Benefit from the darkness conjecture by learning simple ways of making darkness for yourself.
Sleep nightly in darkness
In a minute, I will explain the technical details of making an excellent darkroom. But you can start like this: tack dark, dense blankets over your windows and doors to get relief tonight from outdoor ambient light. Extend corners of the blanket as far past door on either side as possible. 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. 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 manual fan switch 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, 120mm+. Salvage it from a desktop computer tower. Buy it 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). See paragraph below on lightproof venting.
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 gets to be a pain. 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 wipe 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 ($35 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. Black posterboard, wood glue and masking tape work for making a baffled vent. Attach it to a window covering and crack the window.
If your bathroom fan is noisy, you could remove it but still use the ducting. Sewage pipes drain downward but are ventilated upward. 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. Maybe there is a black plastic ventilation pipe running behind some easily repaired drywall in an adjacent closet!
If you live in a cold place, 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, there are two methods: fabric and plastic. Fabric is best because it results in an easily reusable panel with much less plastic, which also offgases slightly. Plastic is easier, though not necessarily cheaper.
Fabric method: cut two layers of clean, strong cardboard to fit the window opening. It’s best if the corrugations of the two sheets run perpendicular to each other. Glue them together with wood glue. Allow a 3mm gap around the cardboard so it fits easily. Border the outside (side facing the window) with a 3cm wide, 6mm thick open-cell foam (ask for non-flame retardant foam at an upholstery supply house). It should stick out over the edge of the cardboard by 3-5mm. Come inward from the foam border and glue 6cm wide strips of thick, opaque, pitch-black fabric to the cardboard so it covers and sticks out past the foam. Use canvas, awning fabric, sailcloth, wool suiting, blanketing, etc. Pushing the cardboard into the window opening squeezes the foam and fabric against the frame, blocking the light. You can also trim the cardboard further to accommodate felt carpet padding. Glue 6cm wide strips 3cm from the edge so half sticks out from the cardboard. This replaces both fabric and foam.
Note: do not use blackout blind fabric. It is ineffective, expensive, and, like all vinyl product, very toxic. Glue cardboard a tab of cardboard near a corner of the panel and above the middle to install and remove the panel daily. While the adhesives in cardboard are harmless, sometimes cardboard smells bad. So glue aluminum foil over the inside (side facing room) of the cardboard to block odor. If light comes in between frame and wall, remove frame, fill crack with caulking or spray foam, then put the frame back on. It should be done anyway.
Plastic method: 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 25mm black masking tape. It 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. lightsonretail.com sells Intertape PF3. If masking tape is not sticky enough on your surfaces, use black kraft paper tape. It is more expensive, thicker, and with stronger adhesive. Look for ProGaff (formerly Permacel) 743, Shurtape 724, and 3M 235.
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.
To darken the door, border the door with 8cm wide strips of black fabric as with the window panel, eg, if the door opens into the room, attach the fabric to edge of the outside so it folds over the edge and fills the gap between the door and frame. Use glue or masking tape of any color for this. Use foam only for large gaps and only on the edges of the door, not the inside or outside.
From simply darkening his bedroom, a friend 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. And 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 actually 2.5 days.
One needs a well ventilated room in a fairly quiet building. A regular, unoccupied house is best. Rent a retreat cabin if necessary.
Note: steel framing or reinforcement and lots of electrical wiring cause electromagnetic disturbance which prevent deep sleep, one of the main values of a retreat. Same goes for the psychic disturbance caused by the presence of other people under the same roof. Simply put, you will not know what a darkness retreat is if you try one in such buildings.
For this short a 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 1-24 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.
Lastly, a recovery period after the retreat is absolutely critical. Allow sufficient, unscheduled time to absorb its value as well as readjust to light, which can affect balance. The day you exit the retreat should be spent quietly resting in solitude at the retreat location. Take a walk. Lie on the sofa. Sleep the night again in darkness. A five-day retreat can require nearly as many days of recovery. Darkness enables your being to go very deep into itself very fast. Just as the Sith lord warned, do not underestimate the power of the dark side.
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.