Rest is not only restorative—it connects you to your inner wisdom and is a portal to revelation. That's the theme of a new book, Rest Is Sacred: Reclaiming Our Brilliance Through the Practice of Stillness, by Octavia Raheem, who joins Tracee Stanley, author of Radiant Rest and The Luminous Self, for a conversation about rest as a deep spiritual practice. In this conversation, they discuss:

• What inspired Octavia to write Rest Is Sacred
• Powerful lessons around distraction
• Rest as a form of protection and nourishment
• How rest connects us to our dreaming selves
• Much more!

Order Octavia's book, Rest Is Sacredhttps://www.restissacred.com

Join Octavia's next Mastermind, Devoted to Rest® https://www.octaviaraheem.com/devoted-to-rest

Mentioned in this episode: Dr. Gail Parker http://www.drgailparker.com "That which you seek is seeking you." —Hafiz "There is nothing new under the sun. There are new suns." —Octavia E Butler

About our guest Octavia Raheem is a wife, mother, author of three books, Pause, Rest, Be (award winning), Gather, and Rest Is Sacred. She is a rest/restorative coach, yoga + meditation educator, and former wellness studio owner. She is the creator of Devoted to Rest™, a transformational rest focused experience for visionary women leaders making a high impact in their fields. Within her rest and work she threads time tested practices, depth skill and knowledge about what supports rest and what doesn’t, wisdom rooted in Black American Southern traditions, and intuition into a blanket of experience under which individuals can gather and rebuke stress, fatigue, and burnout. Her offerings lead driven, inspiring, creative, and purpose centered individuals and companies to awaken the fullness of their potential and power through rest.

Connect with Tracee

Order Tracee's books:

— Radiant Rest: https://www.traceestanley.com/radiant-rest

— The Luminous Self: https://www.traceestanley.com/luminous-self

Website: traceestanley.comSign up for Tracee's newsletter https://www.traceestanley.com/#newsletter

Follow Tracee on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/tracee_stanley

What determines the path of discovering our true Self? Sometimes it begins with realizing who we are not… 

In this conversation, host Tracee Stanley and Caverly Morgan, spiritual teacher, non-profit founder, speaker, and author of The Heart of Who We Are: Realizing Freedom Together as well as A Kids Book About Mindfulness, dive into the increasingly vital call of these times to remember who we really are, not only for ourselves but also for the collective. 

This rich discussion covers:

• Caverly’s experience as a monastic practitioner

• How our approach to practice can reinforce our karmic knots

• Bringing practice into our lives vs. bringing our life into practice 

• Snapping out of our culture’s illusion of grasping for “one more thing” when wholeness is something you can only experience, not consume

• Experiencing timeless reality

• Recommends practices for these heartbreaking times

• Wisdom found in Caverly’s book as well as Tracee’s book, The Luminous Self: Sacred Yogic Practices & Rituals to Remember Who You Are

• The power of healing in community

• Much more!

Connect with Caverly and her books:

The Heart of Who We Are: Realizing Freedom Together

A Kids Book About Mindfulness

Tracee's books:

• The Luminous Self
• Radiant Rest

Visit TraceeStanley.com to find out more and join her newsletter to discover more events and retreats that center rest, creativity, and earth-centered practices.

About our guest

Caverly Morgan is a spiritual teacher, non-profit founder, speaker and writer who blends the original spirit of Zen with a modern nondual approach. She is the author of The Heart of Who We Are: Realizing Freedom Together as well as A Kids Book About Mindfulness. Caverly is the founder of Peace in Schools, a nonprofit that created the nation’s first for-credit mindfulness class in public high schools. Her practice began in 1995 and has included eight years of training in a silent Zen monastery. She has been teaching contemplative practice since 2001. Caverly leads meditation retreats, workshops and online classes internationally. Learn more at caverlymorgan.org.

Dreams are messengers of insights, prophecies, and creative inspirations, a doorway to discovering more about what lies in the depths of our being. Paying attention to our dreaming life is a way of weaving practice into a full cycle of a day and honoring the states of consciousness that we usually dismiss as not real or unimportant. They are also a way to help us heal.

In this episode of Radiant Rest, Tracee Stanley hosts a fascinating conversation with Athena Laz, an intuitive, dream teacher, psychologist & author of The Alchemy of Your Dreams and The Deliberate Dreamers Journal, about dreaming as a powerful pathway to healing. They discuss:

• The story of how Athena discovered the world of dreams and the power they behold

• Different types of dreaming, including lucid, cognitive, and prophetic dreaming

• How to work with dreams and the symbols that arise in them

• What happens when we don’t pay attention to what our dreams are trying to tell us

• The difference between lucid dreaming and astral projection

• The lucid dream that revealed to Tracee where, exactly, she would eventually move to

• Much more, including a visualization practice to connect with the dreaming world

Resources

Learn more about Athena

Athena's books:

• The Alchemy of Your Dreams: A Modern Guide to the Ancient Art of Lucid Dreaming and Interpretation
• The Deliberate Dreamer’s Journal

Robert Monroe, a researcher of alternate states of consciousness

Tracee's books:

• The Luminous Self
• Radiant Rest

Visit TraceeStanley.com to find out more and join her newsletter to discover more events and retreats that center rest, creativity, and earth-centered practices.

About our guest

Athena Laz is a bestselling author and expert in the field of dreams, spirituality, and psychic intuition. Her bestselling books, The Alchemy of Your Dreams: A Modern Guide to Lucid Dreaming & Interpretation, and The Deliberate Dreamer’s Journal are out now and have been translated into more than 13 languages worldwide. She has a new book and oracle deck coming out with Hay House in 2025.  You can discover her work at www.athenalaz.com, and find her on social media: @athena_Laz.

Separation from nature is causing illness not only to ourselves but all beings and systems on the planet—yet our relationship with earth holds the potential for the healing we need, says Jeanine Canty, PhD, author of Returning the Self to Nature: Undoing Our Collective Narcissism and Healing Our Planet and teacher of ecopsychology. In this episode, Jeanine joins host Tracee Stanley to share wisdom and tools from ecopsychology to expand our hearts and consciousness and bring about collective repair. 

They discuss: 

• The definition and origin of ecopsychology, and how it differs from western psychology

• Collective narcissism, and how it’s fueling a crisis

• Pathways to healing through an awareness of our reciprocity with all beings

• Tools and practices to disrupt the false self and shift into the ecological self 

• Much more!

Resources:

Returning the Self to Nature: Undoing Our Collective Narcissism and Healing Our Planet by Jeanine Canty, PhD

About our guest:

Jeanine M. Canty, PhD, is a professor of transformative studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco, telecommuting from Boulder, CO. Formerly the chair of environmental studies at Naropa University, she continues to teach at Naropa and at Pacifica Graduate Institute’s ecopsychology certificate program. A lover of nature, justice, and contemplative practice, her teaching intersects issues of social and ecological justice, ecopsychology, and the process of worldview expansion and change. She is both editor and contributor to the books Ecological and Social Healing: Multicultural Women’s Voices and Globalism and Localization: Emergent Approaches to Ecological and Social Crises. Her newest book is Returning the Self to Nature: Undoing Our Collective Narcissism and Healing Our Planet (Shambhala Publications, 2022). Other selected works have been featured in A Wild Love for the World: Joanna Macy and The Work of Our Time, The Wiley Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology, The Body and Oppression: Its Roots, its Voices, and its Resolutions, Shadows and Light: Principles, Practices, Pedagogy, and Multicultural Perspectives of Contemporary Transpersonal Counseling. She is a certified meditation instructor as well as a Wilderness First Responder (WFR).

What are the lessons you’re tired of learning? In yoga philosophy, the kleshas are patterns that create suffering, and exploring them can help us find peace and ease in our personal lives and within the collective. In this conversation, Tracee Stanley is joined by author, activist, spiritual teacher and practitioner, racial equity consultant and trainer, and intuitive healer Michelle Cassandra Johnson, whose new book, Illuminating Our True Nature: Yogic Practices for Personal & Collective Healing is a guide for turning towards—instead of away from—our suffering, not only to better understand why we suffer but also to also open up pathways to freedom. 

Tune in as Tracee and Michelle discuss:

• Why we resist suffering and how yogic tools and practices can help us overcome our samskaras (patterns)

• How avidya (ignorance) fuels our feelings of separation—especially from nature—and is at the root of suffering 

• The prevailing wisdom of honey bees 

• Why spiritual bypassing leads to more suffering

• Surprising lessons Michelle learned while writing her book

• Much more! 

Michelle’s new book, Illuminating Our True Nature: Yogic Practices for Personal & Collective Healing, is available now wherever books are sold! Learn more here.

Connect with Michelle and explore her books, offerings, and events at michellecjohnson.com

How does life shift when we give ourselves permission to slow down? In this episode, host Tracee Stanley and Rosie Acosta, author of You Are Radically Loved: A Healing Journey to Self-Love, dive into the ways we can savor the little moments and find peace in the practice of slowing down—even when we’re in a season where it feels like everyone is speeding up.  

They discuss: 

• Why it’s important to intentionally slow down into presence

• Sacred boundaries and the practice of “compassionate no”

• Examining our tendency to fill our schedules 

• Why we live in an optimization culture

• Much more!

Connect with Rosie at radicallyloved.com and instagram.com/rosieacosta

Tune in to her podcast, You Are Radically Loved, here

More about Rosie Acosta, in her own words: 

I’m an Author, Meditation & Mindfulness Teacher. I am a first generation Mexican-American, grew up in the early 90’s in East LA during the “Decade of Death.” We are talking drive-by shootings, gang violence, everything one would need to grow up with PTSD. I’ve been on a 20-year journey through yoga and mindfulness, that completely changed my life. I've been teaching for over fifteen years. From my East Los Angeles roots to working with Olympic athletes, NFL champions, NBA All-Stars, and veterans of war, my mission is to help people overcome adversity and embrace self-love. Currently teaching on the #1 Meditation App, Headspace.

When things fall apart, we may need support accessing our inner knowing and inner compass to navigate the grief. Sara Avant Stover wrote Handbook for the Heartbroken: A Women’s Path from Devastation to Rebirth to help orient people experiencing a variety of forms of personal or collective heartbreak and support them in feeling a sense of validation and clarity. 

In this conversation, host Tracee Stanley and Sara discussed:

• Different types of heartbreak
• Intuition and reckoning with what we already know before our rational mind acknowledges it
• Bringing our true Self in relationship to the subconscious parts of ourselves created by upbringing and culture
• Collective heartbreak
• The necessity of processing grief in community
• The role of rest in healing from heartbreak
• Much more!

Connect with Sara and get your copy of Handbook for the Heartbroken at saraavantstover.com

Sara Avant Stover (she/her) is a Certified Internal Family Systems (IFS) Practitioner and business strategist to spiritual, entrepreneurial women. Specializing in supporting women to discover and fulfill their true potential at the intersection where entrepreneurship meets personal and spiritual growth, she's also the author of The Way of the Happy Woman (2011), The Book of SHE (2015), and Handbook for the Heartbroken (2024). 

After graduating Phi Beta Kappa and Summa cum Laude from Columbia University’s all-women’s Barnard College, Sara had a cancer scare, moved to Chiang Mai, Thailand, and, there, embarked on a decade-long healing and spiritual odyssey throughout Asia. Since then, she’s gone on to uplift the lives of tens of thousands of women worldwide. 

Having taught at some of the world's leading retreat centers like Kripalu, 1440 Multiversity, Shambhala Mountain Center, Sara has been featured in Yoga Journal, the Huffington Post, Newsweek, Natural Health, and on ABC, NBC, and CBS. She lives in Boulder, CO.

What does it mean to live with a free open heart? To live boldly? To stop holding back and dive into the divine chaos and art of life? 

In this episode of Radiant Rest Podcast, host Tracee Stanley is joined by Alexandra Roxo, author of the new book Dare to Feel: The Transformational Path of the Heart. As a relationship and intimacy coach, a mentor to women, as well as a new mother, Alexandra is passionate about breaking patterns that keep us feeling alone and stuck. She brings psychology, spirituality, and conscious relationship work to her practice with couples and single women longing to call in and keep love. 

In this conversation, Tracee and Alexandra discuss:

• The ways in which we are taught not to feel 

• Core wounds as a pathway to healing and reclaiming our essential Self

• What having a child revealed to Alexandra about her discomfort with chaos 

• The breath is as a portal to the heart

• The writing and editing process of writing Alexandra’s book

• More!

Connect with Alexandra at alexandraroxo.com

Alexandra’s new book, Dare to Feel: The Transformational Path of the Heart, is now available where all books are sold 

Free Sensual Embodiment Practice: Take a few minutes of your day to drop into your gorgeous body and feel your heart open and sensuality come online with Alexandra’s signature embodiment practice.

About our guest:

Alexandra Roxo is an artist, bestselling author, transformational coach, and teacher. She has been featured as a guest speaker on many renowned podcasts and at numerous festivals and events worldwide and has been featured in multiple TV appearances, including two seasons of Netflix’s hit show, Too Hot to Handle. Her work has also been featured in the New York Times,  Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, The Guardian, Nylon, and Playboy. Her latest book, 'Dare to Feel', is out with Sounds True and explores how to work through blocks to intimacy and passionate living through deep feeling and embodiment.

“The natural cycles of life create harmony, which ultimately leads to long-term sustainability. In our hubris and forgetting, we have decided to break the cycles because we are afraid of inefficiency. I think that, literally, is the root of why we have a chronic disease epidemic.” —Dr. Casey Means

Metabolism is the power of our life force that literally fuels our lives, according to Casey Means, MD, a Stanford-trained physician who left traditional medicine to devote her life to tackling the root cause of why Americans are so sick. Her new book, Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health, outlines a framework for the causes and cures of symptoms and diseases, and how to unlock our cellular health through a more spiritual lens.

In this episode, Tracee and Dr. Casey discuss:

• The definition of metabolism, from the process of converting food energy to cellular energy to its deeper and more subtle meanings.
• Disconnection from nature as the root cause of cellular dysfunction and metabolic dysfunction, and why the collective forgetting our true nature is at the center of the American chronic disease epidemic.
• How breaking our natural and seasonal cycles in favor of short-term approaches to modern “productivity” creates cellular dysfunction.
• The parallels between the ongoing spiritual process of dying and being reborn and the natural process of our cell turnover.
• How systems—from healthcare to capitalism—weaponize our existential fear of death, which leads us into a merry-go-round of treatments and consumerism that don’t support our well-being.
• The five basic biomarkers that reveal metabolic health.
• The six principles of “Good Energy” nourishment.
• The mitochondrial impact of community—and loneliness.
• Much more!

Connect with Dr. Casey Means:

• Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health is available now
• caseymeans.com
• Instagram @drcaseyskitchen 

Tracee Stanley chats with Kaya Mindlin, sought after and beloved Yoga educator. Kaya is a steward of Vedic teachings and brings her wisdom about divine timing and so much radiant wisdom about the New Year ahead. Find Kaya at yogawithkaya.com to explore her many rich offerings. 

Kim Krans, visionary artist, author, musician, and yoga nidra guide, speaks with Tracee Stanley about her latest creation - the new game, Renunciation. This game asks you to take a rest from the overculture and reclaim what is most important in life as you let go of capitalism and explore karma. Originally recorded as part of the Creative Spark Series in the Radiance Subscription, we just had to share this on our podcast. 

You can explore yoga nidra with Kim here- You can also listen to music by Kim here.

Kim received her BFA in drawing at Cooper Union in NYC, MFA in mixed media at Hunter College, and an MA in depth psychology and creativity at Pacifica Graduate Institute in California. Her seeker's heart has brought her to study in-depth practices of Classical Hatha, Kundalini Yoga, and shamanism in India, Africa, Europe, and the UK. Kim teaches events and workshops that activate the forces of creativity and radical transformation through art, meditation, mysticism, and movement.

Quote from the Bhagavad Gita 18.47: It is better to do one's own dharma, even though imperfectly, than to do another's dharma, even though perfectly. By doing one's innate duties, a person does not incur sin.