Quiet, please! The remarkable power of silence – for our bodies and our minds

No dogs barking. No lawnmowers. No revving engines. No sirens or car alarms. No planes. No construction work. No delivery lorries. Just pure, blissful silence. My ears could barely believe what they weren’t hearing when I opened the door, stepped into the garden and listened. It was autumn last year and I had just moved 600 miles north, from south-east England to Abernethy Forest in the Scottish Highlands. Occasionally, the wind shushed through the tree tops, like a slow wave breaking on the shore. Then it was quiet again. I lay in bed that night, letting my ears explore the faint thrum of silence, and for the first time in ages I didn’t reach for my earplugs.

In the ensuing months, my ears let go, by degrees, of a tension that I hadn’t been aware I was holding. I almost expected to look in the mirror and find them drooping, like those of a drowsy puppy. “Isn’t it a bit quiet for you there?” people asked – either mystified by our move, or concerned that we wouldn’t hack it. But I can’t get enough of it.

A 2006 study from the University of Pavia on music unexpectedly revealed how much the body and brain appreciate silence. The researchers were investigating how different types of music – from classical to techno, ragga to rap – affected markers of stress, including blood pressure, heart rate and breathing frequency. A two-minute silence was randomly inserted between the tracks as a control measure; but it turned out that listening to this silence elicited the lowest readings of all. “This relaxation effect was even greater than that seen at the end of five minutes of quiet rest [prior to the study beginning],” the authors wrote.

Spending time in silence – through meditation, prayer or going solo in the wilderness – has been integral to spiritual and religious practices for millennia: a path to self-discipline, knowledge and self-actualisation and a way to get closer to the god or gods you choose to worship. “The fact that it arose as a central feature, across different continents and eras, speaks to its importance,” says Gordon Hempton, an acoustic ecologist and campaigner for the preservation of quiet places.

But in today’s noisy world, silence is often seen as an emptiness to be filled.

When author Sarah Anderson was researching her recent book, The Lost Art of Silence: Reconnecting to the Power and Beauty of Quiet, she was surprised to discover that many people regard silence negatively. “They find it boring, uncomfortable or even confronting,” she says. Anderson herself relishes quiet, but admits that on a silent retreat she attended, she couldn’t help wondering whether there were things she could, or should, be doing with all that unfilled time; as if spending it in silence was wasteful.

“Ever since the Industrial Revolution, noise has been synonymous with productivity and progress,” says Hempton. “In all the clamour, we have forgotten the value of quiet.”

I did not move to the Highlands in search of silence. But having found it (or at least, more of it), I’ve realised the truth of Hempton’s assertion: “Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything.” Immersing myself in silence, I’ve found not less, but more. I am more aware of the soft sounds that are normally drowned out, of textures and colours, movement and patterns. It is as if my senses have been dialled up a notch.

Embracing the silence of the world around me has made me quieter, too. I talk less. I move more quietly. I ease the field gates shut, close the wheelie bin lid gently, whereas before I’d have thought nothing of banging and slamming around. Why would I, in a world already filled with noise?

Lowering the decibel level outside my skull has also turned up the volume of the noise within. I can finally hear myself think. Or, as novelist Pico Iyer wisely observed, hear myself not think, giving rise to something deeper than thought.

In silence, I can unpack the contents of my mind – thoughts, feelings, memories and opinions – and sort through them with greater clarity. I might notice an uneasiness about a decision I’ve made, or stumble upon a new insight, for example. I’ve become more contemplative, less quick to rush to conclusions. Hempton isn’t surprised. “In a quiet place, the mind falls quiet, because we tend to echo where we are,” he says.

The notion of silence as a presence, rather than an absence, isn’t just airy-fairy. Our brains perceive it that way. A 2023 study from Johns Hopkins University found that the brain processes silence in the same way as it processes sounds – as an “event”. Silence is not just inferred from a lack of auditory input, but actually perceived. As Ian Phillips, professor of philosophy and brain science and co-author of the study, puts it: “We really do hear silence.”

There is also evidence that attending to silence can promote neurogenesis – the creation of new brain cells – in the hippocampus. Researchers placed mice in an anechoic chamber (a soundproof space) and exposed them to various auditory stimuli, including total silence, for two hours a day. All sound scenarios, ranging from a Mozart piano concerto to the cries of baby mice, stimulated the proliferation of precursor cells in the hippocampus. This is the first stage of neurogenesis. However, after a week, these new cells had become functioning neurons only in the mice that received the silent treatment. This was a surprise to the researchers, but they theorised that because complete silence is so rarely experienced in mouse world, it prompted a level of attention that “might stimulate neurogenesis as preparation for future cognitive challenges”.

A completely silent environment would have been just as remarkable to our forebears. “It would have been a cause for concern, indicating the presence of a predator or an absence of biodiversity, meaning there’s nothing to eat,” says Hempton. That may explain why, in a 2013 study from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences that used virtual reality to investigate the effect of looking at natural landscapes on mental health, viewing forested landscapes without sound was found to be not relaxing, but unsettling.

The term “soundscape” refers to the combination of sounds that are present in a particular environment, and how we perceive it. This includes natural sounds – those made by animals, plants and weather – and human ones, from conversation and music to vehicle and industry noise. “We can distinguish between different aspects of a soundscape – pleasantness, for example, as well as eventfulness [how much or little acoustic activity is present], predictability [is the noise expected?] and meaning, or importance,” says Joshua M Smyth, a professor of health psychology at Ohio State University. If you were listening to the dawn chorus, you might rate the soundscape as eventful, predictable and pleasant, while the house renovations going on next door might be rated as eventful but unpleasant. “Noise is never neutral,” says Smyth. “One’s perception of it is a major factor in how stress-inducing it is.”

This was cleverly demonstrated by a 2016 study from the University of Gävle that exposed people to a single indistinct sound, telling some that it was the roar of a waterfall, and others that it was the noise of industrial machinery. The former found the sound more mentally restorative.

Here in the Cairngorms, where the writer Nan Shepherd “bent her ear to silence”, the pine forest muffles sound, while the surrounding hills act as a wind break. Among the trees, it can feel as if you’ve stepped into a landscape painting. But Hempton is right: it’s not truly silent. There are goldcrests peeping high up in the canopy, the trickle of a burn, snow flumping to the ground in winter.

Natural soundscapes are beneficial to the human brain – in part, at least – because unlike construction-site noise, planes and the attention-grabbing notifications on our phones, they form part of our auditory heritage. “Our brains evolved over aeons hearing the sounds of nature and often, for long stretches, nothing else at all,” says Richard Cytowic, professor of neurology at George Washington University and author of Your Stone Age Brain: Coping with Digital Distraction and Sensory Overload.“Silence is an essential nutrient. It is necessary for us to think.”

But with the world getting ever louder, it is increasingly hard to come by.

The average level of noise in urban environments has risen by 0.5-1 decibels per year over the past three decades. As well as being a pain in the drum, chronic excessive noise has been directly linked to cardiovascular disease, anxiety and depression, hearing loss and, in schoolchildren, impaired cognitive development. One in five people in Europe are now exposed to levels of noise pollution deemed harmful to health, according to a 2020 report.

It isn’t just humans who are suffering, says Hempton. “Noise pollution prevents birds from hearing predators and requires them to sing louder or at a higher pitch, which consumes more energy.” In a 2013 study for the Royal Society, researchers erected rows of loudspeakers in a designated wilderness area and played transportation noise; bird abundance declined by a quarter.

We do get used to the level and type of noise we experience. For example, people who live amid the cacophony of New Delhi show greater tolerance to noise – especially honking vehicles – than people living in London. When Anderson moved from one part of London to another, she discovered she was living beneath a flight path. “At first, it was a nightmare, but now I hardly notice it,” she says.

But the reverse is also true. It took a trip to the capital – where I grew up, and spent more than half my life – for me to realise how much I had adapted to the quiet of my new home.

One Sunday evening, I stepped on to the sleeper train at a dimly lit and almost deserted station. On Monday morning, I disembarked at London Euston and was immediately assaulted by an onslaught of noise. Loudspeaker announcements, the ringing and pinging of phones, shouty conversations, the roar of traffic, sirens blasting … Then the banshee screech and rattle of the tube and the straining engine and bleeping doors of the bus as it crashed across potholes on suburban streets. It felt like being pulled from the silence of the womb into the clamour of the world. Like everyone else, I clamped headphones over my ears. But I wasn’t listening to anything. I was just trying to escape the racket.

For Hempton, headphones, ear defenders and earplugs are not the answer. “Our auditory sense is all about connection, to people and place, and these cut us off from the world,” he says.

It is perfectly understandable to want to swap the din of city life for music or a podcast, but there is a risk that the non-stop soundtrack playing in our ears makes our experience of silence so rarefied that when we do chance upon it, we do everything we can to fill it immediately. “People have become afraid of silence,” says Cytowic. “It’s why the TV is on constantly, for ‘background’ noise – not to mention the endless scroll of the screen. Our brains never evolved to cope with this level of non-stop stimulation.”

What does he advise? “Switch off the TV. Go for a walk. Leave your phone at home. Look up at the trees, at the sky.”

Smyth makes an effort to embed at least brief moments of “acoustic tranquillity” into his daily life. “It might be near-silence, or a sound that is soothing to me,” he says. “If I’m in a noise-filled context, I’ll take ‘sound snacks’, where I’ll leave that environment for a brief period, or create a new one.”

My efforts to share my enthusiasm for silence with my husband have had mixed results. Inevitably, extolling the wonders of sitting in quiet contemplation of a morning seems like a criticism of him eating breakfast while scrolling through his phone – with the radio on. We had words when I was experimenting with the yogic practice of mouna vratha, a daily period of silence (the words translate roughly as “vow” and “not speaking” – an hour a day is usually recommended), and he stood in my eyeline, miming questions, which, though not audible, still felt like interruptions. It was a reminder that silence, like noise, has different flavours. A stony silence, thick with resentment, isn’t calming the way a companionable one is, when you’re reading or walking or looking at the night sky together and no words are needed.

I abandoned my formal practice of silence after a few days. There seems to be a shift towards selling silence as (yet another) tool for self-improvement, for increased productivity and creativity – a means to an end, rather than an experience in itself. Silent walking has even become a TikTok trend. I still seek out quiet, distraction-free time each day. But I prefer not to expect anything from these periods of silence and stillness, nor set a timer.

As I write, the house is quiet. There is the soft whirr of the computer, the occasional sleep whimper from the dog, the sound of my own inhalations and exhalations. These are all sounds that would slip below the radar amid everyday noise. Would it matter if they did?

Hempton argues that faint sounds are the most important for our wellbeing. “We evolved to have incredible auditory sensitivity,” he says. “Sound was the news feed, signalling what was present, the time of day, the time of year. It was our direct connection to the world around us.”

With so many other sources of information, that may not be as vital as it once was. But if we never step away from the hubbub, we’ll never give ourselves the opportunity to listen to silence and find out what it holds.

“To listen, you have to be quiet,” says Hempton. “What I enjoy most about listening is that I disappear.”