140: Rest Is Sacred with Octavia Raheem
Octavia Raheem first wrote a book called Gather where she talked about gathering ancestors, gathering courage and gathering rest. Then she wrote a book, Pause Rest Be, about how rest has served as a tool for courage and resilience for her and the people she’s worked with.
And lucky for us, Octavia has written a new book called Rest Is Sacred, that takes these ideas and weaves them together, taking her readers into a deep place inside themselves.
Octavia F. Raheem (she/her) is a wife, mother, three time author, rest coach, and restorative + Yoga Nidra Teacher. She is the founder of Devoted to Rest® a transformational rest focused immersion for visionary leaders. She is a true luminary in the areas of rest, restorative arts, wellness, and yoga. Octavia has been featured in The New York Times, Forbes, Yoga Journal, Well + Good, Tricycle, at Essence Festival and more.
You can listen to our previous conversations- 47: How To Hold Space and 107: The Power of Rest
In this episode, you’ll hear:
why rest is sacred for Octavia, and all of us
what rest can help us reclaim
why our culture makes rest so challenging for everyone
rest in the most practical terms
what Octavia does for her practice and how she makes time for it
Learn More Octavia:
Ocativa’s Book Rest is Sacred
Follow Octavia on Instagram
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Is yoga exclusively connected to Hinduism? What is the caste system and why would a western yoga teacher need to understand it? How much of yoga’s complex history do modern yoga practitioners and teachers really understand?
In this powerful and thought-provoking conversation, I welcome back Anjali Rao — yoga educator, activist, and author — to unpack the intertwined histories of yoga, caste, patriarchy, and colonization. Drawing from her new book Yoga as Embodied Resistance, Anjali challenges us to explore how caste hierarchies and colonial legacies still shape modern yoga spaces, language, and access to practice today.