To do a personal retreat at home, choose one day, tell someone you trust when you'll be back in touch, and take things out of it: screens, errands, news and plans. Keep food simple, get outside, and give the middle of the day to one quiet practice. If being alone tends to sink your mood, see a doctor first and spend the day with people.
The suitcase is still on top of the wardrobe.
Ysolde has had a mountain retreat saved on her phone for two years. Every few months she opens the page, reads the timetable, and closes it again. Work, then her sister's wedding, then work.
On Thursday evening she tries something smaller. She writes "Saturday: nothing" on the back of an envelope and props it against the kettle in her flat in Arjan. She texts her cousin: "Going quiet on Saturday. I'll call you at six." Then she puts the phone on the shelf in the hallway, plugged in, ringer on.
Saturday arrives. She makes tea, carries it to the balcony, and sits.
Within a minute she's standing again, looking for the phone. She sits back down. A minute later she's thinking about the grocery order. Then about an email. Then about whether this counts.
There's nothing dramatic in any of it. It's only very busy, for a day with nothing in it.
What is a personal retreat at home?
A personal retreat at home is a day you set aside on purpose and keep mostly empty: no screens for entertainment, no errands, no plans, and no one needing an answer from you for a few hours. It isn't a holiday and it isn't a course. It's a chance to notice what fills a day when you stop filling it.
Most guides add things: candles, playlists, a stack of books, a schedule broken into half-hours. I'd do the opposite. The useful part of a day like this is what you leave out, because what's left shows you what was underneath the busy all along.
First, though, a day alone isn't the right choice for everyone, every week.
If time on your own tends to pull your mood down, if you've felt low or flat for weeks, if you've had thoughts of harming yourself, or if you sometimes feel cut off from your own life, as though you were watching it from outside, talk to a doctor before you try this, and choose a day with people in it instead. If you're in crisis, contact your local emergency services.
There's a free masterclass of mine called Who Am I?, for anyone who'd like to look at the question underneath a day like this. It ends in a guided part, so one note first. If you've ever felt unreal or detached from your life, or you're being treated for anything like that, check with your doctor before the guided section or leave it out. Anyone can stop it at any moment, open their eyes, feel their feet on the floor, and call someone they trust. Who Am I? is free with the code GIFT26. Or read on.
How do you plan a retreat day at home?
Keep the plan short. A long one turns the retreat into another project.
Choose the day. A Saturday or a day off works, as long as nothing in it can't wait. One day is plenty. Half a day is fine for a first try.
Tell someone you trust. Say you'll be quieter than usual, and name a time you'll call. This isn't a formality. It means someone knows, and it gives the day a natural end.
Keep a phone in reach for emergencies. Somewhere you can hear it but not scroll it. If you look after anyone who might need you, a child, a parent, someone unwell, a home retreat waits for a day when their care is covered.
Leave out the inputs. No news, no podcasts, no series, no social media. Books too, for most of the day. That's the hardest one for many readers, and it's the one that shows you the most.
Make food simple. Something already in the fridge, or one plain meal you can cook without a recipe. Keep water near you. This isn't a fast. If you take medication, take it at its usual time.
Plan one thing for the middle of the day. The practice below. Everything else can be walking, sitting, tidying a small corner, or resting.
If you've just come back from a retreat away and the first month home is still settling, what to do after a retreat covers that stretch, and a home day can wait until it's done.
Why does a quiet day feel so restless?
Because the habits that run an ordinary day don't take days off.
Ysolde didn't decide to stand up and look for her phone. She was on her feet before she'd noticed. The grocery order, the email, the question of whether the day counted: each arrived on its own, the way it does at the office, in traffic, at the dinner table. On a full day, they hide among everything else. On an empty one, there's nothing to hide behind.
That restlessness isn't a sign the day is failing. It's most of what the day has to show you. Many people find that the reaching, for a screen, a task, a plan, is so constant they've stopped hearing it, much like the hum of a fridge you only notice when it stops. How to stop living on autopilot looks at how much of a day runs on settings like these.
Somewhere under all that reaching is a person who was there before any of the habits arrived. You are not broken. You are buried. A quiet day doesn't build that person. It just lets you notice how much is stacked on top.
What can you do in the middle of the day?
Some ground rules for this one. The practice isn't therapy or medical care, and if you see a doctor or therapist, keep working with them; what they advise comes first. Nothing here asks you to stop treatment, medication or support. If you're in recovery, your programme and the people in it carry on as normal, today included. If a day without distractions is likely to bring up drinking, drug use, self-harm, or thoughts about someone who's hurting you, this isn't the tool for that: call your doctor, a helpline or someone you trust, and if you're in crisis, contact your local emergency services.
You'll need a chair by a window and about twenty minutes. A garden bench or a park works as well.
- Sit somewhere you can see out. Nothing in your hands, nothing in your lap.
- Choose one thing outside to come back to. A tree, a roofline, a patch of sky. You don't need to study it.
- Notice each time your attention goes looking for something to do. A message, a chore, tomorrow, a sentence you'd like to have said yesterday. When you catch one, don't follow it and don't push it off. Come back to the thing you chose outside.
- Don't keep score. Whether it's three times or thirty, the number tells you nothing about how well you're doing.
- When the time is up, sit for one more breath, and then stand. Go and do something ordinary, like making tea or washing a cup.
If anything painful surfaces partway through, you can end it there. Get up, go outside or put the radio on, and ring someone you trust or your doctor. You can always stop early, or skip the practice altogether.
Before the day ends, if you feel like it, jot down whatever you reached for most often, and anything you noticed in the moments you didn't reach. Then make the call you promised.
Who is the Who Am I? masterclass for?
A day at home shows you how much reaching goes on. The masterclass asks a different question: who is it that notices the reaching? Three things make it a good next step.
- One quiet day has left you curious about going further. The page sets it out as something you read, then watch, then take part in, ending with a guided session where all you're asked to do is be still for a while.
- The health note above doesn't apply to you today. If it does, start with your doctor, and come back when they agree.
- A picture of thoughts as clouds crossing a sky speaks to you. It's one of the two images the page says the masterclass keeps returning to.
The page gives its price as USD 297, and adds: "Yours free, use code GIFT26 at checkout."
Empty days get a bad name.
Anne, on my book's Amazon listing: "This book is so much more than a read."
Robert Simic, guiding the remembering.
P.S. If your quiet day turns out busier than you hoped, that's fine; a quiet day can move to another week. When you'd like a guided look at the one who's been doing the noticing, the masterclass is free with GIFT26. Receive the Masterclass