In 2016, reeling from the loss of his unborn child and the breakdown of his marriage, former MMA fighter and bodyguard Traver Boehm took an unusual step: he voluntarily spent 28 straight days in a pitch-black room, utterly alone, as part of a darkness retreat in Guatemala.
For four weeks, he couldn’t see his hand an inch from his face. He lived in a spartan, concrete cave, his only contact with the outside world three meals a day, delivered through a ‘mailbox’ in the wall and announced by the ring of a bell.
In his upcoming book, 28 Days in Darkness, he recounts the experience and what it did to his mind. In this exclusive excerpt, after three weeks in the dark with only his personal demons for company, he starts to believe he’s going mad.
On day 23, I woke up on the cold floor on my yoga mat with no memory of having crawled down from the rock-hard loft. I had no memory of falling asleep the night before.
While I say I ‘woke up,’ I’m not entirely sure. Was I awake? Was I still asleep? Was I dreaming? What time was it? I couldn’t hear the crickets’ feet rubbing together in their sweet cacophony through the vents. I couldn’t sense the temperature to gauge what hour of the morning or night it could be.
It also felt like my head was spinning, and the room was spinning. If asked under oath, I couldn’t honestly have told you where I was, or even who I was.
My stomach felt like it did that time in my early twenties when my buddy Drew and I decided to do shots of tequila in a crowded bar in Manhattan until 2am and then I had to ride a train out to Connecticut for another friend’s wedding first thing the next morning.
Anyone who’s ever woken up and for a nanosecond forgotten about the debaucherous night before knows what I’m speaking of. The faux elation before your whole system crashes. Your skin glistening with sweat, the dryness in your mouth like you spent the night polishing off a bag of kitty litter, and the ache in your entire being – all of it hitting home at once.
Traver is pictured an hour before going in the darkness cave… for the next 28 days, he couldn’t even see the hand in front of his face
Since the night before I began the retreat, I’d eaten the same thing every evening – vegetable soup – so I doubted this affliction was related to my food.
Without a better description, it felt…otherworldly. And it sucked. There was no Pepto in the room with me. There was no intercom I could use to call and ask for ginger tea. There was nothing but my own voice telling me: ‘I got you.’
But I didn’t really have me because I wasn’t sure any of it was real.
Over three weeks into the trial, I was not in my right mind. It felt like a fever dream, the kind you wake up from and then fall right back into.
Thus it was not jarring to me when I heard a voice from the depths of the darkness say: ‘Kneel before me.’
It was a female voice of no particular accent, with the tiniest air of sweetness to it. That of a friend perhaps, but not one I could name.
I groaned hard and rolled into a ball, ignoring the voice and clutching my stomach. I muttered a barely coherent: ‘F*** you,’ trying to catch my breath as the room spun faster and faster.
This was not what I had signed up for. I was down for loneliness, boredom, grief and misery, but I didn’t want to feel like I’d chugged milk that had been left in the sun for three days, mixed with four doses of LSD, and topped off with moonshine.
Since my stomach was empty, the retching that came next was excruciating. My entire body shuddered and flexed against the rigid floor, forcing the air out of my lungs and causing panic to grip my mind.
What if I suffocated there alone in the darkness? What if my heart exploded with blood that was unable to reach my extremities due to the pressure? Alone in the dark is a terrible place to let your mind get away from you, and mine was at the top of a roller coaster about to get throttled over the edge.
The convulsions and dry heaving continued for what seemed like an eternity, and then out of the darkness, the voice returned: ‘Rise and kneel before me.’
Truly feeling like I had lost my grasp of reality but still relying on the stubbornness that was going to get me through 28 days without light, I pushed myself onto all fours, then to one knee, and then to a standing position.
Drool was coming out of my mouth, and my head hung, unable to hold itself upright.
I laughed defiantly into the darkness, proud of my strength and resilience. Adding insult to injury toward the voice from nowhere, I raised my hands above my head in the classic V stance I had taken when walking around the cage after winning fights.
‘I kneel before no one,’ I blurted out – adding in my head, ‘especially not to the feminine.’
The three-foot-high front door – beyond, everything was pitch dark
For four weeks, Traver lived in this spartan, concrete cave
Pictured two days after his exit from the darkness
As the last syllable left my throat, an imaginary rug was ripped out from under my feet, and the hard floor caught my fall. The screws in my stomach twisted violently as I dry-heaved again and again and again.
I cried out in agony, clutching my stomach and rolling into a tight ball. What on God’s green earth was happening to me? Was any of this real? Was I caught in some kind of living nightmare?
I dug my fingers into the floor, grasping at anything to lessen the spasms in my body, but nothing worked. The writhing continued as I screamed into the abyss. An image of the man who had told me he’d been pulled out of his own dark room because he was bleeding from his eyes and ears shot through my consciousness, and I wiped at my own eyes and licked my fingers to see if I was in the same state.
My hands lacked the salty taste of copper usually associated with blood, and my panic level dropped slightly, from an 11 to a ten.
And with no change in tempo, volume, or cadence, the voice returned with her simple directive: ‘Kneel before me.’
Now, I’d love to tell you I’m a quick learner, but like so many men, I have a deep drive to never surrender. To die trying. To let my ego build Fort Knox around my heart and soul and forever run my existence. Thus I did not do as I was told and instead painstakingly pulled myself onto my knees, pausing for a second only to put one foot flat on the floor, push to a standing position, and raise my hands in a classic boxing stance.
I poetically replied: “You. Can. Go. F***. Yourself.’
Wiping the spit from my lips and the tears from my eyes, I stumbled in place, rocking from one foot to the other, before the room spun counterclockwise like a tornado had hit.
Taking a shower in a waterfall on the day Traver came out of the darkness
While my body let go of its forced spasms, the dizziness and accompanying nausea were even worse.
For some reason I put my hands over my ears and squeezed my eyes as tightly as I could, all in the hopes of making the room slow its spin. I pushed myself up against the closest wall in a failed attempt at finding stability.
After I’d spent what felt like days in this position, the voice returned. There was no change. No softness. No caring. Almost as unnerving – there was no malice, either. No anger. It was as if this feminine form was nonchalantly reading off a menu.
‘Kneel before me,’ she said again.
I pushed my head against the wall, groaning. This time I skipped the slow process of standing and instead shot straight to my feet, chest out, head high. ‘I kneel before no one!’ I yelled, my voice going hoarse on the last word. Then adding, so it was clear: ‘Especially not the feminine.’
There’s no other way to describe it: an invisible hand shot out of the darkness and grabbed me by the throat, picking me up off the ground and slamming me flat onto my back.
The wind was knocked completely out of me, and I fought to inhale. It simply would not come. The night terrors I’d experienced as a kid returned to my mind – that feeling of being paralyzed and trapped in my bed as something evil came toward me.
I’ve been choked unconscious more times as a fighter than I can count, so the arriving warmth and tingling in my body were eerily familiar. The room became fuzzy, and sparkles danced in the darkness.
I heard yet again, with what seemed like an ever-so-slightly-bored undertone: ‘Kneel before me.’
‘Like so many men, I have a deep drive to never surrender. To die trying,’ says Traver
‘I’ve been choked unconscious more times as a fighter than I can count’
My body was drenched with sweat, and I was beyond exhausted and disoriented. I hated being alive. I hated that I couldn’t make this experience stop. I hated the darkness and whatever this lesson was supposed to be teaching me.
My stomach locked again, my legs following suit. My calves screamed as they spasmed. It felt like the tendons were going to rip out of my arms, and red-hot knives stabbed the muscles in my chest.
In one final act of defiance, I crawled to the bed ladder and pulled myself to my feet one wooden rung at a time. Through all the pain, dizziness, and retching, I stumbled into the center of the room and got only one word out of my mouth: ‘No.’
My eyes were closed. My head was hanging like a puppet on a string. And I knew I wasn’t going to be able to keep up this defiance for much longer.
And then the visitor’s words changed. Her tone changed to softness. What came next altered my life and view of the world forever: ‘My son, a slave who kneels before a queen gives up nothing. A warrior who kneels before a queen becomes a king.’
In a hallucinatory flash, I understood what was being asked of me. Not to kneel in an act of weakness. Not to surrender because I couldn’t go on. Not to give up. But to willingly take my power and devote it to something bigger than I was. Bigger than my physical form ever could be.
The image of a queen appeared in front of me, her beauty overwhelming and her long cloak glowing around her form. I remember little more than her eyes and the truth they held. A truth so profound it was unquestionable. The truth. The one truth.
Without further hesitation, I took a knee in front of her – as a display of power – in the form of surrender. And she disappeared. Instantly. Just like that, everything stopped. The pain vanished. The room stilled. My stomach and jaw let go. My body was dry. I felt no fatigue. All in a single heartbeat. It was as if the entire experience had never happened.
I pushed myself back against the wall, pulled my knees in tight, and wrapped my arms around myself protectively. I wasn’t sure if what had just happened was real, a dream, or some combination of the two. But I felt a shift. It was as if the part of me that needed to know, needed to see before believing, needed to navigate life as a lone wolf – was gone.
I felt the desire to be more of service and in service than ever before. I felt more whole, seen, and understood than at any other time in my life.
I chuckled and whispered to myself: ‘Goddamn.’
Then I heard the sound of footsteps and the ring of a bell. Breakfast had arrived.
Edited excerpt from 28 Days in Darkness: A Journey from the Depth of Despair to the Joy of Awakening by Traver Boehm is published by Victory Belt, August 26
