Description
Temporarily out of stock
Title: Retreat: The Risks & Rewards of Stepping Back from the World
Author: SEGNIT NAT
Format: PAPERBACK
Publication date: 17/08/2021
Imprint: BODLEY HEAD
Price: $35.00
Publishing status: Active
Stepping back from the world is an impulse as old as civilisation. We are social animals, but sometimes we want to be alone.
And we have never felt that ancient impulse more keenly. Mindfulness and meditation are all the rage. Wellness tourism is booming. Yoga breaks, meditation apps, or spiritual boot camps- retreat has become a defining feature of modern life.
Retreat investigates this human obsession, mining neuroscience, psychology and history to reveal why we seek solitude, what we get out of it, and what is going on in our brains and bodies when we achieve it. What has it meant to the world’s great thinkers, and what does it mean, in our age, as an activity we pay for?
Is isolation a means of engaging more fully with reality, or evading it? And what has retreat meant at a time when humanity has – to an unprecedented extent – been forced to withdraw? Nat Segnit has felt the pull of solitude and the fear of it, as well as the warmth of company. To answer these questions, he has been on retreats around the world and met yogic scholars, cognitive and social scientists, religious leaders, philosophers and artists.
Retreat is endlessly enlightening, sceptical but open-minded. It is about seeking happiness, fulfilment, a change of perspective, and relief from stress and anxiety. And it is surprisingly, joyously full of human encounter. Ultimately, it is about the discovery that retreat is a mental state that can be achieved anywhere, in a monastery or shopping mall, a cave or a crowd.
ISBN: 9781847925848
Pages: 272