Six Ways Silence Benefits Your Mind
It’s a common experience for people to feel refreshed after a walk on the beach, or in the forest. This benefit could be because negative ions help to bring balance to the system, but another layer of benefit is the simple act of being silent. When we refrain from constant chatter and open ourselves to the world around us, our perspective begins to shift.
The power of silence resides, at least in part, in its ability to promote reflection. The more mindfully a person practices silence, the more profound this effect will be. A significant benefit of reflection is an expansion of perspective. The broader a person’s perspective, the greater the options available to them in their life.
The following are six benefits of silence that enable just that, an expansion of what is possible through the broadening of the mind.
Silence Promotes Imagination
Many who suffered boredom as a child had the experience of first seeking entertainment from the world at large via parents, siblings, friends, or some type of media. If none of those options were available, a surprising series of events would unfold wherein whatever was available, no matter how mundane, became a source of inspiration for self-guided play. What was key to unlocking this creative burst of world-building was silence.
Einstein famously said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” In his work as a theoretical physicist, his thought experiments were fundamental to his discoveries. So, on a personal level, he thoroughly proved his point. He continued to practice that child-like world-building across his lifespan. For this to occur, he needed silence.
In a reflective piece for the London Review of Education, Leslie Saunders describes creativity as being, “stimulated by the encouragement of vivid inner lifeworld's, a sense of
imaginative interiority and a sensuously felt subjectivity. Again, this cannot take place in the absence of quiet.
Silence Improves Vision
When you’re not talking, you’re better able to listen, feel and see. Focusing on one sense, by muting another (so to speak), has an enhancing effect on the sense getting your attention. In the case of vision, you’ll tune in much more fully to the world around you, noticing things that often escape your gaze otherwise. If you close your eyes that vision can turn inward, and you’ve now begun the process of mindfulness, creating an additional and highly beneficial way of seeing.
Silence Encourages Relaxation
Sitting in silence tells your body that you are in a safe place. If you pair it with deep breathing through your nose, you will be activating the parasympathetic nervous system which is the branch of the autonomic nervous system responsible for resting, digesting, and healing. This not only relaxes you, but it can also do wonders for your health.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, silence can have the physiological benefits of reducing stress and tension, lowering blood pressure and decreasing heart rate, and increasing focus and cognition. Which is exactly the type of benefits you should expect from getting your parasympathetic system online and another great reason to give silence a try.
Silence, Let’s You Dig Deeper
If you’re always engaging with the world around you, without pausing to stop, ponder and reflect, you are living on the surface of life. Each situation has a rich and abundant offering that can only be examined if you slow down long enough to experience it.
To observe this process in action, all you must do is take two separate walks in a park, one alone and one with a friend. When you’re with someone you tend to tune into each other, often at the exclusion of a great deal of what surrounds you.
When you’re alone and silent, the rest of life starts to show itself. In mere moments, the absence of human voices will encourage others to raise theirs. You’ll hear the buzzes and whirs of insects, the chirps and trills of birds, and perhaps the grouchy barking of a disgruntled squirrel protecting his territory.
The point is it can take silence to encourage receptivity and it takes being receptive to the world around you to dig deeper into life’s possibilities.
Silence Adds Clarity
Amidst chaotic moments, finding silence within yourself can reveal previously obscured possibilities. For example, if you’re in an argument and the other person starts to yell and you yell back, the scenario escalates and worsens. However, if you hold your tongue, pause for a few breaths, and then speak calmly, you may be able to diffuse the situation.
This process is called anticomplementary behavior and refers to doing the opposite, or the unexpected in a situation. In a study for the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Strong et al. found that “how a person behaves toward another systematically and profoundly affects how the other behaves toward the person.”
In other words, how you treat others will be reflected in how they treat you. Not exactly a new idea, but certainly one to consider if adding clarity to your relationships is something you value.
Silence Helps You Sleep
In a PubMed survey of studies on sleep, Susan L. Worley underscored the body of research demonstrating the role of disrupted sleep in a “wide range of disorders, including hypertension,
obesity and type- 2 diabetes, impaired immune functioning, cardiovascular disease and arrhythmias, mood disorders, neurodegeneration and dementia, and even loneliness.
This is somewhat obvious, but having a quiet, peaceful place to rest is a vital component of a good night’s sleep. The importance of healthy sleep cannot be overstated and hence silence is again demonstrated to be golden.
