Land Of Silence

The first time I experienced true silence wasn’t from a total absence of sound. There were birds, barking dogs, and the hum of a nearby town. Within all that sound, one bird’s song stood out to me. After a while, its persistence began to annoy me, but knowing there was no escaping it, I surrendered and listened deeply to that single sound. As I did, I could feel its vibration like a pathway.

This magical bird’s song guided me to a new land that was deep within myself. Once I fully arrived, all external sounds, including its song, disappeared from my awareness. Even more noticeable, my internal sounds mercifully fell away. As they went, I began to feel the edges of my body ceasing to vibrate in a way that kept me separate from this land, and I became one with it. It wasn’t until I was softly guided back to the formation of sound that I realized what had happened. 

I had been guided into, what I’ve come to refer to as, the Land of Silence. While I was there I was able to feel a peace I had never known (to my recollection) before. No new thoughts came through, no observations, no random lyrics surfacing from the depths of my subconscious. Just complete silence externally and internally. I genuinely wept from the feeling of deep relief my body felt from this experience. Once I knew I could get to this magical place it became easier for me to find my way back. Sometimes the birds helped, other times the hum of my refrigerator or just focusing into the vibration of what seems to be silence. This continuous visitation to the Land of Silence has helped me obtain more clarity, confidence, and peace more often in my life, deeply improving my overall wellbeing. 

The pull to help others reach this destination of silence and peace quickly followed this experience along with the questions as to how. As a believer in magic I didn’t require much further explanation. “Follow the sound of the magical bird, that will take you to a land where you will dissolve into it and everything else will disappear” was all that was required, but as a person with the desire to serve her community I know I need to meet them where they are. I understand that not everyone who comes to enjoy my facilitation will hear and trust my explanation of the bird being a metaphor for any auditory vibration and how that can be the guide inwards to their own land of silence. So further research has been helpful with finding more ways to explain this magic and why it’s good for us. 

What I’ve learned is that the human brain has limited working-memory space which is the area our brain uses for temporarily storing information to use in problem solving and reasoning. (Cowen, 2014) When we enter into a state of deep listening, focusing on the sensory input of something such as music, a bird’s song, chanting, a sound ceremony, etc we put a lot of our resources towards processing that information. Which takes up a lot of that working-memory capacity. As that happens it begins to suppress our default-mode network (DMN) which are regions of the brain heavily focused on our internal world to help us with self-referential thinking, daydreaming and thinking about the future. Making our working-memory, and DMN systems predominant in the creation of internal chatter. (Raichle, 2015) Therefore, when we are truly in a state of deep listening our minds will have a harder time creating the internal chatter many of us spend a lot of our days with because it is working so hard to process the sounds we are focusing on. Increasing our chances to experience internal silence which comes with many benefits. 

When we can reach a state of internal silence, many stress markers, such as cortisol levels, blood pressure, and heart rate decrease (Pascoe, 2017). When these levels drop, the body more easily enters the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), the state in which allows the body to focus on healing and restoration. Simultaneously, being in both internal silence and the PNS makes it easier for our systems to regulate emotions and support us in experiencing and managing bigger, more difficult feelings. This increased emotional steadiness occurs because internal silence also helps reduce reactivity in the amygdala, the part of the brain largely responsible for processing emotions and controlling our fight-or-flight response (Cherry, 2025). With this quieter internal landscape, we can make more accurate risk assessments, improve executive functioning, and experience greater clarity in our decision-making (Kable, 2009). Studies also show that the more often we find our way to internal silence, through meditation or other practices, the easier it becomes to access and the more profound its benefits grow over time (Bowles, 2025).

As I go on to explore and share the power of internal silence, I hope to show that the path to it doesn’t need to appear as mysteriously as it did for me that first time. While a single bird once served as my guide, there are many ways to follow sound into a quieter inner world. Sound ceremonies, in particular, offer a gentle pathway to deep listening, where one can use the tones of a crystal bowl, the hum of a gong, or the trickle of a chime to guide the mind’s chatter to soften, the body to unwind, and the door to internal silence open a little more easily with each experience. In this way, sound ceremonies can not only help one find their own path, but can also be practice that helps that path get clearer each time one is attended.  Each immersion creates invitations for participants to learn the art of deep listening and the wisdom within their own Land of Silence.