The Sanctuary
A restorative membership space in Northeast Portland for burnout recovery and meaningful connection.
🌿 What Is the Sanctuary? 🌿
The Sanctuary is a gentle membership space in Northeast Portland designed for people who are burned out, isolated, and desperate for change.
It’s intentionally small — welcoming up to 10 people at a time, so it always feels spacious, cozy, and never overwhelming.
It’s not a class. It’s not therapy, coaching, or more things to do.
Instead, it’s a cozy, creative gathering place — built for rest, relief, and quiet connection, with optional sensory tools and creative materials to support your experience. Membership includes three visits per month to our beautiful studio space (with a small group of fellow members),
where you can settle in, be unbothered, and take what you need.
✨ This is an experiential space — which means the transformation comes from what you feel and do here, not from learning more or trying harder.
Your nervous system is the student, and the space and community itself is the teacher.
It’s cozy, quiet, and inviting. It feels good to be here — and that feeling is the work.
The magic is in the experience.
🌿 Why This Matters 🌿
Burnout, overstimulation, and isolation aren’t personal failures.
They’re nervous system issues.
You’ve read the books. Listened to the podcasts. Tried new routines, tracked your cycle, learned about ADHD and sensory needs.
You’re not uninformed. You’re exhausted. You’re doing your best.
But your nervous system doesn’t reset through more insight. It heals through experience. Through feeling safe. Through not having to try so hard all the time.
That’s what the Sanctuary is for.
Not to fix you. Not to give you more to do. But to give your body what it’s been asking for: quiet, rhythm, co-regulation, space. Because when your nervous system feels safe —you stop bracing, you think more clearly, and you start to feel like yourself again.
🌿 What Early Members Receive This Summer
Early Members will gather in-person (and online) during the pre-opening phase to:
✅ Explore somatic and sensory tools that soothe the nervous system
✅ Spark creativity and gentle self-expression
✅ Build meaningful connection with others who truly get it
✅ Begin the process of healing burnout — in good company
The Summer Experience Details:
✅ Community sessions in person outside in nature in Portland (3x/month)
✅ Sessions include access to different elements from the space - sensory tools, creative materials, thought provoking oracle cards and other objects
✅ We will co-create the future Sanctuary space, shaped by our collective voice and ideas
✅ Private online community access just for members
✅ A locked in introductory price to join the Sanctuary community
This is a special fleeting opportunity - to be part of a small, intimate, collective, and deeply nourishing founding group.
What to Expect in September
🍂 Starting September (Space Opens)
✅ Full access to the physical space
✅ Gather weekly in your group’s specific reserved time (3 weeks per month)
✅ Continue building and growing what we have started
✅ Larger member experience begins
What is special about being an Early Member?
Early Members will be part of a very special group. Early members are being individually invited, and we will be nurturing the community and culture together.
By joining in this group, you will each have the opportunity to get started right away on burnout recovery, community building, and grounding together with the group.
Share your ideas, needs, and hopes for what would make the Sanctuary space most supportive for you—what kinds of experiences would feel nourishing, inspiring, or healing? Your input will help shape what we create together.
✨ This is just the beginning — and you’re invited.
Join The Sanctuary - a space and community designed to support burnout recovery, creative renewal, and quiet connection in Northeast Portland.
This is your chance to be part of something rare — from the very beginning.
The Sanctuary is already in motion. The vision is clear: a warm, thoughtfully curated space for nervous system healing, sensory grounding, and quiet gentle community.
But instead of guessing what people might need — we’re doing something different.
We’re inviting a small intimate group (max 30) Early Members to help shape what this becomes. As an Early Member, your special introductory rate will be locked and will not increase as long as you remain a member.
✨ This is where it starts.
What You’ll Find Inside the Sanctuary
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Sensory Soothing
🌿 Support for your nervous system
Soft textures and grounding objects
Gentle fidgets and tapping tools
Calming visuals and imagery
Soothing scents and herbal tea
Individually wrapped treats for sensory grounding
Everything here is chosen to calm the body, settle the mind, and gently shift your state.
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Creative Expression
🎨 Gentle ways to explore what’s inside
Art journaling materials and visual prompts
Oracle and inspiration cards
Ephemera to spark curiosity
No pressure, just pathways back to your creative self.
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Personalized Pathways
🌀Follow what you’re drawn to
Whether you’re craving:
💤 Rest
🎨 Creativity
🫂 Quiet connection
✨ Inspiration
This space meets you there.
You’ll find gentle guidance cards if you’re not sure where to start.
There’s no right way to use this space — whatever you feel is right, is exactly what to do.
🪄 How Membership Works
We’re starting soft — and you’re invited to shape what comes next.
Right now, we’re in the early member prelaunch phase. That means you’ll be part of this very special intimate group helping us shape the Sanctuary before our physical space opens later this summer.
💌 Pricing and details
💌 Early Membership Pricing
$97/month (billed monthly, cancel anytime)
$970/year (2 months free)
There’s no long-term commitment — stay as long as it’s nourishing.
(But once you’re in, we think you’ll want to stay.)
✨ During Early Phase:
Membership includes:
Invitations to low-pressure in person gatherings and somatic/sensory/creative materials as we explore what’s possible
Access to the online community — a private, co-created space for gentle connection, inspiration, and checking in
A front-row seat as we design and refine the space and experience
Founding Member pricing (your rate is locked in for life)
First choice of session times once we open the doors
This is an invitation to co-create — and your presence will help shape what it becomes.
🌿Once the Physical Space Opens:
Membership includes:
One in-person Sanctuary session per week, 3 weeks each month (you choose your ongoing weekly session time — morning, midday, or evening)
Access to the self-led space during your chosen session time
Ongoing access to the private online community
Seasonal invitations to special events, creative sessions, and connection gatherings
This is a space for nervous system repair, quiet creativity, and connection — built to meet you where you are.
Behind the scenes, this space is grounded in Relational Neuroscience, Attachment Research and Polyvagal Theory — how safety, co-regulation, and sensory experience support nervous system healing.
We don’t need to explain the science right now (as much as I would love to) — it’s enough to just know that:
🧠 The reason it works is because it’s based in how your nervous system actually heals.
Everything in the Sanctuary is chosen to support burned out nervous systems, rekindle a sense of possibility, and offer a presence that heals — your own, and the quiet companionship of others.
It’s not therapy, but it’s deeply therapeutic.
Rooted in Relational Neuroscience and Polyvagal Theory, this space is being created to gently ease the isolation of burnout and reconnect you to yourself, others, and the inspiration, creativity, and renewed spirit that is within.
Is this meant to be Therapy? Was this created by therapists?
Mishka’s Story
A note from the founder, Mishka Willis, Attachment and Relational Neuroscience Specialist
I didn’t set out to build a space like this.
I built it because I needed it — desperately.
I’m a disabled, Autistic, solo parent of three amazing, sensitive, neurodivergent kids. For years, I held everything: the appointments, the paperwork, the meltdowns, the brilliance, the advocacy. All while living with Complex PTSD, chronic illness, and a body that was burning out — quietly… and then all at once.
During the pandemic, I left my career in software. It wasn’t sustainable anymore — physically or emotionally. I shifted into Parent Coaching for families with highly challenging kids, and that’s when I realized:
What I was really offering wasn’t just parenting advice.
It was Emotional Regulation.
It was Self-Compassion.
It was Polyvagal Theory.
It was the healing power of Relational Safety.
The truth is, I had quietly turned my lifelong Autistic special interest — Relational Neuroscience — into my life’s work. I couldn’t stop studying it:
What builds trust.
What repairs connection.
What brings us back into regulation — together.
That work lit me up. But eventually… it burned me out.
My body couldn’t keep up with the pressure to perform, produce, or pretend I wasn’t running on fumes. I hit a wall.
I couldn’t do work the way the world expected.
I couldn’t hustle.
I couldn’t push.
I couldn’t find anywhere I could just be.
That’s when the idea for The Sanctuary came — not as a business plan, but as a lifeline.
What if there were a space that didn’t demand performance or productivity?
A space where no one had to “do more” to be worthy of rest?
A space where your Nervous System could soften, settle, and rewire — through warmth, beauty, creativity, and gentle co-regulation?
That’s what I needed.
And when I looked around, I saw I wasn’t the only one.
Why I Built This
What I heard — time and time again — from parents, caregivers, and entrepreneurs was this:
“I feel like I’ve lost myself.”
“I’m so burnt out I don’t even know what I need anymore.”
“I miss being creative. I miss feeling inspired.”
Burnout and isolation were stealing their spark.
The light of their core selves was dimming.
Not because they were doing something wrong — but because our systems are exhausting, and they were doing it all without enough support.
They didn’t want another class or another plan to fix themselves.
They just wanted to feel okay again.
To be seen. To feel safe. To reconnect to what makes them feel alive.
So I created The Sanctuary —
A self-led space for burnout recovery, creative renewal, and nervous system relief.
It’s not a program. It’s not therapy. It’s not another thing to keep up with.
It’s experiential.
It works because it feels good to be there.
It’s built on Relational Neuroscience, Polyvagal Theory, and Neuroplasticity — but we don’t have to talk about that unless you want to. Just know:
The science is solid.
And the feeling is the medicine.
This is a space that meets you exactly where you are… and offers a gentle shift toward where you want to be.
If you’re burned out, lonely, overstimulated, or under-supported…
If you’re craving connection without pressure, creativity without perfection, and a soft place to land…
Welcome.
The Sanctuary is for you, too.
You’ve Survived So Much. Now What?
You’ve kept going. You’ve held it together. You’ve done what you had to do.
The Sanctuary is here for what comes next: repair, rest, and reconnection.
Early members will help shape what this becomes—for themselves and for others who need it.
More than anything, you want somewhere that feels safe, quiet, and true.
The Sanctuary offers that—without pressure, without pretense.
Self-led, burnout-informed, and softly co-created by early members like you.
What You’re Craving Is Real
