It was the first time she’d experienced true “peace and quiet,” something so unfamiliar it initially felt unsettling. What she didn’t expect, though, is how loud it could be.
Most people are rarely alone with their thoughts for more than a few hours at a time. Strip away conversation, distraction, and ambient noise, and “it’s really overwhelming when you’re spending that many days in your head,” Harmon explains. Her initial reaction was less zen and more panic: This is too quiet. I need to get out of here. Give me my phone—give me something to do! Yet that discomfort, she came to realize, was what made the experience so powerful—so much so that she has returned two more times since, most recently last year.
“It sets up really unique conditions where you not only actually hear yourself but are held accountable to stay present without jumping back into the distraction and the busyness,” Harmon says—and she’s far from alone in craving that cathartic reset.
Silent retreats have long been popular among seasoned meditators and yoga devotees, but in recent years, they seem to be attracting a broader, perhaps more mainstream, and beginner-friendly crowd. Mothers, businesswomen, even students who wouldn’t necessarily describe themselves as “spiritual” are carving out days or weeks for intentional quiet.
But to understand why silence is especially appealing now, we first have to understand what women are retreating from.
Whether you realize it or not, nearly every second of modern life is saturated with noise. There’s the obvious kind: the ping of texts and emails, the hum of podcasts or TV shows playing in the background, the reflexive scroll through Instagram or TikTok the instant boredom kicks in. Beyond literal sounds, however, there’s also the mental noise reminding you of another errand to run, another deadline to meet, another expectation to fulfill that makes it nearly impossible to stay present. For women in particular, that cognitive load can feel heavier.
“The truth of the matter is that being a woman is very culturally challenging,” Nicole Tetreault, PhD, a Los Angeles–based neuroscientist and author of Insight Into a Bright Mind, tells SELF. Stereotypically, “the executive functioning and planning within the home tends to fall on the woman. And when we’re considering being in a working world too, we’re also thinking about picking up the kids, for example, making dinner, meeting work deadlines, and satisfying basically everyone else’s needs before considering our own.”
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