What does rest mean in a world shaped by urgency, productivity, and extraction?

Rest and Renewal explores rest not as withdrawal or escape, but as a necessary and generative force –the ground from which renewal becomes possible.

Across 127 pages, this volume brings together essays, conversations, practical guides, and photography to examine how rest shows up in everyday life: in bodies, landscapes, relationships, and work. It asks what becomes possible when we allow ourselves – individually and collectively – to pause.

Rest, we learn, is rarely simple. It can surface discomfort, guilt, or fear, especially within systems that reward constant visibility and output while offering little guidance on how to stop. Rather than treating rest as inactivity or indulgence, Rest and Renewal reframes it as a radical, regenerative act.

Drawing on ecological and cultural wisdom, contributors look to nature’s cycles – fallow fields, winter forests, dormant seeds – to show how rest is not an exception to life, but an essential phase within it. The volume lingers with wintering, darkness, and uncertainty, inviting readers to stay present with what is unresolved rather than rushing toward premature renewal.

Inside, you’ll find:

• Reflections on grief as a shared yet under-processed experience
• Practices for composting identities, habits, and careers that no longer serve life
• Stories of renewal rooted in cyclical, land-based ways of living
• Practical and creative approaches, from seed and dream-planting rituals to embodied movement and slow cooking

The magazine is structured into four recurring streams – Reflections, Field Notes, RAFTS, and Currents – offering multiple entry points into regeneration through inner inquiry, lived experience, practical tools, and culture.

As we move into a darker season, Rest and Renewal invites us to honour stillness, resist false urgency, and listen for what is quietly taking shape beneath the surface.

Printed by Park Communications, a certified Carbon Neutral Company.

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