Category: Darkness therapy

Dear friends of the dark retreat,

a dark retreat has just become available from today, 5 April, to Saturday 11 April.

This stay is for those of you who want to go into the dark “right now”.

You can arrive today (Sunday) or tomorrow (Monday), even late in the evening, and the stay would end on Saturday morning.

Darkness therapy at short notice, by train

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

Darkness therapy as a trial

If you’d like to “get into the dark right now”, book through our contacts page. The contribution for the stay is voluntary, as always.

The first person to book will get the place.

Thank you for the huge interest, the date is now taken – we look forward to seeing Lukáš.

Dear friends of the dark retreat,

a dark retreat for 3 nights has just become available, from 4 February to 7 February.

It is fairly “short notice”, meant for those of you who want to go into the dark “right now”, or tomorrow (Thursday).

You can arrive this evening (even late), that is Wednesday 4 February 2015, and the stay ends on Saturday 7 February 2015 in the morning. Or you can start tomorrow (Thursday, for 2 nights), or the day after (Friday, for 1 night).

Darkness therapy at short notice, by train

If you don’t have a car, we will pick you up in Kutná Hora or Čáslav.

Darkness therapy as a trial

If you’d like to “get into the dark right now”, please fill in the form below. The contribution for the stay is voluntary, as always.

Dear friends of dark retreats,

if any of you would like to “try out” a dark retreat – perhaps because you can’t get more than 2 days off work, or can’t tear yourself away from your study materials or your staff for any longer – a 3-night dark retreat is available for you.

Arrival would have to be this evening, i.e. Wednesday 28.1.2015, with the retreat ending on Saturday morning, 31.1.2015.

Darkness therapy as a trial

If you’d like to “get into the dark right away”, please fill in the form below. The contribution for the retreat is, as usual, voluntary.

If you don’t have a car, we’ll happily come and pick you up in Kutná Hora 🙂

This is one of the questions we are asked most often. It comes with others that are very similar:

Won’t I get bored during darkness therapy?

Should I suppress my thoughts or let them pass through?

Should I meditate for at least 30 minutes, 3 times a day?

Should I recall my childhood?

Should I try to remember past lives?

Should I focus on cosmic energy?

So what should you do on a dark retreat?

The answer could be as wise and spiritual as you like, and perhaps it is:

On a dark retreat, do NOTHING, in other words, rest!

Have we gone mad? How can anyone do nothing?

On a dark retreat you can hear your inner voice!

Why are you going on a dark retreat? The most common answers are “for calm”, “for peace”, “to find myself”, “for greater self-awareness”.

How would you expect to hear your inner voice if you are talking, exercising, tapping, saying affirmations and doing other things just so that you don’t get bored?

That is why we recommend:

Do nothing, rest, but stay attentive!

Whatever comes, any thought, or perhaps an emotion or a feeling. Be attentive. Look at your thoughts and feelings, let them show themselves and then leave again. There is no need to hold on to them, develop them, or ask why this and why that.

On a dark retreat, do nothing and be attentive, and that way your dark retreat will bear fruit.

For health reasons, a date has become available next week, from 10.1. to 17.1.

If you’d like to sign up for a dark retreat that week, now’s your chance.

Please send your booking via the form.

/rezervace/

Both cabins are now taken. Thank you.

People often ask us whether they will be cold during a dark retreat.

Darkness therapy – insulation

All the sanctuaries for darkness therapy are made of wood, so they don’t contain a single bit of concrete or masonry.

The walls of the western cabin have 16 cm of thermal insulation, and the eastern and southern ones have 32 cm.

The cabin door keeps out both light and cold

The doors are insulated with 3 cm of foam.

There are always two doors, so the doorway is insulated with 8 cm of wood and 6 cm of foam + a 10 cm air gap.

The calculations

The western sanctuary has a heat loss of 700 w/h and a heater with an output of 1500 w/h, which means that at minus 20 degrees Celsius it will heat the cabin to 27 degrees.

The eastern and southern sanctuaries have twice as much insulation and a heat loss of only 300 w/ h, with direct electric heaters of 750 w / h installed.

Darkness therapy and hot water?

Hot water comes from 30-litre boilers, which heat cold water up in just an hour. 30 litres of hot water is enough for a 10-minute shower with no problems at all.

Would you like to know how darkness therapy works, step by step?

You can book a date for your dark retreat at any time.

Here I’m making up for a lack of information, since you keep asking us by email what to bring with you for a dark retreat.

What to bring for a dark retreat?

1. A good mood
2. A good mood
3. A good mood

🙂

What will you get from us for a comfortable dark retreat?

1. Dishes for eating and drinking
2. A towel
3. Bed linen, including a sheet
4. Toilet paper
5. Ear defenders and earplugs, if you want absolute silence
6. Your car looked after by Charlie 🙂

You can read more about how the dark retreat sanctuary is equipped.

Bring comfortable clothes, and please shower with water only; at most we’d ask for an eco shower gel, but water alone is better.

We water our garden with the waste water from the treatment plant.

What you should definitely not bring on a dark retreat:

1) chemical shower gels and shampoos
2) steroids, hormonal contraception
3) chemical perfumes, antiperspirants and other chemical poisons

Please put only toilet paper down the toilet; we use a special eco paper with enzymes.

Ladies especially, please put sanitary products in the plastic bags provided for this in the sanctuary. It really is rather disgusting to have to fish tampons and sanitary pads out of our treatment plant 😉

Over time, society has built its rules and routines around the idea of “the same for everyone”. That doesn’t apply to money, of course 🙂 But it does apply to performance and to getting things done.

Where we are today

These days, hardly anyone cares whether it is summer or autumn, spring or winter. In shift work, even day and night are no longer respected. A production line has to turn out the same number of pieces regardless of the weather, the season, or the sex and age of the people working on it.

To help us succeed under these rules, we have air conditioning, public transport practically to the door and round-the-clock car repair services, so that we are never late for work. There is an endless range of hygiene products so that nobody can tell you are on “your days”. And last but not least, there is an arsenal of pills to “get you back on your feet”.

Where are we rushing to?

Darkness therapy helps you see this

It isn’t only about your job or your business, it is also about your duties at home. Darkness therapy helps you see that you are not a bad mother if you don’t cook dinner today. You are not a bad wife if you are not in the mood.

Menstruation is a gift of rest

Different cultures understand menstruation in slightly different ways, but they have one thing in common, and that is change. During menstruation a woman is different. The processes taking place in her body practically invite her to stop. It isn’t about doing nothing and being bored. It is about stopping for a few days once a month and giving that time to your inner self.

Menstrual huts in Africa are similar to darkness therapy

Menstrual huts are very common in African and South American cultures. In the hut, a woman often has several days to herself, time to rest and gather new strength for the month ahead.

So darkness therapy is suitable during menstruation too.

But of course, it isn’t a requirement 😉

We get some very interesting requests: for example, that an hour or two before a dark retreat begins, the participant can “cleanse” the space in the sanctuary by chanting mantras.

In the dark there is love and light

We firmly believe that love is the driving force of the universe. We believe that without love there would be no light, and without light there would be no darkness therapy.

That is why we believe that all actions are an expression of love, and that through these actions we experience love more and more and come to know the light.

So we have no problem at all if you want to chant mantras in the sanctuary, or pray, or practise yoga or any other exercise. If you want to cultivate the 6 virtues of the heart, practise NLP or EFT, or any other neuro / psychological method, that is entirely up to you.

Darkness therapy and religion

Darkness therapy is suitable for everyone, regardless of religion, political belief, race or faith. Your language or place of birth don’t matter at all. What matters is only that you feel you should go on a dark retreat.

If you would like any music to be played on a player for a few hours before you arrive, we will be glad to do that for you. Just send it to us in MP3 format and we will take care of it.

Darkness therapy and food

The only thing we won’t give you during darkness therapy is meat, bones and joints and products made from them. It isn’t that a pig is more important than a mosquito. We know that no action is simply good or bad. But we have decided to serve only vegetarian food.

We are pleased to announce that you can now donate the virtual currency Bitcoin to us for any of our dark retreats.

Darkness therapy for Bitcoin

We use the bitpay.net payment gateway, an online exchange for buying and selling Bitcoin.

So if you have Bitcoin and would like to pay the price of darkness therapy in Bitcoin, you can pay the deposit in it and settle the rest in Czech crowns, euros or dollars – or pay the balance for your dark retreat in Bitcoin as well.

We hope you will welcome this step and be able to turn your Bitcoin into something meaningful – such as darkness therapy with us.