By Sicadia-Paige
Certified Vibroacoustic Therapist, Certified Myofunctional Therapist, Licensed Esthetician, Nervous System Reboot™ Guide, and End-of-Life Doula
We’re taught or in some cases just come into the world, being afraid of darkness, making it something to avoid. This developed fear can lead to associating it with danger, sadness, and the unknown. Darkness becomes framed in our minds as something bad to get out of, avoid, or conquer. The place where monsters live. The cause of grief and pain, letting depression take root there.
We’re told to chase the light, to brighten up, to keep going. Culturally, we wear black to funerals, not celebrations. We light candles to “push away” the darkness. And in the self-help world, we’re often encouraged to “run toward the light” as if the dark has no wisdom of its own.
But what if we’ve misunderstood the darkness?
What if, instead of something to flee from, it’s actually the place where transformation begins? Not because we fight our way out, but because we finally stop resisting what’s always been asking to be witnessed. The dark space of creative force.
I’ve come to understand darkness differently. For me, it’s not the opposite of healing — it is where the healing begins. It is a necessary step towards remembering and what comes after remembering is a vast vault of uncertainty until explored.
The Room That Changed Everything
During a plant medicine journey, I found myself dropped into what I call “the dark room of uncertainty.” At first it was so scary I regretted my decision to journey immediately. I heard “trust” and “surrender. “ Left with no other option I held onto those words as if they were my only cord back to reality. As I settled in, then came the beauty of the surrender. The room began to feel like a warmth of love in a way my brain couldn’t understand. It felt like home, a welcoming back inward. Love and darkness didn’t compute for me but then it all clicked. It wasn’t scary anymore, in the way I expected. It was quiet, disorienting at first, but oddly peaceful. There was no story to hold on to, no visual to guide me. Just me and the stillness and all the feelings I had never let my body embrace.
That space changed me. In it, I realized the void isn’t empty. It’s full of potential. It’s a place where creation begins. It’s not a mistake or a pause in your path — it is the path.
Since then, I’ve thought a lot about how darkness shows up in our lives — not just as physical absence of light, but as the emotional voids we fall into: grief, burnout, confusion, stagnation. We tend to panic when we hit those places, thinking something’s gone wrong. But what if those moments are invitations?
We fear the pause, the plateau, the quiet days where nothing seems to be happening, but those are exactly the spaces where transformation is taking root?
Darkness as Alchemy
We forget that the most profound transformations happen in the dark. Seeds don’t sprout in the sun. They do their deepest work underground. Butterflies don’t emerge mid-flight. They dissolve inside a cocoon — unseen, unhurried, unrecognizable.
Even the universe began in darkness.
I’ve noticed that the nervous system does something similar. When clients lie down in the vibroacoustic lounge or cocooned in red light, and we let the room dim, their bodies finally let go. Sometimes they cry. Sometimes they dream. And sometimes, they see things: shapes, colors, honeycomb grids, or a deep velvety black that feels alive.
It’s not a hallucination. It’s coherence. It’s the body entering a state where the internal noise goes quiet — and a different kind of knowing can rise up.
The Alchemy of Stagnation
I’ve been through seasons that felt like a flatline. Nothing was exciting, nothing was inspiring, and I thought maybe I’d lost my way. But now I understand those times were part of a larger rhythm. Stagnation can equal growth.
It may not feel like a sacred stillness of peace, but that heavy pause where life feels numb or blocked, is not a punishment. It’s a process.
When we stop pathologizing stillness or darkness — and start seeing it as a phase of the creative cycle — we begin to trust it. Not enjoy it, always. But respect it. Lean into it.
Alchemy doesn’t happen in daylight. It happens in the chrysalis. The in-between. The unknowable darkness.
And here’s where it gets beautiful: if we can shift our perspective on these periods — from seeing them as failures to seeing them as thresholds — then we can begin to soften into their purpose. We become less afraid of them. Less likely to self-abandon. More curious about what’s trying to emerge.
This shift has shaped how I work with others. I no longer rush to “fix” the dark parts of life. I sit in them. I ask what they’re trying to show me. And slowly, I let them work their way through me.
Darkness Is a Portal and Creative Force
When we meet darkness on purpose — in a sound bath, a red light room, or a silent meditation — we build resilience. And that carries over when the hard times come. We don’t fall apart as easily. We know how to breathe. We remember we’ve been here before and made it through.
That’s what I’ve learned in the dark: that quiet is not the enemy. That emptiness is not failure. That surrender is not weakness.
There is a creative force waiting in the void, but we have to be willing to meet it.
In the void, stars were born. In the womb, we begin. In sleep, we repair. Even plants root downward into rich, dark soil before they bloom.
Darkness isn’t the absence of light. It’s the container that makes light possible.
In neuroscience, stillness is required for neuroplasticity — the brain’s ability to rewire itself. In quantum physics, the “void” is actually a field of pure potential. And in somatic healing, we know that true regulation of the nervous system requires periods of downshifting — not constant activation.
When clients come to me struggling with emotional overwhelm, grief, or even creative burnout, they often want tools to “get out of it.” But sometimes, what we need most is to be in it — consciously, compassionately, and with reverence.
Inviting Darkness In
Today, I no longer fear the dark in the same ways. I may fear the unknown that is about to be shaped from it but the remembering of my “room of certainty always brings me back. In fact, I find myself seeking it, yearning to rest in the void. Making space for it, makes is less scary too. In my practice, in my meditations, even in my therapies like vibroacoustics and light-based sessions, I hold room for the internal darkness to be welcomed and try to encourage my clients to do the same while holding a sacred container of safety for them to explore.
Languages of the body or our cells come in many forms. The subconscious remembers our connections to the cosmos. Sacred geometry in nature shows us our connection to science. And spiritual symbolism that can be deduced from all of this reminds us we are everything in and of the universe. In states of deep surrender, especially in the still, silence of the dark we transform.
A Personal Invitation
So here’s what I’d offer, not as advice, but as a lived truth:
Don’t rush to escape the darkness. Sit with it. Ask it questions. Create within it. Trust that you’re not broken because you’re not moving fast. Some of the most profound creative breakthroughs come not in bursts of inspiration, but in the quiet hours where you thought nothing was happening.
Hello, darkness, my old friend…
Turns out, you were here to help me become.