ducks. As Smyth put it: “Your recovery was clearly disrupted by the
experience of noise. It set back your recovery with a carryover effect
of at least a minute. For you, walking in the park, the benefits of
nature may be offset by the noise of planes. Those noises are violating
your experience of pleasant views and sound. It’s half as stressful as
doing the speech task. Those are aren’t trivial effects.”
Based on his research, Smyth has several recommendations for us
sensitive types: try to reduce exposure to irksome noise through
headphones, office insulation, etc.; if we can’t do that, try to change
our attitude about the noise—maybe by thinking that someday I will
be on one of those planes getting the hell out of D.C.—and make an
effort to experience positive sounds and quiet places.
“We should think about soundscapes as medicine,” he said. “It’s
like a pill. You can prescribe sounds or a walk in the park in much the
way we prescribe exercise. Do it twenty minutes a day as a lifetime
approach, or you can do it as an acute stress intervention. When
you’re stressed, go to a quiet place.”
In fact, Smyth thinks short nature-based interventions like this
could help more people more efficiently than many other ones that
get more attention, like meditation. “Meditation is getting all the
glory. Unjustifiably,” said Smyth. “Seventy percent of people will
wash out.” Not everyone likes nature, either, but just about everyone
likes the noise to die down, at least occasionally.
THESE DAYS WE might worship absolute quiet, but John Ruskin wrote,
“No air is sweet that is silent; it is only sweet when full of low
currents of under sound—triplets of birds, and murmur and chirps of
insects.” To the extent that nature sounds are soothing to most
humans, three in particular stand out: wind, water and birds. They are
the trifecta of salubrious listening (favorite music and the voices of
loved ones are perhaps the happiest of all, engaging almost every part
of the brain, according to neuroscientist and musician Daniel Levitin,