Have you ever been on a retreat? Maybe a work one, or wellness, or a spiritual retreat? My own experience is in high school religious retreats where we’d go to a farmhouse and cook together, take long hikes and talk all night. I liked that it felt different from my everyday life. It took me physically away from the familiar, which helped me mentally and philosophically explore new things.
More recently, I was part of a day of complete silence for a yoga retreat as I was also learning about anatomy, Sanskrit and the history of the practice as I became a 200 hour registered yoga teacher. I found it incredibly difficult to not speak to my family and friends – and that was just one day. It gave me a deeper appreciation for even the small personal interactions in my world.
In this week’s episode, “Retreat from the Day-to-Day Life,” we talk with people who have made retreats a part of their life. Writer Pico Iyer has gone on more than 100 retreats to a Benedictine Hermitage in Big Sur, California over about 30 years. He started going on retreat when his family home burned down in a California wildfire. Plant scientist Monica Gagliano tells us about her experience in a 39-day darkness retreat – something most of us would not consider, but might be able to learn something from as we are looking for ways to move beyond the news deluge, and noise and bright lights of daily life. Iyer says one thing he does every day (that most of us can do) is to go on a walk. He says this kind of mini-retreat “opens himself up either to the beauty all around or to whatever ideas are going to come into my head.”
– Shannon