What Happens When There Is Nowhere Left to Hide? with Scott Berman from Skycave Retreats

What happens when all external distractions are removed?

No phone. No emails. No conversations. Not even any light.

In this fascinating conversation, I sit down with Scott Berman, founder of Sky Cave Retreats, to explore what darkness can reveal about ourselves when there is nowhere left to hide.

We discuss why darkness retreats are often very different from what people expect, how our survival patterns emerge when we are stripped of our usual distractions, and why true self awareness may begin with learning to sit with discomfort rather than trying to escape it.

What struck me most about this conversation was Scott's perspective that perhaps healing is not about transcending difficult emotions, fixing ourselves, or chasing peak experiences. Perhaps it is about developing the capacity to stay present with what is already here.

If you've ever wondered what might happen if you slowed down long enough to truly meet yourself, this episode is for you. 

What We Cover

• Why darkness retreats are often very different from what people expect

• How fight, flight and freeze responses emerge in complete darkness

• The surprising challenges experienced by long term spiritual seekers

• Why vulnerability is often the gateway to deeper self connection

• The difference between peak experiences and lasting transformation

• Common misconceptions about darkness retreats

• Self reconnection, intuition and learning to trust yourself

• Why Scott believes darkness is not inherently healing but can create the conditions for profound self awareness

• The role of safety, nurture and nervous system regulation

• What darkness has taught Scott about his own healing journey

About Scott

Scott Berman is the founder of Sky Cave Retreats and has spent more than a decade exploring solitude, self inquiry and the transformative potential of darkness. Through facilitating hundreds of darkness retreat experiences, Scott and his team have developed a unique approach that combines nervous system awareness, self observation and deep personal exploration.

His work challenges many common assumptions about spirituality and healing, inviting people to meet themselves with honesty, curiosity and compassion rather than striving to become someone different.

Where to Find Scott

Website: Sky Cave Retreats

Instagram: @skycaveretreats

YouTube: Sky Cave Retreats

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:03

Welcome to Inside Out Connections, where we explore the link between your skin, your gut, emotional health, and your deeper sense of self. I'm your host, Tracy Ann, a wellness coach exploring what it really means to reconnect from the inside out. What happens when there is nowhere left to hide? No phone, no emails, no conversations, no endless distractions, not even any light. My guest today is Scott Berman, founder of Sky Cave Retreats, and a passionate advocate for the transformative power of darkness. What fascinates me about Scott's work is that it seems to cut through so much of the noise of modern day life. In a world where we're constantly busy, connected, and stimulated. A darkness retreat offers something completely different: an opportunity to stop, to slow down, and to turn inward. But perhaps it's not the darkness that people fear. Perhaps it's what the darkness reveals. Today we're exploring what happens when all external distractions are removed, why people choose to spend time in complete darkness, and how this unique experience can lead to profound insight, healing, and self-connection. Scott, welcome. I am so excited to have you here today, and I'm fascinated to hear all about Sky Cave Retreats. Yeah. So before Sky Cave retreats, what was life looking like for you personally?

SPEAKER_05 1:46

Um well, I guess it matters how far back we go. Um there was a time in my early twenties where I started spending a lot of time alone out in nature, out in the wild, I'd spend three to six months solo out in the mountains in southern Baja in Mexico. And then also in Northern California. And there was I mean, it was kind of two different pulls in me. Uh I didn't see it that way at the time. One was a sincere thread of there's something more. That was kind of what what I was aware of and and more kind of what I thought I was primarily moving on. But then there was this other thread of um pretty much aversion to what was actually here. And we find, especially being with and accompanying so many people through the dark, that those tend to be coupled. There is this genuine movement and reaching for there must be more. And it can be coupled with what's here right now is not good enough. I don't like it, I want to fix it, change it, transform it, move it, whatever it may be. But that part of that aspect of it tends to get covered because it's certainly not a comfortable thing to really feel. Um, and so in that movement of there must be more, um, I'd gotten into meditation and various practices and spent a lot of time in solitude and discovered dark retreat in 2012. Uh, did my first one with my wife. And then in 2013, I went down to Baja and built a little small earthbag dome and went in the dark there for my first solo time. And then we landed here in southern Oregon and built our first dark retreat in 2018 and started using it in 2020.

SPEAKER_04 3:43

Fascinating. And so when that question came to you, like you said, there's got to be something more. How old were you at the time, if you don't mind me asking?

SPEAKER_05 3:52

I mean, the first time was actually the first time I took mushrooms, which I might have been 16. So that was yeah, um almost 30 years ago.

SPEAKER_04 4:05

Yeah, opened up a different doorway, so to speak.

SPEAKER_05 4:08

Yeah, that was the first time of like, whoa, that was more like there is something more. It was less of a question and more of a like there is something more. Yeah. I mean, I was young and like I think the there wasn't much access for me at the time of psychedelics being held in any kind of intentional container. So it was just kind of more of a free-for-all with myself and my friends. And so it was a different kind of you know, experience when something's not held in a way where someone can support someone's sense of safety and kind of you know, nurture that them coming into what else may be here. Um, but there were a couple windows through my early explorations with psychedelics of like, oh, there is more. And then there was a reaching for how to get there. Um I'd say and then I I'd say that was probably primarily my orientation for like the next 20 years. I got pretty good at singing myself into ecstatic bliss and spending most of my days in that. I'd say that was what was driving me for probably about 20 years and a lot of my time in solitude. And then I'd say over the last four years, as the work here with Dark Retreats has really shifted, which we'll kind of get into. There was the first two years here, which it was just me. And then four years ago, Adrian, my other teammate, and really the primary architect of like how we hold things here, how we orient with people, uh, what we've come to kind of understand and see as we've had over 700 people come through here. It's really started to change me as I could start to see some of the things in myself that I couldn't see. Different defenses, strategies, ways of managing my experience, different ways that I saw how I took spirituality as a way of shifting and changing and managing my experience as opposed to moving closer to my natural, authentic, kind of spontaneously emerging experience.

SPEAKER_04 6:26

I love that. That makes sense. Yeah. We're quite clever in ways that we can duck and weave sitting with ourselves and the big emotions that come up, right?

SPEAKER_05 6:39

Totally. On that note that you shared, like something that tends to surprise people, and it certainly surprised myself, and it's been a learning curve as we've seen it over and over again, is typically spiritually oriented people who have a lot of history in spirituality, who have a lot of their sense of worth and meaning in spirituality, like they tend to more often than not have a harder time in the dark than people who don't have that much weight of spirituality in their in their personality, in how they hold themselves. Um and a lot of people tend to be like, whoa, like, why would that be? And what's happening there? And it's not to say, it's not all the time, but it it tends to be that, and I I fit into that category as well. And so it tends to be that there's a lot more filters of how we're supposed to be. We all have our cultural filters of how we're supposed to be, what we've grown up with, what culture teaches us, like for a man, maybe showing sadness and fear is typically not really a welcomed thing in our culture. And showing fear as a man certainly tends not to be good for survival because one's like vulnerable and exposed. And so, you know, as a woman, there's anger, and then there's whatever else we grew up with in our family, in our peer group, in our culture. And then bring in spirituality, which brings in a whole nother lens of maybe how we romanticize spirituality, how we idealize spirituality. Most people didn't get into spirituality to feel their discomfort more. They got into it to transcend, to awaken, to move beyond discomfort, to move beyond fear, to move beyond sadness, to move into bliss and ecstasy. And when that is how spirituality is organized, if it is in somebody, then there's almost a turning away from what may spontaneously or naturally be here in the backdrop that doesn't align with our ideas of how we should be or how we want to be within a spiritual context. And so there's that. And people with lots of spiritual techniques have developed very nuanced and sophisticated strategies for managing their experience. We can breathe through, we can like do a certain kind of practice, we can control our experience and our awareness and our focus by adding, overlaying. And not that there's anything wrong with any of that. It's just an interesting thing to kind of explore that there are more sophisticated nuanced techniques for holding ourselves together and moving through discomfort as opposed to, and not that this is better, but just as an alternative of not doing that and having oneself be totally vulnerable and exposed in the discomfort and allowing our system to digest it without us, through our ideas of how we should be, trying to fix and change it.

SPEAKER_04 9:46

For sure. And that makes absolute sense to me. And there are just so many different ways to get there. But I think the key point is self-awareness, is understanding all those blocks and strategies that we have. And I spoke about it on the podcast before I had Tom Cronin on, who's a meditation teacher, delightful man, love what he does. He's a Vedic teacher, and it's fantastic for people to meditate. And I love all that. But I raised something on the podcast about how my mother leading up to her death was meditating more than she was awake. She suicided when I was younger. So that was her way of probably checking out from the world a little rather than dealing with what was actually going on. She was using meditation as an avoidance, I guess, to everyday life. So that just resonated with me in that way.

SPEAKER_05 10:43

Yeah, and there are many different forms of meditation. There's many different types of meditation, right? So that obviously it has its different applications and different situations and all the different things. It's just one unique thing that we've noticed, um, that it can add more filters around how we should be, what we should do. And it can add more sophisticated strategies and defenses and ways of managing our experience. We find that if somebody has a real receptivity, like they've come with the blank slate, the classic like zen mind, beginner's mind, there's an openness, there's a willingness to be with what's here. And they don't have many strategies or techniques from breath work or meditation or whatever. When they go into the dark, they come undone a lot more quickly and a lot more easily. And then in the coming undone, there's an actual meeting what's here, as opposed to being in our strategies and defenses and our movement to achieve spirituality or overcome sadness or fear, or there's just uh an intimate meeting. It's more of a being in a relational field with what's here and not in our kind of movement towards how we think we should be or want to be, which is uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_04 12:10

Yeah. And it's letting go of those rules and rigidness, right?

SPEAKER_05 12:16

Yeah, and that's you know, that's difficult. I mean, that's a whole nother amazing thread to explore. So our our typical I guess one thing that I'd say is where someone does a dark retreat completely shapes their experience. Like all places are not created equal. Like it's more than just going into the dark. And it like how the container's held, the the type of support that's provided completely shapes the type of experience that someone has. And so it's not like somebody hears about a dark retreat or they see a lot of different experiences that someone's having at maybe one place and then go somewhere else thinking they'll have maybe a similar experience. Because the way that the container's held, the way that it's presented, it completely shapes someone's experience. And we could kind of touch on some of that. For example, most people do not enjoy a dark retreat, just to be completely frank. And as I see more and more dark retreat places pop up, they tend to come more in this realm, whether they're more in a plant medicine thread or a spirituality thread, but they're presented as this helps reset your nervous system. It's really relaxing, it feels like a dark womb, like all these really juicy, beautiful things. In our experience, that's just not true. It is not any like the way we relate to the dark and what we've seen is the dark is a pressure. It creates pressure in your system. It stimulates your survivor, your survival patterns, it stimulates your defenses, your safety mechanisms, all the things you do that you do when you're under pressure. But since a lot like our personality is almost like our survival pattern and the way that we manage our experience, so when people are in there, it can tend to go unnoticed unless the way the container's held and the way that the support is with you, it kind of supports you in seeing and noticing that. Otherwise, if somebody says, Tracy Ann, come to our retreat and it's going to be relaxing and reset your nervous system and it's going to be like a womb and it's going to be this beautiful, juicy experience. And you go, and that's not what's happening for you, but like in the backdrop of you, you feel like it should be, and the support is there with you, kind of being like, this is, I mean, unconsciously, this is the type of experience you should be having. And for them, which happens with all facilitators, right? There's a sense of meaning and worth in the facilitator for you to have a certain kind of experience because that makes me feel like I'm doing good work. And so all of a sudden, unconsciously, you bury all the negative, hard feelings that you're having. And there's a way in which you present in a positive way. And so to take that with how what we discovered over the first two years here, the first two years was just me. All I had was my experience, my very like at the time, kind of more male-oriented spirituality. There was an achieving spirituality, there was a getting somewhere, there was a fixing and changing our experience to be the most ideal, beautiful version of ourselves, which kind of overlays the fact that we're actually not happy with where we're at and just meeting that. And so in those first two years, if if you asked me, do people experience fear, I would have said no. You said, What is it like? I would have said, Everyone's having an amazing, positive, transformational experience. That's what I wanted people to have. That's what, that's the way it was presented, and that's the feedback we were getting. And every single person was saying that. After those two years, Adrienne, who is a friend of 15 years, who is comes more from a somatic background and a lot of her own kind of deeply rested inner work and is also incredibly perceptive. She would have sessions with people before and after their dark retreat. And when someone would emerge and have their session, I would share with her a little bit, like there was so much emotion, they were so happy, and all these things. Person after person, she would come back and share. Like this person was in fight, flight, or freeze. Like their entire nervous system had so much charge, they were super activated. And it was person after person after person, where I was like, whoa, I'm totally missing something. And Adrian was like, I don't think dark retreat is good for people. And she was in that for probably about a year. She stayed with it because she was like, I'm having incredible access into people because of how cracked open they are. And we're able to really traverse so much that we wouldn't normally be able to. And I don't think dark retreat's good for people. Over that year, she started to map out more what's actually happening for people. Like when we're not trying to have people have this kind of romanticized spiritual experience, what's actually happening in their nervous system? And so we began to map out more. Adrian began to map out more the fight, flight, and freeze, how we could recognize it, how we could support people and them recognizing it. And so we began to evolve kind of a map of what was happening on some level and how to how we orient and support people here now. And so that's kind of changed, and we've seen a real evolution in the type of experience people are having and people not leaving with built-up charge and there being more of a congruence of what I'm noticing, what they're noticing, what Adrian's no, like there's a more coherent kind of um thread that gets woven in there. And there's so much more that we can get into of just the different things that we've noticed over the years and how the darkness is ultimately registers as a threat in our nervous system. Now, those things I said, like that it's regulating and that like it can be healing and that it's soothing for the nervous system, like and that it's a dark womb, like those things can be true, but they're not necessarily true across the board. And if somebody goes into the dark for maybe a few hours, that may be their experience. But when somebody goes in for more than a day, there's a different kind of pressure that comes and it's not necessarily soothing. And but unconsciously, we all suppress that because when somebody's committed to a certain amount of time in the nervous system, in the background of the psyche, to admit I'm uncomfortable, I don't like this, and I have to be in here for a couple more days is incredibly petrifying for the for our organism. So it gets buried. So it gets buried, and most people are not in contact with how incredibly uncomfortable they are in the dark. And so that tends to be one of our primary orientations with people, is normalizing it and really inviting people into the conflict that is inherently in their system from the pressure, overwhelm, discomfort, disorientation, loneliness that comes with being in the dark.

SPEAKER_04 19:49

Because I would imagine being in the dark, depending, like you said, how long you are there for, whether it's a day or a few days, your mind would be quite noisy initially, right? Just there'd be a lot of chatter going on in your mind. It'd be I'd imagine the volume would be turned up quite loud.

SPEAKER_05 20:09

Yeah, for most people. I mean, there is, you know, as there is a period of time for let's say 60% of the people where being in the dark is inherently relaxing. And that's when the melatonin comes on. So in the beginning, for maybe 60% of the people, a little bit more than half, there's a big dump in the brain of melatonin. And so people do relax, they rest, they sleep a lot, like it genuinely feels relaxing. Not for everyone, for a little bit more than half of the people. But come, and it's different for everyone that they may have that, they may have an amazing night's sleep, or that melatonin, everyone's different, may go on through the first half of the day. For some people, if they're lucky enough, the melatonin goes through the entire first day. But at a certain point, that melatonin wears off and the holy shit kind of comes on. So, like, yeah, it can be like some of those the ways that some dark retreat places pitch all these positive things. It can be true that first day for some people. But go once it goes on, it's just not really the case. And so then the orientation becomes everything. Like just being in the dark is not really a nurturing experience. Our orientation is what can make it a nurturing experience and what can bring kind of a very simple fundamental change.

SPEAKER_04 21:42

So, Scott, talk me through the process. So somebody comes to you for the first time to sign up for a retreat. What does it look like?

SPEAKER_05 21:54

Um so I'd say Before I get into it, because it is always evolving and we're kind of at the cusp of like another big step. As right now we're in Southern Oregon and we have three caves here. We are in the process of expanding and building another center in Asheville, North Carolina, where we'll have 10 caves and more of a group facilitation space and really get to take the next step in what we've seen and what's evolved over the last six years and kind of moving it into form in a new way. And so in that, there'll be more of a prep course and a lot more preparation. But like right now, when somebody signs up about a couple of weeks before they come, there are some talks that they get from Adrian that really distills down at the core of it, like what we've learned over the years. Like it really helps break down the fight, flight, and freeze so that people can begin to be able to notice themselves when they've gone into it. It normalizes the threat that people feel when they go in the dark. It normalizes kind of what the nervous system does when it's in the dark. It goes over some of the brain chemistry shifts that we notice and different fundamental orientations that we have found to be supportive and we have found to be themes and threads that are woven through most people's time in the dark. And then when somebody arrives, there's 24 hours for them to settle into the space before they go into the dark. And they also have a session, a one-on-one session with Adrian that really starts to meet them where they're at and support them in going in. It supports them in them starting to see some of their patterning so that they can recognize it. It starts to lay the groundwork for what would be new. You know, and that's it's different for each person. Like somebody, their patterning might be that they're constantly trying to fix and change their self and they're stuck more in this healing loop of like what's wrong with them. And so for that person, it may be them shifting to finding, discovering, connecting with parts in their body that are actually comfortable, relaxed, or even just neutral. And in that, they start to create a relationship with parts of them that don't need to be fixed or changed. And then that can start to have their system digest those parts that were contracted because they're starting to relax. For someone else, they may have so many positivity filters. And there's any negativity, it's covered with positivity and everything's fine and I'm doing great. And for that person, it might be walking them into the conflict and having like, it would more be like supporting them in, well, one, normalizing it so they don't feel like there's anything wrong with them of where they are maybe in conflict or contracted, and then letting that contraction press into them and squeeze them without them trying to breathe through it and change it. That would bring them into a totally new way of being and it would allow their system to be spontaneous and uncontrolled. And so for each person, for one person, it might be that they're numb and they don't have contact with their body. And so for the first time ever, they may discover that they're numb and they're just in that numbness or they're emotionally numb or they're not available to anger or fear or the way that they hold in the energy. And so for them to express anger, but someone else may habitually move in anger as a defense from their weakness. And so for that person, it may be coming into the vulnerability. So each person we meet where they're at, and then there's this exploration of getting familiar with kind of the survival patterns we have, and then new ways of orienting.

SPEAKER_04 25:52

And so after that So there's no, there's there's no ultimate goal.

SPEAKER_05 25:57

That's great. Yeah. There is no ultimate goal. There is no universal benefit of going into the dark. There's actually, I'd say, really no benefit of going into the dark. It's all in the orientation. It's like it's actually, I'd say, more detrimental to go in the dark because of how stimulating and aggravating it is for the nervous system, unless you're in a container with ideally people who understand what's happening at a nervous system level. They're not trying to sell you the benefits of dark retreat. They're not telling you this is an amazing, beautiful experience. They're not needing you to have a beautiful, amazing experience. And um, curiosity. It's curiosity, it's an exploration, and they actually really understand what's happening. Most people feel trapped when they go in the dark. Like that is a very common theme.

SPEAKER_04 26:51

And most people I feel like women and men they differ. I'd imagine sort of mothers who tend to find it hard to relax because we're so busy doing everything for everyone else 100% of the time. Is there a bit of a pattern, do you see, with with women and men or mothers in particular?

SPEAKER_05 27:09

Yeah, I mean, there is. We live in a patriarchal culture. So women also have like uh when it comes to survival, the masculine takes, you know, takes the cake, if you will. And so there is this like, and the dark brings on a survival response so it can bring on those kind of more. I mean, it matters how somebody's pattern and what their survival pattern is. I would say that naturally women have more access to nurture. And nurture is the thing that carries someone through the dark. Nurture is the thing that allows our system to self-digest. It's the thing that allows us to be receptive. It's the thing that allows us to put control down because of the connectivity that comes. And then our system can process on its own without us thinking we know what's best because this is wrong to feel, and I'm supposed to feel this way. So naturally, women have more access to nurture. There maybe tends to be for women more access to receptivity, to listening, to connectivity that is more of like simple and relational. So I would say the feminine, because we live in a patriarchal culture, and so there are plenty like across the board who carry more masculine energy, and there are men who carry more feminine energy. So I'd say more like the feminine really finds their way in the dark. Like it is through softening, through listening, through attuning, through receiving, through gentleness, through nurture that one finds their way. It is not the hero's journey. It is not for the spiritual warrior. Um, because those things are big and to overcome and conquer, and all of a sudden one's controlling how incredibly uncomfortable, weak, vulnerable, exposed that one is that's it. Going into the subject. And so after that session with Adrian, someone that evening goes into the dark, people take time to get oriented in the space. And then right now, then we're exploring with different kinds of programs and ways of or holding the container, which we'll get into when we get into Asheville. But for now, and the way that it's been the last few years is three days, four nights in the dark. And then somebody emerges, they have another session with Adrian, and then there's 24 hours to kind of integrate. In that session with Adrian, there's the opportunity, like for many people, there's still a lot of unprocessed charge in the body that people have no ideas in there. And so part of that comes out in the session. There's also a drawing out of maybe what someone's some insights that people have come into, and then really like discovering them more in the body and embodying those. I mean, one amazing example of, I guess this dovetails back in, of people feel trapped in the dark. Even though the door's not locked, we spend a lot of time de-shaming, inviting people to take a pause. We do not encourage people to stay in the dark the whole time. We encourage people to let nurture lead, to listen to their body, to not just stay in the dark because you think it's best. That's going to give you the best experience, that's the best thing to do. We spend a lot of time doing that. And even still, a majority of people feel trapped in there because we've all been programmed from survival that failing does not lead to anything good. And so when somebody's come to do a dark retreat, stepping out of the dark feels like failure. And so all of our filters come up that that's not good. We're not going to get the right experience. And then so we override our system that says, I'm overwhelmed, I can't be with this anymore. And then people go into an enduring, and there's a background sense of I'm trapped. And there was somebody here some months ago, and I went up to I'm up there every morning and evening with checking in. And I was asking questions. And from the sometimes just the way people say hello, once I've gotten to know them, just that's enough to really sense into if someone's genuinely relaxed, open, and connective in the space, or if they're more in their defenses and held together and getting by. And so my sense was he was getting by. But he was like, I'm good, everything's fine. And I asked, and we really like there's a lot of different questions that really support people in self-reflecting and feeling in and self-attuning. As we got into it more, he was able to land in, well, actually, I'm really bored. What happens when people are bored is they've typically gone numb. And they've there's not there's no engagement with their body, certainly not the space, but there's like a shutdown. It's a complete shutdown. It's very common. And that again, like it, it's very relaxing. It can be because the whole system shut down. So people can, we've had people go through their whole time and they've gone numb and they've been relaxed, but there's ways that we can begin to explore with them with all the sudden, it's almost like a disconnect from themselves rather than being connected. Totally. And if you have a well-attuned support, that's not like that's again where it becomes like because a facilitator could come up and somebody's like, I'm calm and it's great, and they're just like, that's great. Positive experiences are the best. But like if there's a real exploration and one's willing to really land in, I don't know if dark retreats are good for people, then there's a real different way that someone's going to explore. And so for this person, I asked a bunch of different questions that started to have him feel and explore and orient in different ways to where I then invited him, like, hey, you don't need to stay in here. You can come out and take a break if you want. And he was like, Okay, I'm coming out. Like right away, he was able to, and so he came out and he started crying right when he came out. And after a few minutes, he looked at me and he said, Scott, I told you that I was okay. And I really believed that I was okay, but I wasn't. And that is very common.

SPEAKER_04 33:48

Yeah. The way that we're held together. Your Instagram is what drew me in. This is how I I I came to your work originally. It is just so powerful to watch a combination of the music. Music always gets me going, but just seeing everyone in their most vulnerable raw state when they come out of the cave. Are these people in for like a day, three days, a few hours?

SPEAKER_05 34:19

Like it's a mixed group of it's it's um, you know, in our early days it was a free-for-all because we had no idea what we were doing. We had people come from 10, 20, 30, 40 days. After we witnessed enough cycles of people coming through, we found that there's a real, like, in our experience, the dark is a pressure. Like that is primarily and inherently like one of the main things that we notice. And what compounds that pressure is the amount of time people are in the dark. Longer is 100% not deeper. It's usually less deep. There's a sweet spot for everyone, but the psyche in the dark for really long periods of time will totally just shut down. And so right now, we do three days, four nights in the dark. Now, people don't always stay in the whole time. There are people who weave in and out. There's people who come out and see the stars. Like there's a real invitation to let your body lead, not your mind lead, not what you think you should do or what you think is best. It's really like starting to attune to what your body wants. And then there's more nurture, receptivity, connectivity. And then what happens is one, there's a big difference between I should be in the dark, two, I want to be in the dark. And when someone genuinely wants to be in the dark and they're attuned with their body, there's nurture and connectivity and intimacy. One can actually open and there's a felt sense of safety, like a genuine felt sense of safety in the body. One can then open to the dark and be in a relational field with the dark. And once somebody's in a relational field with the dark and in tune with their body, there's this bridge to actually feeling the infinite, to feeling the vastness, to feeling eternity.

SPEAKER_04 36:16

It's like surrendering to the process. And I often say that when we're sick or or we get a cold or the flu or something's happening, and it's like, oh, I've got so much to do. There's so much on my plate, and and then we start to fight and we have all this resistance to what's going on. But if you just surrender to the process and and invite and allow, it just becomes an an easier transition.

SPEAKER_05 36:42

Totally. I mean, and you know, obviously easier said than done when we're like when we're under pressure.

SPEAKER_04 36:50

But it changes, it changes something when you allow yourself.

SPEAKER_05 36:54

Definitely. Yeah. Which is, you know, it's it's hard because when we're under pressure, our impulse is to relieve the pressure. And and but to allow the pressure, it sometimes gets louder and bigger. Part of the intuition is to not allow when we're under pressure. And so that's like there's a really interesting alchemy that the dark offers is it creates in our nervous system a sense of threat. It creates a sense of pressure, but we're not under a real threat. And so it really is this interesting opportunity. Like the dark reveals, it exposes the backdrop of us, like the survival patterns, the compulsions, like all of it can come to the surface. That is how we hold the container here and what we invite people into. Because in the world, when we're under threat or there's an emergency, or we're under a lot of pressure, we usually need to push forward. And like some of us get bigger, some of us get smaller, some of us run, some of us fight, some of us free, we all do different things when we're under pressure, when there's an emergency, but we got to move. And so the unique invitation, at least here with us in the dark, is what happens when you're under pressure, when the survival patterns come on, when your nervous system feels threatened, but there's not a real threat. And you have the time and space to slow down and just like, whoa, what is happening in my body, in my nervous system, in my mind? And what is like these are my habitual compulsions? And since there's not a real threat, I can actually be with this sense of threat and allow it. But it's hard, it's not intuitive because when we're exposed in that, we feel incredibly vulnerable.

SPEAKER_04 38:54

I wanted to touch on intuition because I would imagine just in our busy modern day life of technology, screens, emails, constant beeps, reminders, we're always tuned in. And I think many of us are not in touch with our intuition. But I would imagine doing these retreats, your intuition will become more heightened.

SPEAKER_05 39:19

It's not a promise I'd make. I'd say usually less likely than so. Um I'd say it can happen, but what's what's more likely to happen is landing in your survival patterns. And that's going to feel intuitive. Like when we're under threat, it's not real intuition, it's our reflexive nature to protect ourselves. And but it feels like intuitive because it makes sense, it's survival. And so when we're in the dark, there is this background threat. And again, it it varies. Like when I say that, we've had tons of people come here and it's very clear that they are incredibly uncomfortable, severely dysregulated, they have a lot of charge. Like the way they're talking, you I feel like I'm being like blown back to the wall because there's so much aggression and they don't feel aggressive though. I mean, we've all been with people who, if we asked them, they'd say they're relaxed, but they're like yelling and clearly aggressive.

SPEAKER_01 40:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 40:24

That is what happens in the dark all the time. And it's overlaid with all these things. And I mean, there was somebody recently, and it's a conversation I've had with so many people where I'm the best I can asking questions and supporting them and them coming into contact with what's happening in their body, because you can feel the aggression or the fear or the survival that's there. And it's it's been said many times, well, but I'm not in a panic. I'm fine. And it's like, well, panic would be a really not a really uh functional response to have when you are kind of trapped in the dark because your system would rev so high if you were panicking. And so usually the system shuts down. And so it's not that people are in a panic. Like when I do talk about the threat and the overwhelm and the pressure, it doesn't mean people are in a panic. It's just that there is this pressure, and then we all do what we do when we're in there. And so, in terms of the intuition, the reflexive movement is to protect ourselves and it feels intuitive because it feels like survival and it's keeping us from what's uncomfortable. It's not intuitive to allow our chest to be squeezed. It's not intuitive to allow the gripping in our belly to grip us without trying to breathe through it and change it. But once someone really gets in touch with what's happening in their body and uh and genuinely allows it, those threat responses do unwind. Somebody is not necessarily in a survival pattern the entire time they're in the dark. As someone really attunes to their body and discovers a felt sense of safety, there is an unwinding. The organism does can begin to feel safe in the dark. And then the true intuition can come online because we're not in a survival pattern.

SPEAKER_01 42:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 42:28

If that makes sense.

SPEAKER_04 42:30

Yeah, it does.

SPEAKER_05 42:32

Um we've seen many folks come through who are numb and don't have much access, and they could do dark retreat after dark retreat, and they go in, their system goes numb and flat, and they like that, or they're able to overlay lots of fun things on top of it, but there's not a genuine receptive, vulnerable opening. And they could go in many times. Like the amount of time and length someone goes into the dark doesn't necessarily equal much. It doesn't, in in our experience and what we've seen, it doesn't matter how many times someone's gone in the dark, it doesn't matter the length of days. Like I have seen people go into the dark for one day here and have the most life-changing, profound experience than someone who's been in for 40 days or someone who's done 15 dark retreats because somebody can go in and stay in their survival pattern the entire time and not realize it. So it's it's really it's the quality and not the quantity, right?

SPEAKER_04 43:31

Yeah. And so do people eat when they're in there or is it a fasted state, or are you uh are people fueling when they're in these retreats in the cage?

SPEAKER_05 43:42

Yeah. So we don't let people fast. What we've seen over the years is fasting tends it has its benefits clearly, but in the dark, fasting can tend to dissociate someone from their body because you're denying the basic nourishment of Tending to and caring for your body. I mean, obviously it has its benefits, but in this container where you're stripped where you're stripped of everything, and nurture is kind of the doorway to tend to your body, naturally we're going to feed it. And so, um, I mean, if people want to eat a little bit, that's fine. But like once people really step into the container and how we hold it, and that sense of nurture is really what we invite, people do eat warm food. It's not vegan or vegetarian. If somebody wants meat, it's like whatever is comfortable and nurtureful for you, that's where we meet you.

SPEAKER_04 44:42

I love that. So it's got a huge philosophy behind work and this podcast is self-reconnection and exploring the different modalities that can help guide ourselves back to ourselves. So, what fascinates me about your work is that it seems to cut through and bypass so many external layers. So there is nowhere else to go but inward. Do you feel darkness retreats accelerate that self-awareness more so than other modalities?

SPEAKER_05 45:17

Again, I I guess I'd say it can. A dark retreat, for most people, if they just went in solo on their own or they went in a place where it was presented in all these different ways that it could be presented, it could just create an incredible amount of built-up charge and survival patterns in somebody's system. Um, unless the people who are holding it have a sense of what's happened for the average person's nervous system when they go in. So I think it can create an incredible amount of self-awareness. It can have people really understand what their system does under pressure, what their nervous system does under pressure and under threat, what happens when they let that in, and they're able to genuinely allow their system to be in that way, since there's no need to act. There's not a real threat, which is the uniqueness of, I think, of the dark retreat. And then from that, there is a discovery of what else is here. And there can be so much uh depth and insight and intuition and like awareness in that. But again, I think it's it's primarily rooted in the orientation coupled with going into the dark. But inherently, the dark, I'd say, is more or less if someone's going in for longer than a day, the dark is more inherently stimulating than anything else.

SPEAKER_04 47:03

Yeah. Interesting. So who is the person that comes to see you? Are they burnt-out professionals? Is it a mixed bag of different people seeking a different modality? Like who is your client that comes to you?

SPEAKER_05 47:20

Yeah, I'd say it's a mixed bag. I'd say a lot of it has had to do with the way that we've crafted the experience and the way that we present it because we have steered clear of like trying to present it in any spiritual kind of way, of even talking about the benefits. I mean, clearly we're like, is a dark retreat good for people? That depends on the orientation. And so it brings people with burnout, people who want to unplug. It brings the spiritual seekers, it brings the psychonauts, it brings the uh people who saw the real on Instagram and they've never meditated, they've never done breath work, never done plant medicine, they've never done therapy, and they're just like, I want that. Like, I don't know what those people have, but like I want that. And so it's a whole range. Uh, people who are like, I don't like meditating, people who are just getting into health and wellness. So it's a whole span, which is amazing because it it also gives us this wide breadth of humans that have so many different backgrounds, intentions, expectations. Um, I mean, in my early days, it was really because of what I came out of. Like I thought Dark Retreat was just for more advanced meditators and people who had spent a lot of time and it was like a big step in that. Um, I feel very differently now. I actually um because I found that people who come in that actually tend to have more filters and a little bit more challenge in genuinely surrendering and opening. And so it's been delightful and it's totally flipped my idea of spirituality on its head when I've witnessed tons of people come through here who are like, I don't even like meditating. They've never been, they're not on a spiritual mission, and they've had the most they've gone into the deepest states of like suspended in stillness and bliss for hours. No meditation practice, never meditated a day. There was one guy who came straight off of Wall Street. He was one who's like, I don't even like meditating. The idea of it's not interesting, I'm not into plant medicine, breath work. And he went in and he was in tears in the second day from the depth of the tenderness and stillness that he dropped into without anything. It was just, he was incredibly receptive and was able to really take us to heart and really able to at that point, just some simple pointings with people, kind of like, have you ever looked just a little bit that way? And with somebody who's undefended and they're able to turn and look and willing to admit the fear and the vulnerability and go into it, then there's there's so much incredible, delicate kind of magic on the other side.

SPEAKER_04 50:20

Because if you think of talk therapy, while there is a time and a place for talk therapy, it's amazing. I've done it. We do have those filters out. We filter what we say, how much information we're going to give, how vulnerable we're going to get. You know, we're just sort of letting little bits out. It depends on how safe we feel, who the therapist is. But to me, this sounds really interesting because you're with yourself the whole time. So there is a trust in that. And for some people, it's really hard to trust themselves, right? So I guess that's part of the journey is learning to trust yourself and connect rather than seeking somebody else to guide you. I know you're offering some type of guidance, but in terms of a traditional therapy session, it it so it just sounds to me like a beautiful way to connect with yourself.

SPEAKER_02 51:17

Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_05 51:19

It can be. And you know, there is the um there's the initial discovering of how incredibly uncomfortable we actually are when everything's taken away. And then you know, with I think the support comes in, I mean, for many ways, co-regulation as humans like is essential. Um and we all can't see what we can't see. And so someone can just point, and if we're really willing to like lay down how we roll and look a little newly, there's like all of a sudden a whole new vista can open up and we can start to explore in new ways.

SPEAKER_04 52:06

And um yeah, there's and in terms of of psychedelics, I mean, here in Australia, it it's not really a thing. It's not legal in Australia. I mean, you can, but it's a a costly experience if you want to do it. But um I would imagine the Sky Cave retreats are more appealing for people that are a bit tentative about going down the psychedelic pathway.

SPEAKER_05 52:31

Yeah. I mean, we've we've had, I'd say that's a range too. You know, we have lots of people who have never done psychedelics and they're like, I'm not interested. We have people who are like, I'm considering psychedelics, but I was interested in doing this first. People who are like, I did a lot of psychedelics and I'm no longer into them. And then people who are like, psychedelics is my jam and I'm trying this too. And so there's the full range. You know, I'd say this is incredibly different than psychedelics. Um it can be, I say this lightly, but it can be very difficult for people who are deep into psychedelics because psychedelics give a very big, powerful, meaningful experience. And it really fills our sense of spiritual worth because something's happening and it's big and it's meaningful, and we're seeing things and we're knowing things, and like we're blasted open. And so there can be for a lot of those people this expectation that darkness retreats going to be this type of peak experience, and we're gonna get blasted open and DMT is gonna happen, and we're gonna have visual all these things. And really, the the magic of the dark retreat takes place in the subtleties. It's incredibly simple, it's incredibly delicate, it's so small, it's so quiet, it's so tiny. It is not filling us with a sense of spiritual worth and pride. Or when obviously there's so much more to psychedelics, and that was for me an initial catalyst. But just that being one of the traps of that, and then how that can kind of get jumbled up with a dark retreat, because it's really the meaning in a dark retreat is not found in the biggest, the brightest, the loudest, the coolest, the like the a really an amazing story to tell. Like when people genuinely drop in the dark and open into a relational field with the dark and find an incredibly new level of intimacy and connectivity, they're just like, what could I say? Like there's just not, it's not there's no big story. The way that someone kind of dissolves out into the dark, there's not someone there to really claim I did something amazing. It's like, it's the dissolving of that. And like when that droplet becomes the ocean, in a sense. And so it's it's an incredibly simple experience. And so there's not that much to write home about. I mean, there is, it's fundamental and it could completely change us, but it's it's also incredibly simple. Now that's not to say, I was gonna say that's not to say some people do have peak experiences in the dark. Some people do have visuals. I'd say most of the people who have visuals don't like them and they want them to go away because they're distracting, they're overwhelming, it's obscuring kind of the simplicity, the subtlety that they've dropped into. That's more often than not. Some people have really cool visuals. Every once in a while, somebody comes and has a completely mind-blowing peak experience. And sometimes people come and they have a mind-blowing peak experience, and it lasts for about half an hour, 45 minutes. They ride the afterwaves for it for about a couple hours, and then they're right back where they were. Some people clawing back to another peak experience. So we have found peak experiences do not fundamentally change someone. It's really the orientation, the way that we relate to what's here that can begin to fundamentally change us because we carry that through the entire current.

SPEAKER_04 56:26

And Scott, do you find afterwards, do you get feedback from the people that have come along and they've had this experience like we see on your Instagram reels? Do you hear about afterwards when they go back into their normal life? Does it keep rolling? Are they still having some kind of change or awareness in their everyday life?

SPEAKER_05 56:49

Yeah. I mean, we definitely we hear stories of like how it has or may have fundamentally changed people. And you know, there's one caveat I'd say about the Instagram reels. Um they're misleading. They do not point to the type of experience that someone necessarily had. Those reels, when people take their masks off, that is the peak experience of the entire thing. So it's misleading in that we are displaying, showing, because it's really the only thing that we capture. I mean, there's truth in it, and it's a peak experience. And it is really hard to tell for some people, it's relief. I mean, we've stopped really sharing these videos to really more touch on the essence now of what we offer and what's possible of what, but when someone emerges for the dark, for some people, if they were holding their breath in there the majority of the time to get by, when you come out, when you're rescued from five days stranded on a desert island, you are going to be incredibly emotional, incredibly grateful, so happy, talking about, you know, really the peak moments and insights you've had, but it might have been incredibly difficult. And then there's people who are totally open, deeper in new levels of intimacy and connectivity, and they come out and like, whoa, it's so much because they're feeling so much and it's through the connectivity, it's not from relief. So it can be um it's different. We tend to not really portray the relief reels anymore so that we could kind of more stay true to um. Well, that's not it could still look like relief, you know, it's still like there's still it's not so much grief.

SPEAKER_04 58:45

I I feel it's that vulnerability.

SPEAKER_00 58:48

Yeah, relief. Yeah, sorry. Relief. Yes, relief.

SPEAKER_04 58:51

Yeah, sounds similar. Um very different.

SPEAKER_05 58:54

Uh yeah, but more like the difference between relief and connectivity.

SPEAKER_04 58:58

Yes, but it just speaks to me, and I'd imagine it speaks to so many people because it's so hard for people to show their vulnerability. So when you witness that, it's like, oh God, it's like we it's like we're there with them. You know, you just definitely we all relate to that feeling, which is just magical.

SPEAKER_05 59:18

The ones we do show, it's hard to tell from the outside if it's real relief or if it's actually from the openness and connectivity. They can look from the outside, it can look the same. Like it is, it has that level of vulnerability. And so I'd say in the last year or two, there is like we don't see that that often because of how we are with people now. There is not a crazy amount of charge building up in people's nervous systems that when they come out, there's this huge moment of relief. And that is one thing that I'd say has changed over the years because we are closely tracking people's nervous systems so that someone's not staying in there, building up a bunch of charge so that when they come out, it's relief. When they come out, it is more through the connectivity and actually that sense of intimately feeling what's here, not necessarily being relieved from being stranded on the desert island totally.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:15

Yeah. Yeah. I love that. What are the misconceptions about your dark retreats?

SPEAKER_05 1:00:22

God, I feel like I just talked about so many of them. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:27

Any specifically, if somebody comes in for the first time.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:32

I mean, your expectations probably aren't going to be fulfilled. It's very rare that I don't know if I've ever had somebody come and be like, this was exactly what I thought it was going to be. It's usually not. Um, because if somebody's come just based on watching the Instagram reels, even those people, like not even the majority of them, like 95% of those people, that is not what they were in the majority of the time they were in the dark. They they had times in that current, but that's not like they weren't living that the whole time. So that can be, you know, it's the misconceptions, unfortunately, how I see a lot of different dark retreat places that are popping up now, how they're selling themselves on all these positive spiritual benefits, nervous systems, all these things. Like we just find that that's just not true. It can be true. But to say that it's going to be true, uh, it's just not from what we've seen. Um, but it can be those things, but that depends on the orientation and how the containers is. If it's presented that way, then somebody's going to try to replicate that and get there, as opposed to going through a process that allows them to admit, I'm uncomfortable, I'm scared, I'm overwhelmed, I want to go home, I don't like this, I'm nervous, I'm anxious. Because that, like you were saying about the vulnerability, that's incredibly vulnerable, incredibly exposing, really scary to admit. And then add on top of that, not doing anything about it to change it, adds another level of vulnerability. But that's where someone really starts to come undone in a really gentle way, as we hold it with them, to actually land in a felt sense of safety while that's also present, since there's not a real threat. And so, um, yeah, other things that I'd say, like misconceptions. I think just through this whole conversation we touched on so many, which I think is really important because the more and more dark retreat centers, I think, that pop up, they get presented in a way that talk about the various benefits and they set an expectation that yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:46

I like it with the no expectation. Yeah. I like your approach with the no expectation, no goal. It's just coming in with just a tiny bit of openness about where it might take you. Right. And that in itself is a pretty magical ride. So I would imagine, Scott, that this type of work as a facilitator has changed you as a person and how you show up. What have you learned the most about witnessing and facilitating what you do?

SPEAKER_05 1:03:18

Yeah. It's definitely changed me. Like we have such a unique window into the human psyche here. You know, it's it's a pretty blank slate. Everyone's going into the same type of experience. It's a very controlled environment, if you will. It's quiet, it's dark, everyone's eating the same food. So that's that's pretty unique. It's just amazing to see what's there when everything gets stripped away, when we're no longer able to prop ourselves up in the usual ways that we prop ourselves up, how we all habitually, reflexively go to protect ourselves when we're under threat, and what happens when we have co-regulation, when we're able to establish a felt sense of safety, what happens when we begin to trust ourselves, what different people and different structures and nervous systems need to have trust, to relax, to feel safe, to unwind, how we all have a different capacity for pressure and what a different system needs to follow a new pathway, to be safe, that like what's beneficial for one person, them moving in and expressing anger, could be another person just following their habitual pattern. And for that person, it's, you know, that just the unique ways where that where how everyone's structured and what brings someone into something new and meets someone where they're at. And, you know, there was in the realm of expectations and not going in with much preconceived notions, there was somebody who was just here recently and not on a spiritual mission. He heard about it through Aaron Rodgers, the football player who came. He he this guy came and he was just here for the human experience. He was just like, I just came to experience the human experience. And so when he went in, he didn't have all these filters about how he should be. He wasn't on this romanticized spiritual journey. And one of the days I went up and he was incredibly honest. He fit into more of a unique category of somebody who was just able to name the discomfort because he didn't, he wasn't trying to not be uncomfortable. And he was very clear about that. He's like, I've just come to be with what's here. And one of the days he was like, I'm so lonely. And he was like, How could somebody not be lonely? Where I'm alone in here, I'm eating, and like, as I was with him in that, and as he was able to admit how lonely he was, that was the thing that had him very gently come undone and be vulnerable, and where he was able to feel to him how like connectivity and intimacy was everything, and how he was able to meet himself in that and what that then brought him into. And it's just amazing to see it tends to be that thread where we admit what feels like weakness, which is not. Going to be intuitive that has us move into something totally authentic and allows something kind of spontaneous to emerge and something.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:09

And just to understand that that we're, like you said, all human, having this human experience, right? And we're always so worried about what other people think the vast, but at the end of the day, we're all feeling all the same feels, and we've got our bag of tricks that get us through life. So no, I love that. It's it's just I find it really fascinating. And one day I'm gonna get my ass over there and try it out, perhaps.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:34

Good. We'll get you in the dark.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:37

Yeah, so good. Now, Scott, is there anything else that we haven't covered that you wanted to touch on before we wrap up?

SPEAKER_05 1:06:45

Um, I think we like uh yeah, we covered a lot of ground.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:51

We we covered a lot of ground.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:53

So before we wrap up, I always like to offer a few questions of self-reconnection. So what has the darkness taught you personally about yourself?

SPEAKER_05 1:07:07

Um I guess personally, and not necessarily through the experience of others, but more like through my time of being in there. It's you know, to be totally honest, it's showed me how I have habitually um gone to my go-to survival pattern would be one of them, it would be to dissociate and freeze and kind of go numb. And so through my time in the dark, and naturally through witnessing others and seeing how that plays out, it showed me that pattern. And it uh gave me the space to really gently and spaciously, without time pressure, without performance, to really like allow myself to be in that. And then through that allowing, there was uh a thawing and then the capacity ability to be in that pressure, and then a whole process from that. And so it it did show me how I defend and deflect and gave me the space to allow myself to be in that and have it naturally move through my system.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:29

The ultimate self-awareness. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:34

What are your go-to daily rituals you can't live without?

SPEAKER_05 1:08:39

One of the first things that there's not many things that I probably do every single day, but like I'll drink a quarter gallon of warm water every morning. That's the first thing. Uh, not for any specific health reason. It's just comforting and enjoyable. And so that's something I really enjoy. Um, I could live without it, but like that would be the one of the few things that I would do every day. And um I tend to, and more and more now each day, as I like learn to incorporate slowing down and doing nothing into my day-to-day. It's just like laying down, kicking up my feet and just relaxing, like doing nothing, not not a breath work, not a meditation, but just attuning to my body, just feeling the weight of my body and the gravity that pushes me down into whatever I'm laying on, and just simply enjoying nothing special.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:40

Just being 100% present. Yeah. Scott, thank you so much for an honest and deeply thought-provoking conversation. Perhaps it's not the darkness that people are truly afraid of, but the emotions that rise up as a result of sitting with themselves. Your work invites people to slow down, become still, and reconnect with themselves in such a powerful way. Thank you so much for coming on the show and being a guest today. Where can people find you and explore your work?

unknown 1:10:13

Yep.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:14

Um, skykaveretreats.com on Instagram, Skycaveretreats, also on YouTube. We put the same kind of reels up there. And so those are all the different places to find us.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:26

Super. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:28

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:35

Thank you for joining me on Inside Out Connections. I hope today's conversation reminds you to tune in and find small ways to self reconnect. If this episode resonated, please share it with a friend or leave a quick review. Come join me on Instagram at insideout skin gutcoach.