sleepy time stories
for grown-ups and inner kids
You deserve tender care, sweet grown-up.
Welcome to a place where your emotional load dissolves, where the earth holds you, and where you make a home with loving, safe, magical creatures.
In this one-hour container each week, you will be witnessed, guided, and honored. Anxiety, exhaustion, anger, sadness, confusion, grief will be transformed into ease, contentment and clarity, using somatic grounding tools, creative expression prompts and an intentionally-crafted story read to you with love (and character voices).
When: Every Thursday at 8pm (DXB) — Four calls a month!
Where: Live on Zoom
Never attended a Sleepy Time Stories Session before?
Try it for free!
does this resonate?
You spend your time and energy holding yourself up for those around,
but struggle to nourish yourself beyond the basics,
You find it mightily easy to love others,
but cannot seem to access it for your precious self,
You’d like to build more mindful evening rituals,
but find yourself doomscrolling or watching TV,
You want to tune into gratitude at the end of each day,
but instead spend it thinking of your unfinished tasks and goals,
You long to have deep restorative rest,
but when you do something supposedly “restful,” you feel irritated, agitated or distracted,
You want to live and lead from a loving open-heart space,
but struggle with accessing it on your own,
You know that you’re full of creative potential, joy and whimsy,
but you can’t figure out how to get there.
If even one resonates,
I built this for you.
You were always meant to be held,
even as a grown-up.
“I don’t remember the last time someone read me a story.”
Their eyes are dewy as they say this, an embodied experience of “Oh, I didn’t know I could have this!”
We assume it is only kids that need nurture, but we are evolving beings, and
grown-ups like you deserve respect, gentleness, and so much nurture.
As adults, we’ve made denying ourselves the norm. We feel we need to earn ease and play. We’ve become used to suffering before we allow ourselves a “treat.” And when we receive joy? It is often tinged with guilt.
Magical things happen when we nourish our souls (something our ancestors knew intimately):
Your inner voice becomes kinder,
your sleep deeper and more restful,
you have more ready access to creativity,
risks feel less risky and,
there is more of all that is good: embodiment, presence, flow, ease.
about the stories
Oral storytelling is in our blood; it helps us make meaning of the world, guides our lives — inner and outer.
I grew up listening to tales of obedience, discipline and walking inside the lines. The stories I write for Sleepy Time are different — they are an examination of our inheritance, unlearning, and building new worlds from care.
Here, you will meet gorgeous magical creatures to fall in love with: Fireflies, deers with sparkling antlers, and friendly owls. A tree trunk that fits your back perfectly and leans in to support you. Ground that is the exact right temperature and texture for your particular day.
The creatures you meet will fall, fail, stumble, learn, soothe and guide, modeling ways of being in loving relationship to self and other. These tales and lovable creatures will soon ripple through your conversations, soften your inner monologue, and help you build new routines.
We’re told to practice “self-care,”
but it was always meant to be community care.
Our well-being was always meant to be collectively-tended,
never an isolated uphill battle against impossible societal expectations.
Sleepy Times Stories is community care.
“I had no idea the amount of stress my body has been clinging to until I did some grounding exercises (in a Sleepy Time Stories session).. “Hug yourself,” she says gently and I wrap my arms around myself, erupting into shaking sobs that come from a chasm deep within where I’d buried all thus like the dirty laundry I didn’t want to deal with.”
— Sleepy Time Attendee“If you need a little comforting ritual at the end of a long day, I’d definitely recommend these evening enchantments.”
— Sleepy Time Attendee“I love these stories so much! Each one is a gift.”
— Sleepy Time AttendeeGathering is not enough;
If you’ve been hurt or let down by other human beings in the past (who hasn’t?) — in small ways or big ones — you’re reasonably skeptical of turning to humans for comfort or soothing.
This is why community is difficult (not just because it’s less convenient now).
In most spaces, we mask expertly, show up as our "“best” put-together selves, and it’s hard, if not impossible, for others to help us or even really see us.
Trust is rightly earned — over time — to know that
we will be welcomed,
our feelings will be honored,
we will not be made to feel like “not enough,” and
we will belong, our whole messy selves.
Gathering is not enough; we need a human with capacity in their nervous system,
we need someone who won’t flinch at our messiness,
we need gentle facilitation. That’s where I come in —- >
Hi, I’m bhoomika!
I’m a writer and trauma-responsive facilitator whose life’s calling is to use stories to help hold and heal our most tender parts.
Over the last six years, I have walked the path from cynical to trusting, building capacity in my nervous system, and setting myself free, with support from Somatic Experiencing, Art Therapy, Brainspotting, EMDR, IFS & other modalities. I have been to the darkest places inside myself and healed them, built immense capacity, and learned an incredible amount about the environmental care, relational attunement and nervous system regulation it takes to set ourselves free.
I built Sleepy Time Stories because I know what it is like to care without being cared for, and inversely, I know how transformative it is to be held with love inside intentional supportive groups.
I have been devoted to building communities of all kinds for the last decade. I have an M.A. in Media Studies, from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, which grounds my practice in an intersectional feminist understanding of the world. I’m trained as a Cambridge CELTA certified teacher. I was part of the conference committee for the very first Middle East North Africa Trauma Association (MENATA) Conference in Dubai, and I’m soon-to-be in training to become a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner (SEP).
WHAT TO EXPECT inside each sleepy time stories call
❋ Grounding & containment toolsI will guide you through a few supportive and easy-to-follow somatic and creative grounding tools (movement, drawing etc.) to help you step out of fight-flight and step into a lighter, more present headspace. Preparing you for an evening of truly restorative rest.
❋ Healing power of gatheringGathering with others is a powerful form of co-regulation. Community — particularly, safe community — is medicine. If you’re used to holding yourself and others up, this is an invitation to let your hair down and let the room hold you.
❋ Magic of storiesCome hear soothing and soul-nourishing animal stories, that include generational unlearning, connecting back to nature & signaling safety and belonging to the body — all serving as gentle reminders of our inalienable rights on this earth.