Here are two ways to benefit from the darkness conjecture by making darkness for yourself.
Sleep nightly in darkness
In a minute, I will explain in the technical details of making an excellent darkroom. But you can start like this: tack some blankets over your windows and doors to get relief tonight from outdoor ambient light. Leave a window or door cracked for air, even if it lets in a little light. Reducing light by 90% will improve your sleeping conditions noticeably. If you like the experience, you can make further improvements after a few days when your motivation and energy level have increased.
If you get sound sleep, you may feel a bit tired afterward. The propagandists for the Edison Light Bulb Company (and their offspring) have called this getting “too much sleep”, which is a physiological impossibility The body does nothing it does not have to, including sleep. Actually, you are tapping into a backlog of lost sleep. Feeling groggy is the first phase of catching up. This can take a few days.
Once your room is comfortable for sleeping overnight, you can make it suitable for a two-day retreat.
Now for technical details. First, let me make clear that the tricky part of making a darkroom is not darkening it, but ventilating it. If you have forced air heating and cooling in your house (normally a bad idea) then thank your lucky stars. Just turn the fan on. If you room is attached to a bathroom with a quiet exhaust fan, then likewise, you’re in like Flynn.
Otherwise, the simplest solution I know is to use a 12V DC case fan. Salvage them from desktop computer towers. Buy them used for $1 at flea markets or new for $5-20 at any computer or electronics store. Power it with an AC-DC universal adaptor with variable voltage ($5 at discount stores).
If you do not have electricity, and you just want to try this for a night or two, a quick and dirty solution is to power the fan with AA batteries. You will only need 4-8 of them for one night. Tape them together in series (positive end of one to negative end of the next, in a chain, with one fan wire at each end of the chain). No fan movement Switch the positive and negative wires.
Constantly changing the batteries quickly got to be a pain, so I bit the bullet and got a small but proper solar power system for less than $100. Once it is set up, it just goes. Keep the wires orderly and the panel clean.
- solar panel: 12V. Size depends on location: 10W in Guatemala, 40W in rainy Oregon winter. ($10-$100 on eBay)
- charge controller: 12V, six-pole ($25 on eBay)
- battery: 12V 7A, lead acid ($30 at a motorcycle shop)
- wire, 20 AWG, enough to connect everything ($10 at hardware store).
Then you need a lightproof vent. One hopes it does not let a lot of sound in. Sometimes rooms have light-proof and sound-dampened holes built into them in unexpected places. If your bathroom fan is noisy, you could remove it but still use the ducting. All plumbing has ventilation pipes on the drain side of things. Maybe there is a black plastic drain pipe running right behind some easily repaired drywall in the closet! Black posterboard, wood glue and masking tape work well in making a baffled vent that could attach to the black plastic (see below) and lead to an slightly opened window. Once, friends and I replaced a flush toilet with a composting toilet. The newly exposed drain hole in the floor proved a perfect exit duct for the 12V fan.
If you live in a cold place and do not have proper ventilation, please either: move to the tropics; or spend $1,500 immediately to buy and have professionally installed an Energy Recovery Ventilator. Without this device, you are definitely spending a lot of money just to suffer.
To actually darken the room, cover windows with 6 mil black polyethylene plastic sheeting, found at all hardware stores in rolls ($10-25, depending on size). Tape it to the wall beyond the window frame because light and air often leak between the frame and wall.
Use 1 black masking tape. If masking tape will not work on your surfaces, use black kraft paper tape. Black masking tape is effective, cheap, sticks and conforms well to irregular wall surfaces, yet comes off easily without residue (unless you leave it up a long time). Local art and professional lighting supply stores carry it. Google ”black masking tape” for online dealers. I bought Intertape PF3 from lightsonretail.com. Kraft paper tape is more expensive, thicker, and with stronger adhesive. Look for ProGaff (formerly Permacel) 743, Shurtape 724, and 3M 235.
Please avoid electrical and gaffer’s tape. They are made of soft vinyl and especially obnoxious adhesives and are thus extremely toxic in their manufacture, handling, use, and disposal.
If the room gets too hot from direct sun, then before taping up the black plastic, cut a piece of cardboard the same size as the window opening (inside the window frame). Tape or glue aluminum foil to one side of it. Set the cardboard in the window opening, foil facing outward.
If it is a cold room, do exactly the same thing as for a hot room, but with the foil facing inward. If the room gets hot and cold with the seasons, open up the plastic on one edge and switch the cardboard around every six months.
Finn Po and I once made a removable cardboard insert for a friend with a large piece of cardboard. It was like large tray that slid into the window frame. We cut it about 3 larger than the window in all directions. We creased the cardboard 3 from the edge all around. We bent the cardboard at the creases into flaps (the walls of the ”tray”). Then we glued 4 wide strips of felt carpet padding along the edges of the the bottom of the ”tray”. 2 on, 2 overhanging the edge. Those 2 of unglued, overhung padding thus bent with the cardboard up the ”walls” of the tray as it got pushed into the window frame. The whole thing fit snugly yet slid in and out easily and blocked 100% of the light. We got the cardboard from a furniture store and used wood glue for the padding. It was a precision job, but worth it if you want to retain total access to the windows.
To darken the door, hang dark, dense blankets over it inside and out. Use push-pins. Extend corners of the blanket as far past door on either side as possible.
From simply darkening his bedroom, a friend, just reported to me a huge difference in the quality of sleep he and his mate are experiencing, as well as a return of vivid dreams. I have experienced the same thing whenever I have been able to darken the room I sleep in. Basically, the darker, the better. Total darkness is way better than near darkness.
Retreat for two days
Your body will catch up on all the sleep you have ever lost in about 48 hours if you stay in a totally dark room, resting as much as possible. The amount of deep sleep you can get is hard to imagine or believe until you do it. It is best to go in at night and come out three mornings later. So it is more like two and a half days
One needs a well ventilated, quiet room. It should be in an unoccupied or fairly quiet building. For this short period, a bathroom is unnecessary. A 5-gallon bucket with a toilet seat and a pail of dirt or sawdust is sufficient. Put it where the air exits the room (preferably to the outdoors, not the rest of the house
You will need a couple gallon jugs of pure water. You will need 25-50% less food than usual. I recommend keeping it to fresh, raw, ripe fruit and leafy greens to maximize psychological vulnerability and physical elimination. Keep it in a large cooler with a block of ice. Eat as much as you like. It is likely that your appetite will be profoundly diminished due to the extra melatonin in your nervous system (which is why we do not get hungry when we sleep). This was especially noticeable in my first retreat.
There is usually a period of time somewhere in the middle of the retreat, from two to 24 hours, that is difficult emotionally. Just wait it out. Read about my four darkness experiences for more about this.
Someone should check in with you once a day for a few minutes just to say hello and in case you need something.
In these ways you can quickly and cheaply begin experiencing for yourself the effects of resting deeply in darkness on your energy level, sanity and overall health.