When we first began offering The Mindful Unplug ten years ago, the name mostly pointed toward the obvious thing: stepping away from our devices for a while. Back then, even the idea of consciously choosing to spend less time tethered to our screens was still something of a novelty.

When we first began offering The Mindful Unplug ten years ago, the name mostly pointed toward the obvious thing: stepping away from our devices for a while. Back then, even the idea of consciously choosing to spend less time tethered to our screens was still something of a novelty. Ten retreats later, I think the unplugging that matters most may be larger: unplugging, even briefly, from the incessant commentary, from the demand to have an opinion about everything, from our own habitual stories about who we are and who everybody else is, and from the idea that every minute needs to be filled or productive or documented.

Our nervous systems are regularly asked to metabolize global crises, geopolitical analysis, moral outrage, economic speculation, and the opinions of several thousand strangers before breakfast. The human nervous system, it turns out, was not originally designed to function as a breaking news ticker.