I’d been looking forward to this wellness retreat for months. Six days of digital detox in a converted farmhouse somewhere in rural Wales – no phones, no laptops, no Wi-Fi. Just meditation, yoga, healthy food, and reconnecting with myself. The brochure promised transformation. A reset. “Return to your life refreshed and recentered,” it said, alongside photos of serene-looking people in linen clothing gazing thoughtfully at mountains.
What it didn’t mention was the itching. The mental itching that starts about four hours after your devices are ceremoniously locked away in little wooden boxes (“You’ll get them back on the final morning, don’t worry!”). That persistent, maddening itch that says: I wonder if anyone’s emailed me? Has that client responded? Did my mum try to call? What’s happening on Twitter? Is the world ending? Has that photo I posted got any likes?
I wasn’t expecting to feel this way. I’d been smugly telling colleagues for weeks how ready I was to disconnect. “I can’t wait to just unplug,” I’d announced, stirring my oat milk latte with self-satisfaction. “We’re all too addicted to our screens anyway.”
My friend Jessie had snorted. “You? Unplugged? You check your phone when you go to the loo.”
“That’s different,” I’d protested. “That’s just… efficient use of time.”
But now, sitting cross-legged on a yoga mat while our retreat leader Willow (definitely not her real name) guided us through our intentions for the week, all I could think about was my emails.
“Breathe into the space of possibility,” Willow was saying in that particular voice wellness practitioners seem to develop – sort of whispery but also somehow loud. “Visualize yourself releasing the digital tethers that bind you to stress and distraction.”
I was visualizing myself releasing the latch on that wooden box and checking if my editor had gotten back to me about that pitch.
“Notice any resistance coming up,” Willow continued, somehow staring directly at me despite having her eyes closed. “That resistance is your addiction speaking. Acknowledge it, thank it, and let it float away.”
I acknowledged it alright. My addiction was speaking in full paragraphs, possibly with PowerPoint slides. It was telling me that this whole digital detox thing was a terrible mistake, that important things were happening without me, that I was missing out on… something. Anything. Everything.
The first night was the worst. I lay in my spartan but expensive room (the retreat’s marketing materials used the word “simple” about sixteen times, which apparently meant “we’ve charged you four-star prices for a youth hostel aesthetic”), staring at the ceiling. My hand kept reaching for my phone on the bedside table before remembering it wasn’t there. It felt like phantom limb syndrome, but for my iPhone.
At breakfast the next morning, I scanned the dining room for fellow sufferers. Most people seemed irritatingly serene already, munching on their ancient grain porridge and chatting quietly. But then I spotted him – a man about my age, pale, with the slightly wild eyes of someone who’d spent the night contemplating breaking into wherever they kept our digital contraband.
I sat down across from him with my own bowl of what tasted like warm wallpaper paste with blueberries.
“You look how I feel,” I said.
He glanced up, grateful for the interruption to his staring contest with his spoon. “Is it that obvious?”
“The twitching gave it away.”
“I’m Dan,” he said. “I run an e-commerce business. This retreat was my wife’s idea.”
“And where is your wife?” I asked, looking around.
“Sunrise meditation on the hill. She’s thriving.” He said this with the mild contempt of someone watching another person enjoy a food they find disgusting.
“I’m Katie,” I offered. “Freelance writer. This retreat was my own terrible idea.”
And just like that, I’d found my digital withdrawal buddy. We spent the morning whispering during yoga, making up emails we might be missing. “Dear sir/madam, We’re pleased to inform you that you’ve won five million pounds. Please respond within 24 hours or the money goes to your arch-nemesis.”
During the afternoon “Mindful Walking” session, where we were supposed to silently notice the sensation of each footstep connecting with the earth, Dan and I trailed behind the group.
“What I don’t understand,” I whispered, “is why they can’t give us like, 30 minutes of controlled internet time each day. It’s not like we’re in rehab.”
“Aren’t we, though?” Dan replied. “My screen time notification last week said I average 7.4 hours a day on my phone. That’s… not great.”
“Yes, but that includes useful things. Work emails. Research. Maps. It’s not like we’re just playing Candy Crush.” I paused. “How far are we from the nearest town?”
Dan’s eyes widened. “Are you suggesting a prison break?”
I wasn’t. Not really. But the thought had definitely crossed my mind that if we could just get to a place with Wi-Fi, check our messages, and come back, no one would know. We could scratch the itch and then fully commit to the wellness experience.
By day three, things got weird. I found myself genuinely enjoying a fermented foods workshop. I had a conversation about composting that lasted forty minutes. I cried during a guided meditation about gratitude. When I mentioned this to Dan over lunch (some kind of lentil situation that tasted far better than it looked), he nodded sagely.
“Stockholm syndrome,” he said. “We’re bonding with our captors.”
But that evening, as I watched the sunset from the retreat’s garden, I realized something unsettling. The itching had subsided a bit. Not completely – I still reflexively reached for my phone whenever I had a spare moment – but the frantic need had dulled. I’d gone almost 72 hours without knowing what was happening in the world, and the world had apparently continued spinning.
Instead of my usual bedtime routine of scrolling through social media until my eyes burned, I’d been reading an actual, physical book borrowed from the retreat’s small library. I’d slept better last night than I had in months.
Was I… benefiting from this torture?
On day four, disaster struck. I was heading to the compost toilet (an experience that deserves its own essay) when I heard it – the unmistakable notification ping of an iPhone. I froze, my head swiveling like a predator that had just detected prey.
The sound came again. I followed it around the side of the building to find Willow, our serene retreat leader, hunched over a smartphone, furiously texting.
Our eyes met. Guilt flashed across her face, quickly replaced with the calm mask of wellness.
“Katie,” she said evenly. “This isn’t what it looks like.”
“It looks like you’re texting while the rest of us have had our digital pacifiers confiscated,” I said, trying to keep the accusation out of my voice and failing completely.
“I need to stay connected for retreat business,” she explained. “Emergencies, bookings, that sort of thing.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, eyeing the phone like it was a bar of chocolate in a weight loss camp. “Those look like Instagram notification symbols from here.”
Willow sighed, then surprised me by laughing. “Busted. Look, I believe in everything we teach here about digital mindfulness. I really do. But I’m also running a business, and yes, sometimes I check Instagram. I’m only human.”
I should have been angry at the hypocrisy, but instead, I found myself asking: “Can I just check my email? Five minutes. I swear I’ll go right back to being mindfully disconnected.”
She hesitated, then handed me her phone. “Five minutes. This never happened.”
My hands were actually shaking as I logged into my email account. There were 147 new messages. Most were junk. Some were newsletters. A few work things that could definitely wait. Nothing life-changing. Nothing that couldn’t have waited three more days.
But oh, the relief of knowing that.
I handed the phone back to Willow after exactly five minutes. “Thank you. I needed that.”
“What we tell ourselves we need and what we actually need are often very different things,” she said, slipping back into retreat-leader speak. “But sometimes scratching the itch helps you realize it’s just an itch, not a wound.”
That night at dinner, I debated whether to tell Dan about my illicit email check. I decided against it; he seemed to be going through his own process. He’d actually attended the optional dawn meditation that morning and reported that he’d “kind of gotten something out of it, maybe.”
The last two days of the retreat passed in a blur of activities I’d have normally rolled my eyes at but found myself enjoying – sound baths, intention setting, even a workshop on making your own natural deodorant (which, let’s be honest, was more necessary for some retreat participants than others by this point).
On the final morning, as we lined up to reclaim our devices, I felt strangely reluctant. The wooden box that held my phone now seemed like Pandora’s box – did I really want to release all those notifications, alerts, and demands back into my life?
When I finally turned my phone on, it erupted in a symphony of pings and buzzes that made several people around me jump. 249 emails. 73 WhatsApp messages across various groups. 118 Twitter notifications. 42 missed calls.
I felt my shoulders tense, my breathing quicken. The calm I’d cultivated over six days began to evaporate almost immediately.
Dan appeared beside me, looking equally shell-shocked. “It’s a lot, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said, still staring at my screen. “I need to set some boundaries when I get home.”
We both knew this was easier said than done. Digital wellness is the unicorn of modern life – everyone talks about it, but few have actually seen it in practice.
On the train home, I did something radical. I deleted my work email app from my phone. I could still access it through the browser if absolutely necessary, but removing that little red icon with its perpetually increasing number felt like removing a tiny thorn from my thumb.
I’d like to say that the retreat transformed me completely – that I’m now one of those people who keeps their phone in a drawer and only checks it twice a day. That’s not true. I still sleep with my phone by my bed. I still scroll when I’m bored or anxious. I still feel that familiar itch when I’ve been disconnected too long.
But something did shift. Now I catch myself sometimes, phone in hand, and ask: Do I actually need this right now? Is this serving me, or am I serving it?
And occasionally – not always, but sometimes – I put it down and look out the window instead. For someone who once checked their emails during a funeral (not my proudest moment), that’s something close to a miracle.
Though if I ever do another wellness retreat, I’m definitely smuggling in a backup phone. Even spiritual growth has its limits.
Leave a Reply