Reciprocal Resting

A collage of nature memes on a green background, text overlay says "Reciprocal Resting Pod". Example of memes: "source? it was revealed during my nature walk." and "There is literally nothing in nature that blooms all year long, so do not expect yourself to do so."

Pod-Head: Dani Pierson

Was your favourite part of elementary school silent reading after lunch? Are you envious of the house cats that spend their days napping in the warm rays of the sun? Do you yearn for community spaces where rest is valued more than labour?”

These are the vibes that the Reciprocal Resting pod is going for! The goal in this pod is to create a collective space where rest is centred with room to explore its political potentialities, its curiosities, and all the feelings that it brings. 

In the Reciprocal Resting pod, we will experiment with practices of rest as a method to engage meaningfully with the world. In resting together, we intervene into the colonial capitalistic definitions of rest and care as hyper-individualistic and consumerist choices.

Things we might get up to in this pod:

  • Silent, but together, reading time
  • Collaborative art projects
  • Crafting circles
  • Visits with Land
  • Conversations about rest

During these activities, I will offer prompts and anchors for us to have conversations about rest, productivity, and feeling / being in the world differently. Sometimes these anchors will be questions, or a song, or a video – things that will elicit creative and collaborative considerations of rest. The things we will do together are meant to offer space for reflection, reverie, and connection as an antidote to the harsh individuality of dissociative rest under capitalism.

Our experimentations in rest are intended to provide something to ground us to FEELed Camp and to each other, but they will be low stakes and flexible. In taking cues from the Land and each other, we will find ways to rest that allow us to feel connected to this experience and to the world. If you need a change in pace or alternative way of engaging, there will be room for shifting / ebbing / flowing.

Dani Pierson

Headshot of Dani Pierson wearing a red-black striped shirt and large yellow bead earrings.

I am Dani (she/they), and I recently completed my SSHRC-funded MA in UBC Okanagan’s Interdisciplinary master’s degree in the Power, Conflict, and Ideas theme. I am Métis-Settler from Treaty Eight territory with family ties in Fort Nelson, B.C. This year, I have presented my research at the Indigenous Graduate Student Symposium in Vancouver, BC and the Urban Indigenous Wellbeing Conference in Kelowna, BC. I have published my research in the inaugural issue of Pawataatamihk: Journal of Métis Thinkers (2023) and have led Rest as Resistance workshops in collaboration with UBC Okanagan’s Sexual Violence Prevention and Response Office, the Graduate Student Committee of the Student’s Union, and Dr. Astrida Neimanis’s environmental humanities lab, the FEELed Lab.