Retreat

The Risks and Rewards of Stepping Back from the World

Nat Segnit

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Paperback

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English

The Bodley Head Ltd
17 August 2021

Popular philosophy; Popular medicine & health; Self-help & personal development; Popular psychology

Retreat is a stunning journey through the many ways humans go on retreat - religious, spiritual and secular - both in today's world and in our past

'Reads at times like Eat Pray Love as written by David Foster Wallace. A rich and almost eerily timely book' William Fiennes, author of The Snow Geese

Stepping back from the world is an ancient human impulse. Over the last year we have had to retreat. But throughout time, we have chosen to.

We were doing it more and more, anyway. Mindfulness and meditation are all the rage. Wellness tourism, yoga breaks, meditation apps, and spiritual boot camps have been booming - religious and secular, entry-level to hardcore.

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 and 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 centre, a cave or a crowd.

By: Nat Segnit
Imprint: The Bodley Head Ltd
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 232mm, Width: 154mm, Spine: 24mm
Weight: 377g
ISBN: 9781847925848
ISBN 10: 1847925847
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 17 August 2021
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Nat Segnit's investigations into the human impulse to withdraw took him to India, Greece, the US and the Arctic Circle, until unforeseen circumstances forced his own retreat, along with the rest of humanity. He has written for the New Yorker, Harper's, 1843 magazine and the TLS, and regularly writes and broadcasts for BBC Radio 4. Retreat is his second book.

Reviews for Retreat: The Risks and Rewards of Stepping Back from the World

We typically live tangled in our busy routines, but every once in a while we seek to explore the new. And just as a boring life might seek adventure, overloaded lives seek something more substantive. Segnit takes us on a delightful expedition into this ancient personal quest to decamp, relinquish, discover -- David Eagleman, neuroscientist at Stanford University, author of Livewired