AN ONLINE REST SANCTUARY
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DEEP REST IS POSSIBLE
Step 1: Enter your name and email below. This is how we will communicate about Rest together.
When you join, you will automatically join the rest book club starting April 10th. *The book is not required,
This is a guided journey through rest as a liberatory practice. Each week I will send you two emails with rest education, a daydream practice for creating peace, as well as suggested reading & rest practices. The series of daydream prompts about Peace, I am SUPER excited about so - I hope you will join me :)
Open to all who want to examine rest as both a cultural and personal necessity, especially at this moment in time. You will get plenty out of the weekly emails themselves to learn about and practice rest. But this book is also great so feel free to rent or buy!
Step 2: Experience Rest - watch the video and/or listen to the guided rest practices below
Shorter Rest Experience (8 min)
A note from Jamila: The ^ above rest practice uses sound and yogic principles to support the body and mind to find Rest. My trauma-informed yoga teacher Brooke says "Sound calls the fractured aspects of the mind." Sound is very powerful as it deals with vibration and frequency: the language of creation. For use with trauma, sacred sound can be so gentle and supportive.
These sounds have been integrated into the recording: the sound of the handpan drum, the sound of horses on a subtle level through a recording sample of Angus' breath, the sound of the Chicopee river against the banks, a sound Remedy from Source Medicine in the sound of the ocean waves, and my vocals/voice.
Longer Rest Experience (30 min)
This is video features two of the resting horses who inspire much of my understanding about Rest.
The energy and presence of horses has a striking impact on our imaginations which is why they are such a prominant symbol and archetype. Simply seeing their image and hearing their breath sounds can invoke a strong connection to their loving hearts and wise ways of moving through the world. They can move fast but they also move slow. They pause. They rest. People will often talk about "Horse Time" Which means that when you are working with horses - you will be slowed down to move at their pace.
I invite you to drop into Horse Time and spend some time gazing at the horses and then feeling them in your imagination through the video and guided rest practice below.
This 30 minute guided rest practice incorporates Equine-Assisted Learning and Trauma-Informed Yoga Nidra below.
You are invited to find a quiet space to watch this video and let the slow healing energy of horses help you rest.
Step 3: Rest in Community - join or request an In-Person Rest Gathering (local to Springfield, MA)
Attend a Rest Retreat, Request a Rest Workshop for your organization or community, or join BIPOC Rest Group at Make-It Springfield.
Experience deep rest through storytelling, sound healing, and communal reflection.
Gather in spaces where rest is honored as an act of healing and resistance.
More information for requesting an in-person Rest Workshop/Rest Experience for your organization:
These flexible, immersive workshops range from 30 minutes to 1.5 hours and offer guided rest experiences. They are designed to be offered for free unless the organization or space has resources to pay. Led by Jamila (Embodied Leadership Project Director), they incorporate storytelling, handpan sound healing, trauma-informed rest practices, and community reflection time. Piloted with participants from kindergarteners to elders, these sessions have been especially impactful in mental and behavioral health spaces, early childhood education (K-2 classrooms), and women’s reproductive healthcare settings.
More information about the BIPOC Rest Group
Please follow our IG page for group information and registration links: @bipoc.restgroup
More about this This Space
This online Rest Sanctuary offers multiple ways to engage with rest as a cultural, personal, and communal practice. Whether you prefer reading, listening, or gathering in person, these offerings provide accessible ways to deepen your relationship with rest.
Our framework is rooted in the teachings of key organizers, leaders, artists, and teachers of rest—including Tricia Hersey, Tracee Stanley, and nature herself through the therapeutic wisdom of horses.
This online rest sanctuary is designed to support intergenerational Rest for the Springfield and extended community both online and in-person. Rest is something that most of us struggle to access. This project offers a place for learning about and practicing rest.
This space exists as a response to two foundational experiences:
As a community, across age, race, culture, class and gender, we are collectively grappling with trauma and exhaustion (for many reasons including: oppression, colonial paradigms, working constantly, the many Pandemics, violence, grief, climate change, volatile political realities, warfare, toxins in the food and water, etc)
As a community, the majority of us are interested in feeling better and we desire to create a better world.
The space proposes that rest is a powerful pathway toward healing trauma, restoring our energy and health, and creating the world we want to live in. Rest replenishes the biological and psychological systems of the body/mind. Rest is key in the process of healing trauma. Rest is a vital aspect of the creative process that can be seen in nature’s rhythms, as well as human’s process of creativity.
This space acknowledges that trauma, oppression, and the pressures of capitalism make accessing rest nearly impossible. Even if we do find the time to rest, our nervous systems will struggle to engage a restful state. We are not taught about rest or encouraged to rest. When we do not know how to or are not permitted to create rest periods, to practice rest, and to support others to rest, we are not engaging with our full creative and healing potential. The creative process is foundational to the way ideas are implemented across all fields whether we be in arts, humanities, STEM, politics, social change, business, entrepreneurship etc.
This space invites the leaders, artists, teachers, and healers of our community to:
Gently learn about rest and its complexities on an individual, communal, national, global and historical level.
Acknowledge the ways in which we struggle to rest
Explore different ways to practice rest throughout the day and week
Consider the implications that our inability to rest is having not just on our own health and stability, but on our creative process, our families, our organizations creative potential, and ultimately those that we serve and love.
This space offers gentle, engaging, creative, in-person and online rest-based programming that serves rest to people of all ages: both kids and adults.
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