Why periods of silence are important to your health
Everyone has talked about silence but few have gone deeper into why it is important.
Some people can work while listening to music, others cannot but either way being silent for small periods of time can help you in different ways you may not know, yet!
Personally, being silent for me sometimes was hard, especially when I’m with other people talking. If there were a few seconds pause I was very uncomfortable and felt the need to say something. Has this ever happened to you? This is a paradox, why human beings tend to feel uncomfortable if not fearful in silence. This may be understandable when silence in our daily lives is particularly absent. So when it happens we don’t know how to react.
Let’s continue discussing a little more about silence.
Science has confirmed that our brains need silence and why? Silence contributes to the regeneration of the brain.
A few studies about neurogenesis from Research Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (Kirste et al., 2013) have found that silence has a huge impact on the brain. German researchers found that the brain of rats that stayed in silence for two hours a day grew new cells in the hippocampus, a region in the brain correlated with memory, emotions, and learning. They also found that these new cells were able to differentiate and integrate into the nervous system to fulfill different functions. Silence in this study is responsible for increased precursor cell proliferation, and even after 7 days, compared with other types of stimuli to the brain, only silence remained associated with an increased number of these precursor cells. The absence of auditory input leads to greater numbers of newborn immature neurons whereas ambient and unstructured background auditory stimuli do not. So reserving a few minutes a day in total silence can be beneficial for our brain, helping us conserve memory and be more flexible to changes. Silence has also an anti-stress effect. Our body is built to react to sound inputs even in deep sleep. The noise provokes the activation of the cerebral amygdala. While some types of noise may increase adrenaline and cortisol, Bernardi et al.,(2006) found that a 2-minute silence pause between music (independent of a person’s music preference), induced evident relaxation greater than that preceding the exposure to music and leads to reduce sympathetic activity (stress response) and may be potentiality useful in the management of the cardiovascular disease. Just two minutes in absolute silence is much more beneficial than listening to relaxing music and helps reduce blood pressure.
Now shifting from a biological point of view to a more philosophical one, silence also has pedagogical value.
According to Zembylas & Michaelides (2004), silence in education is an indispensable disciplinary act that aims to establish effective teaching and learning. The use of silence in education settings may simply allow time for reflection teaching and learning. The essay pinpoints the difficulty to define silence and also the cultural differences between western and eastern cultures. Do you know that in some eastern cultures silence is believed to be just as important as speaking because it provides the opportunity to reflect on the value of what has been communicated? Silence in the east is valued as opposed to being feared as I aforementioned. We usually equate silence with a lack of communication. However, silence and non-verbal communication are particularly important in classroom interactions because the student’s emotional communications take place without talking. There are many nonverbal cues such as body language and facial expressions that help silence to function. Silence can be considered an important factor in many communicative situations in the classroom. Silence may allow time for reflection on teaching and learning or as a disciplinary action when teachers silence “ noisy” classes to restore the classroom’s social structure.
You can learn better by silently observing the world. And learning to listen to silence not simply is a mechanism for reflection but also serves to create meaningful spaces in which emotions such as anger and hatred can be reinterpreted. Indeed helps with personal growth.
The authors state that silence is important to respect others. It facilitates openness, receptivity, and above all hearing the experience of otherness. Without silence respect towards others is not possible, along with care, generosity, and compassion.
In conclusion and in a world full of “noise”, restlessness, entertainment, and action, silence becomes golden. Slowing down, and quieting the mind and body nourishes the brain and the spirit, as we’ve seen. These findings are the grounds for why meditation has health benefits. You can meditate every day by staying in complete silence with your eyes closed and focusing on breathing for a short period of time.
Enjoy the silence.
References:
Bernardi, L., Porta, C., & Sleight, P. (2006). Cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and respiratory changes induced by different types of music in musicians and non‐musicians: the importance of silence. Heart, 92(4), 445. https://doi.org/10.1136/hrt.2005.064600
Kirste, I., Nicola, Z., Kronenberg, G., Walker, T. L., Liu, R. C., & Kempermann, G. (2013). Is silence golden? Effects of auditory stimuli and their absence on adult hippocampal neurogenesis. Brain Structure & Function, 220(2), 1221–1228. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-013-0679-3
Zembylas, M., & Michaelides, P. (2004). The Sound of Silence in Pedagogy. In Educational Theory (Vol. 54, Issue 2, pp. 193–210). https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0013-2004.2004.00005.x
