Meditation is a challenging but rewarding experience.

When I was in college, I used to meditate often, and found it was a highly effective way for me to quiet my stress and reset my mind.

But as I've made my way through the always-on world that we live in today, it's become a lot harder to find even 10 minutes to disconnect. There's always that nagging inner voice: what if that important person responded to your email? 

That's why I was intrigued when I heard about the Somadome on a recent tour of CORE: Club, the ultra exclusive social club frequented by New York's elite. 

The Somadome, a spaceship-like pod that retails for $14,500, promises to make meditation easy by enveloping users in a combination of  LED color therapy, guided meditation, binaural beats, and energy healing.

I decided to give it a try.

I first encountered the Somadome at the Institute of Skinovation, a high-end skincare clinic located in CORE: Club, an exclusive social club in Midtown Manhattan.

I was told that the pod is made up of "microcrystalline tiles" developed by French geophysicist Pierre Nicolas to channel healing energies. I cannot attest to how grounded in science the tiles are.

The pod uses guided meditation or binaural beat meditation (or a combo). I've done both before. The idea behind binaural meditation is that you listen to some admittedly strange sound patterns to induce your brain to output certain wavelengths associated with a certain mental state.

You can try out binaural sound meditation for yourself at Square Eater. There's not a ton of scientific evidence examining the effects of binaural beats and the studies that exist are mixed at best.

I've had some success with it, but that amounts to a big ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ because it could just be a placebo effect.

The Somadome can be found at a few high-end spas like the Institute, the Ojai Valley Inn & Spa in Santa Barbara, CA, and the Four Seasons Westlake Village in Los Angeles. A 20-minute sessions usually costs $30-60.

Somadome has also been selling units to universities and corporations.

The chair is cushioned and comfortable. It feels like a cocoon. When I got into the pod, an Institute staff member warned me that I might fall asleep. I didn't believe her.

The staff member also told me to leave my phone outside of the pod. The pod is built to block out electromagnetic fields, she said, so bringing your phone would defeat the purpose. If nothing else, it's a clever way to get me to actually disconnect for my meditation session.

You get a pair of headphones to block out the noise around you and listen to the meditation track.

The Somadome is constructed to help meditation practioners to block out the world, founder Sarah Attia told Business Insider in 2015.

“Meditation is all about finding our minds and listening to a sort of voice from within and connecting and it’s so hard to do that and it’s just getting harder,” she said.  “In a perfect world we would all go to yoga everyday and go on a meditation retreat every quarter and have the perfect place in our home that is sacred where no one interrupted us and we could find the time. But we don’t.”

Once you are inside with the lid closed, it's cozy, but not claustrophobic. You can still see outside of the pod to your feet if you like. It's distracting, and I would've preferred something more all-encompassing.

There's a touchscreen built into the side for you to pick your meditation.

I had a busy day ahead of me so I decided to choose "mental performance" and "focus."

An ethereal female voice starts the meditation "welcoming you to your journey to the present." But after that, nothing happened. I sat in the pod for ten minutes wondering if I was doing something wrong. I guess there are still some kinks to work out.

I concluded that the track didn't play for some reason and I switched to "physical wellness" and "recharge."

Finally, the actual binaural track began to play. The track sounded like a mixture between undulating and pulsing sound-waves, rushing water, and birds chirping. You wouldn't think that's relaxing, but it blocks out all thoughts.

It gets a bit stuffy in the pod pretty quickly. Apparently there's a fan that you can turn on, but I couldn't figure it out. Chalk it up to user error.

I didn't expect to, but at some point I fell asleep. A bell chimed to tell me the session was over. I must admit I felt like I had just taken an amazing power-nap.

How much the LED lights and binaural beats helped versus simply forcing me to disconnect because of the pod's structure I can't quite say. But it did help me push past the biggest roadblock to effective meditation — the nagging of the real world.

I feel like the Somadome would be useful to someone new to or uncomfortable with meditation as it simply makes the practice of meditation easy, taking care of creating a secluded space and guiding the person through the session.

I could also see it being a great thing to have in an office. I often need a break at work, but meeting rooms are hard to come by in our bustling space. The Somadome would be an interesting way to provide a semi-private way to rest and recharge.

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