The ‘raw-dogging’ TikTok travel trend helped me understand the importance of spiritual practices

Could you stay awake for eight hours on a plane with no food and no entertainment, just staring straight ahead at the flight map? That’s the new challenge currently taking social media by storm. The trend is called ‘raw-dogging’ - originally slang for unprotected sex but now meaning to travel ‘the hard way’, unshielded by creature comforts: no book, no phone, no snacks.

As an older millennial, I was a child before the internet existed.‌

As an older millennial, I was a child before the internet existed. Now, I reach for my phone the second my mind is unoccupied, browsing Facebook in supermarket queues and watching YouTube videos while I make lunch. Most of those younger than me have had access to constant mental stimulation for their whole lives. It’s no wonder they’re realising the need to switch off.

I don’t want to drift through life, pulled along by habits and distractions. Paul exhorted the Christians in Ephesus, ‘Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead,’ urging them to live ‘not as unwise, but as wise’ (Ephesians 5:15-16, NIV). This is how I want to live too, making conscious choices and allowing God’s Spirit to lead me. So could raw-dogging be part of the answer?

The benefits of taking a break from mental stimulation are well-known. It rests the brain and nervous system and helps us feel grounded in the present. Embracing empty moments of boredom sparks our creativity and gives us a chance to reflect on our feelings and thoughts. For Christians, there’s something deeper: the opportunity to make room for communion with God.

Followers of Jesus throughout history have taken intentional steps to cultivate this quieter, more spacious state of mind. 

Followers of Jesus throughout history have taken intentional steps to cultivate this quieter, more spacious state of mind. Many have found value in spiritual disciplines like silence and solitude, and the practice of fasting. These too are making a comeback in our rest-starved culture, and I think they present a more life-giving path to the balance we really need.

We know that Jesus regularly went away by himself to pray (Luke 5:16). In our noisy modern world we have grown unused to silence, and being alone with our thoughts is something we may even avoid. Yet in quiet solitude we have a chance to slow down, notice what’s important in our lives and in our own hearts, and open our minds to meet with God. For me, the fact that I find silence and solitude uncomfortable only underlines how much I need them.

Many of us today have little experience of fasting, yet it has been practiced by God’s people for thousands of years. Temporarily abstaining from certain foods or all food was often part of expressing repentance, seeking God’s guidance or praying for him to act in desperate situations. Believers understood fasting as an important way to demonstrate reliance on God and fall on his mercy, allowing hunger pangs to point them from their need for food towards their deeper need for him.

These spiritual practices remove something in order to make space for something else. They treat self-denial not as an end goal but as a path to blessing. A big theme in scripture is waiting for God: waiting to hear his voice, waiting for prayers to be answered, waiting for change in the world and in ourselves. Humans try to eliminate waiting wherever possible, but God moves slowly and in his own time. He doesn’t rush. In our lives he rarely works through sudden transformation, preferring instead a longer, gradual process of growth. Building these ancient disciplines into our daily lives trains us to wait well. It slows us down to God’s tempo and increases our patience so we can trust him more fully.

Unlike raw-dogging, spiritual practices are not a one-time endurance challenge, but a way of building healthy rhythms into our lives. In scripture, rest is balanced by work; fasting is balanced by feasting; silence and solitude are balanced by activity and conversation. As Ecclesiastes 3:1 tells us, there is a time for everything. Living life as God designed it is not about chasing extremes but about putting things in their proper place. So don’t wait for your next long-haul flight. Instead, think about how you can unplug from distractions to make space for God today.