How Silence Reduces Stress and Improves Productivity and Health
Silence can be the perfect antidote to busyness and stress. When you’re feeling overwhelmed, practicing silence can help you reduce stress and improve productivity and health.
We live in a world of doing. Busyness. Constant connectivity. Productivity.
Many days can be noisy, fast, and overstimulating.
Maintaining a quick pace and high energy can overwhelm your system and impact your health.
That’s why it’s important to find quiet to reset your system.
In fact, practicing silence will not only help you feel better, but it can also help you get more done and improve your health.
Why Silence is Important
Just like technology tries to keep you connected and engaged 24/7, your body tries to do the same. Your body goes where you direct it, and then it tries to respond as fast as you tell it.
And guess what? You’re giving your body a lot of instructions to follow ASAP.
The problem is, when you move from one crisis to the next, your sympathetic nervous system is triggered. Then it stays on high alert in fight or flight mode, thinking every to-do on the list is a 5-alarm fire. When your internal system is overstimulated, health issues can arise.
Know what happens when your sympathetic nervous system stays elevated for long periods of time?
For starters, your blood rushes to your extremities so you can run to the emergency, even if you just need to put a spreadsheet together. This automatic, hard-wired response in the body can be helpful if you need to save a person from a fire, but working in excel may not require the same level of alertness.
When your blood is in your extremities preparing you for battle, it’s not helping you digest your food, nourish your body, and take care of many other helpful bodily functions. You ever notice when you’re stressed, you feel a little queasy and sick to your stomach? This could be why.
To get out of this reactionary mode, you want to activate your parasympathetic nervous system. A great way to do that is by getting quiet and practicing silence.
When you’re still, you can quiet your senses, your organs, and your nervous system.
Health Benefits of Silence
There are many health benefits to quiet time. There’s even research to back it up.
A 2013 study found that mice grew new cells in the hippocampus after 2 hours of silence. Seeing as the hippocampus is the area of the brain responsible for learning, emotions, and memory, this is definitely good news for the benefits of silence.
Another study showed that spending time in a loud area can increase your heart rate and blood pressure.
On the flip side, research found that two minutes spent in silence reduces stress and blood pressure more than listening to music.
More silence benefits include:
Lowers cortisol and reduces stress
Decreases blood pressure
Drops heart rate
Reduces muscle tension
Increases focus and mental clarity
Boosts productivity
Improves creativity
Creates more mindfulness and less reactivity
It all makes sense. When you drop your stress, you drop your cortisol levels, and in turn your blood pressure and heart rate decrease. Now your muscle release and you’re feeling much more relaxed and calm in your body.
From that place, you can think more clearly, be more creative, more productive, and even have better conversations with people around you because you’ve moved out of reaction mode.
How to Create More Silence in Your Life
Now you know all the benefits of silence, so how do you get more of it?
An obvious place to start is to stop talking. Carve out dedicated time for quiet. No calls, no chatting with anyone in the house, block it off, and savor it.
You can treat this silence practice like a formal, scheduled meditation or you can do things a little looser.
Try one or more of these silent practices and see what helps you really reduce stress and feel better in your body.
Bring quiet awareness to your activities like cooking, gardening, or sewing
Take a walk without your phone, music, or podcast
Eat meals without reading or talking on the phone
Work without background noise or music
Find a quiet place at home or in a park to sit
Get up early to enjoy silence in the morning before others are awake
Drive your car without the radio on or talking on the phone
Leave your phone at home while doing errands to stay present
You can even start slowing down your conversations. Pause more, listen, and reflect.
Inserting quiet into everything you do can change the way you show up in the world. It may change the pace you move and how present you are in your activities.
Creating more silence could lead to a deeper enjoyment of your life. This slowing down can end up making you more productive, as well as happier and more fulfilled, realizing all that you have right in front of you.