For today’s blog I sat down with my sister Ruane Sibley. Ruane has been part of the solu/n.o.w. team nearly from the beginning, and is integral to our success in helping people understand and use the simple, profound, life-changing tool of the n.o.w. Tones. And, it’s nice to get a perspective other than my own every once in a while!!!

HEY Ruane! First, tell us when you started with solu.

2017. When I was approached to become part of solu, still in its very early stages (the first production run was being manufactured then), I was ready for a change! I was looking for work that would actually give back to others, work that was more in alignment with how I wanted to show up in the world.

The previous job I was in as a retail manager, I had to create ways to show up authentically. The shift to solu just felt like moving into a natural part of my being—it was pretty incredible. My sister Alene and her partner Michael approached me with this new and exciting, no-guarantees opportunity, all of us putting ourselves on the line—it was an unintentional startup and, with the addition of me, we became a team of 3 people. Three people on a mission.

How would you define your position with solu?

It’s so interesting. We call me a lot of different things… and I am so many different things. First of all, I completely run the shop—the ecommerce. The simplest title for me is Customer Connector, however this is an ever-changing and evolving job that is not really a position at all. I am Michael’s primary support person, I run the store, do any voice-over work required, I work in PR and retail connections, and I also voice and work one of our solu puppets!

It’s fun for me that every day is different. I could be doing voice for a commercial, or working on our next product, or talking to a doctor about best use practices for the n.o.w. Tone System. It really goes on and on.

What is one of your favorite aspects of the job?

I LOVE talking to customers and connecting—it is really my favorite part. I have some of the most touching, meaningful conversations. It actually is super moving to hear how their lives have opened up since starting with the Tones, or where there has been release of pain, release of limitations, and just the introduction to peace for so many.

Customer communication includes smoothing out issues for someone who is frustrated, for example a shipping issue gone awry. To really engage with that person to the point that by the time we hang up there is joy between us, where before they had a level of buyer-stress—this is an amazing feeling.

What does an average workday look like for you?

An average workday—they all look different. But every single day starts with customer care: answering questions, calls, emails, shipping, then I talk to our partners. First Michael and I check in with each other, always, for our daily brainstorm session. Jeff, our CFO (and who has grown into an integral team member in all aspects of the business), and James, our tech and security expert, are often needed; they hold keys to areas of expertise that I just don’t have. They are always available to me, and are amazing.

Alene and I check in pretty fluidly. No structure there, never has been since the day I was born, completely open-ended, natural and without expectation.

Tell us something about your personal relationship with the Tones.

Ohhh…. Okay. Super interesting. At the beginning I certainly could hear why they were so special, and for the first year or two I would listen to them sometimes. Yet I always believed in their effectiveness 100%. Then, after about 2 years of working with them, suddenly another level of understanding opened up to where every time I listened I was having a personal relationship with the Tones.

To this day new understandings, and things that never happened before during listening sessions, come to light. And it’s always exactly what I need.

It’s crazy that I can still be surprised by them, but I am. Every day.

Can you share some of your interactions with customers?

There is a general essence to customer stories—first in that n.o.w. users want to share successes and surprises with us, unsolicited. Like, a customer who wears a Fitbit told me that she can see that her blood pressure has come down as a direct result of listening to the Tones. There was a Hospice worker who told us about someone’s parent who was passing; the family laid the n.o.w. Tone Therapy System on her chest let the Tone’s play as they all listened. I was told how peaceful and beautiful it was that she left the earth while the Tones played—this affected me deeply.

Though difficult, one of my favorite stories of all time is from an extraordinary social worker who is a customer of ours. She handed the speakers to a teen girl who was emotionally shut down and uncommunicative due to trauma. While the girl held and listened, apparently she began to visibly relax and became able to try speaking and sharing. This actually had given me tears.

Another good one is from a grandmother who was really excited to share that she had brought n.o.w. as a gift to her family. They had a new baby who had trouble sleeping. On this visit, the baby was restless and making noises. She played the Tones, and suddenly the baby had gone to sleep.

Recently, there has been a new trend in feedback: I am hearing more stories of how people are using the Tones with consciousness-work, as in journeying beyond the mind. This is very exciting, and is independently happening more of the time now. Interesting.

From your acquired sage position, where you actually talk to people who struggle in the myriad of ways that life can present, what advice can you give to people?

I would say that my main advice for people is to know that they have everything they need inside of them, to completely trust themselves. What I tell them about n.o.w. these days is that it is opening them up to what they already have within them, it’s bringing them back into this—it’s giving a doorway to access those points and then they can take over. It is more of access to what they have than it being that n.o.w. is giving them anything.

I believe that is the answer, really, for everybody. We need these tools right now to open to these deeper places in ourselves.

n.o.w. is a tranformative product, and you work with it very closely. Is there anything different about you now than when you started with the company four years ago?

I guess I did not know, back then: I am the creator of my own experience. This is something I definitely did not know then that I know now. The more peace I carry within myself is the more peace that I can bring through my work and my personal interactions as well as in my own space.

I am grateful.

And we are grateful too, to have Ruane with us. Thank you Ruane! And thanks readers, for reading!! –Alene

Please try a 3-minute sample experience of the n.o.w. Tones for yourself by clicking here.

A man named Sy Sperling famously used to say in his commercials: “I’m not only the President of Hair Club for Men—I’m also a client.” This pops into my head more regularly than I can stand, and it is because: “Not only am I the co-developer of the n.o.w. Tone Therapy System—I am also a listener.” Regularly so.

Never once have I been a person who maintains practices; I am skillfully resistant to structured time and organization, someone who likes to take on shiny new “good habits” with fervor only to drop them before a week and a half has gone by. If there is one thing you can count on with me, it is that I do not count on my own ability to have routines, of any sort.

But, lo and behold! I listen to n.o.w., twice a day pretty much every day. It has been and continues to be a discovery for me in richness of feeling, in effectiveness as a tool for better living, and in giving me the quick hack into mindfulness I always wanted and could never find.

Hey, before I continue, right now I’ll take a 3-minute break and listen to a session of the Tones. After, I can share what comes to me about my experience. In fact, you’re welcome to join me if you like: go ahead and use our DEMO for your own 3 minute experience, then meet me back here.

Okay, back! And wow, that was amazing for me. Not kidding, although I have to say that after 5 years of listening to the Tones, it must seem like an exaggeration that I would say wow. But I’m not exaggerating.

When I turned on the System just now, I stayed at the computer and placed one speaker on each knee. This caused both speakers to be under the table I use in my studio, and I realized they sounded almost “new” to me, once again, because their sound was amplified and made somewhat reverberant by the table top above them. It sounded LOVELY, and was an instant reminder of why the Tones are designed to be played in and with the environment where you are. It was a deliberate decision not to have headphone jacks or Bluetooth added to the System—instead, we added the world.            

I took a nice breath in, and noted that my posture went gently upright. My shoulders dropped back, my chin raised up comfortably—it was like my skeleton put itself back into balance. This was a luscious feeling while the Tones played, an undoing of the position I’d held for the previous hour while looking at the computer and also my phone’s screen, catching up on texts in-between unconscious, “accidental” clickings onto Instagram. Confession: I am the Pro in “procrastination.”

The Tones combined and swelled up to me, and I closed my eyes to listen more attentively. My bones and muscles released their grip on each other, and I found it easy to concentrate. Then the air conditioner decided to turn on then, and it blew loudly from the AC vent I have mostly closed off in the ceiling—this produces a whooshing sound that I generally don’t appreciate, but it blended into the Tones as they played and became another part of the experience—it only took me a few seconds to accept the added layer of sound, rather than wish for something different.

I was able to release thoughts and plans, and the words and words of a blog post and even the points I wanted to remember, and simply trust that I’d be able to get back to it all in only three minutes. Let me say that pure trust, for a few minutes, while letting the Tones take the mind out of normalcy and noise and into a quieted realm, is really something; I had felt myself wrestle for a moment as I’d wanted to mentally jot down some thoughts, then I just let myself get swept away. This, by the way, has translated into an ability to do this in the rest of my life—it is like I’ve been in “Don’t Worry” training. And it’s working!

I go in and out of intent on listening. Though I don’t have the talent to still my thoughts for long, the few seconds I get within the whole session is more than plenty—the Tones become my anchor, then my sail, then the wind, and I am sent moving far from thoughts. A brief moment into eternity is still eternity.

Ahhhh, *sigh.* I’m carrying that calm right now. Thank you for coming along and sharing this with me! I love n.o.w. because it cheerily welcomes me to a new peace whenever I listen. The peace is real, and it has intelligence and influence—it does not stay locked in the moment back when I listened, but rather brings about change to the rest of my day and my life. To me it feels like a quick but profound release of human suffering, creating a tiny vacuum to usher in motivation and inspiration I would not otherwise be privy to. It helps connect all the dots.

Really, what more could an unstructured, routine-resistant, meditation drop-out ask for?

With Utmost Sincerity, and Peace to You  –Alene

And again, click here to try your own 3-minute n.o.w. Tone Therapy Session!

“How is the n.o.w. Tone Therapy System different from/better than using a meditation app and binaural beats with headphones?”

This is a question that appears to us regularly, for good reason. Whether through sounds baths and Tibetan singing bowls, or linear digital recordings or another method, people are increasingly familiar with the idea of using binaural beats for a relaxation response. Our Tones seem a lot like other useful tones that are out there on the market, in apps, or playing on Youtube, etc. But they are in fact formed differently and offer a broader experience.

With the helpful magic of software I get to mix in a good portion of a past response to this question, also, from Michael Joly.  

First, n.o.w. is atypical in sound and brain/body reaction due in part to our patent-pending discoveries in the area of aural neuromodulation. The creation of sounds from the Tone Therapy System happens independent of Michael’s original instrument recordings to bring an experience to the listener that we can’t predict, but which has proven through our customers to bring stress and anxiety reduction; there is a shift which happens toward meditative states that appears to be quicker, easier and more effective than anything else on the market today. We have not created binaural beats for the sake of what these beats can do; instead, the beat frequencies created in the play of the System work alongside other components that happen during a listening session. Any beats are just part of the unique-each-time experience that the System is played and listened to.

n.o.w. is subtly––yet profoundly––different. We leave it up to individual users to determine their own preferences but we can say that our feedback and testimonials over time have shown us that the reasons people prefer n.o.w. over other products are as varied as those people themselves.

n.o.w. (which stands for New Origin Waveforms) is one latest development in the emerging field of “consciousness transformation technology,” and yet it sort of goes backwards in time with the use of non-digital, real instrument tones. n.o.w. is self-contained and does not use a mobile phone, or computer app. The Tones were all recorded in a quiet, open setting. They are meant to be played back into whatever environment the user is in at the time of listening so that their own soundscape or quiet environment can interact with the Tones.

The placing of the speakers––whether on the body where gentle vibrations can enhance the experience, or together on a table, or in different areas nearby, all serve to create a new and unique 3-minute experience. The Tones play for three minutes, always and only, in order to deliver a complete n.o.w. session with a beginning, middle and fade-out-to-end of the Tones. Then n.o.w. shuts itself off automatically.

What’s so great about all of this? We believe there are several things:

*Three minutes is easy to find within each day.
*The Tones are tuned to the Universal Tuning Standard of 1 (A432), and while they always sound similar they will vary forever––this will keep your brain from ever being in any anticipation or normal recall, but rather brings to the listener a present-state experience that can never be otherwise.
*Listeners appreciate the lack of gaming and self-competition, or any record of how often or long they listen––what happens between you and n.o.w. stays between you and n.o.w.!
*The vibrational component to the speakers and Tones has allowed us to bring the n.o.w. experience to the hearing-impaired.
*Being voice and music-free means that there is less opportunity for the sort of judgements that can get in the way of presence.

There are no objectives when using n.o.w., no doctrines or belief systems, no overt goals. Listening to n.o.w. and becoming aware of thoughts––and gently letting them go so as to listen to the Tones again, and again, is meant to bring the user to moments of release of their incessant, worry-plagued (or at least very noisy) thinking mind.

That is all it does. And yet, in that, there is much to be discovered. We feel the times between the listening sessions are also important (as listeners become generally less reactive to stress). The System delivers calm and relief in short doses. This is felt in different ways by different users (sometimes in the body, sometimes as waves through the brain, an overall body release of tension and “inner” relief, or as a nice sound…), and those doses string together in ways that users say produce positive life changes. The idea is that over time––be that in the immediate time or over a course of use––having more of oneself available, and more peace, will affect life in uncountable ways.

Is it “better” than binaural beats? The answer really comes down to: it is different than using plain old binaural beats because it is a System of many things that occur along with the sounds themselves. You, the listener, are of course one of those things.

The Tone Therapy System is meant to be SUPER easy so you’ll use it, and ABSOLUTELY effective so that you’ll keep using it; with that, the personal and collective discoveries of the n.o.w. Tone Therapy System continue on and on.

Thanks for letting us revisit this question!

JUST LISTEN!!! And, have a great day today. –Alene (and Michael!)

To hear a 3-minute demo of n.o.w. NOW, click here!