Why more women are spending days in complete silence

The first thing many women notice on a silent retreat isn’t the calm: It’s the noise they brought with them.

When Sarah Harmon originally considered attending a silent retreat back in 2019, the draw went beyond a scenic getaway from screens and the chaos of family life. She wanted something rarer: the opportunity to escape the constant anticipation of the next email, the next call, the next item on her to-do list. “Especially as a mother, it’s been almost impossible to prioritize and set boundaries for quiet,” Harmon, 43, a therapist and mom of two based in Boston, tells SELF. “I felt like I was always doing, doing, doing and putting everybody else’s needs first.”

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So she signed up for a retreat at the Insight Meditation Society, a secluded wooden center in central Massachusetts. There, for five days, she lost access to her phone as well as her usual fillers for downtime—books, small talk, and idle hobbies. Instead, her days were structured around long periods of sitting, walking, and even eating in complete silence.

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.”

Even women without children feel the strain. Anushka Joshi was 22 (one of the youngest participants) when she signed up for her first silent retreat in 2021. “I was overwhelmed and super busy,” Joshi, now 27, tells SELF, reflecting on a period when she was struggling to transition into post-grad life. “My parents, who had gone on a retreat before, said it would be a good idea for me to try, and I was like, ‘You think I’m so anxious that I need to go sit in silence for 10 days?’”

But extended quiet—not just a few minutes of solitude—may be what overstimulated brains need. Just as our bodies require physical rest, our minds, too, need recovery from the constant mental juggling. Otherwise, “the brain stays in a state similar to chronic fight-or-flight,” Dr. Tetreault explains, which over time can disrupt sleep, elevate stress levels, reduce focus, and contribute to physical health issues like higher blood pressure or cardiovascular disease.

Silent retreats are designed to provide just that. Most aren’t housed at luxurious wellness resorts, but rather simple, secluded centers tucked away in nature. There are no jam-packed schedules, no loud cars honking, no lavish spa treatments, no gourmet meals to look forward to, and no guided instructions on what to think, feel, or do—beyond simply respecting the rules of silence.

“The appeal for a lot of people is this simplicity,” Dina El-Mogazi, a receptionist at Springwater Center in the Finger Lakes region of New York, tells SELF. Like at many silent retreat facilities, daily itineraries at Springwater are kept purposely unstructured, revolving around multiple 25-minute rounds of silent sitting meditation with seven minutes of walking in between. These cycles stretch for hours, interrupted only by meal times and occasional group check-ins.

“We encourage participants to explore for themselves how they want to sit, whether they want their eyes closed or not,” El-Mogazi explains, in reference to their sitting meditations—though the same low-instruction approach applies to walking meditations as well. Overall, “we just ask them to observe their thoughts, which can be a bit hard at first, because most people want to be told what to do.”

Meanwhile, the Insight Meditation Society, which offers programs ranging in length from weekends to several-months-long, enforces a few additional measures to remove distractions—no electronics, no books, even no eye contact. (Think about how we subtly communicate through our gaze, whether it’s an eye roll, a furrowed brow, or a lingering glance that makes us wonder if we’re being judged.)

“There’s constant input in everyday life,” John Spalding, their Director of Partnerships and Communications, tells SELF. “People will sleep with their TVs on all the time or they’re listening to podcasts all night, and so it is such a gift to be able to unplug from our digital world and get in touch with ourselves in a way we otherwise can’t.”

That “gift,” however, doesn’t come easily. Emotional breakdowns are common during the first two days, according to both Spalding and El-Mogazi—so much so that participants joke about who’s “plotting their escape,” Harmon says. But that discomfort is intentional: In a world constantly pulling at our attention, retreats force the mind to do the hard work of sitting with resistance and disconnecting in order to reconnect—to nature, to your priorities, to yourself.

For Leah Frazier, a 42-year-old CEO based in Dallas, a five-day stay at Big Bear Retreat Center in October became an unexpected lesson in surrendering control from the forward-driven logic of the business world—and in learning to live in the moment.

“I’m a planner, so being unable to control the schedule was driving me crazy,” Frazier tells SELF. She describes herself as a striver—someone accustomed to defining progress through outcomes and achievement. “When we were doing walking meditations, for example, I originally wanted to walk all the way down to the end of the road and make it all the way back before the bell dinged,” she recalls. “But the purpose of a retreat, they tell you, isn’t to reach a goal: It’s to notice what’s in front of you.”

Freed from the pressure to produce or optimize, Frazier began noticing little details she would have otherwise overlooked: the rich colors of the California foliage, the sharp, pine-like scent of tree sap, even a faint vanilla-cinnamon aroma drifting through the forest. “My senses were heightened because I wasn’t able to distract myself.”

Original article appeared on SELF