| Finding Quiet in a Noisy World |
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"Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves." -The Duchess: "Alice in Wonderland"  Learn to tune out background noise with Toni's tips Sounds to Reduce (or Create) Stress As per my annual habit of developing at least one useless skill per year, this year my skill is sitting quietly and listening. I'm still amazed at how soothing the full range of natural sounds are and at how easy it is to sit for hours, simply, actively listening. All of this sitting and listening reminded me that sound, internal and external, has an amazing effect on our well-being. We rarely pay attention to the background cacophony of our world or think about how it affects our health. Internal sound is the ongoing chatter going on in our heads, most of which is irrelevant to the situation at hand and unhelpful in our daily lives. Sometimes it might be echoes of the sounds you heard, but paid no attention to throughout the day. Any combination of the ringing phone, the crying child, the person shouting angrily, the fire alarm test in your building, sirens outside- and on, and on, and on- can reverberate in our heads for hours. All these sounds can create levels of stress that can undermine your health- and they're not even real sounds. The sounds making up our real soundscape can be equally exhausting and stress inducing. The physical effort of blocking out background noise to focus on the task at hand can be more exhausting than planned physical exercise. How many of us go through the day with the phone in one ear and a finger in the other so you can complete the conversation or thought we are having? While it's true that if you're already strongly focused on a task and it's flowing well, nothing can distract you. But that level of concentration isn't usually sustained for an entire day. I'm finding that the sound of the television is problematic. Something about the high pitched, breathless, insistent tone is stressful. What are your sounds that create or soothe stress? Research is beginning to show that meditative sounds, such as uuuuum or ohhhhm, or whatever sound resonates with you can contribute much to lessening day to day stress brought on by excessive ambient noise. Even if the sound is only silently going through your mind, stress levels can be lowered, the internal chatter quieted. It's thought that the resonation of long vowel sounds provides a stabilizing vibration. Research also shows that for many, music can achieve similar results. Something about the regular pulse of music, be it Led Zeppelin for some or Bach for others, organizes the brain waves into a level of comfort and efficiency. There are meditative techniques in which, after getting comfortable, closing your eyes, relaxing the back of your throat and stabilizing breathing, one can breath into the silence before or underneath the noise. The silence before the noise is oftentimes found inside the body. The result is the sensation of external sounds coming from several feet away through a barrier rather than from a few inches away on the subway. While it is difficult for many of us to get to the country regularly, simple recordings of nature and mediation tapes can do the trick of transporting you to a more soothing place to reduce tension in your head and body. As we design our physical space, we can also design our soundscape with a rich mix of music, sounds and silence to suit our daily requirements of energizing, being in the zone, and resting. |
