AI-Driven App Helps Combat Stress & AnxietyAI-Driven App Helps Combat Stress & Anxiety

It might sound out there, but sound frequency therapy has been shown in studies to reduce stress and anxiety, as well as calm the endocrine and autonomic nervous systems and more.

Tulsa, OK., based Soaak Technologies is capitalizing on using artificial intelligence (AI) driven sound frequency therapy in an app to make the therapy’s healing potential widely accessible. The eight-year-old company has raised $4.5 million, with the United States Air Force being among the believers in the technology.

Most recently, Soaak announced it has partnered with the corporate wellness platform Zeamo, and shared that the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology awarded it nearly $500,000 in grant funding.

Novel Health & Wellness

Soaak’s proprietary sound frequency compositions are designed to not only reduce stress and anxiety, but also improve sleep, focus, mood, cognition, and help manage pain. The company claims the Soaak App has users in 156 countries, and 97% of members say that Soaak has measurably improved their lives in one or more areas.

MD+DI recently spoke with Soaak Technologies’ co-founder and President Aaron Fournier and CEO and Executive Chairman Henry Penix about how the technology works and how creative fundraising has fueled the company’s continued growth.

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Evolution from Clinic to App

Soaak started in 2016 with a brick-and-mortar clinic offering IV therapy, deep tissue massage, thermography, acupuncture, cranial sacral, bodywork, sound frequency therapy, and genetic profiling.

“Of all the modalities that we offered, we found that sound frequency therapy was giving us the best and most consistent outcomes for anxiety, depression, low energy, brain fog, and insomnia,” said Penix. “We have since developed 25 more frequencies, but that top five gave us the confidence that we could create something that would have the same efficacy as an in-clinic treatment outside of the clinic.”

Soaak went on to develop an app to deliver sound frequency therapy with comparable efficacy to what patients might achieve during 20-minute in-person session, where they would listen to a frequency aimed at treating a particular concern and making patients feel better. People who paid $1,000 a month for in-clinic, could access the therapy for $29.99 a month with the app, according to Penix.

The term “frequency” refers to Soaak’s proprietary sound frequency compositions, Fournier said.

“We like to call them frequency compositions because it's not just one frequency. It's not just, you know, one sound at a specific hertz. It's multiple [frequencies] that we put together in clinic to create those different outcomes,” Fournier said.

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App users have access to all the frequencies.

“If you were presenting with anxiety, you would go to the anti-anxiety frequency compilation…,” Penix said. “Now, because frequencies are adaptogenic, meaning that the body will only take what it needs and disregard the rest, you may be using one, two, three, four of those frequencies or all 20, but whatever it is, it's exactly what your body requires and needs to help it with, in this example, anxiety.”

Soaak’s app is evolving, having introduced AI, machine learning, and reading biometrics in the last few months iteration. So, when users open the app they can connect it to an Apple Watch, Oura Ring, or a Garmin product to see if they’re outside the range of a predetermined range of heart rate or heart rate variability, for example.

“Our AI can come in and say, ‘Hey, your heart rate is elevated. Are you working out or are you stressed out? If you're stressed out, it will show you the frequencies to play that will calm you down. If you’re working out, it will show you the frequencies that will pump you up,” Penix said.

Challenges

One of Soaak’s biggest challenges was to create something that could be played through an app with the same efficacy as an in-clinic treatment.

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“… after about two years and a lot of time, energy, and money, we were able to prove that efficacy and by virtue of … tens of thousands of customer testimonials in 156 countries, now we are seeing a lot of those things come in,” Penix said.

Things might not have worked out so well for Soaak if the perception of sound frequency therapy hadn’t evolved from what Penix calls “woo wee,” or weird, to more scientifically sound.

Growing evidence that the therapy offers good outcomes has helped to secure the company’s future.

“The cherry on top was when we won our first military contract and did very well with it, delivered what we were asked, and then we won our second,” Penix said. “That in itself has opened up other opportunities for future funding from military-type programs.”

Soaak is helping Air Force pilots with mission readiness. Because that involves a stress component, Penix said he has been talking with Veterans Affairs about the possibility of using the technology for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Goals

The company wants to have a presence in every country. As for the technology, Penix said that with advancing AI and machine learning models, along with reading wearables and biometrics, the Soaak App could become more user-specific and more seamless part of everyday life. They’re working toward consumers simply existing with the technology with one of the company’s latest iterations called dual audio.

“That means that you can open a frequency, let's say for anxiety, and if you want to be listening to an audiobook … while you're listening to the frequency, you can actually open up that audiobook and can turn the frequency down to where it's barely audible,” Penix said.