Welcome to The Commons

Tools for Reflection, Practice, and Integration

The Commons is our living library: tools, guides, card decks, and reflections gathered from years of practice with leaders, facilitators, and communities. Everything here is offered so you can bring healing-centered practice into your own work, your teams, and the spaces you hold. Like seeds carried on the wind, these tools are meant to travel. Use them, adapt them to your context, and share them with others who might need them.

How to share these tools:

The tools in the Commons are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC 4.0). This means they belong to the commons: free to use, adapt, and pass on, with a few simple agreements that keep them in the spirit they were made.

You are welcome to:

  • Share them: copy and pass them on to others, in print or digitally
  • Adapt them: translate, remix, or shape them to fit your context, culture, and community

We ask that you:

  • Credit the source: name Refugia and Lana Jelenjev as the creators, link back to the original, and say if you changed anything
  • Keep them noncommercial: don’t sell the tools themselves, or adaptations of them
  • If you’d like to use these tools in paid work, write to us, and we’ll find a way together.

A simple way to credit: Adapted from [tool name] by Lana Jelenjev, Refugia (refugia.world), shared under CC BY-NC 4.0. You can read the full license at creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0.

Knowledge that belongs to communities
Some knowledge shared in the Commons may come from communities who hold it as their own. That knowledge stays with them. If a tool names a community as its source, please honor that, and ask before using it beyond your own learning.


CULTIVATING CALM: 40 Somatic Practices for Nervous System Relaxation

In our fast-paced, often overstimulated world, the demands on our bodies and minds can easily push us into fawn, fight, flight, fear, freeze, or flop. These survival states, while adaptive in moments of immediate danger, can become harmful when chronic. The key to shifting out of these states and into calm, grounded presence often lies in one powerful yet often overlooked part of our nervous system: the vagus nerve.

The vagus nerve, often called the “wandering nerve,” connects the brain to vital organs and bridges the mind and body. When functioning well, it fosters a sense of safety and connection. When dysregulated, it can contribute to states of stress, disconnection, and overwhelm.

Somatic practices—physical, body-centered exercises—offer an accessible and effective way to tone the vagus nerve and support nervous system regulation. These practices empower us to meet challenges not just with mental resilience, but with embodied ease. In this resource, we share 40 simple somatic exercises to help you move from states of fawn, fight, flight, freeze, or flop into calm, grounding, and reconnection with yourself.

These cards are offered from a spirit of generosity. 

We believe in creating spaces where value flows freely, guided by trust & shared purpose. Instead of a fixed fee, we invite you to contribute an amount that feels meaningful and generous to you, reflecting the value you received, the impact you believe this work can have in the world, and your unique circumstances.

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