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The Extended Resonance of a Little Quiet Time
Bare foot boy wearing a hat, Powerhouse Museum Collection
Okay — this research isn’t exactly talking about the effects of silence on mental health; but I would argue that it’s pointing to the equation of perceptual experiences that most of us think about when we imagine quiet time. Here, they come under the slightly off-putting (a little righteous and assertive) rubric of “green exercise.”
As Science Daily reports, this research, published in Environmental Science & Technology set out to discover how much daily ”green exercise” was necessary to enhance people’s mood and general sense of well-being. “Green exercise” was defined as time spent performing activities such as working in a garden, walking a nature trail, farming, fishing and taking a break in a park — all activities that often correlate with quiet time. Interestingly, the study authors found that just five minutes a day was sufficient to produce powerful benefits for mental health. Indeed, from the point of view of health policymakers, the greatest positive impact on self-esteem derived from these five-minute doses of green exercise.
Though I cringe at the jargon, the findings are still very encouraging. As researcher Jules Pretty remarked: “We know from the literature that short-term mental health improvements are protective of long-term health benefits.” His colleague, Joe Barton added, ”So we believe that would be a large potential benefit to individuals, society, and to the costs of the health service if all groups of people were to self-medicate more with green exercise.”
One of my central arguments is that while noise pollution certainly exists (perhaps the most egregious form is that produced by shipping industry and naval sonar, which is catastrophically disrupting migratory, feeding and mating patterns among marine animals) the majority of aggravating noises in our lives do not meet this definition of the extraordinarily loud.
As I write in the book, “rather than conceiving of the noise surrounding most of us as a pollution issue, we might think of it as a dietary problem. Our aural diet is miserable. It’s full of over-rich, non-nutritious sounds served in inflated portions—and we don’t consume nearly enough silence. A poor diet kills; but it kills as much because of what it does not contain as for what it includes. For this reason, we approach the challenge of correcting unhealthy eating habits differently than we do that of plugging the chimney on a factory. When we educate children about diet, we talk not only about the hazards of fast food, but also about the benefits of healthy nutriments. Why can’t we do the same with quiet?”
Hopefully, this kind of research can help us think about how to improve our sound diet by adding to our intake of natural sounds. Recognizing how unlikely it is that we will find a way to make the whole world quieter, we can yet receive enormous positive health benefits from introducing a little more of the sounds most of us associate with peace and quiet into our daily noise binge. Even five minutes interruption to the cacophony can help us begin to rebuild our relationship to the larger world. We no longer feel we have to block it all out as an invading barrage. We begin to unfold in the place we actually are.
Okay — this research isn’t exactly talking about the effects of silence on mental health; but I would argue that it’s pointing to the equation of perceptual experiences that most of us think about when we imagine quiet time. Here, they come under the slightly off-putting (a little righteous and assertive) rubric of “green exercise.”
As Science Daily reports, this research, published in Environmental Science & Technology set out to discover how much daily ”green exercise” was necessary to enhance people’s mood and general sense of well-being. “Green exercise” was defined as time spent performing activities such as working in a garden, walking a nature trail, farming, fishing and taking a break in a park — all activities that often correlate with quiet time. Interestingly, the study authors found that just five minutes a day was sufficient to produce powerful benefits for mental health. Indeed, from the point of view of health policymakers, the greatest positive impact on self-esteem derived from these five-minute doses of green exercise.
Though I cringe at the jargon, the findings are still very encouraging. As researcher Jules Pretty remarked: “We know from the literature that short-term mental health improvements are protective of long-term health benefits.” His colleague, Joe Barton added, ”So we believe that would be a large potential benefit to individuals, society, and to the costs of the health service if all groups of people were to self-medicate more with green exercise.”
One of my central arguments is that while noise pollution certainly exists (perhaps the most egregious form is that produced by shipping industry and naval sonar, which is catastrophically disrupting migratory, feeding and mating patterns among marine animals) the majority of aggravating noises in our lives do not meet this definition of the extraordinarily loud.
As I write in the book, “rather than conceiving of the noise surrounding most of us as a pollution issue, we might think of it as a dietary problem. Our aural diet is miserable. It’s full of over-rich, non-nutritious sounds served in inflated portions—and we don’t consume nearly enough silence. A poor diet kills; but it kills as much because of what it does not contain as for what it includes. For this reason, we approach the challenge of correcting unhealthy eating habits differently than we do that of plugging the chimney on a factory. When we educate children about diet, we talk not only about the hazards of fast food, but also about the benefits of healthy nutriments. Why can’t we do the same with quiet?”
Hopefully, this kind of research can help us think about how to improve our sound diet by adding to our intake of natural sounds. Recognizing how unlikely it is that we will find a way to make the whole world quieter, we can yet receive enormous positive health benefits from introducing a little more of the sounds most of us associate with peace and quiet into our daily noise binge. Even five minutes interruption to the cacophony can help us begin to rebuild our relationship to the larger world. We no longer feel we have to block it all out as an invading barrage. We begin to unfold in the place we actually are.
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georgeprochnik posted this
