Taylor Elane
Rest Practioner
about Taylor Elane | rest practitioner
For Taylor Elane, house of duafe offers a comforting invitation to reclaim rest and ease as a divine right for herself and others.
Duafe means, “wooden comb”. An Adinkra symbol from the Akan culture, duafe embodies femininity, patience, prudence, love, and care for Self and others. Growing up, Taylor was ascribed the duafe symbol by her mother in recognition of the caring and prudent qualities Taylor innately embodied.
Decades later, the COVID-19 pandemic and racial reckoning of 2020 required Taylor to take a caring approach toward her nervous system regulation and well-being. Such an approach centered on cultivating rest and ease moment-to-moment, especially while Taylor held equity-based leadership roles. From non-performative yoga, meditation, naps, daydreaming, journaling, and more, Taylor discovered the power of intentional and active rest for Self-care and soothing her nervous system to avoid burnout.
This personal, daily practice helped Taylor connect to an embodied freedom to just be as a Black and Indigenous woman. Craving more knowledge and trauma-informed embodied practices, Taylor became a student of traditional and Non-performative Yoga® with iya, receiving her 200-HR Non-performative Yoga® instructor certification in 2021. Two years later, Taylor received her 50-HR certification in Yoga Nidra, or “sleep yoga”, with Ashe Yoga Collective to dive into the evidence-based restorative benefits of yoga and sleep-like meditation.
Since then, Taylor has personally practiced and guided Non-performative Yoga®, meditation, breathwork, and Yoga Nidra as liberatory care practices to support a new culture of rest and well-being for all. As both a certified equity and inclusion consultant and a certified trauma-informed and team resilience specialist, Taylor embeds culturally responsive, intersectional, and liberatory frameworks within her guided practices to center rest for those most impacted by systems of inequity.
Taylor’s Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and International & Global Studies underpins her approach, providing a foundation for examining societal complexities, applying cultural responsiveness, and fostering equitable environments.
about house of duafe | where rest and ease are liberatory care practices
Led by Taylor Elane, house of duafe is a wellness practice dedicated to holistic, equity-based rest practices for the Self and the collective. house of duafe is grounded in human-centered strategies to nurture liberation through rest and well-being for all.
house of duafe’s rest practices can be used as embodied tools for Self and collective liberatory ways of being with a well-regulated nervous system. With a well-regulated nervous system and a well-rested body, we’re able to build a greater capacity to more freely care for ourselves, our body, and our community.
Through evidence-based rest practices like Yoga Nidra (“sleep yoga”), restorative yoga, and meditation, or somatic practices like breathwork for nervous system regulation, Taylor creates soft spaces to land and care for oneself and others.
As a rest practitioner and guide, Taylor intentionally holds space for all to explore the support of rest practices for daily well-being and nervous system regulation. Most importantly, such practices are shared in accessible and culturally responsive ways to account for how social systems and social identities impact our ability to rest, soften, and be well daily.