The Art of Stillness - What Happens When We Stop? — Rest, Memory, Psychological Safety and the Science of Learning
The Living Apothecary | Research & Reflection
There is something rather extraordinary about the difficulty we sometimes have doing absolutely nothing.
We can sit down.
Put our feet up.
Close the door.
And still find ourselves mentally working through tomorrow's appointments, remembering something we have forgotten, or planning what needs to happen next.
The body may have stopped moving.
But the mind hasn't necessarily followed.
I have become increasingly interested in this distinction.
Within The Sanctuary, I frequently meet people who describe themselves as exhausted but struggle to rest.
They understand that they need to slow down.
They know they are tired.
Yet when an opportunity to stop finally arrives, stillness can feel unfamiliar.
Sometimes even uncomfortable.
It raises an interesting question.
Is rest simply the absence of activity, or is something more complicated happening within the brain and body?
And what might happen when we deliberately create space between learning, remembering and doing?
These questions have taken me somewhere rather unexpected.
Back to a classroom in 2003.
And to an educational experience that, more than twenty years later, has acquired a fascinating new significance.
Rest, relaxation and stillness are not quite the same thing
We often use these words interchangeably.
But they describe experiences that can be remarkably different.
Rest may involve reducing physical or mental demands.
Relaxation generally describes a reduction in tension or arousal, although it can be experienced and measured in different ways.
Stillness might involve remaining physically quiet, allowing attention to settle, or simply choosing not to engage with another task.
And none of these automatically guarantees the others.
Somebody can be physically still while feeling anxious.
They can be resting while their mind remains extremely active.
They might experience relaxation while walking through a garden rather than sitting quietly.
Or they may feel mentally refreshed after an enjoyable activity that involves considerable movement.
This matters because the human nervous system is not governed by a single switch labelled rest.
Our physiological and psychological responses are shaped by attention, emotion, environment, physical health, previous experience and countless other influences.
So perhaps the first thing we need to understand is that stillness is not a technique that produces one predictable response in everybody.
It is an experience whose effects depend upon the individual and the circumstances.
The relaxation response
In the 1970s, physician and researcher Herbert Benson began investigating physiological changes associated with certain meditation and relaxation practices.
His work helped popularise the concept of the relaxation response.
In a 1974 paper, Benson and colleagues discussed a pattern of physiological activity associated with particular forms of focused mental practice.
The concept challenged the idea that the body's response to stress was the only significant physiological response worth investigating.
Researchers began asking whether particular practices could produce measurable changes associated with reduced arousal.
These investigations contributed to a growing scientific interest in meditation, breathing practices, relaxation training and mind–body approaches.
But an important distinction is sometimes lost when this research is discussed.
The relaxation response is not simply another name for sitting still.
Benson's work involved specific approaches to attention and mental practice.
Nor should we assume that every individual experiences identical physiological changes.
Nevertheless, this research helped establish something important.
Relaxation was not merely a vague subjective experience.
Aspects of it could be investigated scientifically.
And that opened the door to a much wider conversation about the relationship between mental experience and bodily regulation.
The brain does not switch off when we stop
One of the most fascinating developments in neuroscience has been the discovery that the brain remains highly active when we are not concentrating on an external task.
In 2001, Marcus Raichle and colleagues published influential work describing what became known as the brain's default mode.
Subsequent research identified a network of interacting brain regions commonly referred to as the default mode network, or DMN.
This network has been associated with several aspects of internally directed thought.
Autobiographical memory.
Thinking about ourselves.
Imagining future events.
Considering other people's perspectives.
And aspects of spontaneous thought.
In other words, when we stop concentrating on the world immediately around us, the brain does not simply become inactive.
It may turn towards a different kind of activity.
That is an intriguing thought.
We sometimes imagine that doing nothing means nothing is happening.
But the brain is never simply waiting for us to give it another job.
It continues to process information and participate in complex patterns of activity.
There is, however, an important qualification.
Default mode network activity is not synonymous with relaxation.
Nor is it necessarily beneficial or harmful.
Internally directed thought can involve pleasant memories, creative ideas and reflection.
It can also involve worry, rumination and distress.
The significance depends upon what is happening and how the person experiences it.
So we cannot simply say that sitting quietly activates a beneficial brain state.
The science is considerably more nuanced.
What if rest helps us remember?
One of the most compelling areas of research concerns something called wakeful rest.
In 2012, Michaela Dewar and colleagues published a study investigating whether a brief period of quiet rest after learning could influence memory.
Participants listened to two short stories.
After one story, they spent ten minutes resting quietly.
After the other, they completed a spot-the-difference task.
The researchers then investigated how well participants remembered the material.
The findings were striking.
Resting after learning was associated with better subsequent memory, including when memory was tested seven days later.
The researchers proposed that reducing new cognitive demands immediately after learning may provide conditions that support memory consolidation.
Memory consolidation refers to processes through which newly acquired information becomes more stable over time.
This is particularly interesting from an educational perspective.
We often think that learning requires us to keep doing something.
Reading.
Writing.
Revising.
Practising.
Completing another activity.
Yet this research suggests that what happens immediately after learning may also matter.
Perhaps filling every available moment with another task is not always the most useful approach.
But we must be careful about what the study actually demonstrates.
It investigated memory following a particular learning task.
It did not establish that quiet rest improves every aspect of cognitive performance.
Nor did it show that ten minutes of stillness treats stress, anxiety or exhaustion.
It provided evidence for a specific relationship between post-learning activity and later memory.
And that is interesting enough without extending the findings beyond their limits.
A growing body of evidence
Research into wakeful rest has continued.
A systematic review and meta-analysis published in 2025 brought together findings from 37 studies, incorporating 63 experiments.
The researchers investigated the effects of wakeful rest on memory consolidation.
Overall, the analysis identified a statistically significant benefit of wakeful rest compared with alternative post-learning activities.
The pooled effect was moderate, with a reported Hedges' g of 0.448.
The researchers also found evidence of a smaller benefit persisting after seven days.
Interestingly, the analysis suggested that older adults might derive greater memory benefits than younger adults, although this finding requires careful interpretation.
The results were more apparent for memory recall than recognition.
And several practical characteristics of the resting period, including whether the eyes were open or closed, did not appear to substantially alter the overall effect.
That is a valuable contribution.
It suggests that the relationship between wakeful rest and memory is not confined to one small experiment.
But even a meta-analysis does not answer every question.
The included studies varied in their designs, participants and procedures.
And the findings concern memory consolidation rather than general wellbeing.
Nevertheless, I find the educational implications fascinating.
Perhaps learning is not only about the information we introduce.
Perhaps it is also about the space we allow afterwards.
Returning to my classroom in 2003: Learning, memory and belonging
Reading contemporary research into wakeful rest and memory consolidation has taken me back to 2003, when I was teaching apprentice students.
They entered the programme at Entry Level 3 in mathematics and needed to achieve Level 2 Key Skills.
We gave ourselves twelve weeks.
But I wanted to approach their learning a little differently.
Our mornings were devoted to teaching and developing mathematical understanding.
However, there was one important condition.
My apprentices were not permitted to take their learning notes home.
When they returned home, I encouraged them to rest before opening their learning journals and writing down what they could remember from the morning's teaching.
They could not simply consult their notes.
They had to retrieve the information for themselves.
The journals formed part of their learning and assessment, rather than a controlled research experiment.
My interest was in what students could recall after stepping away from the teaching environment, and how they could engage more actively with their own learning.
Looking back, I can now recognise two fascinating connections with contemporary cognitive science.
The first concerns memory consolidation.
Research suggests that periods of wakeful rest following learning can, under certain conditions, support the retention of newly acquired information.
The second concerns retrieval practice.
Research in cognitive psychology has demonstrated that actively recalling previously learned material can improve longer-term retention compared with simply studying the material again.
In 2006, Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke published influential research examining this phenomenon, often described as the testing effect.
Their findings suggested that retrieving information from memory can itself be an important part of learning, rather than merely a way of measuring what has already been learned.
My apprentices were engaging in a form of unaided retrieval when they completed their journals.
But there is an important distinction between recognising these connections and claiming that my approach produced a particular scientifically established outcome.
I did not design the journal activity as a controlled experiment, and I cannot retrospectively separate the potential effects of rest from those of retrieval practice.
Nevertheless, revisiting this teaching approach alongside contemporary research raises some fascinating questions.
What happens to learning when we remove the immediate availability of notes?
What role might rest play before recall?
And how might the act of retrieving information help learners recognise what they have understood and what they need to revisit?
But there was another important element to my approach.
I joined the group as a learner.
I wanted the apprentices to see me as part of their learning community, rather than simply the person standing at the front of the classroom.
We were working towards the same goal.
And when examination day arrived, I sat the mathematics assessment alongside them.
Thankfully, I passed too!
But what remains particularly memorable is that every apprentice achieved their Level 2 qualification.
Not in the twelve weeks we had allowed.
They all passed within nine weeks.
That outcome was enormously satisfying.
It does not prove that rest or retrieval practice caused their success. We had no comparison group, and many factors may have contributed, including teaching, practice, motivation and relationships within the group.
Nevertheless, the experience has stayed with me.
Today, I can see several important educational principles sitting alongside one another.
The deliberate retrieval of information from memory.
The opportunity to rest following learning.
The use of journals to make understanding visible.
And the development of a learning environment in which the teacher was prepared to share the challenge.
More than twenty years later, these questions are finding their way back into my work through The Living Apothecary School.
Sometimes research gives us new language for questions we began exploring many years earlier.
And sometimes it encourages us to return to those experiences with fresh curiosity.
Psychological safety: When the teacher becomes a learner
There is another aspect of that experience in 2003 that I find myself reflecting upon today.
It concerns the relationship between learning, confidence and psychological safety.
For some learners, mathematics can carry considerable emotional baggage.
Previous educational experiences, fear of failure, embarrassment about making mistakes or simply believing that mathematics is something they cannot do may influence how they approach learning.
I wanted to create something different.
So I made a decision.
I would become part of the learning group myself.
I would work towards the same qualification and sit the examination alongside my apprentices.
I wasn't simply there to teach them.
I wanted them to recognise that we were learning together.
Looking back, I can see a connection with the concept of psychological safety.
In 1999, organisational researcher Amy Edmondson published influential work examining psychological safety within work teams.
She described psychological safety as a shared belief that a team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.
Her research suggested that psychologically safe environments can support learning behaviours, including asking questions, seeking feedback and discussing mistakes.
Although her original study concerned workplace teams rather than apprentice classrooms, the concept has important implications for education.
Learning involves vulnerability.
We admit that we do not know something.
We attempt unfamiliar tasks.
We risk giving the wrong answer.
We discover gaps in our understanding.
And sometimes we must challenge beliefs about what we are capable of achieving.
An environment in which mistakes are met with embarrassment or judgement may discourage learners from taking those risks.
But an environment in which questions are welcomed and uncertainty can be acknowledged may make it easier to participate.
I cannot claim that my decision to sit the examination alongside my apprentices created psychological safety, because we did not formally measure their perceptions of the learning environment.
But I can explain what I was trying to achieve.
I wanted to reduce the distance between teacher and learner.
I wanted the apprentices to feel that we were working towards something together.
And I wanted them to see that learning, assessment and the possibility of making mistakes were experiences I was prepared to share.
All the apprentices achieved their Level 2 Key Skills mathematics qualification within nine weeks, rather than the twelve we had originally allowed.
Their achievement cannot be attributed to one teaching strategy.
But the experience remains an important part of how I understand education.
Today, as I develop The Living Apothecary School, I find myself returning to many of those same principles.
Curiosity rather than judgement.
Questions rather than assumptions.
Reflection rather than simply collecting information.
And a learning environment in which professional experience does not remove the need to remain open to new knowledge.
Some of our apprentices are already qualified therapists. Others bring different experiences and levels of understanding.
Each has something valuable to contribute.
And as their educator, I remain a learner too.
Perhaps psychological safety is not about making learning easy.
Perhaps it is about creating an environment in which people feel sufficiently supported to attempt something difficult.
To ask.
To question.
To make mistakes.
To reflect.
And ultimately, to grow.
Because a good learning environment should not simply tell people what they need to know.
It should give them the confidence to discover what they are capable of becoming.
When the mind needs somewhere to settle
There is another dimension to stillness that interests me clinically.
Many people live with continuous demands upon their attention.
Work.
Family responsibilities.
Caring roles.
Appointments.
Technology.
Decisions.
Unexpected interruptions.
Even leisure time can become filled with activities that require concentration.
We move from one task to another with very little opportunity to notice how we are feeling.
But reducing external demands does not necessarily produce immediate calm.
For some people, quiet creates an opportunity for thoughts and feelings that have been pushed aside to become more noticeable.
This is not necessarily a problem.
Reflection can be valuable.
But for somebody experiencing significant anxiety, trauma-related distress or persistent rumination, unstructured stillness may be uncomfortable.
That is why I believe the language we use around rest matters.
We should be cautious about telling people that they simply need to sit quietly or clear their minds.
Some people may find guided relaxation helpful.
Others may prefer gentle movement, music, conversation or time outdoors.
And some may need professional psychological support rather than another wellbeing exercise.
The goal should not be to impose one particular experience of stillness.
It should be to understand what supports the individual.
The difference between doing nothing and having nothing demanded of us
This is perhaps the distinction I find most interesting.
Within a therapeutic setting, a person may spend an hour receiving reflexology, Reiki or another complementary therapy.
From the outside, very little may appear to be happening.
They are lying down.
They may close their eyes.
They are not completing a task.
Yet their experience may involve much more than physical inactivity.
For a period of time, somebody else is attending to their needs.
They are not required to make decisions.
They do not have to answer questions continuously.
They are not responsible for organising what happens next.
The experience may include therapeutic touch, sound, scent, warmth, quiet or simply the presence of another person.
These elements are not scientifically interchangeable.
And we cannot assume that a particular physiological response has occurred simply because somebody reports feeling relaxed.
But the wider context of care may be important.
I explored related questions in my earlier article, Beyond the Technique, when revisiting research involving 2,165 complementary therapy interventions.
What interested me then — and continues to interest me now — was the experience of being given permission to stop.
Not simply stopping physical activity.
But temporarily stepping away from the expectation that we must always be doing something.
Perhaps there is a meaningful difference between doing nothing and having nothing demanded of us.
It is a distinction I would very much like to see explored further in research.
Stillness within The Living Apothecary
The Living Apothecary Method™ has always been concerned with more than the application of a particular technique.
I am interested in the relationship between sensory experience, therapeutic care, reflection and individual wellbeing.
Scent.
Touch.
Sound.
Environment.
Ritual.
Attention.
And stillness.
Within our Elixir workshops, these elements create opportunities for exploration and learning.
But I am also interested in what happens between activities.
The moments when nobody is being asked to complete another exercise.
When a conversation is allowed to settle.
When somebody has time to notice a scent without immediately being asked to identify it.
Or when we allow a little quiet after learning something new.
The research on wakeful rest raises particularly interesting questions for our School.
Could deliberately incorporating quiet periods after learning influence what apprentices remember?
Would this differ depending upon the type of learning?
Would sensory experiences immediately after a lesson support reflection or interfere with memory consolidation?
And how might individual preferences influence the experience?
These are research questions, not established conclusions.
But they demonstrate why I believe education and clinical practice have so much to learn from one another.
My experiences in 2003 also remind me that learning is relational.
The environment we create matters.
The way we respond to questions matters.
The way we approach mistakes matters.
And the willingness of an educator to remain curious matters too.
A psychologically safe learning environment is not one without challenge.
It is one in which people can engage with challenge without unnecessary fear of humiliation.
That is something I want to continue nurturing within The Living Apothecary School.
Rest is not something we have to earn
There is also a wider cultural question sitting beneath this discussion.
Why do so many of us feel that rest must be justified?
We may allow ourselves to stop only when everything has been completed.
When the house is tidy.
When the work is finished.
When everybody else has been cared for.
When there is nothing left on the list.
But for many people, that moment never arrives.
There is always another responsibility.
Another task.
Another reason to keep going.
This is not simply an individual problem.
The ability to rest is shaped by working conditions, caring responsibilities, financial circumstances, health and the support available to us.
Telling somebody to prioritise rest is of limited value if their circumstances make rest difficult to access.
We need to recognise those realities.
Yet I also wonder whether we could begin to think differently about the value of stopping.
Rest does not have to become another productivity strategy.
We do not need to justify a quiet afternoon by demonstrating that it will improve our memory or make us more efficient tomorrow.
The scientific evidence may help us understand particular benefits of rest.
But its human value is not dependent upon those benefits.
Sometimes we need to stop because we are tired.
And that is reason enough.
A gentle invitation to stillness
If you would like to explore stillness, begin without expectations.
Find a moment when you are not required to attend to something urgent.
You might sit comfortably with a warm drink.
Look out into the garden.
Listen to a familiar piece of music.
Or simply allow yourself a few minutes without another task.
There is no requirement to close your eyes.
No need to control your thoughts.
No particular breathing pattern to follow.
And no expectation that you should feel peaceful.
You may notice that your mind is busy.
You may find the experience pleasant.
You may prefer to move around instead.
All of those responses are valid.
If quiet feels uncomfortable, choose something that feels more supportive.
The purpose is not to achieve a particular state.
It is simply to explore what happens when, for a little while, you are not asking yourself to do something else.
Perhaps stillness is not empty at all
I keep returning to the research on memory.
There is something rather beautiful about the possibility that a period in which we appear to be doing very little may nevertheless be significant.
Not because every quiet moment produces an extraordinary neurological change.
And not because stillness is a cure for the pressures of modern life.
But because the brain and body do not cease their activity simply because we stop directing them towards another task.
There are processes happening that we cannot necessarily feel.
Memories being consolidated.
Attention shifting.
Thoughts emerging.
Physiological systems continuing their intricate regulation.
And perhaps, alongside those measurable processes, there is something more personal.
The opportunity to notice ourselves.
To recognise tiredness.
To become aware of what we need.
Or simply to enjoy a moment without having to explain why it matters.
Where science meets soul
Within The Sanctuary, I often think about the importance of creating a space where somebody feels safe, calm and understood.
But I am increasingly aware that these experiences cannot be manufactured through a treatment protocol alone.
They emerge through a relationship between the person, the environment, the practitioner and the wider circumstances of their life.
Stillness may be part of that experience.
But it should never be imposed.
It should be offered.
And perhaps that is what I find most meaningful about the art of stillness.
It asks us to reconsider the assumption that every valuable moment must contain visible activity.
Research is helping us understand some of the things that happen when external demands are reduced.
It also reminds us how much remains unknown.
But perhaps we do not need to measure every quiet moment to recognise its human significance.
Sometimes the most meaningful thing we can offer another person is not another activity.
Not another instruction.
Not another thing to achieve.
But a little space.
A moment in which nothing is expected of them.
And permission, simply, to be.
The Research Café Question
If you were designing a study to investigate stillness within complementary therapy or wellbeing education, what would you measure?
Would you compare quiet rest with guided relaxation?
Would you investigate memory after a teaching session?
Would you examine heart rate variability alongside self-reported relaxation?
Would you explore whether therapeutic touch produces a different experience from quiet rest alone?
And how would you account for individual differences in people's responses to silence, sensory stimulation and therapeutic environments?
Thinking about education, how might psychological safety influence a learner's willingness to retrieve information, acknowledge gaps in understanding and participate in reflective learning?
Could we compare learners who rest before completing a recall journal with those who complete it immediately after teaching?
And how might we distinguish the benefits of rest from those of retrieval practice?
Perhaps the most interesting question is this:
When somebody tells us they feel restored after a period of stillness, what exactly are we measuring — and what might we be missing?
References and further reading
Benson, H., Beary, J.F. & Carol, M.P. (1974). The relaxation response. Psychiatry, 37(1), 37–46. DOI: 10.1080/00332747.1974.11023785.
Connor, J. (2003). Practitioner-led educational project exploring memory, rest, unaided recall and reflective learning within apprenticeship education. Teaching and assessment practice involving Entry Level 3 learners progressing towards Level 2 Key Skills mathematics. Unpublished educational project; descriptive title.
Dewar, M., Alber, J., Butler, C., Cowan, N. & Della Sala, S. (2012). Brief wakeful resting boosts new memories over the long term. Psychological Science, 23(9), 955–960. DOI: 10.1177/0956797612441220.
Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383. DOI: 10.2307/2666999.
Raichle, M.E. et al. (2001). A default mode of brain function. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98(2), 676–682. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.98.2.676.
Roediger, H.L. & Karpicke, J.D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Psychological science and the testing effect. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249–255. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x.
Effects of wakeful rest on memory consolidation: A systematic review and meta-analysis. (2025). PubMed PMID: 40087245.
A note on my earlier educational work
My 2003 educational project formed part of my teaching and assessment practice with apprentice students. The approach incorporated morning learning, a period of rest and subsequent unaided recall through learning journals.
All participating apprentices achieved their Level 2 Key Skills mathematics qualification within nine weeks of a planned twelve-week programme.
The work was not designed as a controlled research experiment, and its outcomes should not be interpreted as establishing a causal relationship between rest, retrieval practice and qualification achievement.
A copy of my original educational project is available upon request, subject to the availability of the original material.
Educators, practitioners and researchers interested in exploring this work further are welcome to contact me directly through Hummingbird Holistics.
Research note
The studies discussed in this article investigate different aspects of relaxation, resting-state brain activity, memory consolidation, retrieval practice and psychological safety.
The educational experience described from 2003 was part of teaching and assessment, not a controlled research experiment. The apprentices' successful qualification outcomes cannot be attributed to a single teaching method.
Evidence concerning wakeful rest and memory should not be interpreted as proof that stillness produces identical physiological or psychological benefits in all individuals.
The Living Apothecary encourages thoughtful engagement with scientific research, educational practice, clinical experience and individual lived experience.
This article is intended for education and wellbeing information and does not replace appropriate medical or psychological advice.
The Living Apothecary Method™
Where science meets soul, wellbeing begins with trust.
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