We’re always on the hunt for the next great bedtime routine. In our Sleeping With… series, we ask people from different career paths, backgrounds, and stages of life how they make sleep magic happen.
It’s far from news that there is a lack of space and resources allocated for Black women to heal. And as Black people face inequitable barriers to health care and treatment during COVID-19, the onslaught of police and vigilante killings that have occurred during the pandemic, and the resulting protests, the urgent need for such a space has only become all the more apparent.
This historical lack of one is precisely why Jasmine Marie, an Atlanta-based breathwork practitioner and business school graduate, founded Black Girls Breathing in 2018. Originally, Black Girls Breathing, or BGB, offered in-person and virtual meditation and breathwork classes created specifically with Black healing in mind. Over the next couple of years, BGB would expand, making countrywide tours and teaching breathwork in cities like Los Angeles, Dallas, and Houston.
When the pandemic hit, BGB went completely virtual, offering a now-monthly breathwork circle that participants can join on a sliding scale from $0 to $25. After George Floyd was killed, Marie again prioritized accessibility, launching a crowdfunding mission to completely cover the costs of breathwork classes for 100 or more Black women for a full year. Now, BGB has increased its fundraising goal for 2021 even further so that the business “can commit to making [its] virtual breathwork circles accessible (free and low cost) forever,” according to the fundraising page.
“As someone who’s in the healing business, as business grows that means that I’m holding space for more people,” Marie tells SELF. “That means more energy. That means I get tired faster. I really had to relearn what it looks like to rest and how I rest; to be honest in what I need in this particular chapter, and finding that what worked before is not working now.” Here, Marie walks SELF through her bedtime routine as a startup founder and wellness practitioner, including how she’s shifted her rituals during the pandemic, how she handles “self-care shame,” and the short exercise she uses to thank herself each night.
On Monday evenings, I have my meal prep service from a local chef here in Atlanta delivered.
It’s an affordable meal plan and I’m so excited about that. It gives me more time to rest in the week and not have to worry about how I nourish myself. Then, Monday evenings at 8 p.m. I have Reiki. I try to cut off right after Reiki and let it lead into bedtime. But last night was a different story—my body was not shutting down, so I just listened to a podcast and turned on a little bit of reality TV.
At a certain time in the evening, I don’t have bright lights on.
I have a heated candle in my room that gives off light, and I’ll light another candle. When I take my evening shower, I never use the full light. I always either have a candle or a plug-in heated candle for light, just because that ritual is like washing away the day, or everything that worried me at the beginning of the day, cleansing that away.
My room is very minimal. I have my favorite colors in there: rose gold, white, and oak.
That’s also been a ritual, finding the art that I like to finish some of my walls so it can feel like home. But I love to keep a minimal space. I have candles on all the time. All the time. There are so many candles. I even have candles in the drawers and stuff, and they’re ready and on deck when I need a new one. Candles are my jam.
I love to keep a very low sensory space. Low lights, very soothing scents.
Right now I’ve got blue fir smells in my candle warmer. I love the wooden [wicks] because it’s also auditory with the crackle. I tap into all five of my senses when it comes to creating a space that feels super vibey and calm and in alignment with how I want to relax and fall asleep.