The Exhale Rest Retreat: Slow Down, Soften & Return Inward

Sep 30

Sunday December 13, 2026 | 10:30 AM–2:30 PM

There is a particular kind of tired that asks for more than an earlier bedtime.

The tired that comes from holding a hundred little things in your mind. Remembering what everyone needs. Moving from one responsibility to the next while some quieter part of you keeps whispering, Can we pause for a moment?

Maybe you have been craving a moment where someone else has thought through the details. Where there is something nourishing to sip, somewhere comfortable to settle, and permission to take your time. Where you can move gently, close your eyes, feel what you feel, and be cared for.

That longing is at the heart of The Exhale: Rest Day Retreat.

On Sunday, December 13, I am so excited to team up with Mina Harrison and Holly Baynes for a four-hour experience curated to help you slow down, just for a moment, and reconnect with yourself in community.

Together, we are weaving sound, somatic breathwork, gentle movement, cacao, journaling, guided meditation, gentle Kundalini, Yin and Restorative Yoga into a spacious, cozy fall day. There will be nourishing Ayurvedic snacks and beverages throughout, plenty of room for rest and integration, and a beautiful self-care gift bag to carry a little of the experience home with you.

Four hours set aside for you.

Time to arrive. Time to soften. Time to hear yourself again.

Reserve your place at The Exhale Rest Retreat →

Why We Need Space to Exhale

So much of daily life asks us to be available.

Available to our families, our work, our messages, our communities. Available to solve something, organize something, make a decision, or offer support.

Even when we love the life we are building, that constant availability can be exhausting. Sometimes we reach the end of the day and realize we have barely checked in with the person living inside it.

Rest gives us an opportunity to notice.

How am I actually feeling? What have I been carrying? What would feel nourishing right now?

Those questions can be difficult to hear over the noise of an ordinary day. Creating intentional space allows them to surface. We can notice the tension in our shoulders, the pace of our thoughts, the feelings we have been moving around because there simply has not been time.

Our intention for the Exhale Rest Retreat is to offer a place where you can meet yourself with tenderness. You can arrive with a busy mind, a tired body, a full heart, or no clear words for how you feel. There is room for all of it.

Rest and Your Nervous System: Why This Matters

Your nervous system helps you respond to the world around you. When demands feel urgent or threatening, the body’s stress response prepares you for action. Your heart may beat faster, your breathing may change, and your muscles may tense. This response serves a purpose, but repeatedly moving through stress without enough recovery can feel wearing.

Relaxation practices offer opportunities for a different experience. Comfortable breathing, guided imagery, and other relaxation techniques can encourage the body’s relaxation response, which is associated with slower breathing and a reduced heart rate. These practices may help with stress, especially when they become part of everyday life.

This is one reason I care so deeply about creating spaces for rest.

It is easy to tell yourself to relax while you are still answering messages, planning dinner, and watching the clock. It can feel very different to enter a space where time has already been protected, guidance is offered, and the next thing on the schedule is another invitation to care for yourself.

During the Exhale Rest Retreat, we will explore several ways of paying attention: through movement, breath, sound, stillness, reflection, and nourishment. You may find that one practice speaks to you more than another. That discovery is part of the experience.

This experience can give you time to rest and introduce practices you can return to. The deeper invitation is to begin recognizing what helps you feel supported, and to make room for more of that in your life.

Three Facilitators, One Thoughtfully Curated Experience

I am so excited to share this space with Mina and Holly.

Each of us brings her own gifts, perspective, and way of holding a room. Together, we are creating an experience with texture and depth: moments of inward listening, gentle exploration, quiet reflection, and deep rest.

Mina Harrison will guide somatic breathwork and gentle movement, alongside an immersive sound bath through Sound Off headphones.

Holly Baynes will offer cacao ceremony, guided journaling, and meditation, creating space to connect with your inner experience and listen to what is asking for your attention.

I”ll share Ayurvedic wisdom, gentle Kundalini, Yin and Restorative Yoga, and a harmonium sound bath, offering practices that invite you to reconnect with your body and settle into supported rest.

There will also be space between the experiences. Time to sip, reflect, get comfortable, and let what you have experienced settle.

That spaciousness is part of what we are curating.

An Immersive Sound Off Headphones Sound Bath

Imagine getting comfortable, closing your eyes, and allowing sound to become the focus of your attention.

Mina’s Sound Off headphones experience brings the sound bath into an intimate listening space. The headphones offer a way to immerse yourself in the sound while sharing the experience with the people around you.

For those of us who spend much of the day tracking conversations, notifications, and everything happening in our environment, simply having one place to rest our attention can feel welcome.

You do not need to work out what each sound means or create a particular experience. You can listen, notice, and allow yourself to receive the moment as it unfolds.

Somatic Breathwork and Gentle Movement: Listening From Within

Somatic practice invites you to explore your experience from inside your body.

What do you notice when you move slowly? Where do you feel ease? Where are you holding effort? What happens when you give yourself permission to respond to those sensations?

With Mina’s guidance, breathwork and gentle movement will offer space for that kind of exploration. The emphasis is on noticing your own experience and finding a pace that feels appropriate for you.

Sometimes we spend so much time thinking about our bodies that we forget to listen to them. Gentle movement can become a conversation: a way to notice, respond, and reconnect.

You can pause, return to your natural breathing, or rest whenever you need. Your experience belongs to you.

Cacao Ceremony: A Moment to Receive

There is something meaningful about holding a warm cup with both hands and taking your time.

Holly’s cacao ceremony will invite us to gather with intention, slow down, and bring our attention to the moment we are sharing.

The warmth of the cup. The taste of the cacao. The simple act of receiving something thoughtfully prepared.

Within this experience, cacao becomes a ritual of presence—a moment to step out of automatic doing and into conscious participation. An opportunity to consider what you are bringing into the room and what you would like to make space for.

Journaling and Guided Meditation: Space to Hear Yourself

When life moves quickly, our inner experience can become a collection of unfinished thoughts.

Journaling offers somewhere to put them.

With Holly’s guidance, we will make space to reflect, explore, and listen. Your writing can be messy, brief, surprising, or deeply personal. The page is yours.

Guided meditation will offer another way to turn inward, with a voice to follow and room to notice what is present. You do not have to arrive knowing how to meditate. You can simply begin where you are.

Perhaps you will recognize something you have been needing. Perhaps you will find a little quiet. Perhaps the most meaningful part will be having time to ask yourself a question and stay long enough to hear the answer.

Gentle Kundalini: Reconnecting With Your Inner Aliveness

I love the way Kundalini brings movement, breath, and attention together.

For the Exhale Rest Retreat, I will share a gentle expression of this practice, with space to explore your own capacity and experience. We will invite movement and presence without rushing past the body’s requests for care.

Within yogic traditions, breath and movement are ways of working with prana, the vital energy of life. I find this a beautiful lens for considering how we spend our energy and how we nourish it.

Sometimes reconnection feels like stillness. Sometimes it feels like moving enough to remember that you are here, inside your body, alive and worthy of care.

This practice will offer room for both.

Yin and Restorative Yoga: Letting Yourself Be Supported

There is a special kind of relief in finding a position where you can let some effort go.

Yin and Restorative Yoga offer different invitations into slower practice. Yin generally explores longer-held shapes with an appropriate level of sensation. Restorative Yoga uses support to create comfortable positions where sustained muscular effort can soften.

During our retreat, these practices will make room for quiet attention and supported rest. We will approach them gently, with permission to adjust, change positions, or rest in another way.

You do not need to be flexible to deserve this experience. You do not need to make a shape look a certain way.

My hope is that you will have time to discover what comfort feels like in your own body, and what happens when you allow support to meet you there.

A Harmonium Sound Bath and Time to Settle

I’ll also share a harmonium sound bath experience, bringing the warmth and resonance of sound into our time together.

After movement, reflection, and inward exploration, there will be room to lie back and listen. To allow the experience to settle without immediately needing to explain it or turn it into something useful.

Some moments are valuable simply because we are present for them.

The sound bath is an invitation to stay with one of those moments.

Ayurvedic Nourishment for a Cozy Winter Day

Nourishment is woven into the whole experience.

We’ll have Ayurvedic snacks and beverages available throughout, bringing another layer of care to our gathering. Time to enjoy a bite, sip slowly, and reconnect with the ordinary pleasure of being nourished.

In Ayurveda, early winter is often understood through the qualities of Vata: movement, lightness, coolness, and dryness. Traditional seasonal care emphasizes grounding rhythms, warmth, and nourishment as a response to those qualities.

That perspective helps shape the feeling of the Exhale Rest Retreat: comfortable, cozy, spacious, and attentive.

The season is changing. This experience offers a chance to notice how you are changing with it, and what would help you feel more supported as you move into fall.

A Self-Care Gift Bag to Bring the Practice Home

Each guest will receive a beautiful, curated self-care gift bag filled with goodies to help carry the spirit of the retreat into everyday life.

I love the idea of something tangible accompanying you home. A reminder of the time you chose for yourself. An invitation to create another small moment of care when the retreat is over.

Because the practice continues in ordinary places.

Beside your bed. At the kitchen table. In the few quiet minutes before the house wakes up. In the choice to pause before moving on to the next thing.

The gift bag is part of our intention to help this experience reach beyond the mat.

Resting in Community

There is something tender about gathering with people who have also chosen to pause.

You can come with a friend or arrive on your own. You can enjoy conversation or leave room for quiet. We are keeping this gathering intimate, with space for 16 guests, so there is room for personal experience within our shared afternoon.

Community can remind us that the desire for rest is shared. That other people are also carrying full lives. That we can spend time together without needing every moment to be productive.

A cozy room. Thoughtful guidance. Something nourishing to sip. People making space for themselves and one another.

That is the atmosphere we are inviting you into.