Rest and Refuge: The Ritual of Holding Grief and Love is an invitation for us to slow down and honor our heart’s need to rest, heal, and reimagine. In this retreat through ritual and practice, we will create what our times so rarely offer: a community-centered unhurried space to grieve, heal, and tend to ourselves as living ancestors: people whose choices, rest, and wholeness are already shaping what comes next. We will slowly return home to the heart of who we are, and find refuge in the tender, unresolved space between grief and love, between action and surrender, between knowing and not-knowing.
Many of us find ourselves wrestling with the reality that we feel unable to hold all that is happening in the world right now, and yet we know, deep within, that we are being called to do something. We are moving through, have weathered, and are weathering so much as we traverse uncertainty and grief, face heartbreak, and try to create and be beacons of hope.
During this retreat, we will engage in collective practices, ceremony, and ritual to honor the fullness and worthiness of our humanity. We will seek refuge in the wisdom of nature’s elements: earth, air, fire, water, and the ether to inspire profound rest, ease, transformation, and healing. We will offer contemplative, mindfulness, and somatic-healing practices, yogic teachings, and sound healing, meditation, yoga nidra, pranayama, and self-reflection to move us into a place of peace, wakefulness, and harmony.
WHAT TO EXPECT
- Multiple learning sessions with the retreat facilitators, including meditation, pranayama, movement, self-study, yogic and Buddhist teachings and practices, ancestral practices, rituals, and more.
- A deeper understanding of the elemental energy we contain and how we can work with it to nourish and replenish our spirits
- Sound Healing
- Yoga Nidra and Rest Practices
- A deep connection with the more-than-human world
- A communal grief and resilience ceremony
- Time to commune with nature and the elements
- Nature walks and blessings
- A fire ceremony
- A water blessing
- Time to commune with others and time to be still and quiet
- Meals included
TEACHERS
Stephanie Ghoston Paul (she/her) is an internationally recognized speaker, racial justice facilitator, organizational development consultant, leadership doula, and recovering lawyer. Her sweet spot is helping movement-makers bring to reality a radically transformed world through wholehearted coaching and consulting. With individuals that looks like care and boundaries work to help leaders balance their lives by coming back home to themselves. Within community, Stephanie holds space for collective healing through truth-telling, and explores what it means to be a living ancestor. In organizations, she co-designs pathways to name harm, imagine liberatory ways of being, and engage in the messy culture and people work needed for that transformation. Stephanie believes that when people, communities and ecosystems fully align and embody their purpose, we move toward a future where all human beings are free, whole, and enough.
She’s been described as a purpose-whisperer, an ecosystem connector, and a culture alchemist. Stephanie is also a best-selling author, the podcast host of Take Nothing When I Die, a documentarian and a TEDx speaker. She centers ease and care in her life and her work, making sure to practice what she preaches. When she’s not “working” Stephanie enjoys cooking spicy dishes with her partner, finding new flavors of delicious tea, and witnessing her small humans discover the world.
Rashid Hughes is an intersectional-contemplative teacher, writer, and restorative justice facilitator who envisions a transformed world where everyone lives with deep connection to nature and one another. He is a certified Mindfulness Teacher, Yoga Instructor, Restorative Justice Facilitator, and Fire Pujari from the Kashi tradition.
Rashid is a co-founder of the Heart Refuge Mindfulness Community, which focuses on mindfulness practices within the experiences and cultures of Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC). In 2022, Rashid was honored to become a Fellow at the Garrison Institute, a transformative experience that inspired him, in 2024, to serve as the Mindfulness Director for the inaugural cohort of the Howard University Contemplative Justice Fellowship.
Building on this momentum, in 2025 he began a meaningful partnership with the National Reentry Network for Returning Citizens, where he now offers Restorative Justice community spaces for Returning Citizens in Washington, DC. He draws inspiration from various wisdom traditions and his personal experience as a Black man, and his teachings emphasize that spiritual practices can serve as a radical source of personal and collective liberation. With great joy, Rashid is dedicated to nurturing life at home with his wife and daughter.
Michelle Cassandra Johnson is an author, activist, spiritual teacher, racial equity consultant and educator, and intuitive and shamanic healer. She approaches her life and work from a place of knowing we are, can, and must heal individually and collectively. Michelle facilitates workshops and immersions, leads retreats and transformative experiences nationwide, and offers an array of healing services for individuals and groups. For over 25 years as a racial equity educator, she has worked with large corporations, non-profits, and community groups. Michelle is a six-time published author, and in May 2025, her sixth book, The Wisdom of the Hive, co-written with her best friend, Amy Burtaine, and published by Sounds True, was released. Her upcoming book, You Are Protected, published by St. Martin’s Essentials, comes out in September 2026.
Michelle was a TEDx speaker at Wake Forest University in 2019 and has been interviewed on several podcasts in which she explores the premise and foundation of Skill in Action, along with embodied approaches to racial equity work, creating ritual in justice spaces, our divine connection with nature and Spirit, and how we as a culture can heal.
Michelle leads courageously from the heart with compassion and a commitment to address the heartbreak dominant culture causes for many because of the harm it creates. She inspires change that allows people to stand in their humanity and wholeness in a world that fragments most of us. She lives in North Carolina with her husband, sweet dog, Jasper, and her honeybees.
Johanna Olivas is the founder of Luna Serenity and the heart behind the Luna Sound Lounge, a private healing space where she offers Reiki, sound healing, and deeply restorative one-on-one experiences. After experiencing burnout in her own corporate career, Johanna made a life-changing shift into the wellness industry with a mission to help others reconnect with themselves before reaching that same breaking point. She also leads workplace wellness experiences, helping teams reduce stress, reset their nervous systems, strengthen resilience, and cultivate greater balance, focus, and well-being in both their professional and personal lives.
A retreat host, sound healer, Reiki Master, yoga and meditation teacher, Johanna has guided people through transformational practices rooted in rest, ritual, community, and nervous system care. With years of experience leading transformational retreats and creating sacred spaces where participants can soften, reconnect, and experience a true vibrational shift, she brings a grounded and compassionate approach to healing. Through sound, movement, meditation, cacao, and intentional ritual, Johanna invites people to journey deeper into the heart, awaken their inner wisdom, and remember what it feels like to come home to themselves.
ACCOMMODATIONS
There are Single, and Double rooms available. Please note, there is no available guest elevator and all rooms are accessible by stairs—except for those reserved for the mobility-impaired on the first floor. There are two communal bathrooms on each residential floor as well as a comfortable lounge with sofas and easy chairs, where tea and instant coffee are available. The lounges also are equipped with wireless, high-speed internet connection. There are several local hotels within driving distance from the Institute, for those who wish to stay off-site, as commuters. Onsite meals are included with commuter registrations.
COVID-19