The Importance Of Enjoying Silence Every Day

At present it seems impossible to find a quiet place to rest or spend at least a few minutes of enjoyment. While we can find the long-awaited peace by listening to a song or a mantra, the truth is that there is nothing like enjoying silence. And we need it every day!

That is why we want to highlight the importance of enjoying silence on a daily basis, even if it seems unattainable. Pay attention and learn to enjoy silence in your day to day.

Is silence unattainable?

We may think that, living in a big city, it is impossible to enjoy blessed silence every day. The screams, the honks, the music, the television… Everything seems to play against that organic need to rest and “disconnect” from the world.

It is said that speaking in a low voice is for the weak, we do not think about exercising without sounds, we even know what it is to sleep without listening to the noises of the street.

However, noise pollution is a very common problem in metropolises. It is related to various disorders such as insomnia or cardiovascular diseases.

How can we enjoy the silence if we live in the city? Do you need to go to live in the country or take a year off at the beach? You don’t have to go to those extremes. Perhaps we can believe that this problem is modern. However, it was talked about more than a century ago.

In 1859 a British nurse named Florence Nightingale wrote a report stating that unnecessary noise is the cruelest absence of care we can inflict on ourselves. It can even cause death at a young age.

Enjoy silence: sound is necessary, noise is not

According to the World Health Organization, three thousand people in Europe die each year from heart diseases related to living in the city and being in contact with sounds of more than 65 decibels on a daily basis.

In a study published in 2006 in the journal Heart, it was concluded that the brain and the cardiovascular system need quiet spaces and moments to relax.

The positive effects of silence

The positive effect of silence goes beyond the physical, because it brings us emotional and psychological benefits.

• It causes the birth of new neurons (a process known as “neurogenesis”). For this reason, its incidence in treatments for Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases is being investigated. This works for children and adolescents.

• In adults it is equally beneficial. It could help reduce cardiovascular risk, stress, or heart palpitations.
• The benefits of leading a reflective, deep-thinking, and meditative life could enhance our cognition.

For obvious reasons, we cannot spend 24 hours a day in absolute silence. Unless we decide to be Tibetan monks and do week-long spiritual retreats. However, a little sound is essential to our life. It allows us to communicate with others, express what we feel or be aware of what is happening around us.

Complete isolation is not required. Living a normal life that appreciates moments of silence and trying to compensate for noise with minutes of absence of sound is enough.

There are anechoic machines that reproduce something similar to “absolute silence” as might be experienced in space. But the truth is that nobody supports that place for more than 40 minutes. The brain needs external stimuli. In the case of not finding them, it will pay attention to what happens in our body: breathing, heartbeat, digestion, etc.

Silence is an intimate space

When we imagine the ideal occasion to enjoy the silence, we can think of being alone lying on the sofa, on the white sands of a beach or on a mountain in a zen position.

This is because finding quiet moments is very personal and intimate. Although many consider the same spaces or situations to rest and disconnect.

From time to time it is necessary to enjoy silence and solitude as a kind of gift that we make to ourselves. The only way to have a calm and peaceful inner life is to take time each day to be completely silent.

Recommendations to enjoy the silence

• What if I live in the city? Even in big cities there are moments of stillness and calm. It can be at dawn or early in the morning. We can also close the windows and blinds well or install a sound insulation system at home.
• Silence is synonymous with meditating before the sun rises or reading in bed on a Sunday morning.
• Perhaps near your work there is a large park whose center is far from the noise of cars and you have a great time among trees and plants.
• Places where meditation and yoga are practiced tend to have quiet spaces away from noise.
• Of course, we can also choose to go on the weekend to a rural place, so that the only sounds are the song of the birds, the waves breaking on the shore of the beach or the water falling through a waterfall.

It is important to identify and separate sound from noise. When is it harmful to health? When it is annoying to the ears, it does not allow us to carry out our activities or it is continuous. A noise can be someone talking next to us, the music from the radio or the television on.

To begin to enjoy the silence or the beneficial sounds, you have to make a change of habits. Find what makes us feel relaxed and restructures our interior.