Silence and nature as a cognitive screen wash.
The concept of silence is an interesting one. I recently read a book by Erling Hagge, the wonderful artic explorer who travelled across the poles in silence, and what he concluded resonated with me, he suggested that silence was likened to a journey we have within our own souls. It allows us to understand more deeply who we are as people and the choices we make every day. For me this resonates, as silence allows us to quieten the constant chatter of noise we have been accustomed to living in the 21st century. Urban living has created an environment where society now works 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, which only serves to enhance the noise pollution we are exposed too and more worryingly the constant stimulation that exhausts our brains and provides little reprieve for cognitive restoration.
According to a study by Kaplan (1995) attention restoration can generally only be enhanced by natural landscapes that promote soft fascination within our minds, so observing clouds, ocean views, forests of trees and green plains, we can restore our attention and memory. Its funny as normally we believe to restore us and rest us, a night of watching tv may prove significant but this only drains our attention further. Kaplan suggested instead that to increase attention we need to use a different part of the brain to allow the restoration process.
Soft fascination does this and so we can benefit from observing and connecting to nature every time we feel stressed, unfocused or tired. But what about silence?
Silence is closely aligned with nature exposure, so to sit or walk observing nature can both restore our attention without much effort and provide an opportunity to refresh our mind from thoughts that can plague us every day. Some days we can over think and become lost in sadness and fear but on nature-based walks this reduces the challenging ruminations that can cause these emotions and with silence we begin to focus our attention on the present moment and observe our thoughts much clearly and this becomes the beginning of spending time with ourselves and listening to the person we are.
Does this sound scary, yes it can be for some to sit alone with our thoughts, but what is scarier is to sit with a daily narration of our fears and what makes us sad.
Today walk even for 10 minutes in a safe natural space until your mind clears and your attention becomes more involved in the present moment. Once this happens you will find that the silence begins to emerge slowly as you begin to become fascinated with the scents, sounds and textures all around.
This may serve you much more than an episode of your favourite tv show.
Colette
English