Tiny Buddha

Tag: silent

  • Why I Learned to Stay Quiet to Be “Good”

    Why I Learned to Stay Quiet to Be “Good”

     “Your silence will not protect you.” ~Audre Lorde

    When I was little, I learned that being “good” meant being quiet.

    Not just with my voice, but with my needs. My emotions. Even the space I took up.

    I don’t remember anyone sitting me down and saying, “Don’t speak unless spoken to.” But I felt it—in the flinches when I was too loud, the tension when I cried, the subtle praise when I stayed calm, agreeable, small. I felt it in the way adults sighed with relief when I didn’t make a fuss. I felt it in the way I stopped asking for what I wanted.

    Goodness, to me, became about not rocking the boat.

    I remember once being told, “You’re such a good girl—you never complain.” And I carried that like a medal. I remember crying in my room instead of speaking up at dinner. Saying “I’m fine” even when my chest hurt with unsaid words. I didn’t want to cause trouble. I wanted to be easy to love.

    So I smiled through discomfort. Nodded when I wanted to say no. Bit my tongue when I had something true to say. I became pleasant, adaptable, well-liked.

    And utterly disconnected from myself.

    The Body Keeps the Quiet

    For a long time, I thought this was just a personality trait. I told myself I was just easygoing. Sensitive. A peacemaker.

    But the truth is, I had internalized a nervous system survival strategy: fawning. A subtle, often invisible adaptation where safety is sought not through flight or fight but through appeasement. Becoming who others want you to be. Saying what they want to hear.

    In my body, this looked like:

    • Holding my breath in tense conversations
    • Smiling when I felt anxious
    • Swallowing words that rose in my throat
    • Feeling exhausted after social interactions, not knowing why

    It wasn’t just social anxiety or shyness. It was a deeply ingrained survival pattern—one that shaped everything from how I moved in the world to how I related to others.

    I didn’t yet have the language for what was happening. But I could feel the cost.

    The silence I carried started to ache—not just emotionally, but physically.

    My jaw clenched. My shoulders rounded forward.  My chest felt like a locked room. I felt foggy in conversations, distant in relationships, unsure of where I began and ended.

    It turns out, when you chronically silence yourself to stay safe, your body starts whispering what your voice can’t say.

    The First Time I Said “No”

    It wasn’t a dramatic moment. There was no shouting or storming out.

    It was a quiet dinner with someone I didn’t feel fully safe around. They asked for something that crossed a line. And for the first time in my adult life, instead of automatically saying yes, I paused.

    I heard the old script start to run: Be nice. Don’t upset them. Just say yes, it’s easier.

    But something in me—a wiser, quieter part—held steady.

    I took a breath. I said, “No, I’m not okay with that.”

    And even though my body trembled, I didn’t crumble. Nothing catastrophic happened. I went home and cried—not from fear, but from relief.

    It was one of the first moments I realized I could choose myself. Even when it felt unnatural. Even when I wasn’t sure what would happen next.

    That one moment changed something in me. Not overnight. But it planted a seed.

    Reclaiming My Voice, One Breath at a Time

    Reclaiming my voice hasn’t been a big, bold revolution. It’s been a slow unfolding.

    It looks like:

    • Taking a few seconds before I respond, even if silence feels uncomfortable
    • Letting myself speak with emotion, not filtering everything to sound “reasonable”
    • Naming what I need, even if my voice shakes
    • Resting after interactions that leave me drained—honoring the impact
    • Journaling the things I wanted to say, even if I never say them out loud

    Some days I still go quiet. I still feel the old fear that speaking truth will cause rupture, rejection, or harm. Sometimes I still rehearse what I want to say five times before I say it once.

    But I’ve learned that every time I listen to myself, even if just with a hand on my heart, I’m creating safety from the inside out.

    And slowly, my body began to shift. I stood a little taller. My breath came a little easier. I started to feel more here—more like myself, not just a reflection of who I thought I needed to be.

    What Helped Me Begin

    Sometimes, what rises first isn’t courage but grief. Grief for all the moments we didn’t speak, for the versions of ourselves that held it all inside. I had to learn to meet that grief gently, not as failure, but as evidence of how hard I was trying to stay safe.

    This journey didn’t begin with confidence—it began with compassion.

    Noticing the times I silenced myself with curiosity instead of shame.

    Asking: What did I fear might happen if I spoke? What used to happen?

    Placing a hand on my chest and saying gently, “You’re not bad for being quiet. You were trying to stay safe.”

    And then, when I felt ready, experimenting with small expansions:

    • Leaving a voice note for a friend instead of texting
    • Telling someone “I need a moment to think” instead of rushing an answer
    • Saying “I actually disagree” in a conversation where I normally would’ve nodded along

    None of these were big leaps. But each one taught my nervous system a new truth: it’s safe to have a voice.

    If You’ve Been Quiet Too

    If you’re reading this and recognizing your own silence, I want you to know:

    You’re not bad for going quiet. You were wise. Your nervous system was doing its best to keep you safe.

    And if you’re beginning to feel the tug to speak—to take up a little more space, to say “no” or “I don’t know” or “I need a moment”—you can trust that too.

    You don’t need to become loud or forceful. Reclaiming voice doesn’t mean overpowering anyone else. It just means including yourself. Honoring your truth. Letting your body exhale.

    You are allowed to be heard. You are allowed to pause. You are allowed to unfold, one breath at a time.

    Your voice is not a threat. It’s a bridge—back to yourself. Your silence once kept you safe. But now, your truth might set you free.

  • The Power of Silence and How to Really Listen

    The Power of Silence and How to Really Listen

    “The silence between the notes is as important as the notes themselves.”  ~Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

    When I was younger, I thought knowledge was something you could capture—something you could write down, measure, and prove. I believed that to understand something, I had to explain it. And for a long time, I tried.

    But then, life—through film, through music, through long conversations with people whose wisdom couldn’t be found in books—taught me something else: the most powerful truths don’t always come in words. They exist in the space between them.

    I learned this lesson in the mountains, where the sky stretches wide, and silence is not empty but full of presence. I had traveled there to document a group of elders who carried the history of their people in their voices, in their stories, in the songs they sang to the younger generations.

    One elder, in particular, stood out. He didn’t speak much, but when he did, the others listened. Alongside his fellow elders, he would chant in a rhythmic, sing-song cadence, weaving the origins of the universe into the fabric of their small mountain community. But what struck me most wasn’t his voice—it was his silence.

    As the camera rolled, he sat in stillness. The wind whispered through the trees. The river murmured its eternal song. In that quiet, there was something deeper than speech, something that pulsed with meaning.

    Later, when I played the footage for a colleague, they asked, “But what is he saying?”

    I wanted to answer, Everything.

    Listening Beyond Words

    If you’ve ever felt like the world moves too fast, like people are speaking over each other instead of really hearing, then you already know how rare true listening is. We live in a time when everyone wants to be heard, but few know how to listen.

    Listening—real listening—isn’t just about hearing words. It’s about feeling presence. It’s about noticing what isn’t being said. It’s about sensing the weight behind someone’s silence, the emotion in their breath before they speak.

    I didn’t always know how to listen this way. In my early years as a filmmaker, I focused on what was visible—the shot, the framing, the dialogue. But over time, I realized that the most powerful moments weren’t always what was said aloud. It was the glance between two people who had known each other forever. It was the way someone’s hands trembled before telling a difficult story. It was the pause between sentences, where something unspoken begged to be understood.

    This kind of listening—deep listening—is a skill, just like any other. And like any skill, it can be practiced. It requires patience. It requires presence. And it requires a willingness to be quiet yourself, to let go of the need to respond, explain, or control the conversation.

    The Silence That Speaks

    There is an old teaching in Nada Yoga, the yoga of sound, that says silence is not an absence, but a vibration. It is a resonance that allows meaning to unfold.

    I have felt this in the editing room, cutting together scenes, realizing that what moves people is not the dialogue but the spaces between it—the quiet before the revelation, the moment of stillness before the truth lands. I have felt it in music, when a musician allows a note to fade just long enough for it to sink into the listener’s bones.

    And I have felt it in life, in conversations where someone shares something so raw, so deeply personal, that all you can do is sit with them in silence.

    That silence is not empty. It is full of acknowledgment, of understanding, of respect.

    The Power of Presence

    One of the greatest challenges I faced in my work was convincing people that this kind of knowledge—this ability to sit with silence, to notice, to be present—is just as valuable as facts and figures, as theories and analysis.

    Academia, where I spent much of my life, doesn’t always recognize the kind of knowledge that is felt more than written. The kind of scholarship that comes through film, through sound, through experience. There, knowledge is measured in citations, in publications, in things that can be counted. But how do you count a pause? How do you measure the impact of a shared silence?

    I have spent years trying to advocate for a broader understanding of what it means to know something. To understand that presence—the ability to be fully here, fully aware—is its own kind of intelligence.

    And here’s what I want you to know: You don’t have to be a filmmaker or a scholar to develop this skill. You don’t have to travel to distant mountains or sit in long hours of meditation. You just have to start paying attention.

    How to Listen Deeply

    If you want to learn to listen—to truly listen—try this:

    1. Pause before responding.

    Next time someone speaks to you, don’t rush to fill the space. Let their words settle. Notice what else is there—their body language, their expression, what they aren’t saying.

    2. Listen without planning your reply.

    Too often, we only half-listen because we’re already thinking about what we’ll say next. Instead, try just absorbing what’s being said. Let the response come naturally.

    3. Pay attention to the silences.

    In music, the rests are just as important as the notes. In conversation, the pauses carry meaning. Notice what happens in those spaces.

    4. Be comfortable with not knowing.

    Some of the most profound moments in life don’t come with clear answers. Be open to sitting with uncertainty.

    5. Practice with sound.

    Spend time listening to the world around you—really listening. Close your eyes. Notice how many layers of sound exist at once. The wind. The hum of a distant car. The rhythm of your own breathing.

    The more you develop your ability to listen, the more you will understand—not just about others, but about yourself.

    A Different Kind of Knowing

    I write this now, not as a call to arms, but as an invitation.

    To the artists, the thinkers, the ones who feel deeply but don’t always have the words—know that there is a place for you. There is value in the way you experience the world.

    You don’t have to explain everything. You don’t have to put it all into words.

    Sometimes, the most powerful things we know—the things that change us—exist in the space between words.

    And if you ever find yourself doubting whether your way of seeing, of listening, of feeling has a place in this world, remember this:

    Some of the greatest wisdom isn’t spoken.

    Some of the most powerful messages are never written.

    And sometimes, the best way to understand is to simply be present.

  • If You Stay Silent About the Problem

    If You Stay Silent About the Problem

  • How a 10-Day Silent Retreat Helped Heal My Grieving Heart

    How a 10-Day Silent Retreat Helped Heal My Grieving Heart

    “In a retreat situation, you are forced to come face to face with yourself, to see yourself in depth, to meet yourself.” ~Lama Zopa Rinpoche

    When I was at university, doing a ten-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat was considered a hardcore rite of passage only the toughest among us attempted. Those who lasted the distance referred to it as a “mind-blowing” and “life-changing” experience.

    “Think of how you feel after an orgasm,” a friend said when I considered finally doing a Vipassana meditation retreat to reconnect with myself after a decade in full time employment. “Imagine feeling for two months like you’ve just had the most powerful orgasm.”

    I couldn’t. I really couldn’t imagine how ten days of enforced intimacy with my own messy mind would result in two months of post-coital bliss. Nor could I imagine sitting still and keeping silent for ten days. Nor was I prepared to sacrifice half of my annual leave to find out.

    What finally got me to commit to the meditation cushion for a ten-day marathon of silence was a shattered heart. I needed a radical act of self-care.

    I had just spent two long years caring for my terminally ill husband. His funeral was followed three weeks later by the largest cyclone in Australia’s living memory. It made landfall within meters of my veranda, destroying an entire community. In the confusion that followed, I found things out about my husband that would have been best buried with him.

    I was shell-shocked, as if a bomb had detonated inside me and ripped my heart to shreds. A psychologist suggested happy pills. But I wasn’t interested in medicated happiness. I didn’t even want the post-coital bliss my friend had spoken of.

    I just wanted to feel whole again. The psychologist advised against a ten-day silent meditation retreat. It was too dangerous, she said. There wouldn’t be anybody there to catch me should I crash hard.

    But I knew that only I could pull myself up from the abyss. Avoiding my grief was not an option. I needed to confront my pain head on.

    Two months after my bereavement, I took myself off to an austere meditation center in Sri Lanka to follow the teachings of S. N. Goenka.

    Here is what I learned:

    Impermanence is the foundation of everything.

    When I showed up at my first ten-day silent meditation retreat, I had just witnessed the impermanence of everything, and it had left me devastated.

    Sitting in meditation for ten hours a day, continuously scanning my body, becoming aware of the rising and falling of my physical discomfort, I learned to accept that everything in life is constantly changing.

    In the afternoons, when the meditation hall turned into a sun-drenched hothouse, the physical discomfort of sitting still became almost unbearable. Resisting the urge to shift my legs or scratch my sweaty head taught me to become a detached observer.

    Every day a cool evening breeze would follow the intense afternoon heat. The tickling of my scalp, the tingling in my legs, the stiffness in my hips, all of it fell away as day turned into night and I stretched out on my rock hard mattress.

    By observing what was happening to my physical body, I learned to trust that emotional discomfort and pain rises and falls in the same way as physical pain does.

    Meditation teaches you how to become a detached observer.

    I learned to focus on my breath, to feel it rising and falling. I practiced watching my mind fill with dark clouds, like a lake with storm clouds reflected on it. I glimpsed brief moments of clarity as I allowed the clouds to drift by. I learned to label my emotions and set them free rather than stay attached to the pain.

    I learned to train my mind to be in control of those dark storm clouds that kept on brewing. They didn’t magically disappear as I sat in meditation ten hours each day. But I learned not to chase after them and become swept up in every little tempest that flared up.

    I learned to simply watch what was going on in my mind. It felt like watching a giant movie screen from the back row of a cinema.

    Meditation teaches us that we can control our emotional pain. By focusing on the breath, we are able to step back, assume the position of a witness, so that it doesn’t overwhelm us.

    It’s a lesson I’ve taken with me into everyday life. When a friend says something hurtful or when someone cuts me off in traffic, I know how not to be reactive.

    Meditation gives you a new perspective on who you are.

    As I sat and listened to the constant chatter in my head for ten days, I realized that our identities are a product of the stories we tell ourselves.

    Old stories from the past showed up. The tortured narrative of my dysfunctional family suddenly made sense. My parents had remained attached to the narrative of their suffering as deprived war children. Unable to craft new stories for themselves, this victim narrative defined them in adulthood.

    Sifting through the details of the aftermath of my husband’s death, trying to make sense of his unfaithfulness, I understood that I had been given the tools to rewrite that story.

    I couldn’t undo what had happened. I’d never be able to have another conversation with him to set the record straight. I couldn’t give our story a happy ending. But I had the tools to use what I had learned to craft a new narrative for myself.

    One stifling hot afternoon, focusing on the beads of sweat forming on my forehead, my focus became laser sharp.  I understood that if I didn’t want to live my life by the victim narrative, if I wanted to be in charge of myself again, if I didn’t want to turn into a bitter woman with a prematurely aged face, I needed to forgive those who had compounded my suffering.

    Writing to the women whom I had considered my worst enemies was profoundly liberating, both for me and them. We were able to make peace with ourselves and with my philandering husband.

    Suffering is an inevitable part of life.

    All of life is suffering. It’s one of the key principles of Buddhism. Human nature is imperfect as is the world we live in. The Pali word Dukkha means suffering, discontent, unsatisfactoriness. We all experience varying degrees of suffering all the time.

    Some of us had come to the retreat feeling stuck in life, stressed by our jobs, frustrated in our relationships, directionless and ready for some kind of transformation. I wasn’t the only who had brought a deep feeling of grief to the retreat.

    I was the only one who had lost a loved one, but grief has many faces. Some of us were grieving collapsed marriages or failed relationships. It made me aware that we will all experience deep sadness in our lives, not once, but many times. It made sense to learn how to deal with it.

    Life had just dealt me an overdose of suffering as if to hammer home this important point. Sitting with my physical and emotional pain for ten seemingly interminable days forced me to make friends with it.

    I was able to put it into a new perspective. I hadn’t died, I hadn’t lost a limb, I had no permanent battle scars. My adopted hometown would recover, the ravaged landscape would heal, and so would I.

    I realized that being able to hold my husband in death, to comfort him on the journey through his terminal illness, had been a chance for deep transformation. I understood that we are in charge of how we respond to suffering.

    Suffering arises from attachment.

    Burying my husband and sorting through the debris after a category five cyclone had shredded my hometown to bits, I had glimpsed how suffering is linked to attachment. Sitting on my meditation cushion for ten days, I grasped the core of the Second Noble Truth that all suffering arises from attachment.

    We are all driven by our desires and cravings. Our unhappiness is a result of our tendency to cling to or grasp at what is unattainable. We become attached to material things; we want to hold onto happiness; we chase after pleasure and we are in denial about the impermanence of everything.

    As expected, I didn’t explode in multiple orgasms, nor did I crash into the bottom of the abyss, both of which would have been a form of attachment.

    On the last day of the retreat, when we were at last released from our vow of silence, everybody was experiencing some kind of high. Something fundamental had shifted for all of us.

    Endless chatter quickly replaced our noble silence. Having sat side by side, experiencing the full rainbow of emotions, we were keen to share our experiences.

    A small group gathered around a self-confessed retreat junkie, who glowed like a 3D postcard version of the Buddha, sitting in full lotus pose for most of the retreat. He had made it his life’s purpose, he explained, to go from retreat to retreat so that he could stay permanently within that blissed out sate.

    I was tempted to quote one of our teachers that it’s just as dangerous to get attached to bliss as it is to get attached to pain and suffering. The aim of meditation is to let go of any form of attachment. But I bit my tongue, because I knew that he would need to find that out for himself.

    Meditation is a personal self-care tool we all have access to.

    Of course the ten-day meditation retreat didn’t magically cure my pain. It took many more weeks, months in fact, on the meditation cushion to heal my heart. But with every retreat I was inching a little further away from the abyss.

    Six years on, I have found love again. My house has been repaired and my garden has grown back into a lush jungle. Life continues to ebb and flow, oscillating between moments of happiness and suffering.

    You don’t have to be at your personal rock bottom to experience the life-changing benefits of a silent meditation retreat. What I learned has stayed with me. Meditation remains my personal self-care tool that allows me to negotiate the inevitable ups and downs of life, from the trivial to the tough stuff.

  • Listen and Silent Are Spelled with the Same Letters

    Listen and Silent Are Spelled with the Same Letters

    Listen and silent

  • The Power of Silence: How to Free Yourself from Painful Thoughts

    The Power of Silence: How to Free Yourself from Painful Thoughts

    “Within you there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at anytime and be yourself.” ~Hermann Hesse

    As a child, I hated when someone told me to sit still and be quiet, and rightly so. I was young and full of energy; every minute of being still and silent was a minute of missing out on this magnificent life.

    Then, as I grew older and entered into teenage and young adult years, it grew into a fear with a capital “F” of being still and silent; for as soon as I was quiet and still, the noise in my head got increasingly louder and more powerful.

    If the chatters of my head were beautiful, joyful, and empowering, that would have been uplifting. But they were voices of judgment, negativity, and self-loathing, nothing else.

    To me, those chatters, voices, and thoughts were me. My head would chatter day and night, even in my sleep. Noise, heaviness, thinking, and more thinking, sometimes my head felt like it was about to explode.

    I wasn’t even aware I was thinking. I was just on autopilot. I would act and react and get triggered into waves of emotions and feelings, which churned into more turbulence, heaviness, and weariness.

    Everything became dysfunctional because I couldn’t interact effectively with people or life. My whole reality, both inside and outside, was warped.

    I was a paranoid, fearful, self-loathing, neurotic human being, so my life and world were full of fear, anger, and depression. Life was an endless battle, as everyone and everything was always against me.

    I got to the point of total exhaustion. I eventually lost all coherence and overdosed on pharmaceutical codeine painkillers, just so I could have peace, silence, and rest. I was totally depleted, and I felt I had lost my battle with life.

    Lying in the hospital, slipping in and out of consciousness, I deprived someone else who was probably critically injured and in need of the bed. But I had a moment of peace and silence because I left my body and head.

    As I stood and looked at my weary body and still very heavy head, I was in the silence. At that moment, the question arose, “If I can see and look at the ‘me’ lying on the bed, then I must not be ‘me,’ so who am I?”

    Of course, I never spoke about this or they would have said I was having hallucinations and sent me straight to the loony bin.

    Amazingly, I survived and took off far away where I couldn’t be found, nor forced to take medication. It was inevitable; I had started on the quest. I had to find that silence again, for it was real.

    What was that silence and stillness that I glimpsed? I knew from that day on there was something more. Over the course of the following years, I rediscovered and nourished that silence, and it grew to be my anchor, healer, and guide. Here’s what I learned.

    Nature’s core is silence.

    Make time for yourself every day to connect in some way with nature. Walk barefoot on the grass, swim in the ocean, watch the sunset, stroke an animal, or even weed the garden. Submerge yourself in nature, and you will experience silent, unconditional, utter bliss and peace from your core.

    Every time I’m in nature, I find that time literally stops and thoughts quiet. All that’s left is the beautiful sounds of birds chirping, water trickling, winds howling, and all the gaps of nature’s silence in between.

    Feed and grow that silence.

    Reading spiritual books or articles, listening to enlightened masters, practicing yoga or qigong, listening to music that you resonate with, dancing and moving your body will feed and nourish your silent core within.

    Meditation is the ultimate channel and food for inner silence. However, unlike nature, which is effortless silence, meditation may be slightly more challenging. Sitting or lying there unmoving and in quietude, the brain may seem anything but silent or still.

    I used to find that whenever there was drama in my life, my brain would get louder. The thoughts were more controlling and dominating, the emotions more intense, and my energy zapped. It was almost like my thinking brain was sucking up all the energy from my entire body.

    But I continued to feed and grow that silence by persisting and holding in quiet meditation, or nourishing it through active meditative activities that anchored it.

    Trust the silence.

    Even if the silence was minuscule, I always chose to stay in it. The less attention I paid to the thinking mind, the softer and dimmer the thoughts became, and the more the silence and stillness grew.

    Instead of resisting or fearing your thoughts, simply be aware. Allow them to be, but don’t attach to them. You have a body that feels and a brain that thinks. They are a part of you, but they are not you.

    In silence, you become aware that you have the freedom and power to choose the types of thoughts you wish to entertain and empower, and the thoughts you wish to ignore and diffuse.

    Silence and stillness came hand in hand. Together, they were my best friends. I loved my early mornings and nights just before bed, for when I shut my lids in meditation I disappeared into the void of peace, stillness, and silence, my essence.

    Silence and stillness are teachers.

    In silence, my head was lighter and clarity emerged on its own accord. Unfathomable strength revealed itself, which helped me let go of my painful past, forgive those who had hurt me, release pent-up emotions, and unfold into compassion and my true nature of unconditional love. Through the healing, my silence is now infused with deep wisdom.

    —

    Sometimes, like myself, you may find yourself careless and allow this connection with your silence to lapse. Perhaps your excuse might be, “No time, too hard, later, tomorrow, next week, after I finish this project, after I solve that issue. Life’s too good right now, I’m fine so I don’t need it.” Then bang!

    A big wave inevitably comes along, catches you off guard, and dumps you straight into the mouth of the controlling mind again. The silence may shrink and disappear. That’s only human.

    Hold yourself in the space of compassion and return to the voice in the heart. That will lead you back into silence and stillness. The voice in my heart is the silent voice, no words, simply a knowing.

    The more I listen and follow, the stronger it becomes. It has about it an air of strength, love, wisdom, and joy. It works magic, it leads me to meet people I am meant to meet, go to places I am meant to go, and do things I am meant to do.

    With devotion and commitment, the work of maintaining and sustaining your silence will naturally become a joyful routine and not a chore.

    There will also come a day when there is only silence and stillness, and that is all. All else arises out of that silence. And flow emerges. The result: Reverence, unconditional peace and love, and infinite possibilities.

    What does this mean? You transcend your limited physical reality, know the true bigger picture, and now integrate your wisdom and truth into manifesting your soul purpose in life.