When you spend several days in complete darkness, you may come back with feelings you would struggle to find in everyday life. One participant who did a three-night dark retreat described feeling truly rested. He stressed that he had not slept so peacefully and deeply for a long time. Sleeping in silence, with no disturbances, allowed him to recover his strength in a way he never does in the usual rhythm of the day.
He did not expect any great shock on coming back into the light, and indeed there was none. He said he did not feel like a completely different person, but rather like someone who had treated himself to the luxury of real calm. Darkness therapy gave him the chance to stop and let everything around him be for a while. In the silence and the dark, your own thoughts and questions come to the surface – the ones that are so often drowned out by noise in the everyday world.
What he said about the worries he had before entering the cabin was also very interesting. He had imagined the darkness almost as a “bogeyman”. But once the first few hours had passed and nothing had happened, he felt there was nothing to be afraid of. He even added that we all carry our real “bogeymen” inside us, and that meeting them may be the most valuable thing a dark retreat brings.
He summed up the whole experience by saying that what he had been through first needs to settle. Even so, he already knows he would like to come back to the dark. Darkness therapy showed him how much he needs to slow down and give himself space. Sleep, rest, meeting his own fears – all of it became an important experience for him, one he would recommend to others looking for inner balance.
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