About Octavia F. Raheem
Award-Winning Author, Rest Coach, Restorative, Yoga Nidra, Meditation Teacher, and Speaker
Hi, I’m Octavia Raheem and I support visionary leaders to rest and wake up their fullest power and potential.
At my core, and in the great tradition of my communal Ancestors Dr. Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman, Ella Baker, Langston Hughes, and so many more I am a dreamer and dream keeper.
“Bring me all of your dreams you dreamer.” -Langston Hughes
Over the last two decades I’ve studied, practiced, trained, learned, taught, and discovered an unlikely companion in the realization of my own and my clients' most audacious dreams.
Rest.Yes, rest.
Let’s back up a bit.
“It was all a dream…”
- Biggie
I am all of the above and also a:
Chief Operating Daydreaming Officer.
Dream Keeper.
I was four years old and in love with reading when I realized the words on a page, those small curved black-bodied things were scribbled together and created by someone.
When I realized humans could create books, I wanted to be a human who did that.
My path to achieving the dream of becoming a published author is layered with thick red Georgia clay, gospel syllables, and hip hop rhymes. It is carved out through prayers and paved with psalms.
Those foundations gifted me an early understanding of the liberating power of the word: of reading, writing, and storytelling.
I start to think and then I sink into the paper, like I was ink.
- Rakim
I’ve written or journaled just about every single day of my life since I could hold a crayon. For decades I held the dream of being a published author even as some of the paths I took out of necessity seemed to take me further and further away from my dream. I tucked that dream away and got on with the business of being an adult.
I began practicing yoga in 1999 and it was off and on until 2003 when I became a devoted student to yoga as an essential part of my path, purpose, and spiritual practice. In 2006 I became a certified yoga teacher.
Practice reveals and removes layers of conditioning. I began to slowly and meticulously untuck my dream from that careful place out of reach of the “too tough fingers of the world” where I had placed it.
In 2012, and at the edge of my life, completely burned out, I found Restorative Yoga, Yin, Yoga Nidra, and Meditation. I found rest.
Slowing down and even being still dramatically accelerated my return to my dream, my resolve in actualizing it, and my capacity to take intentional action in alignment with my dreams and greater purpose.
In other words, rest woke me up to my fuller potential and power. Rest provided me with the energy and fuel needed to move from simply dreaming to creating to sharing to living my dream.
And this is what I support visionary leaders in doing, untucking their most heartful, liberating, and impactful dreams. And living them.
Be still and know.
- Psalm 46:10
When you rest with me, you wake up to your fullest potential and power.
You boldly reclaim authorship over the narrative of your life to reflect who you really are and what you really want. You start a new chapter that includes more rest and time with who and what matters the most to you.
Professional bio
Octavia Raheem is a wife, mother, author of three books Pause, Rest, Be (award winning), Gather, and upcoming Rest Is Sacred. She is a rest/restorative coach, yoga + meditation educator, and former wellness studio owner. She is the creator of Devoted to Rest™, a transformational rest focused experience for visionary women leaders making a high impact in their fields. Within her rest and work she threads time tested practices, depth skill and knowledge about what supports rest and what doesn’t, wisdom rooted in Black American Southern traditions, and intuition into a blanket of experience under which individuals can gather and rebuke stress, fatigue, and burnout. Her offerings lead driven, inspiring, creative, and purpose centered individuals and companies to awaken the fullness of their potential and power through rest.
Octavia has over 20 years of experience and well over 10,000 hours of designing and delivering classes, restshops, workshops, immersions, and trainings that transform, heal, and restore individuals and organizations. In 2021 Yoga Journal magazine recognized Octavia as one of fifteen experienced yoga professionals who have elevated and changed the field on a global scale. Closer to home and as a beacon in her local community, she was named one of four luminaries who have lit the way and created new avenues to yoga in Atlanta, Georgia, and the Southeast in September 2019 by Natural Awakening Magazine. Additionally her writing, rest, and work have been featured in Mantra, Tricycle, Well + Good, Atlanta Magazine, CNN, and at Essence Festival Wellhouse Atlanta.
She has an academic background in English Literature, creative writing, and middle grades education as well as 10+ years of professional experience developing curricula for innovative learning and teaching Language Arts in K-12 settings. Most recently, she combined her passion for yoga, creativity, language, and community through her four year tenure as co-director for Yoga, Literature, and Art Camp for Teen Girls at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art founded by Dr. Chelsea Jackson Roberts.
Octavia is committed to herself, family, community, and our world being well and rested- in body, mind, heart, and spirit.
200 Hour Yoga Teacher Training at Peachtree Yoga Center with Graham Fowler and Elizabeth Nix
300 Hour Yoga Teacher Training at Himalayan Institute
Restorative Yoga Teacher Training with Dr. Gail Parker
Restorative Yoga Teacher Training with Jacci Gruninger and Shelbi Miles
Restorative Yoga Teacher Training with Chanti Tacoronte-Perez
Restorative Yoga for Ethnic and Race Based Stress and Trauma with Dr. Gail Parker
Yoga Nidra Immersion with Nick Atlas
Introduction to Yoga Nidra with Tracee Stanley
Empowered Wisdom Yoga Nidra Teacher Training with Tracee Stanley and Chanti Tacoronte-Perez
Advanced Golden Soul Yoga Nidra Teacher Training 60 Hours with Swami Premajyoti Saraswati (in progress)
Meditation Teacher Training with Tracee Stanley
Antar Mouna Meditation Immersion with Swami Premajyoti Saraswati
Tattwa Shuddhi Training and Initiation with Swami Premajyoti Saraswati
Introduction to Hatha Yoga Pradipika with Yoganand Michael Carroll
Chakra and Energetics with Yoganand Michael Carroll
Asanas as Spiritual Doorways with Yoganand Michael Carroll
Prenatal Yoga Teacher Training with Amina Murray
Yin Yoga Teacher Training at Asheville Yoga Center
Bio dynamic Energy and Yin Immersion level one and two with Cat Kabira
Coaching with Spirit and Using Internal Family Systems to Co-Create Healing and Awakening with Guthrie Sayen and Barti Bourgault
Yoga for Youth Training with Krishna Kaur
Grounded Kids Yoga Training Cheryl Crawford
Yoga Retreat for Women of Color™ with Maya Breuer Retreat Assistant
Reiki Certification Level 1 with Navasha Daya
Basic Pranic Healing with Dawn Myers
Teach For America Corp Member Phoenix 2003
Breakthrough Collaborative Leadership Fellow 2006
Greater Timberridge Baptist Church
Prayer circle in mama’s living room
Training and experience highlights:
I am devoted to being a teacher of rest, restoration, and awakening. This means that I choose to be an ardent student and learner in the field. My list of training, certification, and experiences goes on. Yet my greatest teachers remain my faith, my constant companion- writing, my Ancestors, my late parents Millie Rose Miller & Charles E. Ramsey, my family, mothering, my community, and the elements of nature.
Life itself is my most profound Teacher.
Shiva Sutras 2.6 : Gurur Upayah. Above all, the practice [ of rest ] is my Guru.
I bow to the practice that has shown me how to rise.
“I come as one,
I stand as 10,000.”
- Dr. Maya Angelou