Tatiana Khodakova
“To hear oneself, one needs silence. To hear the truth, one needs quiet” (Lao Tzu)
Have you noticed a strange thing? We are constantly surrounded by noise, yet no one explains why silence has suddenly become dangerous for us. Why does your brain start to panic after just 12 seconds of stillness?
Experiment: 67% of men chose pain
Silence has become a scarce resource, but few realize how much we have unlearned how to engage with it.
Try this right now: Turn everything off. Stop reading, put your phone aside, and sit in complete silence for just 60 seconds. Time yourself. Most likely, you will give up somewhere around the 20th to 30th second. It will become unbearable: you’ll want to check your phone, play music, find some kind of background noise. And you know, this is not a lack of willpower. It’s a program that has been instilled in us.
A threat to survival
Harvard scientists confirm that after just 12 seconds of silence, our brains start to perceive it as a threat to our survival. But why? Why has silence suddenly become dangerous?
The answer came from a study at the University of Virginia (Professor Timothy Wilson, 2014). In this study, participants were asked to spend 6-15 minutes alone in a room, with the option to administer themselves a mild electric shock.
The result was shocking: 67% of men (almost two out of three) preferred to shock themselves rather than remain in silence alone with their thoughts. People chose physical pain over facing themselves.
Silence as an X-ray: A Conspiracy That Lasted Centuries
Now, here’s the most important question: why has silence been hidden from us for hundreds, even thousands of years?
Because silence is a technology for accessing knowledge that is more dangerous than power. It works like an X-ray, revealing everything that is hidden behind the background noise:
Ancient mystics and monks (Pythagoras, Sufis) spent years in silence. This was not a punishment, but a necessary practice for accessing the truth.
Christian hermits went into the desert not to find God there, but to meet themselves. The desert was a place where what a person had been fleeing from all their life was exposed.
“Silence is a test that only those who are ready to disappear can endure”. (Al-Khaladsh)
To disappear as a set of roles, self-perceptions, and degrees of protection.
Our mind cannot endure itself: The Room at Microsoft
To understand how overloaded we are, it’s enough to peek into the quietest room in the world, located at Microsoft headquarters. This anechoic chamber has a sound level close to -20.5 dB — quieter than your breath. The record for an unprepared person staying in there is about 45 minutes.
After 10-20 minutes, silence becomes a physical force that presses on you. You start to hear:
- The creaking of your joints.
- The flow of blood in your ears.
- The beating of your heart like a drum.
Your body suddenly becomes the loudest orchestra in the world. And after just 30 minutes, most people begin to hear voices. This is not schizophrenia; the brain is trying to create some kind of noise in an information vacuum, just to avoid confronting what lies beneath it.
Neurobiology: The Network of Inner Dialogue
In neurobiology, this is referred to as the Default Mode Network (DMN) or self-reflection. In absolute silence, it activates, bringing to the surface all the baggage that has been hidden behind the noise for years: old fears, unprocessed experiences, anxieties.
Paradox: The human brain evolved in a world where silence was the norm for thousands of years. But today, it can’t endure even an hour of absolute tranquility. We have overloaded it so much with constant background noise that the natural environment is perceived as a threat.
The Noise Economy: How We Are Controlled
Why are we so afraid of what was once natural? The answer is simple: silence makes a person free and uncontrollable.
Background noise — whether it’s an office, notifications, or music — decreases the ability to solve complex cognitive tasks by 10-15%.
The Attention Economy keeps us on “microdoses of dopamine” (short videos, notifications), using noise as fuel.
The white noise industry earns billions from your fear of silence. You pay to avoid hearing yourself. But the wealthiest people, on the contrary, pay for silence (retreats without connectivity, rooms without the internet), understanding that this is a precious resource for clarity and life management.
The Technology of Silence: Returning to Yourself
Silence is not emptiness; it is the moment when the mind can do an internal cleanup.
1. 2 minutes of silence: The brain switches to a different mode. The hippocampus (memory center) starts to normalize and defragment information.
2. 5 minutes of silence: The body relaxes. The cortisol (stress hormone) level drops markedly faster than during sleep. Blood pressure stabilizes. You stop hindering your body from healing itself.
3. 8 weeks of practice: Research proves that a few minutes of silence each day stimulates the growth of new neurons in the hippocampus (Duke University), improves learning ability, and increases the insular cortex (the “I am”center), making you more resilient and focused.
As the Daoists said: “The wise do not seek answers; they clear the space in which answers are born”.
Silence brings you back to where you have been running from — to yourself. The ego perceives silence as death because it exists only in motion, noise, and reactions. But behind that fear lies your inner compass, intuition, creativity, and the ability to make decisions not from the head but from your entire being.
All these studies, scientific facts, and mystical teachings only describe what cannot be explained in words.
Silence cannot be conveyed or shown on a screen. It can only be lived. It cannot be narrated, but one can enter into it.
And let’s do that right now.
Not as a complicated meditation, not as a technique or mandatory exercise, but as a meeting. A meeting finally with what you have been running away from every day — with your true self.
We already know: there will be discomfort, there will be a desire to escape. But this discomfort is the signal that you are on the right path.
How to Enter Silence
To make this meeting happen, find the most comfortable and stable position.
Position: Find a comfortable place, sit comfortably but with a straight back — like a rod connecting the sky and the earth. This position will help maintain clarity of mind.
Observation:Close your eyes and take a few deep, slow breaths. Dive inward.
Inner X-ray: Become an impartial observer. Start scanning your inner space:
– Sensations: What does your body feel right now? Are you feeling tension, warmth, or lightness?
We are just observing.
– Emotions: What feelings are surfacing? Anxiety, boredom, sudden joy?
We are just observing.
– Thoughts: What noise is in your head right now? Thoughts about tasks, plans, or self-criticism? We do not engage, judge, or analyze. We simply observe as clouds pass across the sky of consciousness.
We give permission for everything to be. At this moment, there is nothing more important than what is happening within you.
Let’s dive into silence…
Your Choice
If you dared to practice silence, even if you lasted only a few minutes, you have still arrived for a meeting with yourself. You took the first step on a path where there are no maps and no guides, only you and what is inside you.
Most people live their lives without ever taking this step. Why? Because it’s scary, because it’s unclear what will happen. It’s much easier to turn on music, someone’s voice, or the flicker of notifications.
But if you are already here, you have a choice:
•You can return to familiar noise: check notifications, turn on a series, forget about this experience. And everything will return to how it was.
•Or you can choose yourself: do this tomorrow and the day after. Just 2–5 minutes in the morning and 2–5 minutes in the evening.
Not to achieve enlightenment. Not to be successful. But to finally hear yourself.
After a month, you won’t recognize your life because silence is not the absence of something. It is not emptiness. Silence is the space where you can hear and feel who you are.
The Key to Tomorrow
Tomorrow morning, before picking up your phone, just sit. And for two minutes listen: what’s inside you?
At first, you may hear only nothing. Or perhaps fear or anxiety, or a persistent thought may surface. But maybe, for the first time in years, you will finally hear this silence. You will feel it and realize that all this time you were not seeking meaning, a great revelation, or someone else’s understanding… but yourself — through this silence.
And that is enough.
Everything else will manifest through this silence. Just give it space.
“Silence is not emptiness. It is the space where we can hear ourselves”.
Photo by Vladimir Fedotov
Translated by Maria Zayats
Read also:
Don’t search, but live: How to leave the waiting room of meaning and return to the body
Татьяна Ходакова
Практический психолог
Интегративный подход
