A day of deep rest for women who tend everyone else
Private location, St George, BS5, Bristol | 10am to 4pm | Autumn Equinox | Sunday 20 September
The lower private outdoor space
At our first Bone Rest day, I handed the group a small bell.
“Ring it”, I said; “if you need anything at all. I'll be in the kitchen. Your only job today is to receive.”
There was some flinching. “Oh I couldn't. I can't do that.”
Maybe you just flinched too.
If you're the one who tends everyone, who notices what's needed before anyone asks, who can't sit down until everything is done, then you already know why that bell initially felt impossible to these women.
But by mid-morning, the bell was ringing. Women who felt hesitant asking for anything earlier that morning were letting themselves be tended.
That's what this day does.
“It was like being a child at my grandparents’, playing in the garden, coming up to the house to the smell of food cooking. Nurturing, warm, and cared for. A beautiful, private, well thought out space created with so much love.”
This is not a “Spa Day”
Bone Rest is healing work.
Through my circles and one to one work, I meet women doing the deepest work of their lives.
We journey, we reflect, we circle, we sit in therapy, we move it through the body.
Often we can work at our healing the way we work at everything. And then we skip the part where it lands.
The landing is the rest. Even the neuroscience says so now: it's in stillness, when there's nothing to do and nowhere to be, that we weave what we've been through into who we're becoming. Our original ancestors didn't need a brain scan to know it.
All that work you've done? Rest is where it becomes healing.
We often treat receiving as a treat; as something earned only once we’ve done a lot of work. So because we have never learned how to really rest, it can feel exposing, undeserved, almost unbearable.
A glimpse of our first Bone Rest day. The drinks, the food, the quiet corners, the resting. Everything you see was made that morning.
A rest day retreat with nothing in it
There is no timetable on this rest retreat for women. There is no yoga at eleven, no workshop at two.
We open together with a short sound journey and a wee share on what rest means to us. We close together the same way. Everything in between is yours.
There are quiet corners with books and art activities to choose from. Tuning forks, if you'd like to give yourself sound. A sauna heated and waiting. Shade under the vines, sun if you want it, and places to be alone or alongside other women, whatever your body is asking for.
Nothing is required of you. You don't have to share, join in, or make conversation. Rest however you wish to rest.
My homemade rosemary cordial, made from the bush in my garden. Herbalists have loved rosemary for centuries as the herb of remembrance. She calms the nervous system, lifts the spirits, and clears what's grown stagnant. Medicine for a day of remembering how to rest.
That restlessness you experience?
It could be ancestral.
If a day with nothing to do makes you slightly nervous, I understand. So many of us have never been allowed to stop. Our mothers weren't. Their mothers weren't. That restlessness you feel when you finally sit down is old, and it isn't yours alone.
This day is a space to lay it down, for you and for the women who came before you, who never got the chance. Rest is ancestral repair.
“Thank you, Ruth, for such a day!
It was heart-warming - with lovely vegan gastro-feasting, delicious cordials and gentle, flowing companionship!”
The Autumn Equinox Retreat
This Bone Rest falls a few days before the autumn equinox, the still point when day and night stand equal, just for a moment, before the year tips toward the dark.
From here, everything in nature begins to draw down. The sap retreats, the trees let go of leaves they spent all spring making, the land settles toward its fallow season. Farmers have always known that a field harvested year after year without rest stops feeding anyone. Ground needs its fallow time. So do we.
Where your tea begins. Rosemary, mint, thyme, fennel and lemon verbena, grown a few steps from the kettle.
Women used to rest together
One of the women at our first Bone Rest said how rare it felt, and she's right.
For most of the women we come from, rest was not on offer. Our mothers, our grandmothers, the women of the last several centuries, they rested when the work was done, and the work was never done.
What rest they found, they found in company. Shelling peas on a doorstep. Talking over the washing. A song at the harvest table. Rest arrived in the gaps, alongside other women, or not at all.
And most of us today think we are resting in the gaps. But often what happens is that we collapse at the end of the day, scroll until our eyes close, call it rest because it's all we have room for.
But collapse is not the same as rest. Collapse is what the body does when it can't go on. Rest is what the body does when it finally feels safe.
That's what Bone Rest is for. You rest in the company of women, tended and unhurried, and your body knows the difference.
Another space to relax under the vine in the top tiered garden
“I loved the privacy, the lovely peaceful surroundings and birdsong, views across to nature, the smell of wood, outside seating areas, the herbs and the feeling of exuberance after the day. The sauna also brought up memories of my homeland and childhood which I really enjoyed. ”
Meanwhile, I’m in the kitchen
I'm Ruth, a holistic therapist, and I come from a long line of Irish women who tended everyone. In my family, tending wasn't a choice, it was survival, passed down like a family recipe.
I know the over-tending very well, and I've done years of my own work with that wound; and in doing so, I found a medicine in it: nobody tends like a woman raised by generations of tenders.
When I choose it, in service to women learning to receive, the wound becomes the gift. Bone Rest is that gift, turned toward you.
Organic vegetables and fruit I grow
So while you rest, I cook. Everything you eat and drink is vegan, organic and made by my hands, with herbs I've grown myself. Nothing prepared is bought in (apart from some organic crisps!) even the bread is baked.
The menu moves with the seasons: rosemary cordial over ice, fresh mint steeping in the pot, dips green with garden herbs, salads singing with dill and ginger, a raw lemon cheesecake to finish. You don't fetch anything, you don't clear anything. You ring the bell, and it comes to you.
Homemade vegan and gluten-free spread
The Practical details
When: Sunday 20 September 2026, 10am to 4pm
Where: Private location in St George, BS5 Bristol (full address shared on booking)
Who: A small circle of 8 women
Food: All food and drinks included throughout the day, handmade, organic and vegan, right down to dessert
Bring: Two towels for the sauna, (if you wish to use it) and anything that helps you rest.
Investment: £135. One community space (if on benefits or out of work) at £85, and payment plans available. Just ask.