Retreating in Place 🍃

Hello, Friends. I want to introduce a new concept that I have found essential for navigating these challenging times. With global conflicts, religious wars, a struggling economy, an environmental crisis, and political corruption (just to name a few), it's no wonder the human heart is tormented. We must respond by adopting a significantly different approach to self-care; one that is more adaptive and restorative. I am eager to share with you a remedy I believe is precisely what's needed.

Here's how this concept came to be...

For the past 5 years, I have made it a personal practice to take an annual retreat to rest, heal, and replenish my soul from the wear and tear of life. I became acutely aware of the fragility of my heart's well-being after only a couple of years into running my private practice. As a mental health therapist, I've found this work to be both incredibly rewarding and equally exhausting. Therefore, taking an annual retreat wasn't a luxury for me; it was essential to remain an effective therapist and a decent human being!

Last month, I had just returned from my annual retreat to Arizona when I noticed that just a few days after returning, I was already feeling depleted again! This was strange because normally, these retreats fill my internal reservoirs to capacity, and I'm able to feast on what I've gained for months! I knew something was really wrong.

While in the middle of my frantic search for another retreat destination, I heard the Lord lovingly say to me, "Heydie, I need you to learn how to retreat in place." Whoa. I'd never heard of this concept before, so I knew this wasn't my idea. I asked the Lord what He meant by this. Here's what I've come to learn...

Essentially, retreating in place (RIP) is a way of getting healing for our heart, replenishment for our soul, renewal of our mind, and rest for our body, right where we are. While having the opportunity to travel to a peaceful place is a wonderful privilege, we must reach a level of maturity where we can establish a lifestyle that readily provides the essentials we need for our holistic well-being. RIP is the most important type of retreat to embrace as it cultivates a lifestyle of sustainable internal health. If we can learn how to RIP, we won't have to depend on those few and far between vacations to provide relief, but instead, the relief would be embedded into our daily routines. Not to mention, it’s also the most financially affordable type of retreat, making it all the more accessible 😉.

Although retreating in place is the most accessible to all of us, it's the most challenging to take. The pace of our lives is often set by our many responsibilities—those assigned to us and the ones we choose. The ways we overextend ourselves, with muchness and busyness, limit the time we have to care for ourselves. We see the fruit of this exorbitant pace resulting in general unhappiness, constant stress, mental fatigue, physical exhaustion, and adverse health consequences.

Dear Friends, there’s a better way.

If I had to come up with a technical definition, it would be this:

Retreating in place is creating a rule of life that intentionally cultivates 4 vital connections:

1. Connection to God

2. Connection to Self

3. Connection to Others

4. Connection to Nature

Contrary to popular belief, the highlight of retreating is less about disconnecting (e.g., from work, social media, family, etc.) and more about connecting to the right sources. The things that we connect to are the things we are turning towards, focusing on, and influenced by. The type and quality of our connections either replenish or deplete our internal reservoir. That is why scripture warns us to, “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life” (Proverbs 4:23). This profound interconnectedness between God, the self, others, and nature serves as a personal sanctuary, diluting the toxicity of this world while cultivating inner resilience.

The length and frequency of those connections are yours—only you will know what you need based on the condition of your heart. If the concept of knowing what you need is foreign to you, it’s OK, it’s not your fault and you’re not alone. We’ve been conditioned to live outside of our bodies, to ignore or repress our feelings and just keep going. The good news is that the more we turn inwards (by making these 4 connections), the more we will learn the language of our heart, mind, spirit, and body, and we will grow to discern what they're communicating.

So, how do we RIP? Retreating in place is an individualized process; there is no cookie-cutter, right or wrong approach. RIP is also a creative process where you have the autonomy to choose non-traditional approaches to connection.

To jumpstart this process, you may want to ask yourself where, when, what, and how questions. For example, let's take connection to God:

• Where do I feel closest to God?

• When do I feel connected to God? (What time of day?)

• What kinds of things/objects make me feel near God?

• How can I connect with God in ways meaningful to me?

Answering these questions will help get your creative juices flowing and lead you to rituals of connection that will be unique to what you need. Go through this same series of questions for each connection and see what you discover. Be patient and kind to yourself as you do this. Don't judge your answers, despite how silly, irrelevant, or unpopular they might sound. Also, these four connections will start to intersect with each other, and they should! For example, by connecting to nature, you may also be connecting to God and yourself—we are a lot more interwoven than we realize. Lastly, think of these connections as multi-sensory experiences. Please integrate taste, sound, sight, touch, and smell into these connections as they enable us to be fully alive in them and make these experiences worth having.

For the sake of context, let me share with you a few of my personal rituals of connection. This, by no means, needs to be the same way you RIP, but I find that giving examples brings clarity to an otherwise abstract concept.

• Connection to God:

  • Talking to God throughout the day

  • Listening to the Bible on my Audible app/reading my Bible

  • Worshipping in my car

  • Doing a Pause App session (https://wildatheart.org/apps/one-minute-pause/)

  • Creating moments of stillness/silence

• Connection to Self:

  • Taking deep breaths

  • Paying attention to the thoughts I've been entertaining & the agreements I've been making

  • Moving my body/working-out

  • Choosing vegetables instead of "comfort food"

  • Taking a nap

• Connection to Others:

  • Calling/texting a friend I haven't spoken to in a while

  • Praying for someone in need

  • Giving a stranger an authentic compliment

  • Having a coffee date with a friend/planning a date night with the hubs

  • Hosting in my home

• Connection to Nature:

  • Lighting & smelling my favorite seasonal candle and/or essential oils

  • Shopping for fresh flowers & creating my own floral arrangements

  • Going for walks in the woods/hiking

  • Basking in the beauty of sunrises and sunsets

  • Stargazing

I don't do all of these things all of the time. Again, the frequency is based on what my heart needs on a daily/weekly basis. This process is fluid. I hope that by sharing it helps you see how feasible this is—we can do this!

In closing, Friends, there's a better way to live. Our measure of wellness depends on the quality of our interconnectedness to God, self, others, and nature. The methods that once aided us are no longer adequate due to the intensifying global challenges and the harm they inflict on the human heart. By deepening our self-care rituals, we are able to show up whole for others, adding goodness to the relationships around us instead of causing more harm. Imagine that 💚

Lovingly,

-Heydie