Naomi Reid reflects on her recent Hatching Residency at The Nest

To prepare myself for the Hatching Residency at The Nest, I began by simply breathing. Contained within the four walls of Helloland, I sat still and breathed. 

To introduce myself: my name is Naomi Reid (or just Nomi), and I am a very highly strung person. I  think I was born into a stiff body filled with all the worries of the world. Yes, I was that child who slept with worry dolls under her pillow. Alongside this, I have always been a type-A overachiever,  driven by the belief that if you work hard, you will succeed. For many years, this philosophy worked. I was rewarded by the universe. 

But hard work and bottling everything up only works until it doesn’t. 

In winter 2024, I experienced my hardest crash. For the first time, I failed, and that failure was debilitating. I became extremely unwell, mentally and physically unable to work or make art. I was diagnosed with depression, anxiety, and OCD. I couldn’t leave the house. All I could do was clean. With the help of medication, therapy, and the unwavering support of loved ones, I was gently lifted out of this dark pit. During this time, I discovered The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind,  and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk. 

This book opened my eyes for the first time. I realised that my coping mechanisms of pushing forward, suppressing, and enduring were not healthy. The body does keep a score. What particularly invigorated me was the book’s discussion of alternatives to the traditional Western reliance on medication and talk therapy. Practices such as yoga, breathwork, and community can be just as healing, and in many cases are more appropriate for trauma rooted in childhood. “In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them. Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing  the tyranny of the past.” 

I decided to explore yoga and breathwork within my artistic practice. As someone who has always  been physically stiff and disconnected from my body, this felt like a challenge, one I was nervous to face. 

During the first few days of the residency, I researched yoga as a therapeutic practice. Yoga originated in ancient India and derives from the Sanskrit roots yuja and yujir, meaning “to unite” or  “to integrate.” Its origins can be traced back to Stone Age shamanism, where movement and breath were used to heal members of the community. Breath control, known as pranayama, and sensory withdrawal, pratyahara, one of the eight limbs of yoga, are used to regulate breathing, increase vital energy, and improve focus. 

How could this help me? 

Mindfulness introduces a calmer, more accepting awareness of obsessions and compulsions.  Anxiety and OCD can dysregulate the nervous system and escalate the “limbic loop,” while yoga focuses on soothing the nervous system and returning the body to safety. Each morning, I began my sessions with a sequence of poses: child’s pose, cat-cow, warrior, happy baby, downward dog, pigeon, cobra, shoulder stand, and triangle. By committing to breath and movement at the start of each day, I felt marginally calmer and more focused for the hours that followed. If you were to ask me what my practice is, or more commonly, what do you even do, I tend to panic. I’m a jack of all trades and a master of none, a Frankenstein amalgamation of photography,  printmaking, and textiles. Over the past year, as I cautiously returned to making work, I found hand embroidery to be particularly grounding. It requires no screen, no collaboration, and no specialist equipment. It is something I can do while listening to a podcast, allowing my hands to stay busy while my mind softens. 

For the Hatching Residency, I arrived with a plan: to hand-embroider every negative, obsessive thought that occupies my mind day and night. I wrote each thought onto Post-it notes and arranged them across my desk. For every statement I stitched, I scrunched up the corresponding note and discarded it. That was it. I refused to let these thoughts continue to punish me. Day by day, the pile of crumpled notes grew, until there were none left.

Like many perfectionists, I assumed I would complete everything within the allotted time. I  imagined sewing all the embroidered pieces together into a tapestry that would form the backdrop for a movement performance, my body cycling through the yoga poses I had been practising to regulate myself. I hadn’t accounted for the time hand embroidery demands. But as artistic practices bend and grow alongside us, I’m beginning to understand that this slowness was necessary. 

I am increasingly drawn toward performance and using my body as a tool. My work has often centred on other people’s narratives. Now, I want to give myself permission to tell my own story.  As I learn to become more attuned to myself mentally, physically, and spiritually, the body itself becomes form. 

Through conversations with Janet, I’ve been put in contact with former Hatching Residency artist Kate Taylor, and I’m eager to begin a dialogue around movement and wellness. In hindsight, it feels like a blessing that I took my time. It has allowed me to connect with artists and communities I didn’t know existed. 

It has just been Nomi the artist for so long. It’s nice, finally, to step outside and realise there is a big, beautiful world out there. I am learning that this is enough to begin.