put everything in your scene under a node (the things you want to stop) but not the scene itself. On that node run an action that has three actions: the first one just pauses that node (everythingNodeUnderScene.paused = true) the second action is just a wait action the third action sets the SKNode's paused attribute to false

From the description it sounds like the container has a physics body. All the objects inside are trying to resolve the collision by moving outside.