As I’ve stated in my book, The Yoga of Sound, noise negatively affects human health and well-being. Problems related to noise include hearing loss, stress, high blood pressure, sleep loss, distraction and lost productivity. Noise tells our body we are in a stressful situation because humans, like most animals, are hardwired to react to loud noise as a 'warning' of impending danger. This is why we jump when we hear something loud and unexpected. When we're around noise a lot, our bodies seem to react by raising heart rate and blood pressure, and this can cause hormonal changes. Over time, this can lead to heart problems and other health problems.

There is no doubt that that we live and move about in environments that are subject to noise. The low boom of atrocious car stereo systems that vibrate our cells and bones even if we have our car windows drawn up, many of our machines such as lawn mowers and blowers, or the hums of powerful generators in hotels, are all extremely invasive to our bodies. These are all humanly produced sounds that are having a destructive effect on our health and our environment. There are many things you can do about this. For instance, you can research and get involved with local organizations that are working against noise pollution. Or you or start your own lobbying group. Canada is perhaps most knowledgeable about this situation than the U.S. Please visit www.quiet.org for more information.

One way that we heal ourselves from noise is to nourish ourselves with silence. In many of my workshops and retreats, I use The Yoga of Sound to explore the nature of silence, both a concept as well as an experience. The meaning of silence is not evident from popular culture. Western society, for the most part, does not really understand silence the way the East does. Japan, for instance, is a great example of an entire culture that nurtures silence, except of course in places modeled on the west, like Tokyo. Even the Bible does not address silence in depth. I found only seven references to silence in the New Testament. The Old Testament has much more but most of the time they are negative references, such as, “to silence someone”, which is to shut them up, or “put to silence”, which is to kill. This negative association with silence is what we inherit in modern Western society.

The East, on the other hand, has a profound understanding of silence along with many techniques that show us how to cultivate silence. In Yoga, the silence of the mind is most valued, and today, we are fast realizing that understanding silence may hold the key to improved health and well being in ourselves and in our society. Patanjali, in his classic Yoga Sutras, proclaims, “Yogas chitta vritti nirodhaha”. In English, Yoga is the cessation of the disturbances of the mind. We have trained our minds in such a way that like our environments our minds are also generating so much “noise”. How do we find the off switch? 

Another byproduct of noise pollution is Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), which is a serious problem in America today. Becoming silent allows us to listen with all of our being and to attune ourselves to something deeper. In other words, to become silent is to become receptive, to attune ourselves to the Divine Presence, which is also a way of reducing in ourselves those inner states of aggression that are related to the ego. Silence is that condition of mind that allows us to observe ourselves with equanimity. But how to become silent?

Silence is our home yet to we are constantly moving “out” of silence. How do we return to that silence? How do we remain or live in that silence? How do we extend that silence into our workplaces? How can we consciously live out of that silence? How do we converse with others and engage with others without losing touch with that silence? How do we “think” and “reflect” and “imagine” within the context of that silence? Join me at a workshop or retreat and discover for yourself how the techniques of chant and breath and movement can help you recover the power of silence.

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