Fasting During a Solo Dark Room Meditation Retreat
I have great respect for pranic work and fasting. The fresh movement of breatharian is a great source of aspiration. It's really changing deep beliefs in our collective consciousness.
Fasting has great healing holistic qualities and is also a mind opener. What happens when fasting is mixed with a solo meditation retreat in complete darkness.
I can only share what I have witnessed since I reopened the domes for almost a year. The success rate of completing the retreat is low when candidates come already with the plan of fasting or dry fasting.
Here are some facts:
An amazing faster who didn’t drink water for 9 years, eat little food, did many fasts even 40 days fast in the desert booked 7 days and left in the second day.
Another experience faster wanted to do 3 days dry fast had to broke the fast on the second day.
So far, only one faster has done 3 days dry fast, and it felt tough on him.
I have been reflecting on that. First of all, it’s a dark retreat, not a fasting retreat.
The conditions in the domes are not like being outside in the light, the prana is somehow not as full of nutrients as outside in the light, the sun, the sky, the fresh air, the moisture, the colors and so on.
The dark room is a confined space, it can get hot inside in the evening during the dry season. The fans bring air in and out but they are not designed to stay on 24 hours because of the noise and the solar capacity.
I like to put it like this somehow, I can only share my experience. When I stay long retreats in the dome I see how I breath less and less and how stillness takes over my being.
I take advantage of my vision to be shut down to allow the natural flow to go within and I become uninterested about the external conditions or the food.
I enjoy to eat and drink what is necessary to sustain this body. It becomes not much anyway.
It’s all about context and where do I want my attention to be while being in darkness.
It’s clear that I m not going in the dark dome for detoxing or improving my states of consciousness by using fasting. If I want to do that, I will choose an open space surrounded by the most beautiful nature.
I m going in to explore the darkness, to rest my attention in the nothingness of things.
I encounter obstacles on the way.
Who wants to make it harder by adding more challenges?
I build the first dome 10 years ago, I started with a series of 3 days retreats where each of them had a different theme. For example, Vipassana, Hatha yoga, Kundalini, Tantra.
I can see now that my aim was to bring in darkness what I already knew and how I could improve.
Once I started to sit long retreats, I became more humble as I had to surrender to what darkness had to teach me.
The more empty I got, the more I took out with me in the world.
I can only emphasize that.
Come to a dark retreat with an empty cup. Let the space filling it up with more emptiness.
Written by Santosh, the founder of Dark Retreat Center. He now lives in Thailand where he manages retreats on his land. He is a meditation and yoga teacher but prefers building sustainable sacred dwellings at the moment.
https://www.facebook.com/EarthDomesKohPhangan/
Fasting has great healing holistic qualities and is also a mind opener. What happens when fasting is mixed with a solo meditation retreat in complete darkness.
I can only share what I have witnessed since I reopened the domes for almost a year. The success rate of completing the retreat is low when candidates come already with the plan of fasting or dry fasting.
Here are some facts:
An amazing faster who didn’t drink water for 9 years, eat little food, did many fasts even 40 days fast in the desert booked 7 days and left in the second day.
Another experience faster wanted to do 3 days dry fast had to broke the fast on the second day.
So far, only one faster has done 3 days dry fast, and it felt tough on him.
I have been reflecting on that. First of all, it’s a dark retreat, not a fasting retreat.
The conditions in the domes are not like being outside in the light, the prana is somehow not as full of nutrients as outside in the light, the sun, the sky, the fresh air, the moisture, the colors and so on.
The dark room is a confined space, it can get hot inside in the evening during the dry season. The fans bring air in and out but they are not designed to stay on 24 hours because of the noise and the solar capacity.
I like to put it like this somehow, I can only share my experience. When I stay long retreats in the dome I see how I breath less and less and how stillness takes over my being.
I take advantage of my vision to be shut down to allow the natural flow to go within and I become uninterested about the external conditions or the food.
I enjoy to eat and drink what is necessary to sustain this body. It becomes not much anyway.
It’s all about context and where do I want my attention to be while being in darkness.
It’s clear that I m not going in the dark dome for detoxing or improving my states of consciousness by using fasting. If I want to do that, I will choose an open space surrounded by the most beautiful nature.
I m going in to explore the darkness, to rest my attention in the nothingness of things.
I encounter obstacles on the way.
Who wants to make it harder by adding more challenges?
I build the first dome 10 years ago, I started with a series of 3 days retreats where each of them had a different theme. For example, Vipassana, Hatha yoga, Kundalini, Tantra.
I can see now that my aim was to bring in darkness what I already knew and how I could improve.
Once I started to sit long retreats, I became more humble as I had to surrender to what darkness had to teach me.
The more empty I got, the more I took out with me in the world.
I can only emphasize that.
Come to a dark retreat with an empty cup. Let the space filling it up with more emptiness.
Written by Santosh, the founder of Dark Retreat Center. He now lives in Thailand where he manages retreats on his land. He is a meditation and yoga teacher but prefers building sustainable sacred dwellings at the moment.
https://www.facebook.com/EarthDomesKohPhangan/