Thank you NetGalley and Rider for this eCopy to review.
Caroline Sylge’s How to Retreat is a beautifully calming, restorative guide that reframes retreating not as an escape from life, but as a gentle return to yourself. Rooted in seasonal rhythms and everyday accessibility, it’s a nurturing, and inspiring read
“A beautiful and quietly radical book showing how retreating is accessible to all”
I absolutely loved ‘How to Retreat.’ What stands out is how radical and refreshing the concept is. It takes retreating out of the realm of luxury spas and makes it accessible to all of us. The book shows that retreating isn’t just for the elite; it’s for anyone, integrated into everyday life. That’s such a lovely and quietly radical idea. It’s beautifully written and clearly organised with practical steps that make retreating achievable no matter how busy life gets. It’s a book that genuinely offers something for everyone—physically, mentally, and emotionally.
“Everything you would need to help think about, plan or attend a retreat and to continue your practice into your life”
I read this book thinking that I could incorporate the ideas into a weekend or maybe when I have a week off. I thought it would give me ideas, what it actually gave me was so much more.
It’s a well constructed, crafted and thoughtful book. It’s starts with how to prepare for a retreat which is just so helpful and very practical. It gives you ideas about a wide variety of types of retreats you could do alone or with others with different amounts of time. One of the most interesting parts is the thoughts on how you could incorporate the retreat into your day to day life. It even gives you information about organised retreats, having completed a few of these myself I found further information so helpful.
There are poems, references and lots of research and information she even goes so far as reading suggestions.
I think whilst I read the book from front to back it would also work if you just read the chapters you are interested in.
I think this is book that would be a joy as a physical book to use as a reference, making your own notes in and reflecting on over time and would make a fabulous present for someone.
Thank you to NetGalley for providing this book for my consideration, this is all my own rambling, honest and personal opinion.
I was really looking forward to this book and it did not disappoint. It has just the right balance of background evidence to support the ideas, and practical support. I especially liked the idea of retreating being something you can build into your everyday life - it’s not something you have to spend loads of money to do. This book shows you how accessible retreating can be, and how you can build up to longer periods with ideas for different activities depending on the focus you want to have. I will definitely be dipping into it regularly. Strong recommend!
