ForestBody – Underlying mission, purpose, and method

The Big Idea

ForestBody is an organized library of knowledge that attempts to understand and teach embodiment:

  • The mind/body experience, working towards skillful, loving connection with self (and the world that expands beyond self)
  • Health, including individual and collective health
    • individually, including mental/emotional/physical/spiritual health
    • collectively, including humanity and all of life on Planet Earth

Through knowledge, we gain a significant part of what is needed to be skillful in our actions. May the library held here at ForestBody serve you in informing you the way that best serves you, today.

However, embodiment is far more than knowledge

More than this, the true aim of ForestBody is to help each individual develop a skillful, embodied relationship with self:

  • em - bodied: present, centered within one’s body; one’s Whole Self

No longer relying on our heads to have it all figured out, but now opening to the enlivening experience of direct connection to all of reality (as it is lived through each of us in each present moment).

The polarity

ForestBody is a mind/body space, and to help you develop in the way that I see as skillful, I intentionally work in a way that holds knowledge (the mind) and direct experience (the body) in polarity:

  • two "opposites" which, when held in connection, offer a "middle path" that will lead you skillfully down your path

The practice

Here at ForestBody, I teach The Embodied Path as a practice-centered method to embodying the mystical teaching I speak to above. It is the path that takes us out of the overly complex, highly mystical and/or deeply scientific information and brings us into an embodied experience.

The Embodied Path can be simplified as follows:

  • Grounding:- a state of coming into physical connection with our earthly, biological nature
    • Can also be known as a state of energetic connection with our earthly, biological nature
  • Centering: Life is chaos. It is constantly pulling us in countless directions, splitting our attention and fundamental essence. When we center, we come into Self at the core (perhaps, the heart) of it all
  • Alignment: You, as a human being, are made up of countless parts that each serve their own function and have their own story. The sad reality for the modern human being is wild misalignment within self: head leading us in a thousand different directions, heart telling us another story, our shadowy parts unconsciously leading us in unskifful directs, and on and on and on
    • Alignment is about bringing all parts of self into a coherent whole
    • Alignment is also about the Whole that is YOU coming into skillful connection with the world that expands beyond self
  • Discernment: Taking each step along The Embodied Path is rarely a clear and simple matter, and in truth, alignment is never achieved in perfection. Reality shows us uncertainty, and we have to learn to do our best with what we have each step of the way
    • Discernment is the art of skillful action in each moment, making the most skillful decision given whatever imperfect information we have at our disposal

Adopting The Embodied Path is not about spiritual perfection or idealized self-development. Rather, The Embodied Path is better understood as a humbling experience about what it means to be a human being.

Life is messy. Life is complex. Perfection is bullshit. Each moment is all we have.

We learn to do our best with each moment that we have:

  • Soaking in the joy, the wonder, the magic, and the fulfillment that is here in each moment
  • Healing, expanding, and otherwise transforming as we move into the next moment

Mission:

Here at ForestBody it is our mission to bring a higher, deeper, and more skillful practice of Embodiment to the individual, and in doing so, help each individual that crosses our path to get more out of this life:

  • Finding greater presence in each moment, and in doing so, experiencing deeper joy, peace, fulfillment, wonder, and all those good things we are searching for
  • Healing, as each individual that crosses our path receives what is needed for them at this point on their healing journey, whether that's physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual
  • Growth, expansion, and transformation - but only that which is done in an aligned way, and serves the highest potential of the individual

We say this for the individual, but more than this, ForestBody is a space of remembering that we are not disconnected individuals on self-centered paths, but instead, we live as a collective web of life on Planet Earth. Therefore, our work here is not just about self, but it is about self in connection to the greater whole:

  • Healing and otherwise tending to the ecosystems we are part of
  • Healing and otherwise tending to the human relationships we are in: the families and communities we are part of
  • Showing up to do the important work where we are best called to work in this world

Honoring Tradition and Specializing in Modalities:

With the creation of ForestBody, I honor the wide set of wisdom traditions that have served as source material to help unravel the teachings presented here. Most notably, from The East: yoga, Buddhism, and tantra; and, from The West: hermeticism, stoicism, Christianity. Also, honoring the great gods and goddesses, nature spirits, and all other "unseen" forces that have helped guide and shape me on my own embodiment journey.

Here at ForestBody, I am honored to have received a great wealth of wisdom from diverse traditions, and I consider it my highest duty to honor what has passed as I look to teach only that which now serves.

It is with this that I offer the "modern spirituality" that is taught here, one that no longer demands that we hold true to the rigid dogma of religion, but instead puts our soul path at the center of it all. Here, by holding ourselves centered within devotion to serve our own highest path, AND the highest good of all beings, we learn to discern (for our selves) the wisdom, truth, guidance, and choices that lead us to where we best go.

All this being said, there have to be tangible practice that ground in a spirituality (otherwise we find ourselves floating off into the ethers, caught up in the wind as it takes us from one space to the next, never coming home to a cohesive experience of life).

To remedy this, I offer the following:

ForestBody is a conglomerate of wisdom across traditions, yet it offers practice and grounded teachings through the following frameworks:

  1. Yoga and Yoga Therapy
  2. Priestessing

You can work directly with me, Katie, 1:1 in a Yoga Therapy or Spiritual Coaching (Priestessing) container.

You can learn more about these modalities on their individual pages (click highlighted links above).