Don’t get us wrong, we love + appreciate the work we get to do here at The Darkest Horse. It’s both complicated and rewarding – in many ways it’s a privilege, BUT it’s also intense labor that requires us to confront difficult truths.
One of those truths is that our desire to boldly confront systemic racism challenges us to identify ✨NEW✨ ways of working + being, that protect us from further harming ourselves or each other. We strongly believe that work should be cooperative; joining us on this journey will always remain an invitation, never a demand.
Whenever we introduce a new paradigm, we do so not to “fix,” but with the intention of inviting you to shift your attention, shift your action, and shift your practice. This month, we’re inviting you to shift into rest + leisure.
Shifting into a practice of rest can feel in conflict with working at a startup where we’re all rewarded for working hard (long days, long weeks, long months, long years). And while we all have the capacity to produce and deliver, we want to invite the contemplation and practice of pausing that allows for full-body discernment.
We invite you to let go (even if only momentarily) of the myth that working hard means we are being productive. Instead, we invite you to consider rest to be a vital competency. It’s an ongoing practice we have to learn to do individually, communally and as a society.
Rest is a journey. We invite you to have a growth mindset about your own capacity to rest – not to achieve excellence at rest, but as a means to self-actualize and lean into what care, health, and well-being look/feel like FOR YOU. Remember, where each of us starts is and should be different because we all have different lived experiences that define work and rest.
We aren’t talking about resting with the temporary intention to prepare for more productivity or better ideas. We are talking about resting to be more present to ourselves, to our families, to our communities, to our natural surroundings, to our bodies, or to wherever we experience refuge. Why? Because rest can give rise to new sources of inspiration or capacity for something else that hasn’t yet been centered in your life. And, because we all deserve more of it.
🙏🏾Thank you for stepping into community with us. We are super excited about the deep work we are doing with YOU now and in the months to come.
We send each of you our warmest wishes for rest, reflection, connection, and presence.
See you in 2023!!
Reflection Questions
- How do you define rest or leisure? Is there a difference between the two?
- What are your favorite ways to practice rest or leisure?
- How do you feel about your current rest practice? When you think about resting, what do you notice feeling in your body?
- What would be one small adjustment you could make to invite a little more rest into your life?
Resources
Rest:
- Listen: “A Word from the Nap Bishop” Interview with Tricia Hersey (Trymaine Lee)
- Read: What’s Next in the Culture of Care (Rest for Resistance)
- Practice: “Rest Life” Guided Meditation (Tricia Hersey)
- Practice: Somatic Centering (Sumitra Rajkumar)
- Practice: “Relaxing Back into Awareness” Meditation (Tara Brach)
- Listen: Sound Healing (Lucia Luminate)
- Listen: Lotus Sound Bath (Douglas Cardwell)
- Listen: Sound Baths for Relaxation (Alice Hu)
Joy + Pleasure:
- Listen & Groove: The Darkest Horse Winter Solstice Playlist
- Listen: “The Body is Not An Apology” Poem (Sonya Renee Taylor)
- Read: “Pleasure Activism” by adrienne maree brown
- Journal: “Journal of Radical Permission A Daily Guide for Following Your Soul’s Calling” by adrienne maree brown and Sonya Renee Taylor
Holidays:
- Read: How to Navigate Difficult Conversations During the Holiday Season (Very Well Mind)
- Read: Go Where You Are Honored During the Holidays (Rest for Resistance)
- Read: How to Navigate Difficult Conversations with Family over the Holidays (Life by Design Therapy)
