To The Best Of Our Knowledge Retreat from the Day-to-Day Life
13 snips
Sep 20, 2025 
Pico Iyer, an acclaimed travel writer and essayist known for his insights on silence and mindfulness, shares his transformative experiences with silent retreats, highlighting how they help reframe priorities and deepen spiritual understanding. Monica Gagliano, an evolutionary ecologist renowned for her research on plant intelligence, recounts her intense 39-day darkness retreat, describing both the challenges and the profound sense of rebirth that followed. Together, they explore the importance of retreating from daily chaos to connect with the self and the natural world.
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From Wildfire To A Hermitage Refuge
- Pico Iyer fled to a Benedictine hermitage after his family home burned in a major wildfire and found pulsing silence and simple wonders there.
- That first retreat reset his senses and began a decades-long practice of returning to that refuge.
Silence Reveals A Truer Self
- Retreats can liberate you from everyday fretting and reveal a truer, more expansive self.
- Regular silence helps you remember who and what really matters beyond daily distractions.
Make Retreating A Regular Practice
- Treat periodic solitary retreats as a practice like running or meditation to restore balance.
- Use unguided silence to read, write, walk, or simply do nothing to recharge your inner life.
