are highly dependent on description, with occasional ambient noise such as ocean waves, train tracks or soft music.
Train stories are especially intriguing at bedtime, it seems. Headspace, Calm and Breethe have steadily expanded their train themed content. Listeners can travel on the Orient Express or the Trans-Siberian Railway. Headspace has a popular story called “Slow Train”, which changes the ambient train sounds in the background and changes the spoken descriptive details regularly. It consistently ranks in the app’s top five most popular bedtime stories.
“You need movement in a bedtime story — if things are static, it’s too boring and the listener will get jittery,” said Martha Bayless, a professor and director of the Folklore and Public Culture Program at the University of Oregon, specialized in oral traditions from ancient to modern times. “But the movement should be non-threatening and soothing. And for the modern age, what could be better than the movement of a train?”
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Trains stimulate the senses in a gentle way, with a constant forward movement. With train travel, “you’re not in control of the decisions,” Bayless says. “The train is the perfect vehicle for sleeping. You can just take it anywhere, enjoy the gentle swaying, the rhythmic sound, the feeling of being pampered in an old-fashioned, comforting way of traveling.”
The same wouldn’t be true for air travel audio stories, says Bayless: “Imagine trying to sleep while being squeezed into an airplane seat with a passenger leaning on you!” In other words, stories that are too close to real life can backfire as bedtime stories.
How it works
Bedtime stories help some people get more restful sleep, according to Rachel Salas, a neurologist and the assistant medical director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Sleep and Wellness. See the article : 25 Best Horror Books Of All Time – Best Horror Books You Should Read. More restful sleep helps the body better regulate everything from digestion to cognitive performance, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
Bedtime stories work on one level because they are a good distraction that keeps the mind from worrying, going through to-do lists, or generating anxiety. Selected stories are usually positive and upbeat (but not too exciting), which can ease a troubled mind.
One possible reason why our brains are soothed by bedtime travel stories are “mirror neurons,” Salas says. Originally discovered in the macaque, these neurons fire both when a person performs a particular movement and when the movement is merely perceived.
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Salas says these brain cells can confuse our own experiences with someone else’s. For example, a train journey story can inspire a sense of nostalgia for our own past travels, even if the specific bedtime story is about something we haven’t experienced yet. The comforting feeling of something familiar and romanticized can help with relaxation and sleep. In addition, Salas notes, the sound of a train chugging along the tracks serves as a kind of white noise that lulls people to sleep.
For some people, the fascination with bedtime travel stories can be that they open doors to new adventures. While this may seem energizing, it provides soothing reassurance about seeing the world safely.
“From a neurological standpoint, it’s not just about traveling and seeing new places, it’s about connecting. We are social beings by nature. We’ve been through time, away from family and friends, away from freedom. Even if you weren’t someone who traveled that much, you could still go to a restaurant or try something new,” Salas says.
Or it could simply be that removing light and sound from the outside world causes an inner world, our imagination, to take over. Nighttime storytelling is very old — “as old as literature gets,” Bayless says. “In a sense, when we listen to sleep stories, we go back to the beginnings of human culture.”
“In the most soothing bedtime travel stories, not much happens,” says Bayless. “The bedtime stories are about the silence between adventures, and that’s what it’s all about.”
Hillary Richard is a journalist who writes about travel and wellness. You can find her on Twitter.
