Stillness, meditation, reflection, silence. Radio documentary maker Alan Hall goes in search of refuge from the noise and bustle of the modern world, looking for moments of peace amid the hurly-burly of daily life.

I was seeking still moments.

A friend had mentioned The Pause, an unlikely quiet time held at the start of each day in a London boys' school.

Now I found myself perched next to the headmaster, David Boddy, on a stage in the main hall of St James Independent School, Twickenham. This was a school assembly, but not as I knew it.

"Balanced and upright" was the head's gently coaxed instruction.

Three hundred boys fell into a well-rehearsed silence. Many closed their eyes. All ceased fidgeting.

"And settle... into the inner peace." Within moments, the entire school had fallen into a collective stillness, The Pause.

What do we get from stillness - those moments of reverie, of daydreaming, in an ever more noisy, busy and stimulating world?
I was seeking the sensation of escaping - and being jolted back into - the unrelenting bustle of the everyday.
Inner self

I had a suspicion - no more than that - that with the encroachment of digital technology into every private corner of our lives comes an erosion of a precious capacity to step aside from the hurly burly, "to stand and stare".

"What is this life, if full of care, We have no time to stand and stare..."

WH Davies' poem is 100 years old, written before mass ownership of the motor car, let alone the superhighway.

But in moments of stillness, now as then, we find opportunities for reflection, random association and creativity. Lose the gift of daydreaming and we lose that connection to our inner selves.

On the stage at St James school, I began to feel uncomfortable at the prospect of 10 full minutes of Pause, exposed as I was before 300 pairs of eyes.

Game Boys and iPods reduce pupils' concentration spans, says Mr Boddy

But the dreaded eternity evaporated in a passing moment.

"In the midst of the 10 minutes you may get a couple of minutes of absolute inner quiet but the rest is sort of getting there," Mr Boddy explained to me. "By comparison to where their minds have been, it is an oasis."

He fears an "attention deficit syndrome" affects the majority of British schoolchildren. At St James the rules concerning iPods and Game Boys extend well beyond the classroom and the school gate. Boys are not allowed to "plug in" on the way to school.

Mr Boddy estimates that it takes almost two school periods, about 1½ hours, to re-attune any pupil who arrives at school listening to music, to get their ears clear and minds attentive.

"Particularly on Monday mornings, they come in and they're very agitated… and you have to spend quite a long time just getting them to the point where they can attend on something."

As well as the collective Pause, every individual class begins and ends with 30 seconds of silence. The boys think of it as an opportunity "not to think", to "zone out", to clear their heads of one subject and create space for the next.

One pupil talks about putting "things on shelves" in his mind. Another says it helps him see things more clearly.

This is not daydreaming. It's more purposeful. More productive. It helps with academic performance. It is the practice of stillness in the midst of the madding crowd.

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Blessings

Dan Benor, MD
http://awesomewholistichealing.com/