Making Room for Quiet
A simple but profound idea sits at the heart of Miriam Fein's work: that shared silence, offered with intention, may be as therapeutic as the sounds that precede it. As I read her research, I found myself imagining how that insight might shape life at EngAGE Beverly.
Every week I read research on aging, dementia, learning, design, and care. Some of it shifts how I think; some of it confirms an instinct I already had. This series is where I think out loud as I build EngAGE Beverly, sharing the research that's shaping our home and the questions it raises along the way.
I've been thinking about quiet lately, and about how much it can hold. As an introvert, I've always known that silence is where I come back to myself. It's where I rest, reconnect, and feel most like me. What I'm learning as I build EngAGE Beverly is that quiet might offer something similar to the people we gather with, and that it can take its place comfortably alongside everything else a meaningful day holds.
Fein, M. I. (2020). A new dementia treatment with quieting focus, subtle sound vibration, and intentional shared silence: Introducing Resonant Silence Technique. Dementia, 19(3), 894-898.
Where This Started
This didn't come to me by accident; it came through my network. Shanta Sabersky, the founder of Elderwise in Seattle and a mentor of mine, shared a YouTube interview with a cantor and certified music practitioner named Miriam Fein. That interview led me to Fein's research, and to a practice she calls Resonant Silence Technique (RST)®, published in the journal Dementia as an innovative practice.
One of the unexpected gifts of building EngAGE Beverly has been the people I've met along the way. Nearly every conversation introduces another thoughtful person who has been asking these questions for years. I come away with more ideas than I arrived with, and with a growing appreciation for the people quietly reshaping dementia care in ways most of us never see.
The method itself is simple. A facilitator offers a single gentle sound, a hummed tone, a flute note, the ring of a small chime, lets it fade completely, and then holds the silence before offering the next sound. The silences start short and lengthen as the group settles.
While RST has not yet been tested in a controlled trial, it grows out of a long tradition of using sound and silence to calm the body and quiet the mind. In a well-known cardiovascular study, the silent pauses between pieces of music produced more measurable relaxation, slower heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure, than the music did (Bernardi, Porta, and Sleight, 2006). Silence is not nothing. It can be restorative in ways we can measure.
Thinking About Silence Differently
I've started thinking about silence differently. Instead of treating it as the space between meaningful moments, I've begun to wonder whether it might be one of those moments itself, a chance to rest, to let something just heard or said settle in, to feel present and at ease.
There will be plenty to do at EngAGE Beverly: stories and music, art and shared meals, the laughter of children on the days we bring generations together, conversations that wander wherever they please. Quiet belongs among them too, in addition to all the rest, with its own particular gift. It offers a kind of restoration and connection that is simply its own, and it has a place in the day alongside everything else.
No one needs to perform, to produce, or to keep up. Everyone is welcome simply to be here, and a shared silence can be as much a part of the day as a song or a story.
In our home: This is a practice Miriam Fein has shaped over years of work, and I want to learn it from her and from others who know it well before bringing it into our days. When we do, my hope is that it has a steady, regular place here, offered with care and open to anyone, whether they want to take part or simply to be present.
What a Room Teaches
This is where my own field keeps pulling at me. One of the first things teaching taught me is that environments teach. Long before a teacher says a word, the room has already begun telling people what matters here: whether to sit still or move around, to speak up or stay quiet, to hurry or take their time. Maria Montessori built her method around what she called the prepared environment. Loris Malaguzzi and the educators of Reggio Emilia went further still, naming the environment the "third teacher," alongside the adults and the children themselves. Different traditions, one shared recognition: a space is never neutral, and it is always teaching something.
Every room invites something. A chair turned toward a window invites a pause and a long look outside; soft seating arranged in a small circle invites conversation and company; natural light invites a sense of whether it's morning or afternoon. Familiar objects within easy reach invite a hand, and sometimes a memory. A clear, uncluttered path invites a person to move through the room with confidence. Warm color and texture invite a person to stay a while. A calm, well-ordered space tells the nervous system something gentle: that it's safe here to rest, to notice, and to settle.
The reverse holds too, which is part of why design matters so much in this work. Constant background noise and harsh light are a recognized source of stress for people living with dementia (Dewing, 2009). A room can ask too much of a person, or it can make room for them to be themselves. That is what I'm designing toward.
As I sit with these ideas, I keep coming back to reflecting on the rhythm of a day. Maybe the question isn't how to offer less but how to let fewer things compete for a person's attention at once. Instead of constant background noise, we might choose one thing worth noticing: birdsong at the window, bread baking, a poem read aloud, a single song. Then a little quiet afterward, enough for it to settle before the next thing begins.
That last part, the quiet afterward, is the piece I keep thinking about. It's easy to treat a pause as a gap to be filled. I've started to see it as part of the experience itself, the stretch of time where what just happened has room to soak in.
What a Day Might Feel Like
As I design EngAGE Beverly, I find I'm thinking as much about atmosphere as about activity. Not only what we'll do each day, but what the day will feel like.
I don't imagine a place that's silent all day. Homes aren't silent, and ours won't be either. On the days we bring generations together, there will be children's laughter. Friends will tell the same good stories. Soup will be simmering for lunch. What I imagine is a home where quiet is welcomed rather than avoided, simply another part of the rhythm of the day: no television competing for attention, music chosen on purpose, a poem read slowly enough to savor, a chair by the window where a person can sit and simply be, with someone nearby and nothing that needs to be said.
I also picture one room set aside for quiet on purpose. A small, restful space a person can step into when the day starts to feel like a lot, with soft light, a comfortable chair, and the gentle sound of birdsong or moving water. Nothing would be asked of anyone there. It would not be a room a person is sent to, but one a person can choose, and come back from whenever they're ready.
I started with quiet, because it's the thing I know best in my own life. The longer I work on this, though, the more I think the real question underneath it is both simpler and bigger: what will it feel like to spend a day here? I don't have the whole answer yet. What I have so far is a handful of small things I keep returning to, a poem read slowly, a long look out a window, a quiet that's allowed to last, and a growing sense that how a place feels is not a small thing. I'm beginning to think it may be the most important thing of all.
Julia Otter Singler, EdD
Founder and Executive Director, EngAGE Beverly
This post was drafted with assistance from AI as a research and writing aid, and reviewed and edited by Julia Singler before publication. The research synthesis, citations, and conclusions reflect Julia's reading of the underlying literature.
References
- Bernardi, L., Porta, C., & Sleight, P. (2006). Cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and respiratory changes induced by different types of music in musicians and non-musicians: The importance of silence. Heart, 92, 445-452.
- Dewing, J. (2009). Caring for people with dementia: Noise and light. Nursing Older People, 21.
- Fein, M. I. (2020). A new dementia treatment with quieting focus, subtle sound vibration, and intentional shared silence: Introducing Resonant Silence Technique. Dementia, 19(3), 894-898.
