Yes, the best way to anatta is serenity. Intellectual understanding does not help at all. It can help you remove noise from your life, but the real understanding comes from serenity.

When you are absolutely calm, you become an observer automatically. The second link of dependent origination is the real deal. You have to stop doing anything. This is not just for a few hours. You have to stop any kind of fabrication for days and at some point, mind becomes observer and it doesn't want to do anything. And then it is revealed that everything keeps on going automatically as if we are watching a movie.

It feels as if we were forced to become an observer by the universe until our death.

Wisdom can help but wisdom without peace is useless. Serenity is the real deal which helps us experience whatever the Buddha says first hand.

I think this is just going extreme because these things(ear getting hurt, etc) will keep happening as long as the body exists. Physical pain is best to be avoided.

What the Buddha teaches is to just relax. The main teaching of the Buddha which is the Anapanasati sutta is just depicting the relaxation after we have cut off enough of the background noises. If you have relaxed enough anatta and all the rest of it will be revealed automatically. The epitome of relaxation is nibbana.

The big skill in life is to just relax and chill. Buddha would have won Guinness world records or the Olympics in relaxation 😀.

The ultimate technique is to not do anything, just sit like a log of wood for days. Awakening is guaranteed but most people cannot even go 10 minutes without touching their phone or PC.