I came into the RORS program during a time when burnout was my baseline and I knew I needed a change, but didn't know how to get out of the cycle I had been in for years.

I was initially hesitant to apply for the RORS program and thought that I should push it off and wait until the next round. But then I thought to myself that there is no better time than now and I wanted to heal my relationship with rest.

I am relieved and grateful that I made the decision to join the RORS program. I learned so much from Cassandra and my fellow Resties each session. Now I have the language, tools, and community to more comfortably and confidently honor my rest.

“As a former competitive athlete and daughter of immigrants, I learned to overlook my personal needs in the spirit of hard work and success. It was easy to justify working 14 hour days and even feel undeserving of rest.

At the time I started RORS, I was extremely burnt out and navigating a life transition. I initially joined the program to think about rest in the context of work. However through the program, I came to understand my experiences in relation to systems of unrest that make us push ourselves past our limits. Rest became a liberatory practice for me, for me to reconnect with my true self and needs.

RORS gave me the community, language, and tools to start to give myself grace, release internalized judgment, and accept myself in all of my existence. It gave me the safe space to articulate and move towards the life I long for — one of gentleness, curiosity, and frolicking in the sun.”

“As a former competitive athlete and racialized Asian person living in the West, I was told to ignore my body so much from a young age. Conditioned to prioritize perfectionism, be competitive, and operate at high levels of performance, I didn’t know how to listen to my body.

I entered the RORS program to get in touch with my somatic self. As a student of ethnic studies passionate about social justice, I conceptually understand and critique capitalism, heteropatriarchy, and other systems of unrest.

But to actually build community where we practice resting and validating each other? That was what I really needed.

In RORS, I started paying attention to what my body was telling me. I realized that I've known exactly what I’ve been needing this whole time! I just didn’t have the tools or the awareness of what to do with it. So when I’d feel bad, I knew I didn’t like it, but I didn’t know how to move through it.

RORS played a big part in me pulling away from disconnection and towards my actual, authentic self. Now, I’m moving closer to what I'm supposed to be doing, what feels right in my body, what excites me, and what brings me meaning and happiness. It feels like I’ve created a container for myself to practice my sovereignty.”

“I am SO grateful to have found RORS! This program not only gave me tools on how to recover from burnout, but allowed me to practice prioritizing my self (mind, body, and soul) as I continue to build on my relationship with rest.

This was an incredible experience where I felt supported by an active alumni group and learned a lot with zero homework. I loved the focus on community care and especially appreciated the somatic approaches and systemic frameworks to rest.”

“The RORS program is the most beautiful synergy of safety, love, and accountability all in one.

I started the RORS program with a severe lack of understanding on how my inability to sit still was affecting my life.

I am leaving the RORS program with an immense amount of gratitude for a new muscle and ability for rest that I have literally grown out of the love and safety of this cohort, and my life is changing every day because of it.“

“At RORS, I was able to be witnessed in my fullness and holistic authenticity, as well as learn very real coping mechanisms and lessons for my own rest practices that I utilize to this day.”

“My RORS experience was incredibly important to my healing journey. Cassandra and my cohort peers helped collectively lead me to a true, sustainable, and real relationship to rest. RORS is a community space that is welcoming, safe, and encouraging, and I highly recommend this course.

I now have a more integral relationship with rest in my daily life, a stronger sense of self, and a gracious and grateful community of #resties that I trust and know will be with me along the way, should I ever need a helping hand.”

“RORS helped me begin to unpack and rewire my thoughts and beliefs around urgency and start to shift my toxic relationship with work and hustle culture.”

“I truly learned to both listen to and feel what my body is trying to tell me, rather than minimizing my physical/emotional/mental needs through processes of intellectualization.”

“The RORS program transformed the lens I use to view rest. I am now able to center rest, understand its importance, and be more mindful of how I can gently integrate it into my life - despite being in a society that pushes us to reject it.”

“My rest journey is the most meaningful transition I've ever made in my life so far.

The biggest part involved stepping back to my core and to stop trying to justify my right to rest. My life perspectives have shifted and I embraced insights that can't be taught in schools.

Once you're on this journey, it leaves a lasting impact on the reality you want to create.”

“The program really showed me how to allow rest into our lives, embody rest techniques, and solidify habits rather than only using them when you are stressed out and desperately need them.”

“Something in my spirit was calling me to rest before my body shut down. RORS is not another "to do" on your list. It's a restructuring of how we choose to use our time and mental capacity. This cohort was transformative.”

“RORS is Asian faces and voices of people I know.

RORS is a place to lie down, a revolutionary question, a soft opening in this unfashionable, lifelong effort to slow down in the face of urgency.

To say in the care of our peers, “My pace is sacred, my rest worthwhile.” and more of me means it this time.”

“I used to be excited about contributing to the demanding grind of being a tech professional. However, after years of keeping my head above water, burnout eventually took its toll, and I found myself in desperate need of a break.

Thanks to Cassandra's program, I had a transformative experience where I discovered that rest is not a mere luxury as I had previously thought, but a necessity for us to cultivate a sustainable lifestyle.

Cassandra was highly effective in creating a safe and nurturing environment for us to learn how to rest without guilt, and I’m proud to be part of her alumni of Resties!”

“When I joined RORS, I was at a crossroads. I had just started winding down a book tour and left my full-time job due to burnout. I probably hadn't had a truly free weekend in a year trying to juggle both. After quitting my "real job," I was freelancing part-time to pay the bills while I recovered from my latest burnout cycle. I could not remember a time in my life when I had not experienced these endless boom-bust cycles of pushing myself past my limits and burning out, and I did not want to keep living this way.

That said, I was also trying to "take advantage of the downtime to work on writing" even as I recognized the cognitive dissonance, having done the therapy and read Trisha Hersey's Rest is Resistance and all the books about burnout and the value of slowing down. I was intellectually on board with rest, theoretically in favor of everyone laying down and resisting from capitalism, but I didn't know how to truly deprogram from hustle culture. And I really didn't know how to adapt my behavior to my new ADHD diagnosis, which is commonly ignored in women of color.

I'm not going to tell you that RORS fixed my life, but it was nice to be in a community of AAPI women trying to work on similar issues, many also with nontraditional paths. I learned to give myself more transition time between things and to actually pause to consider my capacity. It has also been helpful to see the ways the other Resties have practiced rest during and after the program.”

Upon entering RORs this past fall, I was just leaving and recovering from a toxic nonprofit work environment. I was very disillusioned by seeing a lack of embodiment of values with my former workplace. I was honestly lost and didn't have much clarity on my next steps. I felt so unsure of myself, lacked confidence within myself, and wasn't sure what I needed from my next job as management didn't respect me within my last job.

I was second guessing myself when I entered RORs on if this path was even right for me. Within the RORs cohort, I felt so much sisterhood and mutual understanding where I began to come back to myself. Getting to heal in community was what I needed to move forward.

Cassandra as our guide helped me rewrite my own rest story and my own stories/beliefs around myself. I let down my walls in front of her and the rest of the cohort, where I felt genuinely heard and seen in my fullness. We created inside jokes and catchphrases with each other; we still have an ongoing group chat where we touch base with each other. I have a better embodied relationship to my own rest, where I know when my body needs rest and not to push myself beyond my limits. I now appreciate the journey and the process more than landing on my destination when it comes to career paths.

In the last few weeks of our cohort, I applied to a culinary arts job training program and got in. Currently, I'm in culinary arts job training where my rewritten rest story has helped me in becoming confident within myself, show up vulnerably (which classmates have admired), and put myself out there for jobs that feel aligned. Recently, my own private chef business SexySoupDumplings has started to get more buzz while now applying the skills I've been learning from my culinary arts program.