What My First Residential Retreat Taught Me About Work, Rest and the Importance of a Lunch Hour
- sjholisticyoga
- 3 days ago
- 7 min read
I went into my first weekend yoga retreat expecting to learn about hosting weekend yoga retreats.
I expected lessons about timings, accommodation, teaching plans, group dynamics, and the delicate art of creating a schedule that feels spacious while quietly keeping an entire weekend on track.
I knew there would be things I would do differently next time, alongside things I would come home feeling quietly proud of.
What I did not expect was to come home thinking a little differently about the shape and structure of my working life.
The retreat was followed by a day volunteering at an exotic pet refuge. After more than twenty years of self-employment, it was a reminder that some people begin work at a particular time, stop for lunch, and then finish at the end of the working day.
As someone who runs two small businesses and home educates, this felt surprisingly revolutionary.
I learned what happens when my hands are occupied.
During the retreat, I was physically busy for much of the time.
There were classes to teach, spaces to prepare, guests to care for, questions to answer and the steady, often invisible work of holding the shape of the weekend.
At the refuge, the work was even more practical. My hands were occupied. There were jobs to complete, animals to care for and other people working alongside me.
For long stretches of time, I could not easily reach for my phone.
It was not a digital detox, and it did not reveal that I spend my life compulsively scrolling. It was simply noticeable that my attention remained with the work in front of me.
There was no need to fill every small pause or check what else might require my attention. The task itself was enough.
I was present in a very physical way. I was using my hands, moving my body and responding to what was immediately needed.
It reminded me that attention can become scattered not because we are careless, but because modern work constantly invites us to look in several directions at once.
I learned the peace of doing one thing at a time.
Running two businesses while home educating means my days rarely divide themselves neatly.
I might answer a retreat enquiry while thinking about a yoga class, remember an invoice while helping with something at home, or begin writing only to be pulled towards an entirely different responsibility. There is nearly always more than one thread running through my mind.
At the retreat and the refuge, the next thing was often obvious.
Teach this class.
Prepare this space.
Clean this enclosure.
Carry this.
Listen to this person.
The work asked for my full attention, and there was relief in giving it.
Single-tasking is often spoken about as a productivity technique, but I think it is more than that. It is a way of returning to the life we are actually living. When I am doing several things at once, part of me is always elsewhere. I am completing one task while already leaning towards the next. Even when I am technically resting, some part of my mind may still be standing at the desk.
Single-tasking brings the whole self home. There is less rushing, even when the work is physically demanding. There is less inner noise. One thing begins, is attended to, and, occasionally, is even finished before the next one starts.
I learned more about seva.
In yoga, seva is the practice of service. It is the offering of our time, energy and skills in response to what is needed. Hosting the retreat required a great deal of service. Some of it was visible, through teaching and guiding practices. Much of it happened quietly beforehand, and in the background.
It was noticing who seemed uncertain. Remembering what someone needed. Preparing the room. Adjusting plans. Making sure people knew where to be. Creating a space in which others could soften because someone else was holding the edges.
At the refuge, service became even more practical. Animals needed feeding, water, clean spaces and care. The work did not depend upon whether I felt inspired, productive or especially confident that day. It simply needed doing.
There is something wonderfully clarifying about useful work.
So much of self-employment involves evaluating ourselves. Am I doing enough? Am I earning enough? Should I be more visible? Should I post more often? Is the business growing? Am I falling behind?
Seva loosens that constant self-observation.
Instead of asking, “How am I doing?” we begin to ask, “What is needed here?” And it felt wonderful to arrive in a place and essentially say, "I am here. Use me wherever I am most needed", without any sense of liking or disliking the work I was offered.
That does not mean ignoring our own needs or becoming endlessly available to everyone else. True service is not self-erasure. It is participation. It is bringing what we can to the shared work of caring for something larger than ourselves.
I learned more about sangha.
Community and connection already sit at the heart of my yoga teaching. I know the value of gathering people together, creating shared experiences and allowing relationships to form around a common purpose. The retreat helped me understand sangha more deeply.
The weekend couldn't have been created by a single person. It existed because guests arrived willing to participate. Because the venue had been prepared. Because food was cooked. Because people talked, listened, laughed, helped one another and trusted the group enough to be seen. The atmosphere was not something I manufactured and delivered. It was something we created together.
At the refuge, sangha appeared in a different form. Everyone had their role. Work was shared. Knowledge was passed between people. Someone knew what needed to happen next, and there was reassurance in being one part of something rather than the person responsible for the whole.
Self-employment can be lonely, even when our work involves other people. We may teach groups, support clients or communicate throughout the day, yet still carry the responsibility for almost everything alone. There is no colleague at the next desk. No shared lunch break. No one to notice that we are trying to solve three different problems at once.
The retreat and the refuge reminded me that sangha is not only about being surrounded by people. It is about shared purpose and knowing that the whole thing does not rest on your shoulders alone.
I was reminded that lunch hours exist.
At the refuge, there was a lunch hour. A real one. At a particular time, everyone stopped working and ate. We had all worked up a strong appetite and were grateful for the chance to sit down and nourish our bodies.
After more than twenty years of working for myself, this felt almost indecently luxurious.
Lunch in a self-employed household can easily become something fitted around everything else. It may happen while checking messages, discussing the rest of the day, finishing one job or thinking about the next.
It becomes a brief interruption to work rather than a meaningful part of the day. But at the refuge, lunch was part of the structure. Work had a beginning. It had pauses. It had an ending.
These boundaries did not make anyone less committed. They made the work sustainable. That may be the most important thing I learned.
As a self-employed woman who also home educates, I find that work and family life have spread into every corner of the day. The flexibility has been precious. It has allowed me to build a life around the needs of my family and create work that matters to me. But flexibility without boundaries can quietly become endless availability.
There is always another email I could answer, another class I could plan, another piece of writing I could improve, another business task waiting, or something at home requiring attention. Nothing tells me I am finished. I have begun to wonder how much of my tiredness comes not from the amount I do, but from never being fully at work and never being fully away from it.
A different shape for the day
I do not want to turn my home into a rigid workplace or pretend that family life will fit neatly into office hours. But I do want to bring home some of what I learned.
I want clearer beginnings and endings.
I want time set aside for focused work, rather than carrying it loosely through the whole day.
I want to eat lunch without treating it as an opportunity to catch up on something else.
I want to do one thing at a time more often.
I want periods of physical, absorbing work that bring my attention back into my hands and body. I have already organised a volunteer position with my son at a local animal sanctuary.
I want more seva, more sangha, and more opportunities to work alongside other people towards something shared.
Perhaps the great revelation of the weekend was that rest is not only something we find by stopping. Sometimes rest comes through structure. It comes from knowing what we are doing now and trusting that the other things can wait. It comes from working with our whole attention and then being allowed to finish. It comes from sharing responsibility and belonging to something beyond our own endless list.
I hosted a retreat about transformative rest, then spent a day cleaning and caring for animals. Somewhere between the yoga mats, the shared meals, the physical work and that astonishing lunch hour, I began to understand rest in an entirely different way. Not simply as the absence of work, but as the presence of boundaries and not as a way of escaping responsibility, but as carrying it together. Not as a reward we earn when everything is finally finished, but as a rhythm that must be built into the day itself.
Thank you so much to Emma and Andy of Learn Live Give, and to Caz and the team at The Exotic Pet Refuge. And thanks to all of my retreat guests, gold stars to those who joined me at the refuge on Monday and painted a wagon ready for the upcoming open day.
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