In any given week, I receive at least a dozen pitches or press releases extolling the benefits of some new retreat. Which isn’t surprising, in case you have been comatose for the past decade: we are long past the dawn of the Age of Wellness and now stand in the full, pass-the-SPF-50 glare of its primacy.

The retreat industry as a segment is estimated to be worth a stonking $US300 billion. And gosh, are they legion. Sleep retreats and menopause ones; equine therapy and kundalini; retreats revolving around the ingestion of substances that are criminalised in many countries (hosted, obviously, in places where they aren’t), and others that involve communing with the electrostatic energies of ancient civilisations according to lunar cycles (seriously).