Why Retreats Work: Disconnection, Body Wisdom, and the Science of Letting Go

 If your professional identity is built around what you can think, analyze, and write, this conversation is very much for you. My guest today is Marybeth Donahoe, a yoga teacher and retreat leader based in North Lake Tahoe, and one of the most grounded people I've met in a long time. We're talking about what actually gets in the way of feeling connected to ourselves, not as a philosophical question, but as a physiological one.

We also get into intuition, which I know can feel like a loaded word if you live mostly in your head. I promise we make a case for it that will satisfy the skeptics. This is part one of a two-part conversation. 📍 I'm Alex Howson, and this is Write Medicine

So the first question I do want to ask you is, who are you and what is the work that you do with Rewild Your Soul?

So I'm Mary Beth Donahoe, and I started an organization called ReWild Your Soul Retreats. And what I do is offer experiences that are wellness-based that connect people to themselves, to nature, to culture, and create an opportunity for people to reconnect with their true nature, which I've been a yoga teacher for quite some time, since twenty thirteen.

I really value the growth and the transformation that I can see that happens when we dedicate time to ourselves. And when we go on a retreat, that's like this beautiful opportunity to reflect and to connect to ourselves. I like to have these experience where people can disconnect from their normal day-to-day life and really reconnect to their deep desires or their power.

Maybe they've been just in the whole the cycle of what they're used to doing, the mundane. And so just having that space to, to grow, to really assess. And I've found retreats really fulfilling for myself personally. So it's something that I also personally do. And I really believe in creating connection through culture because I think that the more that we are able to understand others, we actually understand ourselves better, and then there's more space for for more love and kindness towards others and even ourselves.

So the goal through the ReWild Your Soul Retreats is to create these opportunities for people to disconnect from their day-to-day life and to reconnect with their true nature.

What Disconnects Us

What do you think it is that gets in the way of all of us being disconnected from our nature?

That's a good question. I love that. I think a lot of it, especially in the United States, is like a lot of so- societal pressures belief systems that maybe I have to do X to get to here, I have to be successful, or I have to be financially rich, or I have to do this. There's a lot of these I should or I have to.

And I think that the thing that gets in the way is that we just get in that, that, that flow of what our day-to-day is, that there's rarely any time to pause and reflect. And unless you're somebody that really schedules that out, like a week-long experience of that is, is gonna have so many benefits.

But I think it's the, it's our jobs, it's our family lives, it's even our relationships with our friends that can get in the way because we just are in that same habitual pattern all the time. And so I think it's those things that, And even some of our like core belief systems are, can get in the way of our power of our potential.

So

Yeah, I want to dig into that a little bit. Can you say a bit more about that?

Yeah.

Yoga and Inner Power

So I think that most of us underestimate what we are capable of. And so in the tradition of yoga the whole idea of the practice is to be able to feel connected in a calm sense, right? So this unification within our mind, within our heart space, within our physical form, and it's so easy to be, it's so easy to be fragmented in those places.

Maybe you're really in the mind space and you're always thinking or overthinking, right? Analyzing. Maybe you're in your heart space, like the emotions rule your world. I was somebody like that for a really long time, and I've had to learn how to put reins on the emotions. And/or maybe you're somebody that's really physical.

I live in North Lake Tahoe, and we've got a lot of Olympic athletes there, and I used to laugh like, "Oh, if I didn't do three sports in one day, then I wasn't good enough," whatever. So I think that we have this limit in our mind of what we think we're capable of. But in that tradition of yoga, it's like this unveiling, this revealing no, y-you can do it all and you're connected to it all.

And so I think that there's power in recognizing that. And I think that when we come together in a safe container, a safe space and we really sit with ourselves and also share from an open, vulnerable space, we're actually able to tap into that unseen, invisible network of energy and power that we all possess and are connected to.

And so it helps us kinda tap into that when we take a whole week to, really journal or really sit in meditation. And sometimes that word, I think, scares people, meditation. But but I truly believe that each individual has a unique power within that's their radiance, that it's the thing that makes them shine and makes you feel good.

And I think that sometimes those limiting factors, like we've just talked about, get in the way for you to see that. And so there's moments of courage that we often will take but often we step back, and especially as we age, we take less risks, right? We become a little less courageous. We like our comfort zones.

And it's important to, to remember that growth is your power as well, right? That ability to change or to have a different perspective through life

I love that.

Safe Space and Science

So there's so much I want to dig in to there as well because as a lot of the women that I work with are much in their heads, as medical health science writers, communicators, editors, and so on. Their whole work and professional identity is often wrapped into intellectual capacity and what they can think and what they can express through their writing and how they can translate other people's ideas into, something that is accessible and easy to read and all those kinds of things.

And I do see quite commonly that it's easy to, easy for people in the field I work in to get completely absorbed and consumed by that identity. So that means in the context of what you've just described,

Zsuzsa

Short-changing their emotions, their emotional self, their physical self, and that can make it much tougher to create that sort of unification of mind, body, spirit that, that yoga is, such a beautiful practice in helping us to cultivate.

But it is a practice, and that's another reason for me personally a retreat can offer such a great space because it allows you to build some of those practices in a guided fashion, over the period of a week so that you come away with, a toolbox that you can actually apply in your everyday life to to really keep that integration going and cultivate that unity in a fairly specific and directed way.

There's a couple of other things you said that I thought were really interesting because, you talked about the safe container and you talked about sharing and, there's good research and good evidence that psychological safety and that pro-social component of bringing people together to, and helping them share their experiences is a very effective way of helping people to learn, helping people to regulate their nervous system. And and these things as Well are often things that we don't necessarily talk about as being part of a retreat, but they very much are.

Why We Said Yes

I'm curious, what drew you to this retreat specifically? So when you and I started to talk about the possibility of creating something together, what made you say yes?

Alex, it's so easy with you, the synergy that we had when I met you on a, in a training, which was very retreat-like formatting.

Yes

it was-- I don't know. We hit it off really well, and I really love the messaging that you are offering to the world. I think that your viewpoint and perspective and seeing you step into your power through what you already do, how you already help so many people, I think is astounding.

And when we talked about, "Oh, we should-- we could do a retreat together," and I think actually you reached out just asking questions about "Oh, what is..." You wanted to just get more information from me, and then it just naturally, organically came together because I think I've been leading retreats since twenty twenty, so I-it's about six years now, and so I have a little bit of experience.

But working with you and the population that you work with, I think, is it feels like an honor to be able to be alongside your side and to help guide not only the people who join, the beautiful women that will join us but also to be there of your support. I think that I'm really excited about the energy that we can create together just about even in our conversations when we get to meet up leading up to this has been so fun and joyful for me.

So I'm excited to see what we can create together, and I just know in my heart that I also really listen to intuition often, and I had such good feelings. Everything has felt really good in this process, and I think it's important to listen to that intelligence that we have, that intelligence that we have.

Yeah I think that it's gonna be pretty magical the experience that we create.

I feel the same way. And we've been talking about this for almost a year now because we met in March of 2025 in in Tulum. And I feel the same way because already in this year I've learned so much from you. And I was so relieved when you said yes or when maybe you suggested it. I can't even remember now. As you said it kinda happened organically. and I think that's, I think that's a good sign, because we do bring, different perspectives and different energies to, to the retreat itself, and also I think probably how we teach, h- teach yoga, although there's a lot of synergy and a lot of over-overlap there. You talked about intuition. Intuition is one of these words that sometimes find that people who are very much in their heads and to that intellectual identity

Yeah

Shy away from words like intuition. It's, I'm gonna use the term woo-woo because that is how a lot of people experience the idea of intuition. But actually, Intuition's a pretty basic thing it's part of your embodied experience and the accumulation of experience over the years and how you interpret that experience. But the key to me, it seems to be, and I wonder if you what your perspective on this is, that we need to learn to listen to ourselves, and we need to learn to build awareness around what our body, bodies are telling us and and create that framework for ourselves to be able to interpret what our bodies are saying.

Because the body speaks. All those physiological signals that we feel as, butterflies or headaches or pit pain, they're-- all those signals are there to give us information. So I'm kinda curious how you think about intuition.

I don't think that I could have said it more eloquently than you just did. I do think it's it's definitely getting into the body, espe- and that's hard as an intellect. I, I love my head is always in a book, and I tend to be somebody... gotten a lot better over the years, but overanalyzing everything.

And I've learned to get into my body when the mind is running, to get into the body. And even that could be just journaling, right? Because you're using your hands to, to write. But when we ignore those signals is when we are ignoring, this intelligence that our body has, right? So we could talk about that, too, if you wanna go into a little bit of the anatomical aspect of it, as our bodies are so intelligent.

They're constantly sending, receiving and doing things to make us live a more healthful and efficient life. That's what our bodies are doing. I always joke in some of my classes the most intelligent thing in the room isn't your brain, it's actually your whole body because it works in unison.

It's this holistic thing. And I think that we have to learn how to listen to those signals, though, right? Oh, I get the chills when somebody says something about my grandma, or whatever it is. Oh, I I feel elated when you and I started talking about this. Oh, I'm gonna listen to that emotion that comes up, or I felt sick to my stomach when I missed my flight , right?

So there's all these things that that we are con- like you said, we're constantly getting these signals, and it's a matter of unlearning old behaviors or old processing functions in our mind and start listening inward and listening into our body. That will help us tap into more intelligence, right?

Especially for those who like the intellect, this is the most intellectual thing you could have as a human is to be in your body in this experience in the here and the now.

📍 That's the first part of my conversation with Marybeth. In part two, we get specific. What Marybeth brought back from Peru, who this retreat in Mexico is actually for, what we hope women will carry with them six months after they leave Mexico after spending time with us, and the practical fears that can get in the way of saying yes to something like this.

The link to the retreat and all of Marybeth's details are in the show notes