Breath as Offering, Ritual, Prayer.
This course is inspired by & created specifically for all those bearing witness to & protesting the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. We understand this struggle for Palestinian liberation as inseparable from the liberation of all systemically marginalized & oppressed human & more-than-human beings around the world, & of the Earth itself. None of us are free until all of us are free.
This course roots in gratitude for all those doing this radical, deeply needed work of awareness & activism & explores the role of breath - life force, birthright, consciousness - in sustaining long-haul activism (in all its forms) & metabolizing collective & ecological grief as anti-capitalist, transformational, liberatory practice.
Beginning with an opening meditation & introductory lecture rooted in wisdom from Yoga, Buddhism, & Traditional Chinese Medicine, this course consists of NINE short, accessible video recorded breath practices, plus TWO bonus audio recordings.
Collectively these accessible breath practices can support folks in cultivating:
- Embodiment & grounding
- Mental clarity & strength
- Invigoration & joy
- Equanimity & balance
- Flow & spaciousness
- A sense of well-being
- Rest & restoration
- Intuition & a strong voice
In addition to these bite-sized recorded practices that you can visit again & again, participants also receive a 'Breathing Through' Tonglen-inspired meditation from the Work that Reconnects & a Yoga Nidrā guided awareness practice for deep & radical rest.
This supportive & deeply needed course is offered with unlimited access and eight sliding-scale tiers ($11-88), & two-thirds of all proceeds go directly to support Palestinians in Gaza & pro-Palestinian protestors in the US. All remaining proceeds help expand access to our radical rest & communal grief offerings at A Restful Space in Old Town Eureka (Wiyot place name Jaroujiji, meaning 'Where You Sit & Rest').
And if this offering would benefit you and a donation is not accessible at this time, please enroll with the free access option.
Meet Laura.
Laura Johnson (she/her), PhD, RYT-500, is the founder of A Restful Space, offering radical Rest-orative Yoga & community grief circles in Humboldt County, CA, as well as her premiere self-paced online course, Yoga for Ecological Grief. She is also a Geography & Environmental Studies lecturer at Cal Poly Humboldt & an embodied activist. Her work explores intersections of rest & grief, yoga & community, cyclical wisdom & liberation.
Laura is a 500-hour Registered Yoga Teacher with advanced training by Samantha Akers of TheraYoga Method & certification in the Trauma Conscious Yoga Method (TCYM) from the Trauma Conscious Yoga Institute, Embodied Activism from The Embody Lab, & authentic Yoga Nidrā with Kaya Mindlin.
Laura has deepened in her trauma-informed grief offerings as a practitioner of the Work that Reconnects & a student of Shauna Janz of Sacred Grief, an organization focused on collective healing through grief, ritual, trauma-care, embodiment, & ancestral reconciliation. Laura also centers affective dimensions of socio-ecological crises in her college courses, such as 'Global Awareness,' 'Emotions in the Anthropocene,' & 'Climate Emotions as Activism.'
A yoga practitioner for more than a decade, Laura has offered yin & restorative classes, workshops, & private sessions in Humboldt County since 2018. She is passionate about yoga as a radical relational & embodied practice for personal & collective healing & has been invited to share at the 2022 Sedona Yoga Festival, the annual Post-Capitalist Conference, Vipassana meditation retreats, & on the Sacred Community Project Podcast.
Laura is also a freelance writer with essays published in Lion's Roar, Tikkun, Science & Nonduality (SAND), Resilience.org, Taprot Magazine, & Deep Times: A Journal of the Work that Reconnects, among others. She lives on unceded Wiyot land in Eureka, CA (Wiyot place name: Jaroujii, meaning 'where you sit & rest'), with her husband, young daughter, dogs, cats, goats, & chickens.
To find out more please visit www.arestfulspace.com, www.laurabjohnson.com, or connect on Instagram.
Self-Paced Course Curriculum (Unlimited Access)
- Ujjayi Pranayama, Victorious Breath
- Dirga Pranayama, Three-Part Breath
- Kumbhaka Pranayama, Breath Retention
- Nadi Shodhana Pranayama, Alternate Nostril Breathing
- Surya Bhedana Pranayama, Right (Solar) Nostril Breathing
- Chandra Bhedana Pranayama, Left (Lunar) Nostril Breathing
- Bhramari Pranayama, Bee Breath
- Kapalbhati Pranayama, Skull Shining Breath
- Breath of Joy
‘But breathe this deep because this is the message. We did it. We shifted the paradigm. We rewrote the meaning of life with our living. And this is how we did it. We let go. And then we got scared and held on and then we let go again. Of everything that would shackle us to sameness. Of our deeply held belief that our lives could be measured or disconnected from anything. We let go and re-taught ourselves to breathe the presence of the energy that we are that cannot be destroyed, but only transformed and transforming everything.
-From 'Evidence' by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, in Octavia's Brood
Want to Go Deeper?
Learn about our signature course, Yoga for Ecological Grief.
This unique & transformational self-paced online course (lifetime access, 12 CEUs available) is a radically embodied invitation to honor, open to, & move through our collective pain for the world in these times of intersecting crises, transition, & co-liberation.
A coupon code for this beautiful & robust course is included when you enroll in Breathing for Palestine.
