Tihna started because my daughter couldn’t sleep.

My daughter was twelve. She wasn’t anxious and she wasn’t unhappy — she just couldn’t get her mind to switch off at night. She was having a rough stretch at school, and instead of winding down, her thoughts went round in circles until it was far too late. She’s fourteen now, and that question — why can’t she sleep, and is there actually anything that helps? — is what started all of this.

Then it stopped being only about her. My wife doesn’t have trouble falling asleep — she has trouble staying asleep. She surfaces something like twenty times a night, and each time she does, she wakes me with her. I’d finally be under, and then I’m awake again. Two people losing the same night for completely different reasons.

And I’ve had my own trouble sleeping for the last two years — something I never had before and still can’t explain. So I’m not building this at arm’s length for someone else’s problem. I’m one of the people it’s for, and so is anyone whose mind won’t settle at the end of the day, or who can’t stay down once they get there.

We tried the obvious things first. Most of what we downloaded was a content library with a subscription attached: playlists, rain sounds, a soothing voice. No structure, and no way to tell whether any of it was doing anything.

What got me started was reading about Nikola Tesla’s work on oscillation and frequency. I should be straight about that: Tesla is where my curiosity started, not where the evidence comes from, and nothing in his work validates anything this app does. But it led me to the modern research on brain frequencies, and that’s where I found the part that convinced me — this has actually been tested on people, in controlled trials, with measurable results. That’s when I decided to build it.

So I read the actual literature instead of the marketing copy. The credible research isn’t about pleasant audio at all — it’s about specific frequencies delivered on a protocol over weeks, which is close to the opposite of how these apps are built. That gap is the whole reason Tihna exists.

My daughter and I have tested every build. That cuts both ways and I’d rather say so: the app was shaped by someone who has to live with the results, and I’m not a neutral party. Getting the audio right took a long time and a lot of dead ends, and the honest version of this story includes all the versions that didn’t work.

I want to be careful here, because this is exactly where app founders overclaim: our family’s experience is my motivation, not evidence. A few people in one household is an anecdote, nothing more. The evidence for these protocols comes from the peer-reviewed studies cited throughout this site, and those studies have real limitations I try to state every time I reference them.

I’m forty-eight. I train three times a week — running and bodyweight work — and I still don’t sleep properly. I’ll say the thing a subscription app has no incentive to say: exercise is one of the better-evidenced things you can do for your sleep. A meta-analysis of twenty-two randomised trials found regular exercise improved self-reported sleep quality and insomnia severity in adults — though notably it moved the subjective measures far more than the physiological ones.[1] If you’re not moving your body at all, start there before you start here.

I’m also not going to pretend I have this sorted. I should be lifting heavier than I am — that’s a goal I’ve set, not a box I’ve ticked. Tihna isn’t a replacement for the basics. It’s for the nights when you’ve done the sensible things and your mind still won’t switch off.

I’m a software developer and entrepreneur. I’m not a neuroscientist, a doctor, a sleep clinician or a therapist, and nothing here should be read as if I were. If you want a clinical opinion about your own sleep, that belongs with your GP, and I say so on every page.

I’m not a trained audio engineer either. I learned that side of it by building it — reading the research, writing the signal chain, measuring what came out, and binning the versions that didn’t hold up. So read the list below as a description of what is actually in the app, not as a credential:

• Carrier and beat design. Every program has a deliberately chosen carrier tone — 250 Hz for Sleep, 200 Hz for Calm, 494 Hz for Focus, 392 Hz for Morning — because the carrier affects how cleanly the intended beat frequency is perceived. Most apps never disclose theirs.
• Critical-band separation. Version 1.3.0 shipped a real critical-band notch, so the ambient layer cannot mask the frequency doing the work. Pleasant background audio that smothers the actual signal is a failure mode nobody advertises.
• Signal isolation. I verified that the sub-octave drone cannot leak into the spatial-motion path, so what you hear is the protocol and not an artefact of the mix.
• Headphone verification. Binaural presentation physically requires stereo separation. Tihna checks before every session, because a program delivered through a phone speaker is not the program at all.
• Protocol structure. 28 sessions across four weeks with a defined frequency target per week, rather than an infinite playlist. The structure is the product.

You can read the full engineering write-up in Inside Tihna 1.3.0, including the measurements.

This field is full of confident nonsense, and a lot of it is profitable. I sort claims into tiers and I publish the tier, not just the conclusion. If you only read one section of this page, read this one — it’s the thing you can hold me to.

Sourcing

Every factual claim in an article links to a primary source — the paper itself, not a news write-up about the paper. Where I quote an effect size, I quote it as published, including the sample size and the limitations. Where a study is small, unblinded or industry-funded, I say so in the same breath as the finding.

What I won't do

No invented review scores or star ratings. No fabricated testimonials. No implying Tihna treats, cures or diagnoses any condition. No claiming a study measured something it didn't. No AI-generated filler articles presented as research.

Corrections

If you find something on this site that’s wrong, email me at brainfrequency@tihna.com.au and I will correct it and note the correction. Every article carries a last-updated date, so you can see when a page was reviewed instead of guessing.

Commercial disclosure

Tihna is a paid subscription app and I make money when you subscribe. Comparison articles on this site name competitors and I have an obvious interest in the conclusion, so I try to describe what those apps do accurately and let the argument stand on its own. Read them with that conflict in mind.

Tihna is a registered Australian company, not a studio behind a brand name. If you need to check who stands behind the app, here it is in full.

Company

Tihna Health

ACN

679 869 437

Registered in

Victoria, Australia

Platform

iOS — Apple App Store

Contact

brainfrequency@tihna.com.au

Who answers

Me. Questions, corrections and press all come to the one address.