We urgently need a society that’s better at letting people get the rest they need.
Our collective rest will save us.
Tricia Hersey, founder of The Nap Ministry
Every Saturday over at Solidarity Sesh, the community has been leaving an otter cam running in the background while conversation drifts in and out. Nobody has to watch it. Nobody has to talk. The otters float on their backs, juggle a favorite stone, somersault off alone for a while, drift back for a minute of shared play, and then peel away again into their own absorption. It turns out that’s a pretty good picture of how a lot of us already live — and a pretty good picture of how to rest.
This week we’re making the otters the whole point. We’ll put a live otter cam up on the shared screen, watch mammals do the thing we’re so often punished for doing, and talk about rest as something our animal kin practice openly and without apology. Bring your best rest in the animal world facts and trivia — how bats roost, how bears den, how a sea otter wraps itself in kelp so it won’t drift away while it sleeps. Come learn how to rest like an otter.
Date and Time: Thursday, July 23 at 7PM Central
The Watch
Our “video” this week is alive. We’ll settle in with a live otter cam — the same kind of shared, low-demand watch we lean on at Solidarity Sesh and Watering Hole Hangs — and let it run while we talk.
Watching together is its own kind of rest. It gives you a focus for your eyes and a reason to stay in the room even when speaking is off the table — a way to exist in parallel with the group without having to perform being present.
The Stimpunks Frame
Rest is not the reward you earn after you’ve been productive enough to deserve it. That framing is the one we push back on hardest. In the culture we’re steeped in, rest is treated as a lapse — something you’re allowed only once the real work is done, and never quite yet. Tricia Hersey and The Nap Ministry name the theft plainly: the softness was stolen, the space to just be was stolen. Reclaiming rest is not laziness. It’s resistance.
For monotropic bodyminds, the stakes are even higher. A world built for constant task-switching, constant availability, and constant surface-level social performance is a world that burns us out on contact. Rest isn’t a break from our real selves — it’s the condition under which our real selves get to exist at all. This is why every Infodumplings has a scheduled bodymind break built right into the hour, no explanation required, no pressure to come back on camera.
What the otters already know
In her reflection on the Solidarity Sesh otter cam, our co-creative director Helen Edgar traces the resemblance between otters and monotropic life, and it’s uncanny once you see it:
- Many otters keep a favorite stone tucked in a pouch of skin, carried and reused again and again — a comfort object, a stim tool, something reliable to return to. Special interests and sensory objects work the same way for us: regulation through a flow state.
- Otters mostly play alone — juggling a stone, somersaulting, floating — and every so often play with another otter for a short while before drifting back into their own separate delight. That’s the rhythm of moving from a solitary cave space to a social watering hole and back, at your own pace.
- They exercise their bodily autonomy without apology. Every Saturday, the otters just get to be otters. In a safe space, we get to do the same.
As Helen puts it, the otters may be offering us an embodied version of something our community already knows and lives. Maybe we all need more time to be more like otters.
Rest as an animal practice
Humans are the only animals who have convinced themselves that rest must be earned. No other creature files a moral report before lying down. Bears den for the winter. Bats hang in the dark for most of the day. Cats sleep sixteen hours and feel no shame about a single one of them. Rest, across the animal kingdom, is not a failure of will — it is how bodyminds stay alive. When we learn to rest from our animal kin, we’re not learning a new skill. We’re remembering an old one that neuronormative culture trained out of us.
Join Us
Infodumplings happens every Thursday at 7PM Central in the Stimpunks Learning Space.
Bring an animal-rest fact. Bring a favorite otter clip. Bring a stone you carry around, or the sensory object that is functionally your pouched pebble. Or bring nothing and just come float — lurking is a real and honored way to show up.
Want to curate a future session? Get in touch →
How the Hour Goes
| Time | What’s happening |
|---|---|
| 7:00 PM | Welcome & housekeeping — introduce rest, rest-as-resistance, and the otter cam |
| 7:05 PM | 🦦 Otter cam — settle in, watch together, let the conversation drift |
| ~7:30 PM | 💬 Discussion — how otters and other mammals practice rest; bring your animal-rest facts |
| ~7:40 PM | 🧠 Bodymind break — 5 minutes, do whatever you need |
| ~7:45 PM | 🦦 Back to the cam + Helen’s otters piece |
| ~7:50 PM | 🎤 Open mic — share about anything |
| 8:00 PM | ✨ Cozy overflow + next week’s reveal |
Sessions run approximately one hour with cozy overflow after. Camera optional, chat always open, safe foods and stimming always welcome. If speaking is hard tonight, the otter cam is a perfectly good reason to just be here.
Related Glossary Entries
- Rest
- Bodymind
- Bodymind Break
- Bodymind Affirmation
- Monotropism
- Flow
- Stimming
- Special Interest
- Parallel Play
- Body Doubling
- Caves, Campfires, Watering Holes
- Bodily Autonomy
- Interdependence
Reflection Questions
On rest
- Where in your life is rest still something you feel you have to earn? What would it change to treat it as a right instead?
- What’s your pouched pebble — the reliable object or ritual you return to for regulation?
On animal kin
- What animal’s way of resting do you most envy, and why?
- Watching the otters drift between solo play and shared play, where do you recognize your own rhythm of cave and watering hole?
On the room
- What does it feel like to be present with a group without having to perform being present?
- What’s one animal-rest fact you can bring to the mic that the rest of us won’t know?
Resources
- Rest — Stimpunks Glossary
- Stimpunks Solidarity and Otters — Helen Edgar, Autistic Realms
- Bodymind Break
- Bodymind Break — Pattern Library
- Bodymind Affirmation
- Offline: Fresh Air, Daylight, and Large Muscle Movement
- Solidarity Sesh
- Watering Hole Hangs
Part of Stimpunks Recurring Events. See also: Solidarity Sesh and Watering Hole Hangs.
Leave a Reply