I have always known the power of silence.  It was my mother's greatest weapon when she was "mad beyond words".  :)

In class today as we were watching each other's moments, that the real power in using silence is that it forces the audience to "listen" to the speaker/tellers eyes instead of his/her words.  When we, as listeners, wait for the next piece, we are given time to fill in the gaps with our own understanding and we have time to read the eyes of the speaker and predict where the next step might be.