Enriching your
life through Solitude and Silence
Noise certainly seems to be part
of our everyday lives from the alarm clock in the morning, to
the traffic outside, to the never-ending sound of voices,
radio, and television.
Our bodies and minds appear to
acclimate to these outside intrusions. Or do they?
Two decades ago the committee on
Environmental Quality of the Federal Council for Science and
Technology found that “growing numbers of researchers fear the
dangerous and hazardous effects of intense noise on human
health are seriously underestimated.” Similarly, the late Vice
President Nelson Rockefeller, when writing about the
environmental crisis of our time, noted that when people are
fully aware of the damage noise can inflict on man, “peace and
quite will surely rank along with clean skies and pure waters
as top priorities for our generation”
More recent studies, writes
Michael D. Seidman, M.D., in terrific book, Save Your Hearing
Now, suggest that we pay a price for adapting to noise: higher
blood pressure, heart rate, and adrenaline secretion;
heightened aggression; impaired resistance to disease; a sense
of helplessness. Studies indicate that when we can control
noise, its effects are much less damaging.
I haven’t been able to find any
studies on the effects of quite in repairing the stress of
noise, but I know intuitively that most of us love quite and
need it desperately. We are so used to noise in our lives that
silence can sometimes feel awkward and unsettling. On
vacation, for instance, when quite prevails, we may have
trouble sleeping. But choosing times of silence can enrich the
quality of our lives tremendously. If you find yourself
overworked, stressed-out, irritated, or tense, rather than
heading for a coffee or snack break, maybe all you need is a
silence break.
Everyone at some time has
experienced the feeling of being overwhelmed by life.
Everyone, too, has felt the need to escape, to find a quite,
secluded place to experience the peace of spirit, to be alone
with quite thoughts.
Creating times of silence in
your life takes commitment and discipline. Most of the time,
periods of silence must be scheduled into your day’s
activities or you’ll never have any.
Maybe you can carve out times of
silence while at home where you can be without radio,
television, telephone, or voices. If you live in a family,
maybe the best quite time for you is early in the morning
before other arise. In that silence, you can become more
aware, more sensitive to your surroundings, feel more in touch
with the wholeness of life.
attain
super conscious states. These techniques are taught in yoga.
Source:
www.timeswellness.com
|
