Category: Darkness therapy

Dear friends of the dark retreat,

in April we are going away for a week to catch our breath and recharge.

Even so, some of you would like to come for a dark retreat even without a guide, so we have decided to open the sanctuaries for a dark retreat while we are away as well.

The start would have to be on Saturday 9.4.2016 in the morning, by 10 o’clock at the latest, and the darkness therapy would end on Saturday 16.4.2016 or on Sunday, whichever you prefer.

A week-long dark retreat without a guide

This means that no one will be coming to see you, and you will either fast or bring your own food.

There is an electric socket in the sanctuary, so you can bring a travel fridge.

Water and electricity will of course be provided, so you will have something to drink, as well as heating and hot water for showering.

You have the opportunity to go into the dark for up to 7 nights.

A dark retreat without a guide is suitable for those who wish to immerse themselves in themselves as fully as possible and not be disturbed in any way.

Please consider carefully whether a week-long dark retreat without a guide is right for you!

If you would like to “dive into the dark as soon as next month”, book through our contacts page.

In the note, please write: “April without a guide”

As usual, the contribution for the dark retreat is voluntary.

We will honour the first three bookings; those on the waiting list will be told their place in the queue.

Dear friends of dark retreats,

we have noticed that we don’t all use the same way of measuring time or the same terms.

So we decided to write a short guide for you, so that we all count days, nights, hours, dates and so on in the same way.

We receive bookings from you for dark retreat dates of, for example, 4 nights and 3 days at the same time, which doesn’t make sense.

Dark retreats are counted in nights

As you often arrive in the afternoon and leave in the morning, you won’t stay with us for 24 hours, and so not even for one day in the sense of a day = 24 hours.

But you will stay with us for 2 calendar days, because you arrive on Saturday and leave on Sunday.

At the same time, you will spend one night with us on a dark retreat.

That is why in the dark retreat dates we always show nights. If, for example, Pavel is listed for Friday, that means the night from Friday to Saturday.

An example of a week-long dark retreat

Saturday 16:00 arrival – 1st calendar day of the retreat
Sunday morning – 1st night, 2nd calendar day of the retreat
Monday morning – 2nd night, 3rd calendar day of the retreat
Tuesday morning – 3rd night, 4th calendar day of the retreat
Wednesday morning – 4th night, 5th calendar day of the retreat
Thursday morning – 5th night, 6th calendar day of the retreat
Friday morning – 6th night, 7th calendar day of the retreat
Saturday morning departure – 7th night, 8th calendar day of the retreat

Dear friends of dark retreats,

a dark retreat for 6 nights has just become free, from this Saturday 20 February to Friday 26 February.

The darkness therapy would end on Friday morning.

A dark retreat this very week, by train or bus too

If you don’t have a car, we will pick you up from the train or bus station in Bykáň, Kutná Hora or Čáslav.

A dark retreat this very week

You have the chance to go into the dark in 4 days’ time, for 6 nights.

If you would like to “dive into the dark this very week”, book via our contacts. As always, the amount you contribute for the retreat is voluntary.

The first person to book gets the place; we will let anyone on the waiting list know where they stand in the queue.

P.S. The date usually fills up on the day it is announced. If you come across this message in your email or on the website a few days after it went out, please don’t reply – it will certainly be taken. Thank you for your understanding.

This dark retreat is now taken – we are looking forward to welcoming Miluše.

Dear friends of dark retreats,

as our calendar is booked up almost a year ahead, we have decided to cut our own holiday in half and are offering three dates for 3 participants, each for 7 days (6 nights).

We fly back on Sunday afternoon, and you will be able to start your dark retreat that same evening, 17 April 2016.

So you can start on Sunday evening, and as usual the darkness therapy would end on Saturday morning, 23 April 2016.

A dark retreat in April by train or bus

If you don’t have a car, we will pick you up from the train or bus station in Bykáň, Kutná Hora or Čáslav.

A dark retreat for 7 days

You have the chance to go into the dark for 7 days in April 2016.

If you would like to “dive into a dark retreat as soon as April”, book via our contacts.

As always, the amount you contribute for the retreat is voluntary.

The first three people to book get the places; we will let anyone on the waiting list know where they stand in the queue.

Dear friends of dark retreats,

a week-long dark retreat has just become free, from Saturday 13 February to Saturday 20 February.

As usual, the darkness therapy would end on Saturday morning.

A week-long dark retreat by train or bus

If you don’t have a car, we will pick you up from the train or bus station in Bykáň, Kutná Hora or Čáslav.

A dark retreat for a week

You have the chance to go into the dark in 14 days’ time, for a whole week.

If you would like to “dive into the dark this very month”, book via our contacts. As always, the amount you contribute for the retreat is voluntary.

The first person to book gets the place; we will let anyone on the waiting list know where they stand in the queue.

P.S. The date usually fills up on the day it is announced. If you come across this message in your email or on the website a few days after it went out, please don’t reply – it will certainly be taken. Thank you for your understanding.

Dear friends of darkness therapy. The day before yesterday, people from a university in Prague came to film an interview with us about dark retreats. On that occasion we decided to devote even more time to running dark retreats and to build our fourth sanctuary, the northern one. We believe this will ease our overbooked calendar and allow us to welcome more participants who long for a dark retreat.

A dark retreat in the northern sanctuary will be different

The north inspires respect in us; it is the opposite of the warm south, which in turn offers calm and an embrace. To express the opposite energy of the cardinal directions, we decided to build the northern sanctuary genuinely to the north of the southern sanctuary, and as its mirror image. The entrance will stay on the west side, so that you can still wave goodbye to the setting sun before you go in.

The retreat room will be at the northernmost point, so from the entrance onwards you will be heading north.

Building materials of the northern sanctuary

As in the other sanctuaries, wood will dominate. We love the scent of wood, so the northern dark retreat sanctuary will be made of wood too. You will find a timber frame, wooden panelling on the walls, a wooden floor and even a wooden bed and a small dining table.

Facilities of the northern sanctuary

There will be a bed and a mattress made of natural materials, a wall-hung flush toilet, a shower with hydromassage, and of course luxurious water from our hand-dug well, which is over 120 years old.

Nor will there be any shortage of silent heating and a ventilation unit with heat recovery, which returns heat indoors in winter and keeps the heat outside in summer.

Contributions towards a dark retreat in the northern sanctuary

The northern sanctuary will cost an estimated 250,000 CZK, which, with an average contribution of 7,000 CZK per dark retreat, we will be able to finance if all participants pay for their retreat in advance. We are fully aware, however, that not all of you want to or are able to contribute, so the amount of the booking deposit and of the contribution for the retreat remains entirely voluntary.

In the booking form below you can therefore choose the amount of your booking deposit yourself. Every crown helps us fulfil our aim of meeting your needs and building the northern sanctuary.

We expect it to be finished at the end of May, so that dark retreats in the northern sanctuary can begin from 4 June 2016. We will keep you updated on the progress of the building work here on the website and by email.

Booking the northern sanctuary

Availability calendar for the northern sanctuary

« Previous October 2026 Next »
Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
			1   Nikola	2   Nikola	3   Ondřej	4   Ondřej
5   Ondřej	6   Ondřej	7   Ondřej	8   Ondřej	9   Ondřej	10   Petr	11   Petr
12   Petr	13	14 Jan-Pavol Tomáš	15 Jan-Pavol Tomáš	16 Jan-Pavol Tomáš	17   Vojtěch	18   Vojtěch
19   Vojtěch	20   Vojtěch	21   Vojtěch	22   Vojtěch	23   Vojtěch	24   Jirka	25   Jirka
26   Jirka	27   Jirka	28 Martin Jirka	29 Martin Jirka	30 Martin Jirka	31

Key
	Provisional / standby
	Sanctuary of Freedom

 

Dear friends of dark retreats,

a dark retreat has just become free for the next 4 days, from Wednesday 27 January to Saturday 30 January.

So that we have time to clean up, you can arrive today after 8:30 pm.

As usual, it would end on Saturday morning.

A dark retreat straight away, by train too

If you don’t have a car, we will pick you up from the train or bus station in Bykáň, Kutná Hora or Čáslav.

A dark retreat for 4 days (3 nights)

A chance like this comes up only once every few months.

If you would like to “dive into the dark today”, book via our contacts. As always, the amount you contribute for the retreat is voluntary.

The first person to book gets the place; we will let anyone on the waiting list know where they stand in the queue.

P.S. The date usually fills up on the day it is announced. If you come across this message in your email or on the website a few days after it went out, please don’t reply – it will certainly be taken. Thank you for your understanding.

During a dark retreat, the participant stays alone in a completely dark space with no light getting in. Soundproofing is not usually the aim, just a bonus.

But how does a dark retreat go when the participant doesn’t even want to talk to the guide? We could divide dark retreats according to how much people want to chat.

The dark retreat as a debating club

Since the most common recommendation during a dark retreat is to do nothing, participants often start to get bored. They chase this boredom away by wanting to chat with the guide, once the food has been brought, about anything that comes to mind. The aim is not to learn something or share something; the aim is to pass the time. This can lead to monologues lasting up to an hour about their work, their relationship, children, neighbours or their own view of superstring theory. Sometimes it is a developmental phase and sometimes it is an everyday experience. The next most common aim is to get attention, which is not so much about passing the time as about complaining about the hardships of life, or, on the contrary, showing off one’s successes.

A dark retreat with contact

Experience most often shows that participants do talk when they are in contact with the guide. At the very least they exchange a greeting and a few words about how they slept, how they are doing and so on. Briefly sharing a dream, or how they are currently experiencing themselves, is also completely normal. A very interesting part of the contact is when participants don’t want to be told what food they have today, because they want to work it out for themselves. So sometimes they ask what the food actually was yesterday 🙂

A dark retreat without contact

This kind of dark retreat can be practised by anyone and at different levels, depending on how the participant feels. The guide just says hello, brings the food and leaves. It is even possible not to speak to the participant at all. The only contact can be a knock, with an answering knock from the participant to say they are OK.

The highest form of contact-free darkness therapy is when the participant asks for food for the whole retreat in advance, usually fruit, or keeps a cleansing fast, and does not want any contact at all. In that case they are undisturbed for the whole dark retreat, and participants often report that they had no idea what day it was and are surprised that the dark retreat is already ending when the time comes to leave the sanctuary.

A dark retreat is beneficial for every talking type of participant.

No matter how much the participant wants to talk or to stay silent. Participants usually communicate in waves. What always matters is that the participant controls how much communication there is. When they want silence, they have it; when they want to share, they can. The guide never pries or persuades them to talk when they want silence, and the other way round.

Dear friends of dark retreats,

if you would like to go into a dark retreat one year and come out the next, this year you have the chance to do so.

However, you will need to be fully self-sufficient.

This means that you won’t have visits from a guide and you won’t be given any food.

We will give you a carton of bottled water (just in case the power goes off); you will need to bring your own food.

If the power did go off, the sanctuary should stay warm for a week without any problems, as it is almost passive, and the air will last for 14 days even without ventilation.

A dark retreat over Christmas 2015

So this dark retreat is meant for those of you who want absolute peace and perhaps even to fast for a week.

Arrival would have to be on Saturday 26.12. between 9 and 10 in the morning, and departure on the morning of 2.1.

We are going away for the holidays to the other end of the country, leaving on 26.12. around midday and not coming back until New Year’s Day (maybe a few days earlier), but to be on the safe side, assume that we really won’t be at the dark retreat centre.

If you are going on a dark retreat for the first time, please think carefully about whether a retreat without a guide is right for you. A dark retreat without a guide isn’t only for “old hands”, but you do need to think it through and only send a booking if you are sure it feels right.

We will be glad to answer any questions about the Christmas 2015 dark retreat

At the time of writing, there is space in 2 sanctuaries.

P.S. Now fully booked, thank you for such huge interest.

Dear friends of dark retreats,

a dark retreat has just become free for next week, from Saturday 5 December to Saturday 12 December.

It is a standard week-long retreat, arriving on Saturday between 4 and 5 pm.

As usual, it would end on Saturday morning.

A dark retreat in a few days, by train too

If you don’t have a car, we will pick you up from the train or bus station in Bykáň or Čáslav.

A dark retreat for a whole week

A chance like this comes up only a few times a year.

If you would like to “dive into the dark as soon as next week”, book via our contacts. As always, the amount you contribute for the retreat is voluntary.

The first person to book gets the place; we will let anyone on the waiting list know where they stand in the queue.

P.S. The date usually fills up on the day it is announced. If you come across this message in your email or on the website a few days after it went out, please don’t reply – it will certainly be taken. Thank you for your understanding.