I have a confession.
I hear the word retreat and my brain starts packing a bag.
Preferably for somewhere with trees, a mountain, a few trails and nobody asking me what’s for dinner.
A retreat sounds lovely.
It also sounds like something that requires time, money, planning, a reservation, and quite possibly a whole new wardrobe.
But what if retreat doesn’t have to be a big event?
What if it can be ten minutes? A half hour? Or an afternoon?
What if you don’t have to go anywhere?
I’ve been reading Caroline Sylge’s How to Retreat, and I love the idea that retreat can be much more accessible than we tend to make it. A retreat can be a deliberate step away from the noise of ordinary life, and it can look very different depending on what you need.
Which got me thinking about a question I probably need to ask myself more often:
What does my soul need today?
Not what does my calendar say? Not what am I behind on? Not what would make me feel impressively productive?
What does my soul need today?
And sometimes the answer is surprisingly simple.
Āloka
Sanskrit and Pali. Meaning light, brightness, vision or enlightenment. When something inside you finally becomes clear.
Yesterday, apparently, my soul needed to get rained on.
I woke up thinking I should go to the gym.
That meant walking there, working out, and walking home again.
Then I looked outside. It was cloudy and raining.
My immediate response was something along the lines of, Excellent. Perhaps I shall simply allow these blankets to absorb me.
But eventually I got myself moving. Rain gear on. Out the door.
Only a few minutes from home, I noticed something. I was enjoying the rain. I could feel it on my hands. I could hear it hitting my hood. The air smelled different. The whole world seemed quieter.
By the time I reached the gym, I was more than ready to move.
I hadn’t needed to convince myself. I just needed to get outside long enough for my nervous system to catch up with the plan.
Sometimes we don’t need a retreat just a walk in the rain on the way to the gym. And sometimes we need the gym.
That’s the tricky thing about asking what your soul needs.
The answer isn’t always rest.
Sometimes it is movement. Adventure. Solitude. People. A nap. Fresh air.
The micro-retreat
I think this is where the idea of a micro-retreat joins well with the idea of forest therapy.
We have somehow managed to turn rest into another achievement.
Apparently we need the perfect location, the perfect playlist, the perfect journal, the perfect candle and three uninterrupted hours to properly relax.
I would like to formally announce this is unnecessary protocol.
Your retreat can be tiny. You could put a plant on your desk. Turn on a little water feature. Put your phone somewhere you can’t see it.
Sit there for ten minutes. Listen. Look. Breathe.
That’s it!
You have not travelled anywhere. Your bank balance remains unchanged. No achieved enlightenment. But you stepped outside the usual stream of demands.
That counts.
And tomorrow, your retreat might look completely different.
Maybe you need to sit in a cozy chair and read. Or wander for thirty minutes through a park while the leaves are turning. Perhaps you have enough energy for a three-hour mindful walk through the forest. Or just enough energy to sit on a bench and watch water move.
All valid needs.
Forest therapy makes room for all of this
One of the things I love about forest therapy is that there isn’t a mileage requirement.
Nobody hands you a medal at the end because you managed to walk seven kilometres while being mindful.
You don’t have to conquer the forest. You don’t even have to walk very far.
The forest isn’t a treadmill with better scenery. It’s an invitation to slow down and notice.
And the beautiful thing is that you can scale that invitation to whatever your life (and your body) can manage.
Nature can be a forest. It can also be a tree outside your door. A houseplant. A garden. Rain on your hood. The sound of a creek. Ten minutes watching birds. A patch of grass.
There is some pretty fascinating neuroscience behind this.
We don’t have to make nature complicated. Sometimes we just need to stop long enough to realize it is there.
Your brain might thank you
Our brains spend a tremendous amount of time directing attention, filtering distractions, making decisions and responding to demands.
Nature seems to give that hard-working attention system a bit of a vacation.
Researchers call one part of this soft fascination.
Instead of forcing yourself to concentrate on something, your attention gets gently captured by things like moving leaves, clouds, birds, water or sunlight.
You aren’t doing nothing. Your brain just isn’t working quite so hard at doing everything.
A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis found that nature exposure was, on average, more cognitively restorative than non-nature exposure, particularly for working memory and attentional control. Interestingly, around 30 minutes appeared to be a particularly useful window in the studies they examined.
And a 2026 review looking across 108 neuroimaging studies found evidence of changes in brain networks involved in stress, attention and self-referential processing following exposure to natural environments.
Now, before we all start dumping our meds out the window, putting a houseplant beside our bed and declaring ourselves neurologically healed, a little caution is appropriate.
This is promising research, though not a magic prescription.
Studies differ in their methods, environments and participants, and researchers are still figuring out exactly what kinds of nature experiences work best, for whom, and for how long.
But the evidence is increasingly pointing in an interesting direction:
Getting away from the constant demands on our attention may actually give our brains some room to recover.
And I will happily take more reasons to go sit in the sun.
What if creativity is the point?
Unused creativity is not benign. It metastasizes. It turns into grief, rage, judgment, sorrow, shame.
-Brene Brown
This is another part of Sylge’s thinking that really caught my attention.
Creativity can be part of the retreat.
But it can also be what comes out of the retreat.
Sometimes you retreat because you need to write.
Other times you finally get quiet enough for the idea you’ve been carrying around in your head to come knocking.
Maybe you take photographs or write or sketch or paint.
Maybe you start noticing colours, shapes, textures and tiny details you normally walk straight past.
You don’t have to be an artist. You don’t have to produce anything profound.
Take a picture of a leaf because you like the way it looks. Write three sentences. Draw a tree that looks like a potato. It’s okay! The potato tree has value.
The point isn’t necessarily to create something impressive.
The creative act may simply be another way of paying attention.
And sometimes, when we stop trying so hard, something unexpectedly creative finds its way through.
My Micro-Retreat Menu
So, if you are wondering what retreat might look like today, here are a few possibilities.
🌱 5 minutes: Find one living thing. Look at it properly. Notice something you’ve never noticed before.
💧 10 minutes: Sit beside water. Real water is excellent. Tiny tabletop water feature? Also acceptable.
📖 20 minutes: Make yourself a cozy space and read. No multitasking. No “I’ll just check one thing.”
🍂 30 minutes: Take a slow seasonal wander. Notice what has changed.
📷 45 minutes: Take your camera and photograph whatever catches your attention. No theme required.
🎨 60 minutes: Write, draw, photograph, paint, collage, doodle. Follow your curiosity.
🌲 2–3 hours: Go into the forest. Walk slowly. Sit down. Listen. Notice. Journal. Rest. Let the experience unfold instead of trying to accomplish it.
And then there is:
🛋️ The “my body has voted” retreat: Stay home. Make tea. Read. Listen to rain. Look out the window. Rest without turning it into a failure.
Because sometimes the most mindful thing you can do is listen when your body says no.
Aging is when your brain says, “We ride at dawn.” And your body says, “We absolutely do not.
Retreat so you have something to give
There is another aspect of this that I think gets overlooked.
We don’t retreat only so we can feel better. Sometimes we retreat so we can return. Because when we’re depleted, we don’t have much left to offer anyone.
Our patience gets shorter. Our creativity dries up. Everything feels like one more demand.
And sometimes we need to step away. Not because we don’t love people, but because we do.
I’ve written about this before in A Grid of Love and Light, because I believe our light is meant to reach beyond ourselves.
But we can’t shine indefinitely on an empty tank. Sometimes we need to step back and replenish. Not so we can become more productive. So that we can return with a little more presence.
A little more patience. Creativity. Light.
So ask the question
Before you automatically do what you always do, stop for a moment.
Put down the phone. Look out the window. Take a breath. And ask yourself:
What does my soul need today?
Maybe it needs a forest. Or rain. Perhaps a workout. Or a book. Maybe it needs creativity. Or a friend. Maybe solitude. Or ten quiet minutes beside a plant.
Maybe it needs to crawl back under the covers and put out a Do Not Disturb sign for the world.
The answer doesn’t have to be the same tomorrow.
That’s the beauty of it.
A retreat doesn’t have to be a place. It can be a response.
A response to what your body needs. What your mind needs. What your soul needs.
And perhaps the goal isn’t to retreat far enough away that we become someone else. Perhaps it is simply to step out of the noise long enough to remember who we already are.
You don’t have to escape your entire life. You can simply step out of it for a little while.
