You have already felt the shift in a room with By Moonlight.
Maybe it was a refuge space at your conference, a retreat for your staff, or a healing justice integration that landed differently than anything else you'd experienced together as a team.
Testimonies
“By Moonlight facilitation is beautiful, powerful and magic."
ACLU Montana client“By Moonlight led a room of ACLU Executive Directors to share deep stories with each other, weep, rest, unlock and heal.”
ACLU Montana Client
“Sojourner's skill as a facilitator is unparalleled — whether guiding us through breath work practices to regulate our nervous systems, leading creative movement sessions that invite us to reclaim joy and embodiment, or facilitating cultural leadership legacy work that reconnects us to our lineage and ancestral wisdom. Every space they hold is intentional, sacred, and deeply impactful."
Creative West, Anika TeneWinter Cave is What Comes Next
Winter Cave is a three-week strategic rest space that takes the natural break the world already gives you — Christmas through New Year — and nestles you and your team into a kind of secret sabbatical.
You already feel the call to learn something other than grinding, ignoring your body, and compromising your integrity out of fear. Winter Cave invites you into the natural pause of winter as a guide to the wisdom of slowing down.
Change makers, leaders who go against the grain, conspirators, you are created from the inside out and you know this. And yet where are trainings that give you the tools to navigate your inner world? Audre Lorde leaves us this powerful quote,"the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." The Cave uses the wisdom of nature to develop new tools that will absolutely dismantle the house that creates burnout and toxic work places.
Leaders emerging from winter cave share that they now have:
A shared language around rest, rhythm, and care that carries into the new year
Stronger cross-departmental relationships and trust
The ability to reframe how to show up in a capitalist world.
Clarity and deep inspiration around projects that felt overwhelming
A renewed sense of purpose and connection to the mission
a deeper understanding of the value of rest - not as something separate from meaningful work, but as an essential part of sustaining it.
Given the systemic nature of grind culture and the cult of speed, leaders have to as Tricia Hersey says, “snatch back their rest.” The biomimicry of nature will support us. Let us take a cure from our fellow mammals who use this time to nourish, and protect our reserves.
When you and your team join the cave you make a pleasurable and measurable commitment to begin your reprograming towards trust, creativity and belonging in the workplace. These are qualities that will fortify your workplace with real humanity and the connection and respect and freedom that every person desires. And the clients your organization serves will feel the difference.
You will enter the cave with your team and emerge with a shared language around rest, rhythm, and what it means to genuinely care for each other.
Leaders who have been in the cave start noticing what grind culture is costing their people. And they start wanting to bring that medicine home.
Winter Cave Hibernation for Teams: Threshold to Emergence
Week One — The Threshold
December 12–18
Before the holidays arrive, you enter.
This week is intentional preparation — a full week to cross into a different relationship with the season before the noise begins. Winter Cave is not something you speed-drop into. It asks you to arrive slowly, to learn the language of rest before you need it, to root yourself in practice and intention before the pull of the holidays takes hold.
The cave has established the agreements, the practices, the pod connections, and the winter wish that will anchor you through everything that follows. You get your first real taste of yoga nidra, altar work, and what collective rest actually feels like.
By the end of Week One your team will have:
A set of agreements and practices to carry through the cave
Named an individual winter wish — a personal intention that anchors the whole experience
Connected with their pod for accountability and care. This can be in the work team or in different pods
Their first experience of yoga nidra and collective rest
A genuine head start — rooted and anchored before the chaos begins
The work of the threshold is simple: prepare. So that when the holidays arrive, you are already inside something larger than them.
Week Two — The Crossing
December 19–26
The holidays arrive. And this year, you are ready.
This is the week where everything you learned in the threshold gets put to use. The practices travel with you — to the family gatherings, the travel days, the quiet mornings between obligations. The winter wish becomes a compass. The pod becomes a quiet anchor. The cave is no longer a session you attend — it is an orientation you carry.
This is also the most honest week. The holidays will pull. The busyness will call. Children, family, running around — all of it is real. The invitation is not to resist that. It is to layer something intentional and spacious underneath it. To notice where pockets of stillness live inside the chaos. To return to the practice — even briefly, even imperfectly — and remember who you are underneath all the motion.
By the end of Week Two your team will have:
Practiced carrying rest into complexity, travel, and obligation
Learned what it feels like to hold an internal anchor through external chaos
Discovered that rest does not require perfect conditions
A new relationship to the holiday season — as something to move through with intention, not just survive
Week Three — The Anchoring
December 27 – January 3
The holidays release their grip. The world gets quiet. This is the most spacious and beautiful week of the cave.
You have been through the threshold and through the crossing. Now you arrive somewhere open. This week is for harvesting what emerged — naming what shifted, what you want to carry into the new year, what you are leaving behind. It is contemplative, expansive, and unhurried. The pressure of the holidays has passed. The pressure of January has not yet arrived. You are in the most luminous in-between.
Your team comes back together to close — reflecting on what the cave gave you, anchoring the practices into your life, and receiving an integration guide to carry the rhythm forward.
By the end of Week Three your team will have:
A shared language around rest, care, and what it means to show up for each other
Personal practices to integrate into the workday
Stronger cross-departmental trust built through a shared experience
Key anchors and practices to carry into the new year
A foundation for the culture of care you have been building toward
A note on the holidays — and why the cave works right now
We know what you're thinking. This is the busiest time of year. And honestly — the last thing anyone wants is to spend their holiday break with their coworkers.
Winter Cave is not that.
This is not a team retreat. It is not asking anyone to clear their calendar or give up a single day of personal time. After the first four days of The Threshold — where we come together to set the container and establish the practices — the cave becomes something each person carries with them. To their family gatherings. Their quiet mornings. Their holiday travel.
From there, each person chooses one or two practices as their personal cave commitment. A nidra (rest practice ) session on a slow afternoon. An altar moment before the family arrives. A breath practice on the plane. The cave travels with you — and your team becomes a quiet anchor moving through the season alongside you, not as harsh accountability. This is a gift to the individuals on your team and folks can connect with each other or not. But it would be nice to know that everyone was deeply learning about whispers of care, support, love, sacred boundaries and honorable healing.
There is no perfection required. No shame in how you show up. Make the threshold and then let the cave become your own.
Many people find that the first year is simply about learning what rest could feel like. The second year, they start clearing space for it. By the third, they are protecting it.
You start where you are. That is enough.
What People Are Saying
There were certain things that were feeling like a slog before the cave. Work things like social media and posting. After slowing down and connecting in the cave I have felt very fluid. I was able to slow myself down enough to zoom out what I am trying to express and feel through in my offerings.
— Amina Dressen, Winter Cave Participant
A series of workshops that are leading to the creation of my book started to germinate and emerge because of my time in the cave. The space that you created to be with grief allowed the book to start coming through.
— Winter Cave Participant
It honestly felt like a nice steady space to process my own grief that I was moving through without pressure to mask and show up in a certain way.
— Xochi, Winter Cave ParticipantSmall Team Bundle (5-10 seats)
Price: $2500-$5000 ($500/person)
• 3 weeks of Winter Cave for 5-10 staff members
• Collective rest journey + care packages for each person
• Access to all 5 guest teachers + rituals and meditations
Why it works: A cost-effective way for a small department or working group to build a culture of care together.
Your Hibernation Guides
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Sojourner Zenobia
Ritual Facilitator
Sojourner Zenobia (they/them), Sojourner has completed decades of somatic performance training at Marymount Manhattan, Pearl Ubungen’s BFA at Naropa University, The School at Steppenwolf and Pantheatre’s Roy Hart school in Paris. They have trained in connecting with ancestors, nature and the spirit world and healing facilitation at Life Force Arts in Chicago, they trained in circle keeping with Circles and Ciphers and Kay Pranis, and in 2021 they completed Tracee Stanley and Chanti Tacoronte-Perez’s yoga nidra Training.
Sojourner found spirituality through the practice of presence as a performer. This portal of presence opened up the Buddhist path to them and the Buddhist practice opened the healing of connecting with the earth. They became the spider that they were terrified of as a child and began to weave together everything that gave them feelings of trust, hope and freedom. They are now an embodied sacred space facilitator, installation artist, experimental vocalist, body mover and earth steward.
For the past 10 years Sojourner has held a meditation and ritual space called “Stillness,” where they have guided hundreds of BIPOC queer folks in deepening their connection with ancestors, nature and personal spiritual gifts. Sojourner is currently exploring stillness by trusting the wisdom that emerges in their body at quiet moments and by trusting the relationships in their life.
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Yoli Maya Yeh
Yoga Nidra
Yoli Maya Yeh is a Yoga & Shiatsu Therapist (AOBTA, VYASA, Yoga for the Special Child) and an Educator in Comparative Religions and Global Studies (MA Comparative Religious Ethics). Yoli works at the intersection of Indigenous Preservation, Healing Arts and Social Justice and is co-founder of DEIcipher Group.
Raised in her family's Native American spiritual teachings, Yoli spent twelve years of her young adulthood studying language, yoga, tantra, healing arts and meditation in India and continues to travel and teach around the globe.
Yoli holds transformative healing space for especially hard to treat, autoimmune, chronic conditions, unexplainable, undiagnosable, compound situations. She is devoted to healing for women and birthing bodies and offers supportive space for grief, loss, birth loss, traumatic birth expereinces and the spiritual dimension.
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Peregrine Burmas
Winter Cave Herbalist
I was born of the deep winter in zhekagoynak/zhigaagoong/šikaakonki and the expansive dreams of an immigrant community, who raised me to know the cultural medicines of touching your food, mixing salt with water, and “bahala na.”
Across the last decade I’ve studied how we heal, completing formal trainings and apprenticeships in trauma-informed yoga, vipassana, loving-kindness, and transcendental meditations, reiki, traditional farming, and spirit-led clinical herbalism; and sowing these modalities into the lush embodied sanctuary I now facilitate. I created Dirt & Free Herbal Arts to support culture-bearers and world-builders remembering health as interconnectedness, and something we can regenerate from symptom to system and seed to soul.
What I’ve learned in this work and my body is that the plants, fungi, algae, animals — our non-human neighbors — remind us that we're never out of relationship.
Herbs offer accompaniment, wisdom, and tangible support on multiple levels:
They can help us ease into the softness for which our inner child yearns.
They can stoke the fires of our digestion as we process the old shit we’re still holding onto.
They remind us that we are of the earth, that we belong to the land.
As we regenerate these relationships, more vitality flows through us. Our sensitivity becomes a superpower, through which we reclaim medicine everywhere. And healing happens together.
Learn more about my offerings at dirtandfree.world
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Asia Dorsey
Dream Work
Asia Dorsey is a bioregional, rootworker raised by a collective of aunties and grandmothers in Historic Five Points Community in Denver. She has apprenticed with elders in, India, Ghana, New Zealand, New York and more to discern a practice of a People’s Medicine, grounded in the movement for reparations, healing justice, and her ancestral earth-based practices.
Asia is the owner of Bones Bugs and Botany an organization committed to creating pathways towards embodied liberation though food and herbal medicine education. She teaches ecological design with the Regenerative Education Collective of Denver and uses her talent of pattern recognition to decipher and reintegrate the sacred instructions of plants and ecosystems into people systems with Regenerate Change.
Find her on the Petty Herbalist Podcast helping her people to rise together in the power that is their birthright and at www.bonesbugsandbotany.com.
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Zahra Baker
Storyteller
Zahra is a vocalist, ritualist, storyteller, actor, teaching artist and wellness practitioner. She is recognized for her performance work as an engaging performing artist, a keeper of African American oral traditions and an experimental vocalist. She is honored to have collaborated with phenomenal musicians, poets, dancers, artists, filmmakers, and storytellers over the past 35 years in Chicago.
As a creative musician, Zahra has performed extensively with Shanta Nurullah, which include Shanta Nurullah’s Sitarsys, Freedom Song Leaders, Classic Black and ShaZah. Zahra has also performed with Hamid Drake as a member of the improvisation ensemble Moment to Moment. Storytelling performance history includes the Performance duo “In the Spirit,” with Emily Lansana and collaborative works with performance artist, Sojourner Zenobia. She has performed at venues such as the World Music Festival, M3 Festival, MCA, The Chicago Art Institute, The Old Town School of Folk, The Chicago Jazz Festival, The National Association of Black Storytellers Conference and Festivals, The Chicago Cultural Center, Jonesborough National Storytelling Festival, Rhode Island Black Storytelling Festival and countless Schools, Museums and Festivals.
As a 2024 Elastic Arts Dark Matters Artist in Residency, she developed a ritualized performance that included Adam Zanolini, Avreeayl Ra, Luc Mosely and Paige Brown. As a teaching artist, Zahra has developed wellness music and performing arts programs in schools, community centers, shelters, recovery centers, eta Creative Arts Foundation, the Chicago Department of Corrections and the Chicago Park District.
Winter Cave For Individuals
Is your mind, body and spirit begging you to slow down?
It’s time to listen. Join “The Cave,” to rest, nourish and restore yourself.
“In the midst of freezing temperatures and winter depression, I found winter cave to be like a warm sun, illuminating all the things that keep me whole. The meditation sessions, the rituals and the spiritual activities we did with the group were incredibly healing and made some of the hardest winter month feel more like spring (a new beginning) The cave gave me a space for me to cultivate important spiritual practices that I had put off for too long or just simply forgot. Chicago winters are brutal. So it was EVERYTHING to engage with others and embark on a spiritual journey together when everything else feels so isolating. It helped my S.A.D. ease up and got me to cusp of spring!.”
— Essence McDowell, Winter Cave Participant
What’s Included in Your 8 Week Journey
WINTER CAVE HIBERNATION CARE PACKAGE
WINTER CAVE MEDICINE BUNDLE ( YOGA NIDRA PRACTICES, MUSIC PLAYLISTS, BEDTIME STORIES, MEDITATIONS, ALTAR-BUILDING)
GENTLE MOVEMENT
4 RITUALS ( SOLSTICE, MANIFESTATION, GRIEVING, SELF-LOVE)
8 WEDNESDAY NIGHT MEDITATION AND RITUAL PRACTICE SESSIONS
DREAM WORK
COMMUNITY SUPPORT IN SLOWING DOWN OVER THE WINTER
DISCOUNTS ON SESSIONS WITH OUR FACILITATOR OFFERINGS: VEDIC ASTROLOGY, HERBALISM CONSULTATIONS, EMOTIONS COACHING
You are probably here because you are being called to slow down. You are probably an intuitive person who is connected, or desires to be more connected to the rhythms of nature. You can feel the winter coming and your are thinking cozy, soup, stillness, humidifiers, saying no to as much as you can, rest and warmth. Winter Cave is a collective space you join to support and nourish your hibernation.
I think we have to personally reclaim our connection to nature and take major steps to commit to what other mammals do during the darkest days of the year. If it is freezing cold outside, 8 feet of snow, cars sliding off roads, 50 layers of clothes just to walk to the corner, shoveling snow for 45 minutes just to get to work than maybe we should consider that we should be doing less. Maybe the best action is to cultivate inner fires with reflective practices and companionship. Possibly the focus could be on eating nourishing foods to warm our bodies and support our nervous system and connecting with the energy of darkness and stillness.
Winter Cave Schedule
Winter Cave Threshold Week — December 12–20
This week introduces you to the practices we'll return to throughout the cave and sets you up strong for the seven weeks ahead. It's a full week — do what you can.
Opening Retreat Weekend
Saturday December 12 + Sunday December 13, 1–4pm CST
With Sojourner Zenobia, Yoli Maya Yeh, Asia Dorsey, and Zahra Baker
Monday December 14 — Winter Cave Book Club, 6–7:30pm CST
Wednesday December 16 — Altar Session with Sojourner, 6–7:30pm CST
Sunday December 20 — Yoga Nidra with Yoli Maya Yeh, 11am–2pm CST
Sunday December 27 — Steam Ritual
Weekly Book Club — Mondays, 6–7:30pm CST
December 21, 28 · January 4, 11, 18, 25 · February 1, 8
Weekly Altar Sessions — Wednesdays with Sojourner Zenobia
December 16, 30 (Cave Painting)
January 6 (Dream Play), 13, 20, 27
February 3, 10
Bi-Weekly Story Medicine — with Sojourner Zenobia, Zahra Baker + Peregrine Burmas
January 3 (team pod release), 17, 31
Closing Ritual
Sunday February 7, 1–4pm CST
“The Winter Cave was a deeply nutritive experience that I will continue to recall and embody throughout the year. One of my favorite aspects was practicing deep rest in community. The guidance by Sojouner Zenobia and guests facilitators was exceptional and the learnings from my journey are priceless.”
Mercedes Perry, Founder of the Church of Black Rest
GROUP RATES AVAILABLE FOR FRIENDS OR BUSINESSES.
Limited Scholarships available: WINTER CAVE SCHOLARSHIP APPLICATION
Two or More Friend Group Bundle
Cost of The Cave: $750
Bundle Price: $700/ person
sign up with one or more friends and get $50 off.
If you sign up with 5-10 people you can join with the small team bundle at $500/person
check in with each other throughout the winter for accountability to rest and deep self care.
creating a stronger bond between your friend group
care package shipped to each person
access to all 5 guest teachers+ a tool kit of winter practices
Collective rest journey + care packages for each person
Access to all 5 guest teachers + rituals and meditations
Why it works: Collective journeying through winter cave with your closest people for deepened love and accountability as we commit to shifting our relationship to grind culture
* Winter Cave centers BIPOC people by centering BIPOC thought leaders on rest, BIPOC winter cave teachers and is committed to keeping the Winter Cave is primarily a BIPOC group. Understanding the historical context of holding power and privilege in a group of BIPOC people and working to dismantle internalized white supremacy, white bodied people are also welcome to join the cave.
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Hibernation Dates
3 Week Hibernation for Teams
Dec 12-Jan 3rd
8 Week Hibernation:
December 12-February 7th
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Where
Virtual Learning: Zoom Room
and Swarm Network Classroom
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Cost
Teams: $500/ person
Individual: $750 for 8 weeks of Hibernation
Group rates available when you sign up with two or more people.
Payment Plans Available at Checkout
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Who
* Winter Cave centers BIPOC people by centering BIPOC thought leaders on rest, BIPOC winter cave teachers and is committed to keeping the Winter Cave is primarily a BIPOC group. Spaces for white bodied people are limited but white bodied people who understand the historical context of holding power and privilege in a group of BIPOC people and who are working to dismantle internalized white supremacy are welcome to register for, The Cave.