The narrative of a midlife crisis is tired one, and for most of us, being over 40 isn’t about craving buying a sports car or new look. There is such a thing as a desire for internal recalibration, though, or to reassess what we believe happiness is.
Some will get this experience when having children, but that doesn’t mean we can’t experience another shift later in life. In our middle ages, we are often on autopilot, and sometimes getting out to a retreat can be what’s needed to radically rip us out of that routine and show us it shape from afar.
The time for the radical sabbatical
Travel is a great tool for this, but the irony is that those of us in our 40s and 50s are more likely to be routine even about our vacations – we want to rest assured that our precious one week a year isn’t at jeopardy by going somewhere new.
A radical sabbatical is an intense, often demanding, journey into ourselves. A week of passive leisure is a poor substitute for a genuine reckoning with the self (even if it does a good job at rejuvenating us from being burnt out).
It may come as a surprise to some, but it’s not only the younger generation that we can spot at places like Avalon’s Ayahuasca retreats in Europe. Set in serene natural surroundings in Spain, these immersive retreats combine ancestral plant medicine with modern therapeutic support, attracting participants of all ages, including a growing number of mature individuals seeking real change.
Ayahuasca introspection
From the perspective of a mature individual, an Ayahuasca ceremony is less about psychedelic novelty and more about profound psychological excavation. The experience can often feel like a life review, meaning it’s a personal and sometimes jarring confrontation with your own history and patterns (and sometimes, traumas).
For those with decades of life experience and thick skin, it can be an effective tool for offering resolution to why you feel you’re in a rut. No, it’s not a relaxing poolside holiday, but it’s a chance to confront who you are, and what the next stage of your life could be like with an open mind.
Epiphanies in the absence of noise
The deliberate removal of external stimuli during a long silent meditation retreat is another way to experience an epiphany – or, at the very least, sharpen your skillset that’s required to be happy, such as improving attentional focus.
In the profound quiet, the nervous system begins to reset from a state of chronic overstimulation. This isn’t about relaxation at all, really, but creating the mental space for deeply buried insights and emotions to surface without competition from daily distractions. For an individual over 40, the mind is often complex, mature, but with deeply ingrained behaviors and traumas. The silence can be deafening at first, but then clarifying, and leads to perspective on relationships, career and life in and of itself.
A journey just in time
Heading off on a radical retreat after 40 seems scary – you are who you are, and you’ve spent many years building up defence mechanisms to keep you safe. But, growth only occurs in this vulnerable state of peeling back the defences and challenging yourself.
