Device as Vice

A new breed of retreat wants to separate you from your screen—for your own good.

- Alex French

One Saturday last spring, seven strangers and I plopped down on leather couches in the great room of Masseria della Zingara, a beautifully restored 18th-century farmhouse in Puglia, in southern Italy. Everyone looked a little nervous. It was the first day of Time to Log Off , a new week long retreat that asks guests to unplug from their devices while participating in a battery of yoga, meditation, and mindfulness exercises. Tanya Goodin, the retreat’s founder, dramatically passed around a basket, asking guests to surrender their phones and declare their intention for the week.

“I really need to catch up on sleep and just chill the hell out,” said an oil and-gas executive.

“I’m desperate to feel less frantic, less like I need to always be sharing to promote my work,” said a novelist.

When it was my turn, I talked about how I’d been neglecting my wife and kids in favour of texting and posting. “My addiction to technology is nasty,”  I confessed. “I’m in need of a total reset.”