A Retreat vs. A Holiday - What are the Differences
If you feel like you are just surviving day to day, going to work, eating, sleeping and going to work again the next day, it might be time to take a holiday. Or even better, why not change your holiday to a retreat?
Holidays are fun, you get to explore new locations and cultures, meet new people and open all of your five senses to explore life to the fullest. When you return home after a holiday, jet-lagged, you might feel that you need another vacation just to get over the effects of the previous one.
This is where retreats are different. If you truly feel exhausted because of your everyday high-stress and routine-driven life, taking time off should be able to revitalise and refresh you to the extent that you forget you were exhausted in the first place. Where a holiday typically focuses your attention outward, a retreat helps you to shift the focus inward. Retreats are wonderful ways to encourage healing and rediscovering your sense of self. It allows you to create an inner calmness that can help you deal with stress once you return to your daily life.
A retreat can also be offered in an exotic location where you will get the chance to experience a different culture (like a yoga retreat in India). But different from a holiday where you have to keep track of, and manage itineraries, food and accommodation, a retreat takes care of that for you. It’s important to remember that a retreat is a purposeful getaway, to help you reconnect with yourself.
Here are some of the main differences between a retreat and a holiday:
1. A retreat has long-term benefits
When you go on a retreat, you will learn practical ways to bring calm into your everyday life. Creating a routine of daily meditation, better nutrition and daily exercise will benefit your health in the long run. On a holiday you might find yourself caught up in an exciting whirlwind of experiences, which will create wonderful memories but with no real long-term benefit on your health.
2. Retreats are healthier
Retreats usually include some aspect of detox. This may be detoxing from certain foods, alcohol or even social media. When you follow a clean eating meal plan on a retreat, you can get rid of symptoms like bloating, constipation and breakouts by detoxifying from certain foods like gluten. Holidays are meant to explore a new place or culture, and this means eating all kinds of different foods, drinking, staying up late partying, etc.
3. Retreats focus your attention inward
Retreats are meant to encourage healing and self-discovery by focusing your attention inwards, calming your senses and clearing your mind. A holiday does the opposite. It encourages you to open all your senses to experience the world and leaves your mind busy processing all you’ve seen. This is why a holiday can sometimes feel like it’s making you tired.
4. Retreats are cost-saving
If you start to calculate all the expenses of your holiday and compare it to an all-inclusive retreat package, you will probably find that a retreat is cheaper. There are no hidden extra costs that you might experience when on holiday, i.e. renting bathroom towels, etc.
Holidays are fun but can leave you on a high coupled with exhaustion. Retreats can give you the same high but will leave you feeling refreshed and re-energised to face the world again.