There is a room that is called the quietest room on earth in a laboratory in Minnesota. It is completely covered in the highest quality acoustic tiles and is a cube suspended inside another cube with springs that reduce outside noises. Even the floor is a suspended mesh over even more acoustic panels. Essentially, when you are inside you experience negative sound.
People who have spent time inside have experienced having their hearing so extremely augmented that they can hear their own blood pumping, lungs breathing, and even their eyes blinking.
I have never had the opportunity to be in this room, so I can only speculate about the experience from reading other’s accounts. But it seems to be a very impactful experience.
Have you ever been in a loud room and moved away into a quieter one? Have you felt the ringing in your ears? Not heard, but viscerally felt that ringing in your head?
It’s disorienting.
That’s something most people who have been in the quietest room on earth say. It is disorienting. Able bodied people who plan to spend more than 20 minutes in the room are heavily encouraged to bring a chair with them due to the disorienting and physically dizzying effect of hearing nothing outside of yourself.
Deeply listening to nothing other than the small room of air and your own biological machine.
Deep listening.
Cover your ears as tightly as you can. What can you hear? Do you experience the overwhelming loudness of yourself?
What is inside of you that you don’t always allow yourself to hear? Can you listen deeply to your innermost self? What do you have to communicate?
~Aline Harris
