While Aaron Rodgers made a valiant effort to return from a ruptured Achilles heel this season, he is decidedly less motivated to return to another darkness retreat.

‘I don’t think I’m gonna go back in a dark cave anymore,’ he told Pat McAfee during their weekly segment on ESPN. ‘I’ve had enough time for contemplation.’

The injured New York Jets quarterback was asked about the possibility of attending another darkness retreat following the season.

‘Darkness?’ McAfee asked, prodding the four-time MVP to reveal his offseason plans. ‘Dolphin sex parties?’

‘Maybe the latter,’ Rodgers joked. ‘The former, though, I’ve been there, done that.’

McAfee (left) asked Rodgers (right) if he planned on returning to a darkness retreat in 2024

The retreats also come with a yoga mat, and guests have access to a light switch if they need it

McAfee quickly declared that Rodgers had ‘retired form darkness.’

Rodgers then responded by suggesting that the five-day darkness retreat would be good for some of McAfee’s staff.

‘I think there’s some people on the show who could use the time in darkness,’ Rodgers said. ‘There’s some anger issues from the toxic table that could probably get worked out through a little contemplation.’

Although he had hoped to return in time to help the Jets reach the playoffs, Rodgers made it sound unlikely that he could play again for the Jets this season.

‘In the next three to four weeks it would be possible to get to 100 percent, but I’m obviously not there,’ Rodgers told McAfee on Tuesday. ‘If I was 100 percent then I’d be pushing to play but the fact is I’m not.’

It certainly doesn’t help that the Jets were officially limited from playoff contention with Sunday’s loss in Miami, which is a good reason in itself to avoid serious contemplation in a darkness retreat.

Rodgers first shared details of his darkness retreat in the Oregon wilderness in March, prior to his trade from the Green Bay Packers to the Jets.

PICTURED: An entrance to one of Sky Cave Retreats’ three dark rooms in southern Oregon

‘It was a great reset for me, for my body and my mind,’ he said at the time. ‘Maybe a little bit longer than I needed. I feel like by the time I got to the fourth day, I was like, ”Alright, I’m ready to come out.”

Much of Rodgers’ time in the isolated 300-foot cabin was spent meditating, he told McAfee in March.

‘Food that came at 6 o’clock every day, so I had an idea of where I was,’ Rodgers said when asked if he was able to track time while in the darkness. ‘You’re kinda counting down the nights once you get to the third night. ”I got one more night of this after this night.” That’s how I gauged the process.’

Of course, it’s that silence that Rodgers was seeking following a disappointing 8-9 season in Green Bay.

‘There’s not a lot of sounds in there,’ Rodgers said. ‘The mediation in there is incredible because there’s zero distractions, zero light. Your eyes don’t adjust, so you can’t even see parts of the room.

‘You have some hallucinations, at some point, where the room looks different than it actually does,’ he continued. ‘And you really got to walk around with one hand out here, one hand over here, bumping into stuff.’

PICTURED: The doorway to one of the three cabins is seen. There are currently seven more dark rooms planned to accommodate a wait list believed to be in the hundreds

Rodgers, who previously admitted to using halleucinogenics like mushrooms and ayahuasca, stressed that these visions were not the product of any substances.

‘It wasn’t any vitamins or anything,’ he said. ‘It was all natural.’

So how does this experience differ from yoga, meditation, and ayahuasca retreats?

For starters, this is mostly self-guided.

Whereas an instructor might be present for a yoga retreat and shamans administer and observe the use of ayahuasca, a darkness retreat is based on solitude.

And while yoga can make on physically uncomfortable, the darkness retreat is aimed at making individuals confront unpleasant thoughts.

‘We kind of hold discomfort as a negative thing and not to say that it’s positive, but there’s such a hard structure that discomfort is bad,’ Sky Cave Retreats owner Scott Berman told ESPN.

‘The moment somebody feels uncomfortable, they get on their phone, they go for a walk, they eat food, or they do wholesome activities, they do yoga, they go for a run. There are a million things that people do to avoid discomfort.

‘If somebody’s sad in our culture, it’s like, ”Let’s fix you immediately,’ he continued. ‘There’s not a real genuine exploration of, ”Why are you sad?’ What happens if you just include the sadness and rest with the sadness, and be with it, without trying to change it? What happens from there? That is a unique aspect of darkness retreat.

Rooms include a queen-sized bed, bath, stove, and a spout offering fresh mountain water

Located about 30 minutes from Ashland, Oregon, Sky Cave currently has only three dark rooms, all of which are booked for the next 18 months, Berman told ESPN. There are seven more rooms planned in an effort to trim the lengthy waiting list, said to be in the hundreds.

After an hour-long orientation, guests review a meal plan before exploring their new spaces and unwinding.

The hosts provide a meal before sundown and take care of any last-minute requests, but are otherwise scarce, arriving only once a day to take care of material needs, like food or wood for the stove.

The cabins are all equipped with a flushing toilet, bath, fresh mountain water on tap, and a sink for the retreats, which can last anywhere from three to 40 days. Guests do have access to a light switch, but most prefer to resist that temptation in order to get the full experience.

‘Typically, most retreatants find that they sleep, more or less, for the first 24-48 hours,’ reads the Sky Cave website. ‘As the days continue to unfold, they tend to find that they need less and less sleep. Many eventually find that they either do not need to sleep at all or are only sleeping for 1-2 hours a night.’

The cabins are stocked with wood piles for the winter months, when it can get cold in Oregon

But it’s after the first one or two days that the biggest impact can be felt.

‘Heightened sensitivity and the opening of the subconscious can naturally begin to arise as early as the 3rd day of the retreat and continue to intensify as the retreat progresses,’ the website continues.

‘This is due to different neurochemical reactions that occur from various glands and hormones being both suppressed and/or stimulated from the light deprivation and the simple nature of the dark and solitude.’

Prices are not listed on the Sky Cave website, but one vacation website has a seven-day trip listed for $1,350.