When Did Silence Become So Uncomfortable?

Feeling Sound — Episode 7

When Did Silence Become So Uncomfortable?

Hello. You find me perched on a little stone beside a stream, surrounded by weeds and hundreds of bluebells. I've climbed down the bank not far from where I live — a quiet little spot I sometimes come to just to think. I'd forgotten how much everything grows at this time of year, how green and dense it all gets. But I made it. And I'm just sitting here, beside the water, to be still and contemplate for a moment. Maybe you've got time to do the same.

I've been doing some fascinating work recently — looking into the deeper effects of meditation on the brain, writing blogs, developing new sessions — and a couple of weeks ago I was part of a book event that really sparked this episode. I had a sit-down conversation with Elizabeth Alker, BBC Radio 3 presenter, about her book Everything We Do Is Music. It's a wonderful book — she explores all kinds of composers, including the 20th century composer John Cage. And that conversation opened up this whole subject of silence.

I've seen silence be something people genuinely struggle with — in sound baths, in meditation, and in life. And I thought it was worth exploring why.

Someone who comes to my sound baths in Glossop said something to me recently that really stayed with me. It was only her second or third session, and at the end she turned to me and said: I don't remember the last time I had an hour with nothing to do. She talked about how uncomfortable that felt — her mind still active, her body wanting to fidget, this real sense of discomfort at just staying still and not needing to be anywhere or do anything.

There's also a really common assumption that meditation is simply the act of stopping your thoughts and sitting in silence with your eyes closed. It isn't. That's one form of meditation — and honestly, it's quite a tough one. It's not where I'd start with beginners, and I'll come back to why.

So why does stopping feel so hard? A few things came up when I talked to people about this. That feeling of guilt — the sense that we should be doing something else, something productive. A restlessness. We live in a world geared up to exploit short attention spans. There's always a next, a new, a more. And somewhere along the way, I think many of us have finessed the art of busyness — not business, but busyness — as though being busy makes us feel safe, or virtuous, or worthwhile. In a world that tells us to do more, earn more, be more, stopping actually feels quite radical.

But what if stillness wasn't doing nothing? What if it was actually time for the brain to process, integrate, recover — to just be? I went looking for what poets, musicians and neuroscientists have had to say about silence, and I want to weave some of that through this episode.

", released in: 1952

4'33" consists of three movements. A professional pianist — David Tudor gave the first performance — sits at the piano, opens the lid as if about to play, and then plays absolutely nothing. For four minutes and thirty-three seconds. The music, Cage was saying, is whatever is happening in the room. A cough. A shuffle. Birdsong from outside. These days it might be someone's phone going off every few seconds — much like the snooker championship at the weekend.

ey got. But remember, this is: 1952

Around this time, Cage visited an anechoic chamber at Harvard University — a completely soundproofed room, so dead that you don't even stand on the floor, you stand on a net. Interestingly, I studied music, acoustics and recording at the University of Salford, and we had a semi-anechoic chamber there — not the full version, but apparently the full ones can be quite startling to enter. Cage turned to the engineer and said: what's that sound? I can hear something. The engineer told him: that's your nervous system and your blood. There is no such thing as silence.

Imagine that. You enter the quietest place on earth, finally expecting peace — and you can hear your own nervous system, your own blood pumping. Mind-boggling. And I think the question Cage left us with is one that threads through everything I talk about: are we actually listening?

One of the musicians Cage influenced was Nils Frahm — a contemporary German pianist and composer whose work I'd highly recommend. You'll find some of it on the Feeling Sound Spotify playlist. Nils talks about silence as an instrument in its own right. He says: silence is the music that plays between the notes. Both he and Cage are really pointing to the same thing: silence isn't empty. It's full of what we drown out.

And maybe that's part of why silence can feel so uncomfortable. We've become so skilled at numbing out, at staying busy, at avoiding what's actually happening underneath the surface. Silence shines a light on all of that. And we're not quite sure what to do when it does.

— conducted a study back in: 2006

What he found was remarkable. The two-minute silences didn't just return people to baseline. They profoundly relaxed them — more than even the slowest, most soothing music in the study. Heart rate dropped. Blood pressure fell. The nervous system reset. Silence wasn't an empty nothing. It was, as he described it, an active force.

grow the brain. Research from: 2013

So how does all of this relate to sound baths and meditation? It's something I've been turning over for the past few days. And I think the honest answer is that silence isn't where I begin — not with beginners, and not without preparation. When we sit down, switch everything off, close our eyes and expect our minds to go quiet — it often does the opposite. The secret is in building confidence gradually, leaning on different techniques, and allowing the pauses to grow longer over time. After a few years of practice, maybe you can sit in silence for two hours. What a luxury that would be.

For some people, complete silence can feel genuinely threatening. Unsafe. Destabilising. In a group setting, without sufficient guidance, people wonder: is it over? Should I be awake? What's happening? Silence can actually induce anxiety if it isn't set up carefully.

In my own sessions, I introduce silence gradually — a pause before we begin, a moment or two between notes during a sound bath, and that quiet space at the end before I bring people back. I learned this the hard way. My background is in radio, and silence on radio is genuinely terrifying. I remember being the live producer at BBC Radio Manchester for the one-minute silence on Remembrance Day, knowing that if the sound level dropped below a certain threshold for more than about 40 seconds, the emergency tape would kick in. We always strategically inserted a cough at around 30 seconds, just to be safe. Radio taught me to fill the gaps constantly — there's no room for silence. And so when I started running sound baths, I had to actively learn how to be comfortable with it myself, so that I could give that space to others.

I remember those early sessions — leaving a minute or two of complete stillness at the end, not moving, not speaking, just allowing people to be. It was uncomfortable for me. But when I asked people afterwards how that had felt, they described it as a point of transition — a space to slowly come back, to process whatever they'd experienced. I began to understand how essential it was.

I've also had people come to me who've been newly diagnosed with ADHD, who've apologised in advance — telling me they might fidget, might need to open their eyes and readjust, might not be able to switch off. And every time, I tell them: that's completely fine. Your space, your experience. And what never stops moving me is watching those same people reach that place of stillness. Seeing how peaceful they look. Telling them afterwards how long the silence actually lasted and watching their minds be blown. Anything is possible.

So how do we start to bring this into everyday life? I've been thinking about where the small moments of silence might already exist — we just haven't been using them. Hanging out the washing this morning, I let myself just listen. The birds. The stream in the distance. I even hung out each sock individually, I was enjoying it that much. Waiting for the kettle to boil — instead of reaching for my phone, what if I just stayed still and listened? Sitting in the car for a moment after turning the ignition off, before jumping out or coming back in. Just resetting.

And then there are the emotional moments — pausing for a few seconds before a difficult phone call, so you enter it in a calmer state. Or that pause before you respond in a negotiation or a challenging conversation, rather than jumping straight to a solution. That takes confidence. It takes courage. But there's something there.

The poet Rumi said: listen to the silence — it has much to say. In those moments where we think we already know the answer, what if we paused, just for a moment, to see if there was something else waiting?

What does silence mean to you? I'd love to hear. You can reach me at hello@feelingsound.co, or find me on Instagram at Feeling Sound Dark Peak, and on Facebook too.

However you spend your next few days — in silence, with music, or somewhere in between — I hope you find a moment like this one. Beside the water. Space to breathe, to think, and to watch a little grey wagtail go about its day. Take care.