Retreats

Most begin on a Friday afternoon or evening. You arrive, settle into a room — often a shared one — and meet the group over dinner and an opening circle. The days that follow have a rhythm: a morning practice, meals, a session or two, free time, an evening practice. A sound retreat might hold a long sound bath each night; a meditation retreat alternates sitting and walking from early morning.

Many keep some silence: a quiet morning, or at Buddhist and Zen retreats, whole days of it. Phones go in a drawer more often than not. The last morning is usually a closing circle, a final practice and lunch, and then the drive home.

Stepping away from ordinary life to practice is old and widespread. Buddhist monastics keep a rains retreat, vassa — three months of staying in one place during the monsoon — which tradition traces to the Buddha himself. Christian retreats take their modern shape from Ignatius of Loyola, who began directing others through his Spiritual Exercises, a month of guided prayer, in the 1520s. Japanese Zen calls its intensive periods of sitting sesshin; they usually run several days to a week.

The retreat center as most Americans meet it is younger. Esalen opened at Big Sur in 1962, and the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts was founded in 1975 to hold silent retreats. Retreats built around sound baths are newer still, and have grown alongside the sound bath itself.

Read what's included — the room, the meals, getting there — and whether rooms are shared. Ask how much of the time is silent, and whether you can step out of a session, or out of the silence, if you need to. Good organizers say yes and tell you how.

Days of silence or long hours of practice can bring up more than an evening does. If you live with a psychiatric condition, or are going through something hard, tell the organizers before you go and ask what support there is on site. It's a reasonable question, and a good retreat will have an answer. SoundBath.co doesn't list retreats built around psilocybin, ayahuasca or other psychedelics.