Do You Need a Retreat?

You are wound like a clock, you rush everywhere, your boss is demanding, your kids are fighting, your spouse isn't listening and you're about to kick the dog. Time out. You need a retreat.

Sure, a getaway to a beautiful, relaxing mystical mountainous place or tropical paradise can be soothing to the soul. But you don't have to travel far, nor do you have to spend eight hours in meditative silence with robed Buddhists, to go on a retreat.

You can retreat sitting in your bedroom or office, while ironing or while waiting in traffic, according to Rachel Harris, Ph.D., a Princeton, N.J. psychologist who is the author of "20-Minute Retreats."

Harris offers simple self-led exercises that can be done in minutes to help you revive your spirits and nurture your soul, or to put it plainly, to chill out or deal with it.

"Daily retreat time is a way to toss our consciousness up to attain a higher perspective," Harris writes. "It helps us develop our equanimity and not be swept away by our reactions, our feelings or the circumstances or our stressful days. It helps us to stay centered no matter what is going on."

Signs you need a retreat

Harris lists 12 signs you need a retreat. If you find more than half you can identify with, she says it's clear you need to take 20 minutes - or even five minutes or one - to turn your attention to your spiritual life:

1. You can hardly remember the last time you had a moment to yourself.
2. You feel an unquenchable inner yearning.
3. You don't laugh as much as you used to.
4. All you do is take care of others' needs, neglecting your own.
5. Your heart feels closed.
6. You rush everywhere.
7. You don't remember your dreams.
8. You feel disconnected, without an inner center.
9. You know there's more to life, but you don't know what it is or what to do about it.
10. You comment to friends that you feel like you're running on empty.
11. With no energy to do anything else, you spend evenings and weekends zoned out in front of the TV.
12. You want to experience more love in your life.

The retreats Harris has collected - all 190 of them - are inspired by religious traditions. They are also inspired by the practices and beliefs of some tribal culture. The retreats also employ a variety of techniques, including centering prayers where you repeat a word or phrase silently to yourself and meditation involving either concentration on thoughts or on small, subtle movements of the body.

Other techniques involve breathing exercises, journaling and emotional drawing to express your inner feelings on paper, dance therapy or range of motion exercises and psychotherapeutic techniques such as visualization (imagine peacefully walking through a forest and smelling the woodsy fragrance).

Magical rituals, performed with clear intention and emotional concentration, also can work. For example, Harris says burning an angry letter you never intend to send, allows you to "let go of hurtful people, old wounds, negative behaviors and angry resentments."

Creating a retreat space

The ideal retreat is a whole separate room reserved solely for retreats, according to Harris. However, because most people don't have that luxury, she suggests using a corner of a room or preparing a dresser top or table by draping a beautiful cloth across it and lighting a candle or incense.

After dedicating a space, get some tools to practice your retreats. Harris suggests keeping the following on hand:

• Journal, a beautiful blank book or simply a student's notebook
• Art supplies - oil pastels, for example - for that expressive art work
• A clock to set time for your retreat, bells to ring at the beginning and end of a retreat
• Candles
• Incense for those who like it
• Crystals in a bowl of water
• Meditation cushions

Quickie retreats

Harris included in her book a variety of shorter retreats after a group of high-powered career women in her writers' group asked if they just couldn't do retreats while ironing or stuck in traffic. The answer, Harris says, is yes.

Here is a five-minute retreat Harris calls "traffic," designed to help wheel-grippers work with their impatience. Notice how you experience impatience in your body. Make a game out of observing the slightest detail, such as "I feel tension in my left knee," or "I'm hardly breathing." This retreat is not about giving you more patience but purely about gaining more awareness of how you feel impatience in your body. However, you may want to notice what happens to your level of impatience as you become more objectively aware of it. How does it change?"

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External Source Harris, Rachel. 20-Minute Retreats: Revive Your Spirits in Just Minutes a Day With Simple Self-Led Exercises. Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 2000.

This article was reviewed and updated June 2007.

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