Rest in Crisis & Change
Slow Study Group
Program Dates TBA
Wednesdays 4-6pm PT / 7-9pm ET
Registration postponed until early 2025
Recordings will be available to all registrants
An 8-week course to strengthen your capacity for contradictions, conflict, chaos, crisis, and change through liberatory rest and community care
“In ‘hurrying up’ all the time, we often lose sight of the abundance of resources that might help us meet today’s most challenging crises. We rush through into the same patterns we are used to.
Of course, there isn’t a single way to respond to crisis; there is no universally correct way. However the call to slow down works to bring us face to face with the invisible, the hidden, the unremarked, the yet-to-be-resolved.
Sometimes, what is the appropriate thing to do is not the effective thing to do.”
— Báyò Akómoláfé PhD
By the end of this course, you will have the foundational knowledge, frameworks, somatic skills, and values-aligned community of practice necessary to approach your daily life differently: awakened and aware, committed to culture change within and without, discerning and dangerous to the systems that would rather you stay small.
We develop these skills in community to not only survive, but to navigate an increasingly uncertain reality with more creativity, care, and choice.
Learning Outcomes
Develop your capacity to hold discomfort, tension, and nuance
Cultivate body language fluency: the ability to attune to your somatic experience, gather insights about your needs, desires, and preferences, and make decisions informed by your truth
Nurture friendships rooted in rest-affirming culture where we celebrate and protect each other’s humanity, agency, and most authentic expression
Connect the unrest you feel inside to the sociopolitical unrest in the world in ways that validate your lived experiences
Learn the historical context and science behind our struggles to slow down and what it takes to heal
This is for the ones who…
Long to come in right relationship with their mind, body, heart, and soul
Sense the futility of grinding ourselves to dust for “safety”… but struggle to slow down alone
Suspect that fear-based reactivity is inadequate for the crises of our lifetime
Want to take back their power by learning how to be with crisis and shape change
Have been attending Community Rest Sessions and are ready to go deeper in a focused container
Want to find their Restie Besties AKA friendships rooted in rest-affirming culture so that we can become our most free selves together
Want to translate their commitment to liberation from the intellect into embodiment and community care
“A relaxed body is the most powerful body that you have.
And partly that’s because a relaxed body can choose what to do.”
— Prentis Hemphill
What you’ll get
Eight live 2-hour sessions on Zoom with access to the recordings
Frameworks, tools, and practices to support your ongoing rest-unrest journey
Lifetime access to the Rest in Crisis & Change Resource Library
Group chat to stay in touch with your cohort
A Restie Bestie (buddy) for accountability and support during the course
Curriculum
Session 1: Into the Crack
Welcome, setting the container, meet your cohort
Rewriting Our Rest Stories (RORS) framework for culture change
Introduction to the Somatic Check-In practice
Breakout group: Meet your Restie Besties
“Crossing the Threshold” group ritual and embodiment practice
Session 2: Crisis as a Force of Nature
Embodiment practice with Somatic Check-In
Unpacking the hidden creative potential of crisis
Having vs. belonging to unrest
Reacting vs. responding
What it takes to feel rested
Session 3: Disturbing the Peace
Embodiment practice with Somatic Check-In
Situating the struggle to slow down: why rest feels wrong / bad to you
History lesson: How Enlightenment-era ideologies influence how we treat our bodyminds
Destabilizing Western notions of “peace”
Peace, justice, and tension
Safety, safeness, and risk in relationships
Session 4: The Cultural Erasure of Rest
Embodiment practice with Somatic Check-In
Who am I / at rest?
Definitions of rest
Basic-rest-and-activity cycle
The costs of survival
Rest and informed decision-making
Confrontation, conflict, and crisis as healing
Session 5: Conditions for Culture Change
Embodiment practice with Somatic Check-In
Dialectical materialism as theory of change
Limits are liberating: operating within your actual (not imagined) capacity
Building capacity for discomfort
Being in the company of truth: rest as radical engagement
Session 6: Liberation is a Crisis of Form
Embodiment practice with Somatic Check-In
Un-demonizing darkness: on the necessity of natural darkness
Consent in a non-consensual world
The art of escape: dissociation as resource, trance states, dreams, and illegibility as freedom
Wielding your inner world-building technologies
Session 7: Rest & Digest
Embodiment practice with Somatic Check-In
Review of key frameworks, themes, and tools
Q&A
Review and reflect on learnings from Somatic Check-In
Session 8: Becoming the Crack
Somatic Check-In
Group commitments
“Crossing the Threshold” group ritual and embodiment practice
Gratitude, acknowledgement, celebrations
“I want to love more than death can harm.
And I want to tell you this often: That despite being so human and so terrified, here, standing on this unfinished staircase to nowhere and everywhere, surrounded by the cold and starless night — we can live. And we will.”
— Ocean Vuong
Pricing
Utilize the green bottle image to identify which tier best suits your financial situation.
If you are a white-bodied person, please consider opting in at the higher end of the sliding scale!
The following payment plans are available: 2 monthly payments or 4 biweekly payments
Tier 1: $599
Tier 2: $799
Tier 3: $999
“I rate this workshop a 10/10. Cassandra is incredibly smart and her work is really well researched, I am very impressed coming from a scientific perspective. There are so many frauds out there but she TRULY is a healer!
I came away with a much greater understanding of what rest really means! I am going to more thoughtfully approach rest as a multifaceted component of my life. I felt so at peace the next day and wanted my friends to watch!”
— Rest in Crisis & Change Workshop Attendee (August 2024)