Neural entrainment

Temporally displaced in a sad roadside motel outside Sacramento, Jon suggested that rather than fighting the jetlag monster head on, I should give in to twenty minutes of power napping while listening to a recording of sounds supposed to induce "neural entrainment" by adjusting the frequency of the neural oscillations so that it would match the rhythm of the auditory stimuli.

Naturally wary of everything even vaguely esoteric, I kindly rejected the offer. However, a few more pods of black coffee later, I was as tired as ever and decided that I might as well give it a try. Plugging in the earphones and closing my eyes, I heard rain falling. I could see a white cathedral in the rain surrounded by tropical green vegetation under an overcast sky. I thought I was in the Philippines on Luzon.

Later the rain was mixed with images of crisp mornings on the Atlantic Seaboard in the US, how I am about to go running along the river, of afternoons flooded by that special North-American light that one can never really capture.

I did however not fall asleep, maybe it was all the coffee but the twenty minutes came to an end with me still wide awake. Outside it was more than 30 degrees so I decided to take the elevator down to the tiny hotel pool.