Shhh! Feeling Stressed? Try Tuning Out All That Noise. A Growing Number Of Doctors Prescribe Silence For Its Health Benefits

She hasn’t saddled the White Arabian named Jet since she was a teenager living in Dixon, Ill., but Dr. Debra Klamen pats the mane of her childhood horse about 15 times a day.

“That is my silent and relaxed place,” said Klamen, a practicing psychiatrist who teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago and specializes in stress reduction. “I hold the image of patting the horse in an open field about 30 seconds each time. It keeps me from zooming from 1 to 10 (in terms of stress); I usually stop myself from getting much higher than 3.”

Klamen’s form of meditation is called guided imagery, and she teaches it to doctors and medical students at seminars throughout the country. She is among a growing number of doctors who agree that less can indeed be more. They are prescribing silence, in various forms, for its potential health benefits.

“I ask people to think of a soothing place, where they can periodically go to decrease their harmful stress levels,” said Klamen. “I’ve been doing this workshop for 10 years and nobody ever picks a noisy place. The loudest it gets is a beach where you can hear the seagulls and crashing waves. People equate silence with less stress.”

Quieting the mind is increasingly associated with wellness. While this is no revelation to followers of such ancient spiritual traditions as Buddhism and monasticism, it is more surprising the subject has been embraced by scientists and even managed-care organizations.

For example, a study published last year in the American Heart Association’s medical journal, Hypertension, showed transcendental meditation significantly controlled high blood pressure at levels comparable to widely used prescription drugs (and without the side effects). Subjects of an Oakland, Calif., study at the West Oakland Medical Center - all of whom carried multiple risk factors such as obesity, high-sodium diets, high alcohol intake, smoking and sedentary lifestyles - benefited dramatically from two daily 20-minute sessions of closing the eyes and concentrating on a single soothing sound, called a mantra, that is barely audible.

Dr. Herbert Benson, a cardiologist at Harvard Medical School, has produced similar findings with his Relaxation Response technique, in which a person chooses a soothing word and sits quietly to focus on it twice a day.

“Studies demonstrate that passively disregarding other thoughts will trigger a specific set of physiological changes,” said Benson, a best-selling author. “It is a proven fact, not a hypothesis.”

Of course, finding the time to meditate or silently focus can be difficult, if not next to impossible. Even Sharon Salzberg, who directs “intensive silent retreat” weekends at the Insight Meditation Society center in Barre, Mass., acknowledges the urban environment begs for a different interpretation of silence.

She recommends a “loving kindness” meditation while scrunched in public transportation or riding elevators.

“You might be waiting in a grocery line,” she said. “You can choose to be irritated at the delay or silently extend thoughts of friendship to the clerk and other people in line. It sounds unusual, but try it and you find yourself less agitated.” Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama in the 6th century B.C.) taught this meditation as an antidote to fear.”

Klamen said she frequently suggests a brief breathing meditation to clients: One brief meditation she suggests: Breathe in through nose, count 1; breathe out through mouth, say “and.”

“When you are stuck bumper-to-bumper on the freeway, this is a fast way to refocus,” said Klamen. “You loosen the grip of the stressful event.”

A rejuvenating silence might be only as fleeting as the on-off switch of your radio, television or computer. Geoffrey Godbey, a professor of leisure studies at Penn State University, said most Americans have actually gained an hour of free time each week since 1965. But he noted that a stupefying 15 to 16 hours a week are being “plowed right back” into watching TV.

“About 25 of the 40 hours of free time comes on weekdays,” said Godbey, co-author of the new book “Time for Life” (Penn State Press). “Typically, it comes in half-hour or 45-minute chunks. So what do people do? They watch a rerun of ‘Coach’ rather than sit on the porch.”

Dr. Redford Williams, a physician and researcher at Duke University Medical School, has a decidedly practical take on silence that doesn’t even require conversation to stop.

Williams wants people to pipe down and listen for a change.

“Research clearly shows hostile personality types are four to seven times more likely to die by age 50 in all disease categories,” Williams said. “Hostile people don’t trust other people, tend to interrupt and always relate a conversation back to themselves. They can’t seem to shut up.”

These “type-H” personalities aren’t very good listeners, either, and Williams said that trait is the single worst characteristic that turns off family members and friends. It also can rob a person of the “psychosocial support” that a landmark Stanford University study showed helped women with advanced cases of breast cancer live significantly longer.

Williams is making a case for silence - and better listening - as a prescription for heart attack patients. In a major research project funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, part of the National Health Institute, a control group gets no instruction in improved listening skills while the experimental subjects follow a program of intended silence that has proved successful in lowering blood pressure and stress hormone levels in pilot studies.

“We basically tell people not to interrupt, to keep silent and listen,” said Williams. “We find that simply accomplishing that part alone has health rewards. But the real payoff appears to be when people pay close attention to what the other person is saying.”

Williams has a simple measurement for determining if a person is listening. He requires people to “reflect back” only what they have heard and nothing else. For example, if one spouse is asking for help in cleaning the house, the mate should respond, “What I hear you saying is you need me to pitch in with the chores, specifically helping with the dinner dishes or taking out the trash” - and not, “Honey, not now, the Bulls are down by two.”

“I guarantee this process will improve your relationships at home and work,” said Williams, “and my guess is the research will bear out greater protection against illnesses such as heart disease and cancer.”

Some Americans are getting a head start. Monasteries, convents, abbeys and Zen houses are all reporting high occupancy rates for paying guests. This post-modern trend follows in the 7th-century tradition of St. Benedict, considered the father of Western monasteries, who regularly invited laypersons to visit his retreat to try his formula of dividing a day into segments of silence, prayer and labor. He believed silence to be the purest way to communicate with God.

Meditation centers with no religious affiliation are equally flourishing. In fact, it can be difficult to make reservations during peak times. The Insight Meditation Society holds a lottery for some of its more popular “silent intensive retreat” weekends. Participants basically don’t talk from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon; they also are instructed in meditation techniques.

“It is a powerful experience,” said Henry Hudson, an ex-Chicagoan and high school math teacher who first visited the Massachusetts center in 1990 and now works as its chief operating officer. “I found the long stretches of silence greatly increased my awareness. I appreciated my surroundings and the people in my life, discovered what wasn’t right about my job, where and when my stress was showing up.”

Hudson said he also became more conscious of tension among others.

“I could tell if a husband and wife weren’t communicating well even if everything appeared OK on the surface,” he said.

Experts warn that giving yourself the silent treatment can be difficult and emotional. At first you might be relieved not to be talking or “projecting yourself as a certain person in conversations,” said UIC’s Klamen.

As your mind wanders, it is probable that old hurts and resentments will arise, said Salzberg. You might be bothered that you can’t talk - or wish that you could find something else to do with your mind, such as, say, watch a few sitcom episodes on Nick at Nite.

“Many people who come here get teased by a spouse or co-workers that it will be impossible for them to keep silent for two days,” said Salzberg. “They leave realizing deeper connections with people are possible when we don’t have to put the energy into making social conversation. Plus, competitiveness falls away because students stop comparing themselves to what others are saying.”

Salzberg said she teaches meditation techniques during the weekend retreats. She urges her retreat participants to worry less about the ideal state of a completely blank mind and feel comfortable simply releasing any thoughts that enter your consciousness.

“Lots of people think meditation is not for them because their minds are racing with all kinds of thoughts,” said Salzberg. “The key is not reacting to them, just letting go.”

Godbey said that is difficult for many people.

“Americans have this notion that letting go of time is letting go of money or productivity,” he said. “As a society, we need to put more value on resting the mind.”

Godbey has his own personal solution to the raging information overload and shortage of silence own way of finding quietude.

“I’m about to go out to my deck right now,” he said on a recent evening after dinner. “I just plan to watch it get dark. It clears my head.”