COLORADO SPRINGS — Ashley Cornelius unfurled a bright orange yoga mat in a sunny conference room at the Hillside Community Center. Then she bent over and dragged it across the floor, counting out loud each length of the mat. “One, two, three …” She counted to six then stood up straight.
“I think we can fit more people. Maybe … 80?”
Cornelius is the recipient of a $7,500 Arts in Society grant, a collaborative fund for art projects focused on social issues, administered by RedLine Contemporary Art Center. She’s spending her funds on yoga mats (maybe … 80 of them?), blankets and custom tea blends to facilitate a big, relaxing community nap on July 13. She will also use some of the money to pay herself and her co-facilitators a stipend.
The event will open with each of the facilitators discussing their practices with rest. Participants will be led through a short writing exercise, and Cornelius, who is the Pikes Peak poet laureate, will wrap that exercise into a poem. Then it’s time for some shut-eye.
“Tons of folks don’t have access to rest. It’s either commodified or stigmatized,” she said. “Taking a nap is resistance, it’s revolution. It’s a different way to access mental health, which I think people don’t realize or admit.”
Cornelius’s July event is called “Rest as Resistance,” a nod to the work of Tricia Hersey, the self-anointed Nap Bishop of her own blog-slash-social-justice-movement, The Nap Ministry.
Hersey has spent the better part of a decade expounding the power of rest — not as a means to get more done, but as a way to disrupt a system bent on productivity at all costs. Especially when that cost falls disproportionately on the bodies (physical labor) and minds (emotional labor) of marginalized people.
The costs of care
An ongoing study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looks at the sleep patterns of Americans as part of its broader research into preventive measures for chronic health problems. The most recent results found that 46.4% of Black or African American adults get insufficient sleep (defined as seven hours or less per night), making them the second-most sleep deprived demographic after Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islanders, nearly half of whom don’t sleep enough.
☀️ READ MORE
In Colorado, those disparities are apparent throughout the health care system. Despite the state’s efforts to address health care inequity through the Colorado Option, a report released in March concluded that “the health care system remains fraught with issues stemming from structural racism and more needs to be done to reduce inequities.”
One of those issues is the high cost of mental health care.
Access to psychotherapy, for example, has always been “kind of a culture of the rich,” Vincent Atchity, president and CEO of Mental Health Colorado told The Colorado Sun in February.
Cornelius is hoping for 60% of participants in her napping event to identify as part of a marginalized community, but it’s open to anyone. She said that she deliberately chose Hillside, a historically Black neighborhood in Colorado Springs, because she wanted to make sure the site was “a place where people already trusted the space, where people from these demographics already exist.”
“As the world burns, we will eat really good sandwiches”
Before committing to life as a full-time artist — “the best decision I’ve ever made,” Cornelius said — she worked as a therapist for health care professionals in hospitals, a workplace that isn’t compatible with long periods of stillness.
But rest isn’t just about napping. “I’d tell them: Sometimes you can go to the bathroom and sit on the toilet for longer than you need to. If you truly have no time in the day, you can sit in the stall for one more minute. That is also a rest. Take three breaths. That’s also rest,” Cornelius said. “There are so many ways that we can signal to our bodies to take rest, while acknowledging there are systems in place that force us to have to work and be productive in order to live our lives.”
During her community nap event, Cornelius will lead participants through an exercise where they examine their relationship to rest. Does it involve services, like getting a manicure or a massage? Does it require specific spaces, like a yoga studio or a mountain retreat?
“Hopefully we’re helping people see that you can put on a YouTube video or some music and stretch and relax. It doesn’t have to be a thing that’s a lot of effort or a lot of money,” said Samantha Paulin, a therapist at Colorado College and co-facilitator of the nap event. It can mean listening to a good song before you enter a meeting, she added. It can mean sitting on the toilet for an extra beat.
There’s a paradox at the core of “Rest as Resistance”: Cornelius is pouring money, time and effort into creating an event that is about disrupting cycles of work and productivity. She’s working hard to stop working.
That’s part of what feels revolutionary about it, Cornelius said. Acknowledging the system that she’s working in while actively pushing against it, even in the most comforting and quietest of ways.
“As the world burns, we will eat really good sandwiches, we will laugh with our friends. Our joy does not invalidate what’s happening in the world and our systems, but two things can be true at once,” she said. “ Our brains hate that, but it’s true.”
“We can’t disregard our rest in all of it. Which is a really hard thing to say,” she added. “But in many ways that’s how it’s always been — very specifically for marginalized folks. Horrible things have happened to Black folks, but I still exist and have fun and have joy. I think a lot of folks are starting to understand what it feels like to hold two things at once, to feel like I need to rest and also need to call my senators.”
“Rest as Resistance” takes place from 9:30-11:30 a.m. July 13. The event is sold out at the time of writing, but Cornelius wants to bring this event to other communities throughout Colorado. If you are interested in speaking with her about hosting a nap event, fill out this contact form on her website.