NOT AN ESCAPE. THE TRIP THAT BRINGS YOU BACK.
Inspired by Lila Fox’s week at Six Senses Vana.
Welcome to Issue #010 of Sojourn. Each week, I share two original essays to help you slow down, reconnect, and rebuild with intention (hence ‘sojourn’), in a private community that uses travel as a path to reinvention.
Here’s the story I keep returning to when people say “travel is an escape.”
We’ve been sold the myth: get away, leave it all behind, disappear for a while.
But wherever you go, you’re still there. The luggage isn’t just in your hand—it’s in your head. The best journeys don’t erase you; they return you. They don’t ask you to check out; they help you check back in.
I thought of this reading a beautiful, honest note from Lila Fox—Global Travel Consultant, award-winning photographer, and holistic wellness–yoga specialist. Last year cracked her open. Stress she’d always been able to regulate stopped responding to the usual levers—sleep, exercise, meditation. She sat in her naturopath’s office and said, “None of it is working right now.” Supplements helped. But what changed things was what came next: she flew to India to lead a trip she couldn’t cancel, went early, visited a school she loves, then checked into Six Senses Vana in the Himalayan foothills—a wellness retreat where Sowa Rigpa (Tibetan medicine), Ayurveda, and TCM sit under one roof.
There, a quiet stack of practices—Tibetan medicine treatments, acupuncture paired with talk, nourishing meals, early nights—started to work. Not overnight. Midway. Sleep returned. The mind softened. No pharmaceuticals. Just time, attention, and ancient modalities applied with care. She didn’t go to disappear. She went to remember how to be in herself again.
That’s the frame I use for Sojourn: place → ritual → bring-home → rebuild.
PLACE
Choose a stay that edits inputs for you. Lila chose Six Senses Vana—built for healing. Your version might be a monastery hotel in Umbria, a forest spa in South Tyrol, or a city ryokan that turns down noise as a service. What matters: the space makes it easier to do what you’re trying to do.
RITUAL
On the ground, keep it small and schedulable. Lila’s days stacked simple pieces—treatments at set times, conversation-with-acupuncture, meals that matched the work, early nights. The point wasn’t novelty; it was rhythm. In my own trips, the most durable rituals are boring on paper: first-hour no phone, a 20-minute walk at dusk, tea before decisions.
BRING-HOME
Rituals beat labels. “Sustainable,” “wellness,” “transformative”—nice words, but they don’t travel on their own. A practice does. Lila flew home with a kit she could keep: supportive supplements, a weekly acupuncture slot, breath work before sleep, a willingness to feel what she’d avoided. That’s what matters: one or two things you can repeat in the exact life you’re returning to.
REBUILD
Escape is temporary. Reinvention lasts. The question isn’t “Where can I go to get away?” It’s “What can I bring back so I no longer need to?” When a stay gives you a new baseline—for mornings, for attention, for how you meet stress—you’re not chasing the next trip; you’re changing the next week.
If you want a simple way to try this on your next stay:
First hour rule: bags down → shower → water/tea → 20-minute walk. No phone.
One subtraction: pick a single “no” (no news before noon, no phone at meals, no single-use water).
One keeper (30 days): choose a tiny ritual you actually liked there (open-window breaths, dusk loop, paper + tea). Do it daily when you’re home. Track one number (minutes, loops, nights slept through). Review on Fridays: keep / swap / remove one thing.
What I love in Lila’s story is the honesty: she didn’t posture as unbreakable, and she didn’t chase a quick fix. She chose intention > intensity. She let place do the editing, let ritual do the work, and let time do what time does when we stop forcing it.
REFLECTION
What would your version of a “Vana week” look like—where you live now?
Which single “no” would lower the volume of your week?
What tiny ritual could you promise yourself for 30 days?
Travel won’t save you. Intention will. And the right stay can make intention easier to practice—so you can return, not escape.
~Ana