Should You Go on a Silent Retreat? Lupita Nyong’o can Convience You to do so in a Minute!

Mental HealthNovember 15, 2019

Many people would agree with the fact that our surroundings are becoming increasingly stressful thanks to the growing penetration of digital media in our lives.

Now that we are easily connected with each other through social media or other communication methods, people have seemingly stopped going out as much as they used to, instead preferring to spend that time on social media platforms.

Social media has made it very difficult for us to disconnect from the world.

Of course, this is not the healthiest way to socialize, but that is not the major problem. The real problem is that we have begun to spend a lot of time on these devices, which has started to hamper productivity as our energy is utilized in consuming content on the internet.

Thankfully, people are becoming increasingly more aware of the need to disconnect from digital media devices or to reduce the time they spend on them in order to become the best version of their own self, and Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o is one of them.

A Silent Getaway

According to an interview which Nyong’o gave to Marie Claire, it was right after the Oscars ceremony of 2018 that she decided to book herself a trip to a retreat located in Texas. She took this trip because she wanted to decompress her mind after countless conversations she had had at the Oscar.

She had become so exhausted having spoken so much that she did not even want to speak while at this retreat, and hence deposited her phone at the reception. All Nyong’o wanted to do was listen, and so listen she did. The actress called it the most perfect gift she could’ve given to herself, which is saying something considering it was also her 35^th birthday.

A Common Choice

Nyong’o is not the first celebrity to have opted for the option of going on a silent retreat. According to reports, Oprah Winfrey, Gisele Bundchen, as well as Emma Watson have all treated themselves with a speech-free vacation which spanned a few days.

But, it is a struggle to maintain your commitment to remaining silent for days. While describing her experience, Nyong’o reported that she had felt like leaving the retreat many times, but every time she managed to convince herself to stay a bit longer, like an hour, which eventually led her to spend more than 10 days there.

Spending some quality time with yourself in isolation can help declutter your mind of all the negative thoughts, paving way for positivity to enter your life.

And the results were remarkable. Nyong’o did not miss talking to people, rather enjoyed having found clarity as to what is truly important in life.

According to her, the idea behind going on a silent retreat is to realign your life according to what truly matters and to detach yourself from the likes and dislikes we have which basically guide our existence.

We do things that we like while avoiding the things that we don’t. Nyong’o says that remaining silent for such a long period of time detaches one from these likes and dislikes, which eventually makes it easier to live life as one becomes somewhat less picky.

According to her, as soon as her retreat was over, she listened to Kendrick Lamar’s album called Damn, which is also her favorite, and it felt like she was listening to it for the first time as the words made a much deeper sense to her.