I'm Going Dark for Ten Days. Here's Why.

Tomorrow I begin my ten day silent retreat, at home, solo. My man is overseas for work and it’s just this little tin loaf of bread and me! The program is tight, 5 x 90 minute sits a day, gardening, walking, strength training, yoga and two meals, everything timed and in need of discipline to be adhered to. Let the mind start entertaining options and you can quite literally become a nut case about it. Preparing for this Retreat has been tender and careful. I’ve been meditating 90 mins twice a day for weeks to build up. I am in a Wintering too, preparing firewood, tending to the garden, making sure the house is cosy. I have all my meals ready. There will be for 10 days no phone, no reading, no music, no talks, and new for me - absolutely no writing or journaling. This was something my friend Mutribo suggested and I could feel my resistance instantly. I LOVE writing and journaling on a retreat - it’s a pressure valve, it’s a lil escape hatch. And as soon as he said it, I could see why I needed to not do it. Zero output from the outside so my exteroception can settle, I can come deeply within and build interoception ; felt experience, knowingness, wisdom and intuition more clearly.

Journaling during a retreat is the DMN finding a side door. It feels productive, even necessary - you’re processing, you’re integrating, you’re making meaning. But what you’re actually doing is keeping the narrative-self alive and busy. The brain gets to keep constructing a story about the experience rather than simply having it. Writing is sense-making, and sense-making is the DMN’s favourite thing. Mutribo knew that pulling that escape hatch away would mean the experience had nowhere to go except in. Uncomfortable. And exactly the point.

So later today I head to Mutribo’s for one final long chat, a 90 minute sit together, and then I come home, turn off my Starlink, and have a nourishing dinner, and then essentially not leave from Wednesday onwards. There are protocols for my daughter and husband - if something happens they know who to call who will drive to me in person. I would feel very uncomfortable if this wasn’t the case. A friend asked me why exactly I was doing this retreat - or why in fact I do any - as they’re hardly relaxing, and are instead really hard work. My answer was that nothing opens up my heart more, rewires my brain and body more intensely, and shapes my consciousness so clearly. This then goes onto impact everything I do, and how I be in the world. I try to do at least two a year, and 10 days isn’t really that long given some Tibetan monks do 3 years, 3 months, 3 weeks, 3 days and 3 hours as part of their training!

Here’s the science that makes all of this make sense.

The Default Mode Network

The Default Mode Network is a system of interconnected brain regions that activates when you’re not focused on an external task - when you’re daydreaming, mind-wandering, or simply not doing anything in particular. Far from being a rest state, the DMN is where the brain generates its most persistent noise: the self-referential chatter, the rumination, the replaying of past events and rehearsing of future ones. It’s the network behind the voice that won’t quite stop. In meditators, sustained practice measurably reduces DMN overactivity, which is why a deep sit can feel more genuinely restful than hours of passive entertainment - you’re actually interrupting the loop, not just distracting it. The other way you can think of the DMN is like a dog that needs to run. Not be entertained, not be trained - just run, freely, without a purpose. When it gets that, it comes home calm. When it doesn’t, it chews through the furniture. That chewing is the inner critic. That’s the anxiety loop. That’s the 3am spiral. Not a sign that something is wrong with you - a sign that something hasn’t been allowed to rest.

What a Ten-Day Silent Retreat Does

A silent retreat gives the DMN nowhere to go. Without conversation, screens, books, or the usual flow of social input, the brain’s storytelling engine gradually runs out of fresh material. For the first few days this can feel intensely uncomfortable - the mind will amplify whatever it has left to work with. But as the retreat deepens, something shifts. The DMN’s grip loosens. What researchers observe in long-form retreat contexts is a significant reduction in self-referential rumination, a quieting of the default narrative, and a corresponding increase in present-moment awareness. People often describe it as the noise not just reducing but becoming less convincing. Ten days is long enough for that shift to become structural, not just a temporary relief.

For Everyone Else

You don’t need ten days of silence to give your DMN a break. What it actually needs is unscheduled, unstimulated time - not scrolling, not podcasts, not filling every gap. Even twenty minutes of genuinely open time daily, where the mind isn’t being fed new content, begins to reduce DMN overactivity. A slow walk without headphones. Sitting with a coffee and not reaching for the phone. Letting yourself be bored. These aren’t small things - they’re the conditions under which the brain’s default chatter naturally begins to settle. The retreat works because it removes stimulation for an extended period. You can approximate that effect in ordinary life by simply resisting the reflex to fill every quiet moment with input. You’ll know it’s working not because the mind goes quiet on demand, but because things start arriving unbidden. The solution to something you’d stopped trying to solve. A memory that surfaces cleanly, without charge. That particular quality of clarity that shows up in the shower, or on a walk you weren’t using for anything.

That’s the DMN doing what it was actually designed to do - integrating, connecting, restoring. It just needs you to stop interrupting it.

With love,

Jac