What We Do
Black Dream Escape (BDE) is a radical therapeutic practice that centers Black and Indigenous rest as a primary component of holistic mental health. We provide intentional rest opportunities through both communal and individual rest services.
Services
Black Rest Therapy Workshops:
We offer workshops focusing on Black Rest for therapy groups and organizations. These workshops include information of the Senses of Rest, building rest routines, and customized topics based on request.
Rest/Sleep Counsulation:
We provided 1:1 rest sessions to guide you through incorporating rest or quality sleep in your daily life. Rest consultation includes a rest assessment, an individualized plan and affirmation list, focused on your rest needs, and therapeutic rest guidance, based on your rest assessment results.
Lullaby Sessions:
Black Dream Escape offers lullaby sessions for individuals, groups, events, gatherings, or celebrations. The programming will be based on your needs and vision.
Black and Indigenous Only Conference Spaces:
We create and deliver intentional rest space for BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ at conferences and workshops. All too often, BIPOC and Queer people show up at conferences which are for an “everybody” defined by White heretronormative partiarchal values, methodologies and systems. The spaces we create at these events provide relief and ease the burden placed on BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ people to “educate” “enlighten” or donate emotional labor.
Pre-Recorded Digital Rest Sessions
Our YouTube channel is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There, you will find full length rest sessions, ThoughtPathways interviews and discussions, and our Covid Care mini-rest sessions. Our Covid Care rest sessions were designed to be a comforting and relaxing companion to listen or watch as you push back against the unrest of the the world. Please consider subscribing to our channel. Through July, thanks to Office Of Public Art - Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, we post new videos every Wednesday through July 2020. We will return to posting full length rest sessions twice a month after quarantine.
Now Available! "All This Beauty" Album
We are pleased to announce our first album All This Beauty. The 14 tracks on this album document the most popular meditations and lullabies we've offered over the past few years.
We'd like to be there for you all the time, but, that's just not possible. All This Beauty is a portable rest session. Now, through the wonders of technology, we can be.
Rest is always possible. Now it is as close as your nearest listening device. We hope you integrate it into your regular rest practice.
Help Us Get Black Home
We're super excited about our new space on Penn Avenue in the Bloomfiled/Garfield neighborhood of Pittsburgh. But, we're still looking for a plot of land to call our own. A place where we can grow our own medicinal herbs, offer overnight respite care and invite you to explore how the land can rejuvenate and restore you. Our capital campaign is going amazingly well. Donations make it happen. Every amount makes it possible.
We are creating a home for Black and Indigenous wholeness. (Black / Indigenous, obviously, includes Queer.) It is the kind of home we believe everyone should have. A place to come for joy and sorrow. A place to unconditionally be ourselves. A place of healing. A place of hope. A dreaming place. A gathering space. A celebratory homecoming.
Historically, when Black and Indigenous folks addressed mental health problems, we went to someone’s home and would be welcomed as a guest. We relied on our grannies, nanas, aunties, siblings, cousins, pop-pops, or uncles for their sage advice and honored wisdom. We restore this practice by modeling healing as a home-based activity.