In Ottessa Moshfegh’s 2018 novel, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, an unnamed, Mrs Dalloway-like protagonist gradually escalates her use of prescription pills in order to sleep for an entire year. Had she been aware of it, she might have also bought a subscription to NuCalm, an app that promises to wind you right down, and fast. It plays you the sort of music you might hear at a spa paired with a biosignal processing disc (read: an anti-stress patch worn on your wrist) designed to stimulate micro-currents that convert Beta brainwaves (used for logic and reasoning) into Alpha and Theta brainwaves (used for more intuitive and relaxing tasks). 20 minutes of NuCalm rest is akin to about two hours of regular sleep, the company says. Meaning that Moshfegh’s protagonist would have slept for a whole six years, had she been smart enough to read the front page of the Daily Mail last August and see Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, wielding one of NuCalm’s stickers on her forearm.
Before it became known as the world’s most effective power nap, NuCalm began as a radical therapy pioneered by the late naturopath, Dr Blake Holloway. It is “a technology that quickly, safely and predictably relaxes the human mind and body within minutes and with no side effects”. “Like marijuana without the munchies”, says CEO Jim Poole. Since 2015, the technology has had a patent for “balancing and maintaining the health of the human autonomic nervous system” – one under strain from the constant stimulation coming from our phones, and more generalised anxiety. Speaking to Evgeny Lebedev on the Standard’s Brave New World podcast, Poole singsongs: “We ask you to plug in, so that we can unplug you.”
Plugging into technology in order to R&R is nothing new. Doom-scrolling and/or falling asleep in front of the latest viral Netflix miniseries are common currency. Some will passionately argue that NuCalm is a bunch of quack and the biosignal processing discs do not work. If one gets any benefit from this, it's surely placebo. And perhaps that's right – but I think most of us would agree that falling asleep listening to spa music is preferable to doomscrolling.
The original therapy was administered via a $6,000, FDA-approved device which pulsed micro-currents into the cranium to reduce stress. Today, anyone can achieve this by downloading the app (plans range from $15 to $50 a month) and buying the clinical welcome pack (20 discs and an eye mask) for $105. NuCalm was launched in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and while the US was still at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today still, the therapy is used by frontline servicemen, the Department of Defence and by FedEx pilots to reduce fatigue. Holloway initially designed the therapy to treat post-traumatic stress disorder – a condition commonly associated with soldiers. It feels timely revisiting this now with a wider war brewing in the Middle East; and vital, Poole says, to think of NuCalm as more than just a status symbol espoused by minor royals.
Poole has been at the helm of NuCalm’s parent company, Solace Lifesciences, since Holloway died in 2020. He is a bullish and merciless salesman. “My life is like a sandwich,” he says. “The beginning was about helping people [Poole trained as a counsellor]. The middle was about helping myself [he went to work on Wall Street]. And the last 15-and-a-half years have been about helping people again.” My own impression of his career looks metaphorically closer to a tart: less a period of self-advancement lodged between periods of magnanimity and more an upward trajectory in which directorship of NuCalm is the cherry on top. But is it the cherry on top of the sleep gadgets market?
It won’t do well to remind the cynics who NuCalm’s top supporters are: Michael Galitzer, a spokesperson for “energy medicine” who’s previously collaborated with Gwyneth Paltrow’s wellness brand, Goop; and Tony Robbins, who’s previously been criticised for supporting neurolinguistic programming, a pseudoscientific approach to communication which asserts the (unproven) connection between neurological processes, language, and behavioural patterns. I spoke with a less controversial NuCalm advocate, Diana Wentworth – a New York Times bestselling author and co-founder of the education charity, Inside Edge. For her, the main benefit is meditative: a way to switch off from the chaos and anxiety of modern life and achieve silence for a short while.
The marketing potential of NuCalm is undeniable – but do people truly believe this is the future of sleep, or even just the future of downtime? Poole obviously thinks so. I for one remain ever more slightly sceptical. While the benefits are undeniable (NuCalm lulls you into a parasympathetic state, which is vital to lowering stress), the idea of ceding my natural ability to decompress to yet another mobile app is a little frightening. If I can, I’d rather just read a book. My Year of Rest and Relaxation, anyone?
