The Peace of the Pause

Try This: Adopt a power stance. Pose like your favorite superhero or take a variation of Warrior pose. Feel your feet rooted, your body tall, your shoulders wide, your chest puffed out. Make your eyes fierce. Feel the power centered in your belly, coiled like a snake. Hold for one minute or more.

“Stillness benefits more than action. Silence benefits more than words.” ~Lao Tzu   “[…] in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.” ~from A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. LeGuin

Words can heal. Talk therapy, for example, is a wonderful thing, and having trusted friends to talk with is a blessing. Talking to yourself can be helpful, too, as can listening to other people talk (podcasts, TED Talks, sermons, etc.).  

But sometimes hearing others talk or hearing ourselves talk can start to feel a little…too much. Words can accumulate, spill over, and start to lose their meaning–even if those words are positive and encouraging. When this happens (better yet, before it happens), try silence. 

Oh, you say, you’re talking about meditation. Not exactly. Yes, meditation is a formal practice of silence that has wonderful benefits, but what we’re focusing on here are the small moments of silence you can add to your day, short pauses where you choose silence over words, where you breathe, listen, and observe. 

Maybe silence makes you nervous. Maybe you associate silence with punishment (“the silent treatment”), weakness (not “speaking up”), shyness, or ignorance. Sometimes silence means these things. But this week’s reflection is about the positive aspects of silence–the peaceful pause–and we encourage you to push through your nervousness to give it a try. 

Here are four easy ways to invite peaceful pauses into your life:

• If a friend initiates a text conversation, wait one minute before you engage. If trees or birds are nearby, look at them. Or close your eyes and envision a tree.  
• After a phone call, meeting, or text thread, take a few minutes to pause. Listen to your breath. 
• If you’re settling down to binge-watch a show, pause between episodes, mute the TV, close your eyes, and breathe.  
• When you go on a walk or a run, keep the earbuds at home. Focus on what you can see and hear around you.

Notice that these silences we’re suggesting are not in response to stress. You might fully enjoy talking with your friends or participating in a meeting. You might love listening to music or a podcast while you walk. 

Even so, give stillness a try. You might discover that prefacing or ending “word-full” times with silence helps you process what you’ve heard or helps you speak with more clarity. You might discover that you feel calmer after an earbud-free walk.

When you practice peaceful pauses regularly, in times when you’re feeling calm, it will be much easier to introduce the pause in times of stress. Because stress is a thing. Who knew? And when you’re stressed or experiencing a heated moment with another person, the last thing you think of is pausing even though it’s probably the most important thing you can do. 

The first step to pausing while stressed or ruffled is to remember that you can pause. That’s a huge accomplishment on its own. If you can remember pausing as an option when you’re upset, you can then move on to step two: PAUSE. 

Again, step two is also a big hurdle and congratulations if you can both remember to pause AND actually pause. But wait, there’s more. There’s a step three, should you choose to take it. Step three: use words to extend the pause. 

Here are some examples: 

• If you’re having a hard time saying “no”: PAUSE. Then say, “Let me think about that and get back to you.”
• If someone lashes out at you: PAUSE. Then say, “I’m feeling attacked right now. Let’s talk about this after I calm down.”
• If you’re angry at someone: PAUSE. Then say, “I’m feeling pretty angry right now. I don’t think I’ll be ready to talk about this until [name a future time].

The pause helps in tricky situations in several ways:

• It allows what has just been said to linger. The speaker has time to feel that their words had impact, for the positive or negative.
• It buys you time. When you pause, you remember that you don’t have to respond immediately. You give yourself permission to say, “I understand that this is important to you, but I’m not prepared to talk about it right now.” 
• It gives both parties an opportunity to get, hopefully, a tiny bit of perspective.