I’m Green With Calm…

So I was sitting at my desk recently, surfing the web and seeking inspiration on potential topics I could write about, when I came across an article on something called “green noise.” Way back in 2019, I published a post on white, pink and brown noise and their potential benefits. You can read that post here. The tall and short of it, is that any of these “noises” are artificially constructed sounds that exist on at a particular frequency and can provide certain key benefits, depending on how you’re using them.

For example, plenty of people use white noise machines to help them sleep better and get some rest. For those who find that white noise doesn’t help, they can try pink or red noise (also known as Brownian or brown noise) as they have deeper depth and different effect. Pink noise for example, can potentially aid sleep by reducing one’s brain waves to increase one’s sleep stability and provide for a deeper sleep. I’ve used all three at a variety of times in my life, including during sleep, meditation and even when performing work tasks where I need to focus and block out the outside world.

Recently, I discovered green noise, which made me give my head a shake and think I was getting punked. After all, how many “noises” can there really be? Turns out, it isn’t all bullshit. In fact, I’ve recently save a YouTube video to my list that’s 10 straight hours of green noise. Although not necessarily effective as a sleep aid, green noise provides a soothing, calming effect that can be effective at calming oneself, meditating or even just to centre oneself before GOING to bed. I’ve been trying it and listening while I sit outside and enjoy a cigar. I’m not sure if it’s the cigar or the green noise, but the effects were calming.

When I started to look further into it, I came to realize that if white noise is artificially constructed, it would make sense that multiple different levels of noise could potentially be created as well. And when I looked into it to see if I could find others and lo and behold, there are more noise colours than infinity stones (little Marvel comics joke, if you didn’t catch it). While I would encourage anyone interested to do their own research, here are a few of the more interesting ones that I found.

Blue noise is something that works opposite to brown noise as it exists at the higher end of the sound spectrum. This means it likely wouldn’t be good for helping with sleep or relaxation but from what I’ve found, it’s used as some sort of distortion eliminator during sound editing and engineering. I also found violet noise, which can apparently be used to treat certain hearing issues, such as tinnitus, since it apparently blocks the ringing someone with tinnitus tends to hear.

There’s apparently also a grey noise and a black noise, which is basically silence. Wikipedia has a great page defining all of these (although without their benefits) and you can access it here. I still use pink and brown noise a great deal, for those rare occasions when I find a moment to meditate. Green noise is certainly interesting and can provide benefit if you’re just sitting outside, enjoying the weather and want to add a bit of relaxation to your day.

There are several YouTube videos that play lengthy clips of any noise, should you decide to try any of them. I’m partial to my Noisli app, which contains white, pink and brown but there are also some other apps out there that likely feature green noise. At the end of the day, adding a bit of noise to your silence can be helpful and provide some benefits. But you’ll need to try it yourself to find out. ☯️