Winter Rest
A Weekly Invitation to Fertile Darkness
Winter is a powerful time for resting, spiritual growth, and listening to the fertile dark. It’s a time for slowing down. The only trouble is that it can be such a busy time.
Winter Rest offers you the support of community to create space for darkness and winter rest. On select Thursday nights we will gather on Zoom for about 10 minutes to ritually unplug and prepare ourselves to enter into the dark together. The rest of the hour - or the evening if you like - is for you to rest.
My only suggestion for this time is that it is dark and as un-electronic as possible. Maybe only illuminated with candles or night lights. You could sleep, walk outside in the dark, pray, sing, talk, give yourself a spa treatment. You might not feel like you know what to do, which is partly why we don’t give ourselves this time. This is why I am creating this container so we can overcome some of the things that get in the way of allowing fertile darkness in our lives.
The dark is so good for our health, for our dreams, for the cycle of life.
This invitation is my gift to you and there is no charge.
Winter Rest:
A weekly invitation to fertile darkness
Guided by Emily Jarrett Hughes
Weekly Drop-in Meditations - Online
Thursday evenings
Begins November 2nd
Your Invitation to Winter Rest
Preparing yourself:
Finish evening chores
Turn off lights
Light your candle
Evening schedule
7:20 Zoom room opens for community time
7:30 Ritual to enter darkness
7:40 Darkness on your own
8:30 End of darkness, if you choose.
I am Emily Jarrett Hughes, a healer, dancer, and teacher in the Wisdom tradition. My spiritual journey has been driven by the desire to find meaning and hope in a world of dark experiences. The mystery of how life emerges from the dark is common theme in my studies and teaching. For years I have taught dance workshops that explore the Eleusinian mysteries of descent and ascent. This danced approach is grounded in my in-depth study with Laura Shannon, a pioneering researcher of women’s ritual dances from the Balkans, Greece, and Asia Minor. I began studying Spring Forest Qigong during my own dark experience of major illness, and the practice has transformed how I understand darkness. I am in love with the practice and have received the highest level of training and certification available from Spring Forest Qigong.
Winter Rest is special because it is a community experience. Each week we greet a screen of candlelit faces - truly my favorite way to have a Zoom meeting!
The links for each week will be lovingly wrapped in Eye of the Heart’s new online community home.
This is a special space we have created to carve out community in a world of isolation. Even if we cannot connect in person, this space will serve as a connecting place, a gathering home, for those of us looking to connect and commune around our most sacred practices—our spirituality, our writing, our seasonal wanderings, and more.
By signing up for Winter Rest, you will also become a member of this space, and, in addition to the community aspects and events, you will be able to explore other online classes and offerings from Eye of the Heart and its team of hosts.
Registration
