Karen Brody
Hello, Rest Friend,
I’m the founder of Daring to Rest, a global community created to help people rise up rested. In 2017, I wrote Daring to Rest: Reclaim Your Power with Yoga Nidra Rest Meditation, published by Sounds True.
Daring to Rest currently trains women to become rest coaches and Daring to Rest yoga nidra facilitators inside the Daring to Rest Leadership Program for women. We also invite women every January to join us for our annual online Daring to Rest 40 Day Program.
At Daring to Rest, rest is leadership. Our approach focuses on physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual as powerful doorways that inform how you lead.
I’ve supported thousands of women to dare to rest and trained hundreds of women to share the power of rest around the world and become rest leaders in diverse spaces including women’s health, coaching, academic, and corporate wellness.
Through my personal rested path, and supporting others, I know that it’s challenging to sculpt a rested lifestyle in a world obsessed with grind culture. Many of us have been raised with toxic messages about rest that lead to over-busy, over-productive, and under-nourished lives. Our tired mothers, fathers, grandparents, and ancestors are part of an inherited cycle of fatigue. We need a rest-positive community to unlearn this conditioning.
Daring to Rest aims to help people rise up rested and support women to create rest communities around the world. Our motivation is to help humans feel more relaxed, restored, held, cherished, wise, wild, joyful, nourished, and free. We are motivated through our work to create a rested world. All our programs and trainings are influenced by the power and liberatory potential of rest.
I was born in 1966 and grew up in New York City, raised by a single mom in a loving yet unrested household. By the age of seventeen I had panic attacks that did not end until I discovered a transformational sleep practice called yoga nidra in my mid-thirties. This kind of deep rest changed my life, and I knew I had to share it with others. I try to share yoga nidra respectfully, acknowledging that the roots of yoga nidra are not from my lineage - they are from India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
Yoga nidra is not the only way we explore rest in our Daring to Rest programs. I created a framework called The Rested Path that explores the diverse landscape of rest, helping people cultivate a Rested Body, Rested Voice, and take Rested Action in their lives. Daring to Rest trains rest coaches in this framework in our Daring to Rest Leadership Program.
I am passionate about women centering rest in their lives and their telling stories because women have been exhausted from being silenced for centuries. After I started my yoga nidra practice I was called to write Birth, a play about women’s experiences in childbirth. This play turned into a global theater for social change movement to change the culture of birth. It was translated into four languages and raised over one million dollars to improve childbirth in communities around the world.
I continue to be passionate about the power of rest and writing. I have taught Daring to Rest & Write retreats and am currently dreaming of ways to bring my passion for rest, writing, and social change together. If you’re on our mailing list you will hear about it.
I live in New Mexico, on the unceded land of the Tewa people. In 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, I brought my mother out here when she began to show alarming signs of Alzheimer’s. I am currently her primary caregiver, which in rest language means it’s like I am in my own self-study PhD program on how to stay rested as a caregiver. Perhaps you can relate?
My two boys are now young adults, and I am proud to say they were raised on rest. I love helping moms center rest in their household.
Most people I grew up with call me KB, not Karen. You can call me either.
I am daring to rest with you. This is my rest work (& play) too. Thrilled you are here, whether you feel called to rest or you’re simply rest-curious. I hope Daring to Rest helps you rise up rested and reclaim your power.
Official Bio: Karen Brody
Founder of Daring to Rest, Author, and Mom
Karen is the author of the book, “Daring to Rest: Claim Your Power with Yoga Nidra Meditation.” Over the past 17 years she has taught thousands of women to become rested and trained hundreds of women to become rest coaches and yoga nidra facilitators. She is also the creator of the Daring to Rest™ method and The Rested Path™ framework. Host of the Daring to Rest Podcast, Karen loves talking about the landscape of rest and how rest transforms how we lead in our homes, work, relationships, and so much more. In addition to her book Daring to Rest, she has written two books and Birth, a critically acclaimed play that was translated into four languages and raised over one million dollars globally to improve maternity care. Karen is the mother of two boys, now young adults, who were raised on rest.