How Does a Retreat Improve Your Mental Health?
Updated: Oct 4, 2022
Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed and anxious that you can’t think clearly about your life or even take care of yourself?
Perhaps, it is because of your current work’s unimaginable demands, the pandemic, or your personal life causing you to feel stuck in reverse. Truly, there are just so many external and internal factors in our daily lives that can influence, and even keep us from seeing ourselves and life in a good light.
Per the World Health Organization's recent study, the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a 25 percent increase in the prevalence of anxiety and depression globally. To cope, people explore different ways to take a break and escape—resting (may it be creative, mental, or spiritual rest), socializing, traveling, or exercising.
In such times where stress factors continue to increase, it really helps to go on a retreat in order to break unhealthy regular patterns, work through mental or emotional debris, revitalize, and embrace healing. Let’s dive deep to know more about what a retreat has to offer.
Retreat’s wellness treats
1. Improving your physical and mental health
Retreat experiences aim to help you feel better than when you arrived. Your retreat center may encourage a holistic lifestyle by providing healthier food options, exercising, and creating a space where you can experience solace. A retreat primarily offers a chance to transform both your body and mind for the better.
2. Releasing stress and anxiety
Retreat centers typically offer relaxing and homey environments where you can pause, de-stress, and reflect on your life. Such slow moments in nature or comforting spaces can help you pull back and release built-up stress as well as savor good energy.
Through a retreat, you get to pause from doing exhausting work deliverables, take a break from doing the laundry (or other household chores), and many more. Some retreat centers also offer training and techniques to help you manage stress and anxiety.
3. Ditching digital distractions
A mental health retreat is also a form of digital detox. It’s a way to disconnect from the world’s noise and connect to your core. Let’s admit it, many of us feel overwhelmed by the modern age’s constant rush of information and news. Studies back this fact up, highlighting how social media and increased screen time are correlated with negative mental health concerns.
With a retreat, you won’t have regular access to phones, laptops, and other devices. But you’ll get to access your innermost self, and make peace with it.
4. Breaking unhealthy habits
It is easy to fall into unhealthy habits, especially when everything’s almost one tap away. With a wellness retreat, you have the opportunity to step back and assess how your habits affect your wellbeing. With a healthcare professional’s guidance, you can also determine the damaging habits to break. For some, these can be substance abuse, overworking, stress eating, social withdrawal, or problem avoidance.
5. Building new coping mechanisms
As you continue to break unhealthy habits during your retreat, you also learn to know how you can replace them with positive ones. The positive habits you can begin and develop during your retreat will help you keep up a healthier lifestyle as you go on. Some of the habits include exercising, mindful morning rituals, meditation or prayer, journaling, music, trying natural skincare, and learning a new skill, among others.
6. Get all the support needed
Generally, mental health concerns are better addressed with the help of a healthcare professional. During a mental health retreat, you can engage in daily therapy and try mental health retreat programs with nutritional, meditational, social group, and physical support.
7. Find inspiration and get motivated
What’s wonderful about mental health or wellness retreats is the opportunity for healing, transformation, and self-discovery. Wellness retreats give you the opportunity for transformation and self-discovery. When we surround ourselves with nature, quietude, and support groups, we get to find rest and replenishment—which helps us unleash the best version of ourselves. It also allows us to embrace failures and see them as opportunities to bounce back and grow.
Retreat: a way to rest, reboot, and recharge
Taking an intentional mental health or wellness retreat helps you delve deep into your healing and spend focused energy on recovery. What’s good about retreats is that they allow you to embrace your pace when it comes to learning, unlearning, and healing.
If you feel or see the need to do it, do not hesitate to consider taking a retreat. Trust us, it’s always worth it! Through it, you have the chance to experience the benefits listed above. It also allows you to focus your time and energy on activities that’ll help you rest, reboot, and recharge. This will then allow you to face and embrace your life’s “better normal.”
Fund out more about the 2023 Costa Rica Retreat and how it can help you
Blog by Katie Pierce