MAN OVERBOARD

Toby Skinner joins an innovative retreat aimed at rewiring masculinity

- Toby Skinner

For most men, the sobbing started earlier: the point when it felt as though our bodies and minds melted into a whole new dimension. For me, it happened on the fourth day, after a session of intense, intentionally irregular breathing, followed by dynamic meditations that had culminated in a yoga room full of men swaying like seaweed-all self-consciousness evaporated along with the sweat. It was at that moment that Craig White, our flinty guru of masculinity, implored us to let our loved ones in, and something unfurled deep inside me. Suddenly, I felt as though I was enveloped in white light, and could feel everyone I'd ever cared about come thudding into my chest. When I lay on the floor, happy tears rolling down my face, I could see the serene, accepting eyes of my late stepfather in two scuffs on the ceiling. Whatever was still functioning in my brain was thinking: What is happening to me?

It had all started very differently. The Friday before, I'd arrived at Broughton Hall an authentically grand Elizabethan pile near Skipton, on 3,000 acres of bucolic Yorkshire pastures that have been in the Tempest family since 1097-racked with anxiety. I was there to greet 24 other similarly sheepish men; to make small talk, and to explain the socially acceptable reasons we were attending this Men Without Masks retreat-five days without mobile phones, alcohol, caffeine, or meat, designed to shake us out of our "toxic man boxes" and into more authentic and embodied selves. We had sat in a circle under a giant chandelier and medieval oil paintings, men from their 20s to 60s, every one of them silently pigeonholing each other: the white-collar boxer with the huge tattooed biceps; the softly spoken, esoteric looking engineer; the young, frowning shaven-headed guy wearing a hoodie and sliders. For me, at least, there was not an obvious kindred spirit in sight.