Practice expanding your awareness beyond your own self and the routine people/happenings in your own life. Expand your consciousness outward, letting it fall upon the objects, the living beings, the sounds, and all else that is unfolding beyond self and your limited world. Rest your consciousness here. Allow the world around you to be brought into your field. Notice what is here. Do not pull it in, and do not let yourself get pulled out into it. Simply, expand your consciousness, let it rest in the spaces outside of self, and be present to what is unfolding, just as you did in your stillness practice.

Exert, Practice #4 in 11 Embodiment Practices For Your Healing and Awakening

Welcome to Practice #4 of 11 Embodiment Practices for your Healing & Spiritual Awakening. With this piece, it is my intention to teach you a specific spiritual practice that you can add to your spiritual toolbox, allowing you to enter into a more holistic state of being and a skillful ability to walk through life.

When it comes to this, there are a set of essential skills, those which we will cultivate with time as we stay devoted to practice. In relation to this particular practice, I wish to name two skills:

First and foremost, as is most fully taught in spiritual spaces these days, we have to be able to disconnect from the chaos unfolding around us. There is just so much noise out there, isn’t there? And if we are caught up in it, then we have no ability to discern meaningful paths forward. Plus, we will never find peace. We will be endlessly caught up in the waves of chaos that are taking down this world.

Yes, we have to be able to take our attention and our energy inward, disconnecting from all that is unfolding around us. It is from this space that we can find center, cultivate peace, and be able to discern our way forward.

But how do we know where we are going if we are not also connected into the world around us? Plus, what meaning is there if we find ourselves cut off, isolated from our surroundings?

The fact of the matter is, we must walk through life with some degree of our energy and attention outwards, for it is “out there” that we find life as it is unfolding.

My point? It is a both/and sort of situation: that we must be able to both withdraw our energy and attention from what is unfolding around us (so that we can create peace, space, and clarity within); and, we must also be able to expand our energy and our awareness, so that we hold awareness of that which is unfolding around us. Only then can we walk a truly skillful path through life. The question is, how do we do both?

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The Embodied Path - Practice applied to real life

The Embodied Path consists of 11 Practices that are here for you to try out, discerning which ones create value given where you are in life. Ideally, you would try all 11, and given endless amounts of time, you would practice all 11 regularly.

This being said, The Embodied Path is not taught for the ascetic: one who has withdrawn himself from life to focus fully on spiritual practice. Rather, The Embodied Path is being created for the modern individual who has a life and is an active part of society. This means that, yes, we need to find time to devote to practice, but we recognize that this time is limited, and we recognize that much of practice is applied in the playground that is life!

With Practice #1, we entered into a state of physical stillness. Asking that our physical selves cut ties with the endless need to go-go-go, a return to physical stillness sets the foundation for inner stillness, along with all the other spiritual qualities that we seek to embody.

But it’s not all about physical stillness, is it? Because oftentimes, it is motion that is needed to let those chaotic thoughts and energies settle. With this in mind, Practice #2 invited us to go out and move, doing so in a present-centered, embodied way.

Together, Practices #1 and #2 offer a singular polarity: a spectrum that we could see in an either/or frame of mind (is it “more spiritual” to practice in stillness or while in movement?), but instead, honor in its fullness (sometimes we would benefit from stillness, and sometimes we would benefit from movement).

Similarly, Practices #3 and #4 form a singular polarity. With Practice #4, we focus consciousness:

• withdraw your senses from the chaos of the world

• turn your attention to one specific point/object/aspect/etc.

• focus on this one specific point/object/aspect for a set duration of time

Focused consciousness: it is a practice that is widely taught for its ability to bring about spiritual revelation. But it isn’t everything, is it? For, if we only go around focusing, then how do we have any sense of all that is unfolding around us?

When focus never widens into awareness, that inward orientation calcifies, festers, and becomes quite unskillful.

Let me be frank here: we have an empathy problem in our modern world. In a similar vein, we have a serious problem with skillful connection to other life forms. This serves as the foundation for the deeply rooted, toxic, and festering qualities of humanity that look a lot like:

• disregard for nature, including non-human living beings

• disregard for other humans, especially those that have different colored skin, different cultures, and different religions

When we only focus inward, we can readily fall into the trap of becoming self-centered, which, as you will know, is not a skillful goal of spirituality.

The remedy?

Just like we practice focusing, we must also practice expanding: broadening our consciousness, becoming witness to the life that is unfolding around us.

As we do this, we cultivate awareness for what is here. From the state of awareness, we can then have choices about where we might want to focus:

• What connection is there to be made?

• What action is there to be performed?

I will talk more about this as this post continues. For now, I invite you to try out what, exactly, I am speaking to.

A Practice of Expanded Consciousness

Note 1: I encourage you to read through the practice in its entirety before beginning. As you read through, feel free to “practice” each step. Then, when you are ready, disconnect from the screen, closing your eyes if it feels comfortable to do so, and begin the practice in its entirety. Do not worry about getting every step perfect. Go through the practice in a way that arises for you today.

Note 2: This practice builds on Practice #3, which is a practice of centering. You do not have to complete nor even know about Practice #3 before you begin. Just know that it may serve your practice to be more comfortable with centering before you begin expanding.

Practice:

Take a few moments to settle down into your body. Do your best to remove yourself from all distractions as you take a few breaths.

As you inhale, feel into the expansion of your rib cage, your belly.

As you exhale, you might hold the intention to let go of any noise you might be holding in your mind or body.

Breathe in, fill yourself with your own consciousness.

Breathe out, let go of all that does not serve and clouds your consciousness.

When you are ready, bring your full attention to a center point within self:

• this might be your heart

• this might be your solar plexus

• this could be anywhere that seems like a “center” to you in this moment

Breathe fully into this “center” point, and with each breath bring more of your consciousness into this point.

Now that you are centered, it is time to expand. For this part of the practice, I encourage you to take continued breaths into your center point. This will help you to stay grounded within self as you simultaneously expand.

Expansion Practice:

From this point centered within self, begin to expand your consciousness (your awareness) out into the whole of your body:

• your chest

• your abdomen

• your head

• your limbs

• your whole body

As you continue to breathe into your center point, become aware of your whole body.

Next, begin to expand your awareness just beyond your skin - to your immediate environment. Become conscious of what is here.

Then, fill the entire room you are in with your consciousness. You may open your eyes for this, or you may keep them closed and energetically/psychically perceive what is here.

Next step: Expand beyond the room you are in:

• the whole building you are in

• just outside this building

• to your community/ecosystem

• across the nation you are in

• across oceans

Can you expand all the way across the globe?

• What about down into the Earth?

• What about up into the heavens?

All-the-while, continue those breaths centered within self. When you are ready to close down the practice, take your time to really center back within self.

Know that, as you release this expansive state, you may wish to leave some of your awareness drawn to the places/people/situations that serve to hold some degree of your awareness (if only for a certain amount of time).

Make sure that you are fully grounded back in your body in your immediate environment before moving on from the practice.

When I initially sat down to write The Embodied Path, the ability to expand (as well as focus) was the loudest piece of it all

I am a student of yoga. I am also a student of Buddhism (although I do not align with this tradition as well as I do with yogic traditions). As a Westerner who has been taught these traditions, I have gained much in regard to the ability to turn my gaze inward, center within self, and do the work that is important within the bounds that is my own being.

This is important, but what I recognize in the West’s extraction of Eastern spiritual tradition has a lot to do with focusing on that which serves self and does not necessarily connect us to the world around us.

Let me be crystal clear here. A holistic spirituality is one that works within self, and with self in connection to the world beyond. It is not selfish, just as it is not selfless. The ability to focus within self, and to expand your awareness beyond self, is something that needs to be done with great skill.

We cultivate this skill as we practice:

• practice focused consciousness

• practice expanded consciousness

And, connect these two practices into the holistic framework that is The Embodied Path. Get the idea?

The short of it

We have an empathy problem in our world. That is, we have a problem with heart-centered connection to the problems, needs, hurts, and desires of others.

On the other hand, we have a problem of too many people losing themselves in their empathy without having a grounded sense of connection to self.

Loves, we have to be able to resolve both of these problems such that each of us are able to walk through life grounded in the needs and desires of our own selves as we, simultaneously, have awareness for the needs and desires of others.

It is only then that we can move towards careful and skillful discernment: making important choices about where we spend our attention, energy, and other resources.

• Do you need to take time to focus on your own needs? To pursue your own wants?

• Would it be best to take time to support another being?

We can only know answers to these sorts of questions if we can walk through life connected in both expansive and focused nature.

I invite you to take a few moments to contemplate this practice and how it may play out in life. Where are areas that you are really good at this?

Where are areas that could use some improvement? Are you someone who tends to focus more on “self” or on “other.” How could this practice help you shift into greater balance?

Center is a point, but it is not a fixed point. It is a tool that helps collapse the complexities and dynamic nature of your being into one simple location, while also being that which holds the infinite potential of who you are in its form.

Center is here to hold you within a world that is wild and ever-changing, dynamic as it is both adventurous and often even scary.

Center means knowing yourself as whole and eternal even as parts of you may shift and change.

Centering as part of The Embodied Path

I began this series because I wanted to create a framework that provides meaning for:

1. Navigating this wild world while being as skillful as possible

2. Being present in reality, experiencing what is - especially that which is beautiful, joyful, fulfilling, and meaningful, as well as that which is difficult, challenging or even painful

The short of it? How can we be present in all of it - in all of life! - as we call upon wisdom and discernment to move through it all with as much skill as possible?

In answer to this questioning, what emerged is what I now call “The Embodied Path” - a simple yet wholly dynamic framework that meets the individual exactly where they are, never forcing anyone to fit a mold that they do not fit, while always holding space for that truer, more skillful version of self.

The Embodied Path emerges as a 4-step process. It is one that is far from linear and never promises any idealized state when followed in perfection. Rather, it is a set of skills & states to be practiced, repeated over time as the whole process is iterated. With time, practice of skills begins to emerge spontaneously.

The process is, simply, the following:

1. Grounding

2. Centering

3. Alignment

4. Discernment

You can read more about The Embodied Path in this post. As for our breakdown of each part of the process…

At this point in our series, I have written in depth about grounding, and in a recent post wrote what is to date my most comprehensive post on the subject.

Today our task is to do the same with the second theme: centering.

In this definition, the use of the capital “S” in Self signifies that we are not talking about some limited, egoic version of self. Rather, this is the whole being that you are:

• mind and body

• heart and soul

• spirit

• etc.

When we talk about embodiment, we are talking about this whole being that you are: A complex being, one that exists with aspects that are probably even unknown to you. You can “do the work” that it takes to bring awareness to all these parts of Self, and you can “do the work” that it takes to heal, befriend, or otherwise come into skillful connection with all these parts of Self. This can be important work.

AND.

And, you do not have to be conscious of all aspects of Self and everything that is happening all at once to be centered. Again, centering is about collapsing the complexities of life down into a single point. Find center, and you allow stillness to settle in place of chaos.

To connect this “Self” portion of the definition to the second half of what is stated above, you have to understand that centering, as with all aspects of The Embodied Path, is not a selfish act. Rather, it is about coming into connection with Self as part of a far greater whole. When we center, we do it in a way that is not disengaging from the world beyond Self, but instead, actually results in a deeper knowing of our interrelated nature.

In a moment, I will offer a practice to help you dive straight into what I mean, allowing you to experience for yourself what this can offer you. Before this, I wish to add one more piece to contextualize the work offered here within the broader body of work that is The Embodied Path.

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(A quick aside) Practices that support your cultivation of The Embodied Path

As I teach The Embodied Path, I find it useful to divide the work into the following:

1. Skills and States that we are working to cultivate, as is discussed here in this post

2. Foundational practices that help us to cultivate these skills and states, as is being discussed in parallel in other blog posts

While one half of The Embodied Path offers a spiritual exploration of Self in relation to Life through the above 4-step process (again, one focused on skills and states), the other half of The Embodied Path offers a practice-centered approach to embodiment.

Currently we are approaching Practice #4 of 11 total embodiment practices that are worth exploring for the modern practitioner.

In Practice #3 we spoke to focused consciousness, that which looks a lot like channeling one’s attention to a single task/point. I write today’s piece on centering between practices #3 and #4.

With Practice #3 we focus consciousness.
With Practice #4 we expand consciousness.

I write today’s piece on centering between the two — not as a numbered practice itself, but as the hinge connecting them. Consider what follows a threshold piece: centering is what supports you as you move from focused attention to expanded awareness.

Make sense? Let’s give it a try.

Centering Practice

Read through the practice in its entirety before you begin. When you are ready, go through the simple steps in the order they are written out. Feel free to come back to the writing for guidance along the way. Alternatively, you may put away the screen and sink into the practice, doing your best to follow the steps while trusting that whatever form you follow is what is best for you today.

Practice

Come into a comfortable seated position. Begin by taking a few moments to settle, focusing on some full, ease-filled breaths.

Feel your breath in your body:

• inhale, sensing into how your rib cage, and maybe even your abdomen expands

• exhale, doing so with an invitation to let go of any thoughts or energies that you brought into this practice that do not serve

• repeat for 5-10 breaths

When you are ready, go to your “center.” Understand that where exactly this is in your body does not matter so much. Maybe “center'“ is in your heart. Maybe it is in your solar plexus. Maybe it is around or just below your navel. Again, it does not matter where you go. Today, ask yourself where your center is, then tune into this space.

Come into your center, wherever you feel or otherwise perceive it today. Bring your full attention here.

Spend some time at center. I recommend about 8-10 breaths. Use your breath to help you focus your attention. If your attention veers (which it probably will), simply bring it back to center.

Once you feel confidently “centered” your task is going to shift. Now, as some part of you remains at center, your task is to begin to expand. That is, with some aspect of your focused attention at center, your awareness is going to simultaneously expand outward:

• Begin by expanding your awareness to your body. That is, become present to the whole of your body

• Then, begin to expand your consciousness beyond your skin. Feel into the immediate environment surrounding you

• After this, expand into the room you are in…

• The whole building you are in…

• The whole community/ecosystem you are currently in…

• Expand across your whole nation…

• The whole world…

• Perhaps, even, the Universe

Throughout this expansion practice, take moments to remember yourself at your center. Your breath can help you do this.

When you are ready to close down the practice, come back fully to center. Breathe into your whole body as you feel your feet on the floor / your seat in your chair. Tune into the center of your being once again as you know yourself as centered in your body in the room in which you currently reside.

The practice of centering has to do with being at home in oneself, setting the stage for being at peace and having clarity even among the chaos of life unfolding as it does.

Of course, as we know, this idea is not always easy to actually put into practice in a way that manifests as perfect peace and clarity. As with all aspects of The Embodied Path, practice is what is key. More than this, it is about finding practices that work for you given where you are. No practice is perfect. No practice is a one-size-fits-all.

It is my hope that the practice above is able to offer you support in your centering. If you found this to be so, I recommend committing to a daily practice (else, practicing at least several times a week) so that the practice becomes ingrained within you, and center becomes a more stable state (and not one that you have to constantly reach for).

One more note before closing down for today. It is important to put into context that we are, indeed, living in wildly chaotic times. For many, the stability that had been experienced is crumbling away. For others, like my millennial self, I never got to set solid foundations before the world went to hell. In other words, I have never really known center nor stable foundations. Because of this, I find it extra difficult to even know what it means to be grounded and centered in this world.

Fortunately, The Embodied Path is a set of principles and practices that are not necessarily tied directly to external aspects of life. Does it helps to have a stable environment to center into? Of course it does! Still, with time we find that we are able to center and ground even as the world around us shifts and changes (and, in a lot of ways, falls away).

Finding center is not about finding a fixed point. This is not an aspect of you that is physically tied to all that is unfolding. Center is a spiritual point. It exists in perpetuity. It is always there for you to reach towards, and hopefully, to find in times of need.

And, with time and practice, we find that center is a state which arises spontaneously. This is a good thing. We want to be centered because we want to be at home in our spiritual nature, grounded within Self as we do all we can to navigate this wild world as skillfully as is possible.

“The practice of connecting to Earth for grounding is often a powerful way to feel safe, held, and otherwise cared for without having to go directly into the triggers and on-edge nervous systems that many of us live with. For myself, when I really started along my embodiment journey, I could not bring my consciousness inward into my own body. I had to begin by connecting to Earth - to ground. Once I found safety and connection and other aspects of this grounding here, I could then go into the important work that has to do with bringing my conscious awareness inward.

Still, for others (perhaps this is you), they are able to go directly inward into connection with your body and find safety there. Again, this is an important opportunity to point out how we have differences and similarities, and we must pursue this path with the ability to discern what actually serves in each moment.

This quote comes from later on in this piece, and I write it here because it helps set the stage for the body of work you are about to enter into.

In this piece, we get to focus on Grounding, the most foundational state that we are here to cultivate on The Embodied Path. As is stated above, grounding practices come in many forms, and it is my wish that you try several of them out to learn what works best for you at this point in time. I offer several of them here for you today along with supporting teachings that are here to help you cultivate a deeper sense of grounding in your life.

Opening Practice

Take a moment to feel into the ground you stand on. Do this physically as you tune into the literal ground you stand on. Feel your feet on the floor. Feel your seat in your chair.

Now, do this energetically. Take a few deep breaths down... down... down into the Earth you sit/stand on. Let your breath be your guide as your consciousness is moved down into the physical ground beneath you.

You can also do this energetically and psychologically: What grounds do you stand on in your life? In other words, what are the foundations that you stand on as you move through life? Bring conscious awareness to the foundations that hold your life. Breathe into this space.

I encourage you to let thoughts come to mind, or even visuals that show you what these grounds are. I also encourage you to feel it in your body: Where do you feel this in your body? What exactly does it feel like?

There are many qualities connected to the experience of “grounding.” They range from a sense of safety and meaningful connection to that which physically holds you in life on this Earth. The following piece is here to examine the different aspects of grounding in your life, but most importantly to help bring awareness to your embodied state of grounding as you receive access to the practices that will help you skillfully cultivate this state.

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A first look at Grounding - A felt sense of safety and security

In one use of the word grounding, we can speak to a felt sense of being held:

• Safe and Secure

• Nurtured and Cared for

When we are grounded, we feel a level of safety and security, such that we are able to move forward through life without constant need for fighting for those basic needs.

Please know that, in one way, we could see this as dependent on whether or not those basic needs are met. However, I will argue that being spiritually grounded is independent on the extent to which those needs are met.

For, spiritual grounding goes deeper than the physical world. When you are grounded, you are so connected to this Earth, and to spirit, that you know you are held and cared for. In this way, grounding (like all spiritual states) transcends the physical world.

This being said, please understand that our work here together on The Embodied Path does not wish to negate the importance of physical safety, including having basic needs met. In fact, part of what we understand here is that we are at a point in human history where we could meet the needs of all of humanity, if only we chose to. However, because of the power dynamics at play, there are those who wish to continue to control and suppress other beings, and one powerful way to do this is to withhold basic needs.

Please understand that our work here together is collective and individual:

Here, we are working towards a world where these toxic power systems crumble and where all human beings have access to basic needs. Again, we recognize that this is entirely possible, but humanity must choose it and work for it.

The important question, then, becomes how we do work and fight to ensure our basic needs are met. Once we meet this important stage, the work becomes entering into an embodied state of knowing that we are, indeed, safe.

Along the way, it is helpful to cultivate a spiritual relationship to life that helps you to feel physically safe and supported. The next piece of this post will help you out here.

A second look at Grounding:

A felt sense of connection that leads you to an inner knowing that you are held, that you are cared for, and that you are connected in more ways than your mind will ever know

Feel into this one for me. To do so, I invite you to descend down out of your head. Descending down - deep down into your body - into the deepest place that feels safe for you:

• you might descend down into your feet, or your seat in connection to your chair

• you might descend down into your abdomen

• ask yourself, where can you go deep down in your body that feels safe, secure as it connects you to the very grounds of your being?

Breathe deeply into this space as you rest here. Feel into that safe, nurturing connection to the ground, and to the Earth beneath you. Know that you are held. Know that you are supported.

As you do, you might ask:

• How do you know you are safe and cared for?

• Who/What is caring for you?

Let’s explore these answers as we expand our understanding of Grounding

We live in a chaotic and unpredictable world. Especially these days, with fast-paced, high tech version of it all, we are moving through stimulating and stressful environments at a level that humanity has never known. On top of this, life changes rapidly. We may find ourselves travelling (or even moving) from place to place, and possibly even across the globe in a matter of hours!

On top of even this, I write during a time of extreme political upheaval. The leader of my own country has essentially waged war on its own people and its lands. Across the globe, toxic patriarchal figures are once again banded together as they chose war (a most horrific form of destruction) over cultivating life for all.

Yes, life is wild and chaotic and often dark and scary. Still, within it all, there is an ability to find ourselves grounded: Connected into something that holds us, and keeps us standing on a foundation that never shifts.

This spiritual sense of grounding is that which we are here to cultivate. It is needed because our Selves (capital “S” Self and not small, egoic self) are in need of that which is eternal. We can speak to this on a nervous system level, just as we can speak to it on a psychological level, just as we can speak to it on a spiritual level.

The bottom line is:

Our bodies (including our nervous system here, which includes our brain which pulls in our minds but also includes the nerves throughout our guts and limbs and rest of body) require a level of known safety so that we can remain healthy as we go out and live our lives. This safety is connected to grounding, which is connected, again, into that felt knowing that transcends the physical realm.

This state is one that can be cultivated through intention and through practice. If you are willing, here is one more short, simple, yet powerful practice to try:

Grounding Practice: Finding Grounding In Your Body

Take a moment to come into a comfortable, seated position. Feel your feet on the floor and your root in connection to your seat. Take several slow breaths down into your body:

• you might begin in your chest, feeling into the 3-dimensional expansion of your ribcage for several full breaths.

• you might then move down through your diaphragm and into your abdomen. Breathe that same 3-dimensional breath, now into your belly, your back, and even your sides

• you might move all the way down to your physical root - your pelvic floor and surrounding area.

• As you take these descending breaths, notice what feels safe? What feels like “coming to rest.” Where and how do you feel held?

• You might spend some time deepening into the areas that do feel safe and supportive.

• You might spend some time getting curious about the areas that do not (a note of caution here, because trauma often does live in the body, and I recommend having some sort of greater support system if you are thinking you might be going into any tricky territory).

• Give this practice time. With time, perhaps you find yourself exploring different parts of your body, noticing where you feel safe, supported, and grounded, while also noticing (and perhaps working with) areas that do not.

My hope with this practice is that you get to cultivate a most sacred relationship to your body:

• honoring those spaces where you feel grounding in this moment

• honoring those spaces that might be in need of healing

Grounding as meaningful connection to life and purpose

So far we have spoken to grounding in relation to safety and connection. At this point, let us speak to grounding in relation to meaning - that is, what meaningful connections in life hold you, giving you a sense that life is worth living and that you have important things to do here?

As I lean into this, I think about my work in the world (as a writer, a teacher, a Priestess). I also think about what lives beneath this (my own connection to my body, to this Earth, to the lands I live on and have had the privilege of travelling to). This connection to my body and this Earth is sacred, and it keeps me grounded no matter was is happening with “my work in this world.”

I also think about my family and how they serve a foundational support system and meaning in my life. I can also speak to important friendships (especially those that have stood the test of time).

I also think about my ancestry, including the deep relationship I have cultivated with some who have already passed, as well as my ancestral root system that goes far back and connects me to land. I will note here, this is sometimes a difficult one for me as someone who comes from a mixed lineage that does not have direct connection to any spirituality. So I have to go deeper - back to Celtic roots before my ancestors in Ireland and Scotland were displaced, to my paternal grandfather’s farm in Montana, etc.; and, to my maternal grandmother’s wild, witchy ways trying to make it as an untethered soul in this wild, deeply challenging world).

The point here is that it is necessary to have a sense of grounding in regard to that which is here on Earth giving you meaning and purpose. Yes, this can exist in day-to-day activities and relationships, but even deeper (and more important) than this is what is timeless and cannot be impacted (or far less likely to be impacted) by life’s events.

Consider this for a few moments. What connection to this life grounds you? Are there people? Is there a purpose? Is there a god that you connect to (Universe, god/goddesses, spirit, etc.)?

Grounding - Sacred Connection to Earth

Above, I offered a practice inviting you into a felt sense of grounding in your body. Now, let us speak to what I see as an extension of body - which is, Earth, herself.

For, as I see it, our bodies connect us directly to Earth, including the land we live on, the places we travel to, and the greater “whole” that we are all part of. This is where the image of your body as a “tree of life” comes in. Your roots connect you to ground as they connect you to the roots of all living beings here on Earth (just as you get to be the beautiful, powerful, sovereign being that you are!).

One important note on this practice as someone who once had a terribly difficult time finding safety in her own body.

The practice of connecting to Earth for grounding is often a powerful way to feel safe, held, and otherwise cared for without having to go directly into the triggers and on-edge nervous systems that many of us live with. For myself, when I really started along my embodiment journey, I could not bring my consciousness inward into my own body. I had to begin by connecting to Earth - to ground. Once I found safety and connection and other aspects of this grounding here, I could then go into the important work that has to do with bringing our conscious awareness inward.

Still, for others (perhaps you experienced this in the practice above), you are able to go directly inward into connection with your body and safety there. Again, this is an important opportunity to point out how we have differences and similarities, and we must pursue this path with the ability to discern what actually serves in each moment.

This all being said, try this.

Earth/Body Grounding Practice

Just as you did up above, take a moment to settle into your body in a comfortable seated position. Find your feet on the floor and your seat in your chair. Hold the intention to find grounding in connection to Earth.

Breathe down into your body:

• your chest

• your belly

• your pelvic floor

You might take some time to do this, or your might do this quickly (for example, a few full breaths feeling into the whole of your body).

When you are ready, bringing your full attention to your feet/seat in connection to the physical surface you are sitting on:

• the couch/chair

• the floor

Using your breath to keep you centered in your body, allow your attention to descend:

• down through the floorboards, the foundation

• down into ground

You might visualize dirt, rock, soil. What is here, present as ground that you sit upon?

Taking your time, allow yourself to continue to descend: down through the dirt and rock, what exists here? Remember, you are here on a journey to find grounding. What is present in Earth that is here to support this?

• are there roots?

• is there water?

• maybe there is fire?

Doing this practice day-to-day, you will notice that the experience changes.

• some days, it is solid rock that holds me

• so days, water is what nurtures me

• other times, the only thing that helps is fire as it meets my own fire within

Again, as always, make this practice your own. Be so tuned in to the intention to meet what serves your highest needs each day.

Remember, as your true needs are met, you are becoming a person who is meeting the needs of the greater collective we are all part of.

Grounding - An experience that is lived moment-by-moment, day-by-day

You will have noticed that I am a big fan of guided practices that can be done alone in a room as you sit in a meditative space. These practices offer you a special kind of time to be fully present with your body and whole being.

But of course, this experience does not translate directly to “real life.” In life, we are most often busy as we are moving around or tasked with a job.

Therefore, it becomes important to translate this sense of grounding to your normal, waking life.

• Please understand that this will happen organically, in part. The work you do in meditation will translate directly to your life

Also, please understand that while you are out and about, there are powerful ways to feel grounded:

• a powerful practice that I often call upon are those full breaths into my body as I feel deeper into my connection to Earth

• another practice may be to carry something with you that feels grounding. I know many people who carry rocks around with them in their pockets - direct contact to a grounding state

The options here are truly endless, and the invitation here is to spend some time noting what helps you to feel grounded as you go about your day (perhaps writing down some ideas if you find that you do not have much of a list).

Saving the best for last - a most powerful sense of grounding by going into nature and connecting directly

There is one practice that I have found is able to always always always take me into a grounded state, even when everything else fails. It is, of course, going directly into nature, having my body in contact with Earth, and disconnecting from the chaos that humanity and life stirs up.

Yes, nature is powerful medicine, and it is so because it is our natural state to be in connection to it. Be honest with yourself here - it is WILD that we have (relatively recently) constructed a whole life that exists in disconnection from nature and Earth. We live on concrete and asphalt boxed up by steel and other metals. We have put up physical barricades between the connections with Life that are supposed to keep us grounded and connected, and the result is nervous systems and mind that are losing it!

A most powerful path back to a regulated and grounded state is to step into nature and be present here. Simple, yes?

Of course, the practice becomes challenging when it comes to access and time to do this. I can only state the importance of it, and a need (yes, a need!) to find the time and space in your life to connect!

(Say, you don’t have direct access to nature? This is a problem! I now humbly invite you into a task that is creating opportunities to connect with nature where you live and work.

In Summary - Grounding as a process

As with every aspect of The Embodied Path, grounding is a practice and process. This post exists to guide you into different types of practices that may serve, just as it exists to help you understand different types of grounding and the role they play in your life.

I cannot encourage you enough to do the practices here. If you want more, they exist in abundance in my membership (it currently exists on my predicate website at https://upwardslopes.com/forestmembership/).

To close things down, I wish to leave you with the bigger picture that is the greater body of work here: The Embodied Path is being created as a way to support you as the sovereign being that you are. I hold this with the utmost sincerity: your ability to feel safe and held in your body such that you are able to feel free to express yourself - this means everything!

More than this, your connection to life beyond self is just as important. I will continue to say it over and over again: The Embodied Path is a practice-centered path that brings you inward into connection with Self, and in this way it may be viewed as “self-centered.” But if you think this is about self and not the rest of the world, you are not in the right place.

The Embodied Path is here for collective healing and awakening, because it is about knowing Self in connection to the web of life that we are all part of. This cannot be overstated! We are here for collective healing and awakening. And yes, it begins within - with you! - because this is the only space from which you can heal and interact with the world.

A world, of course, which is in deep and powerful need of healing and light-filled transformation during these wild, turbulent times.

If you got something out of this post, I invite you to share it with your community. It helps greatly as we connect and interweave as we all take the necessary steps forward on each of our own paths.

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All-the-while, is each experience leading you deeper into the truth of who you are so that you may express yourself even more fully?

This, my friends, is Sagittarius, and it just so happens that we have a Sagittarius Full Moon this weekend and it is lighting up our world with a fiery demand for truth!

What kind of truth?

Your soul truth. The kind that burns as it leads you to where you best ought to go - to experience life in its fullness!

I don’t always share astrology happenings with you, but as some of you may know, I am not just a fiery Sag. Actually, I am a 7X Sagittarius with sun, moon, rising, north node, Mercury, Venus, and Mars in Sagittarius! Woah, what does this mean?

To put it simply, the sun, moon, stars, and planets aligned when I came into this world, and as lore would have it I was imbued with a particularly fiery tendency towards adventure; and, towards truth.

For better or for worse (because, trust me, there are serious drawbacks to such an imbalanced chart), the Sagittarius archer is alive within me. And, on this full moon, I would love for another opportunity to share its magic with you.

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The fiery and soulful power of Sagittarius

Sagittarius is a fire arrow. But more than this, Sagittarius is a centaur wielding a bow and ready to send that fiery arrow soaring off in all the wild, wonderful, soulful directions it is best meant to go!

The problem with Sagittarius is we often overlook the horse-like body that wields that arrow. We go straight to adventure - we want to soar in all these different directions as we seek one dopamine-spiking adventure after the next!

But where is the grounding? Where is that soulful connection to the fiery truth that guides the paths you are best meant to explore?

Thankfully, this full moon cycle began in Taurus, and Taurus is a powerful grounding energy that holds a beautiful tie to Earth. You will find a practice below to explore both of these energies as you lean into that Sag energy that is alive right now.

For those wishing to learn more about Sagittarius, I previously wrote ​this piece on Sagittarius​. It was written for the New Moon in Sag (which takes place in December) much of it still applies.

Embodied Practice for This Full Moon

As for the Full Moon in Sagittarius:

• Full Moons are a time of culmination. Midway through a cycle, sit in contemplation of what it is that is evolving based on the seeds you planted two weeks ago (in our case, on the Taurus New Moon).

  • If you were not tuned in and playing the game back on the Taurus new moon, perhaps you now wish to lean into a more grounded, earthy energy and contemplate what is unfolding with this cycle of your life?

In this cycle of your life (whatever that means to you), what are you grounding in to bring green pastures to life? What are you nurturing? What are you tending to such that life will blossom in beautiful abundance?

Then, connect this to this the fiery and soulful energy of the Sagittarius arrow.

Getting lost? This is a simpler way to put it:

Sag Full Moon Practice

1. First, lean into Taurus (again, because we were in the sign of Taurus when this cycle began 2 weeks ago). Breathe deep into your body as you call upon this vibrant, earthy energy to ground you into Life

2. Breathe deep down into your body. Feel your root in connection to ground (for example, your feet on the floor or your pelvic floor in connection to your chair). Breathe several deep, grounding breaths.

3. Now, call in Sagittarius: The centaur. The archer. Feel into how the centaur continues to ground you.

4. Then, from this space, look forward:

   1. Where is it you are going?

   2. Why are you going in this direction?

   3. Is this path really worth pursuing? Is it soulful?

5. Finally, lean into the power of the full moon. Let it’s light burn away any falsehoods.

If you get lost, I invite you to continue to lean into deep, fiery, soulful energy. Feel how this energy is grounded into what matters most. Experience where you are being guided from this space.

From this grounded energy, can you raise up that bow and arrow and align to greater truths? And, as you do, can you let the power of the full moon burn away all falsehoods and all misguidance!

One last note: Full moons in general are a powerful time to tune into your depths. That is, take time to dive beneath the surface of your waking consciousness. Descend down into your belly; your womb. What truths exist here?

Astrology, Moon Cycles, and The Embodied Path

Before closing out today’s post, I want to tie in the practice to the bigger picture of what we are doing here at ForestBody with The Embodied Path.

Recall, The Embodied Path has everything to do with your grounding and guidance system through life. It is not about fitting into any precise spiritual box. It is about being open to all the spiritual tools that exist while you ground in what truly serves both you and this world.

As for the spiritual system that has to do with astrology....

Please understand, as someone who was first trained as a scientist and engineer, I will be the first to question the validity of astrology in relation to the forces that guide your life. Still, I lean into these sorts of practices because I have found deep value in them. Here’s why:

1. One of the greatest problems I have found with our modern, patriarchal world is the way scientism has mechanized the whole of reality. Now, while the scientific process and mechanization certainly serves in many ways, what it also does is leech much of the juice - the joy, the wonder, the magic - out of life. This is a great disservice to the human experience.

2. We can reduce and mechanize astrology until it’s magic is gone. This may allow us to sit on our high horses as we snark at our depth of wisdom over the folly of others. But does this actually serve?

3. Or, may it serve to lean into spiritual guidance systems that allow us to explore how it is we are moving through life? May it serve to lean into a spiritual system that opens doors to soul, and to connection to life that expands beyond our immediate, egoic selves?

4. One last point for now - Even as we reduce and mechanize astrology, there are still some energies that stand up to that which can be readily measured and analyzed in scientific ways!

   1. For example, the movement of the moon literally moves oceans. And, as a being that is made up of 70% water, might you also be physically moved by the movement of the moon?

   2. The light of the moon literally lights up our environment. That is, the dark cycle of our lives is literally more full of light as the moon moves towards its peak.

I have a blog post coming soon to explain further, but to leave you today:

Working with the moon is one powerful doorway into the cyclical nature of reality. When we open to this sort of game, we invoke a playfulness that readily brings magic back into our lives.

You can dive in as deep as you want. Keep it more grounded by playing directly with the cycles of the moon (an experience that is tangible). And, if it speaks to you, lean in even further as the sun and moon make their way through the stars!

The big point here is that this is an invitation for a practice to make your own. What speaks to you? Lean into it! Then, through the rest away.

In fact, this is exactly the sort of thing that is up on this Sag Full Moon:

• lean into your soul truth. What serves your path?

• let the rest burn and fall away.

A note to the reader: The following is the 3rd post in our practice-centered series devoted to The Embodied Path. It is here to describe the 3rd of 11 practices that serve as the foundation for the modern human being who is intent on finding grounding, center, alignment, and skillful action in this chaotic and wild world we find ourselves in.

In this way, The Embodied Path teaches a practical approach to spirituality. This is not intellectual work. It demands to be experienced as it is practiced and becomes part of who you are.

You can learn more about The Embodied Path by reading my other articles here on Substack. Or, you can head over to ForestBody.com for a more organized view of this body of work.

Consciousness.

When focused, we can use the word attention to speak to where it is that your consciousness is placed on a single, or perhaps small number of objects, tasks, beings, or other “things” in this world.

When expanded, we can use the word awareness to speak to where it is that your consciousness is receiving input.

Practices 3, 4, and 5 of The Embodied Path have to do with your consciousness. Practices 3 and 4 focus on how skillful you are with your ability to expand and to focus your consciousness. Practice 5 then brings us to the ability to “meditate” - doing so not only with a single object, but with your whole Self (body included).

However, before we get to this more complex task, it is necessary to break down your consciousness into attention and awareness, or, similarly, a focused vs. expanded consciousness.

The ability to focus on a single task

The ability to focus on a single task - to take the full extent of your consciousness, your energy, and perhaps your effort, and to do so for a certain duration of time - is perhaps the most important of human skills that must be recovered in our modern era. I say this for two reasons:

1. The first reason being its inherent usefulness - that having to do with your ability to bring the power of your mind, body, and any tools that you may have at your disposal to a particular moment: a problem to be solved, an interaction to have with another being, a creative expression, etc.

2. The second reason being that this skill has largely been lost due to our overly-busy, hyper-chaotic, and highly technological world

Let’s be honest. When our attention is scattered, it becomes difficult to accomplish a task or solve a problem. More than this, we become incapable of having authentic connection with other beings.

But when the full force of who we are is placed on what is in front of us (again, whether that is a task to be completed, a problem to be solved, a being to interact with, etc.), then us humans become powerful, perhaps not necessarily of accomplishing anything and everything (that would be hyperbolic), but still, able to live fulfilling lives that include authentic connection, creative expression, and skillful problem-solving.

But again, being very honest with ourselves, we live in a world where this precious resource (our attention) has been taken away, and done so with a powerful force. We can speak to the trillions of dollars that go into marketing, social media, television, and other “techie” sorts of modern experiences. We can also speak to what I think is an atrocious affront to our modern freedom of expression that is tied up in a 40 hour work week and a need to outsource our attention to “jobs” that are rarely in line with that which actually serves this world.

Before I digress down that rabbit hole, I simply wish that you take a moment to consider all of the powers at play that take your attention away from the things that matter in life:

• where does it feel like your attention is stolen?

• where does it feel like your attention is demanded in a way that isn’t soulful?

• where do you know that your attention is scattered?

Seriously, take a moment to consider this. Write it down. I will wait…

I could take a considerable amount of time to go into each of these categories, but for the moment, let me guide your attention (ha!) towards the third bullet point up above:

Scattered attention

We do, indeed, live in a world with a sort of extreme prevalence of ADD. With so much stimulus (that which is very strategically pulling our attention in different directions), we become caught up in patterns of having our attention pulled from one person/task/moment to the next, and the next, and the next. All in the blink of an eye!

Once we are pulled into this pattern, we no longer need external stimuli to pull our attention away from what is important. We end up doing this to ourselves as our minds constantly tug us from one thing to the next to the next - all in a single moment!

Yes, some people come into this world with this being a particular challenge (as would be the case in a traditional AD(H)D diagnosis. But let’s be honest. This pattern is expanding and is even learned when a child enters into a world with constant multiple sources of stimulation, not to mention parents and teachers who, themselves, lack the ability to stay focused on a task.

It is a progressive cycle, and given the way our world is moving in an unhinged capitalistic and technological direction, I would predict that things are only going to get worse.

This is why it is essential to practice what we are here to practice! That is:

Practice #3: Focus your consciousness on a single point/task

At this point, I wish to direct you to the practice itself. As you read about the practice, I cannot encourage you enough to actually try the practice. Even if it is just for 1 minute (30 seconds, even?). Try it out!

Then, carve out some time in your life to make it a daily practice. I will give further instruction on this in a moment.

Practice: Focus your consciousness on a single object

Choose an object. It may be a physical object (e.g., a candle). It may be something internal (your thoughts, your breath, a mantra, your heart, etc.).

For our purposes, it doesn’t matter what it is. Choose something, and prepare to focus the full extent of your attention on this singularity.

Now, choose an amount of time for the practice. 30 seconds? A minute? 5 minutes? 10? 20?

Again, for our purposes, the time does not matter. Pick something that is reasonable and achievable.

Set a timer, and go.

Your sole task is to hold your attention on the object.

Simple? Yes.
Easy? No.

When your attention veers (which it will do), simply pull it back. Do not get all messed up about it. Simply return your attention back to the object.

Continue this process for the full duration of the time you told yourself you would do this. Whenever a thought comes up telling you to do something else (because this task is boring/dumb and there are so many other important things you could be doing), then notice the thought, let it float away, and return to your task.

Again, there are many options for doing this practice. Some traditional spiritual practices include the following:

1. Candle: Light a candle, and with a soft gaze stare into that candle. When your attention veers (which it will do), simply pull it back. Do not get all messed up about your attention wavering. Simply return your attention back to the candle.

2. Breath: Close your eyes and become witness to your breath. Witness your breath come in and go out. Do not try to control your breath (this is a state of doing). You are only here to witness your breath. Watch it come in and watch it go back out. When your attention veers (which it will do), simply pull it back. Do not get all messed up about it. Simply return your attention back to your breath.

   1. For this practice, I invite you to get specific about where in your body you are noticing your breath: your nose, your mouth, your chest, your belly?

3. Thoughts: The same task as #2, but this time, witness your thoughts. In this case, there is an added layer of difficulty because you do not want to get absorbed in your thoughts, but instead, become unattached from thought as you enter a state of awareness. Still, the basic idea is the same. Set a timer and bring your full attention to your thoughts until the timer goes off.

   1. Notice how you can separate yourself from your thoughts

   2. Notice the waves and patterns of your thoughts (not by getting caught up in them and thinking, but becoming witness to them).

Did you pick a practice? Did you try it out?

Good, then let us continue.

The ability to focus (and otherwise control) your attention is not necessarily the most important task of all time, but when we lose it, the consequences become disastrous.

The above practices are fundamental to your spiritual development, which includes the full extent of how your life unfolds moment-by-moment, day-by-day. When you are able to control your attention, you are able to place it where it serves, and these implications go further than your mind will ever understand. Still, to name a few:

• your ability to complete a work task, doing so in a shorter amount of time and doing so with greater skill (because your attention is on it and not split into other areas)

• your ability to receive the most joy out of a moment with a child, a friend, a pat, a lover, a landscape, or any being at all

• your ability to receive the greatest depth of fulfillment out of a single task

These experiences are combinations of skills, but without your ability to be present in the moment, you will lose out on what is here to be done and here to be received.

And, without your ability to focus your attention on what is in front of you, then your skillful presence in life will not exist at the level you deserve.

To expand on this point, let us circle back to the bigger picture.

Focused attention is essential, but do not get caught in the unskillful belief that it is everything

I created this series in part because I wish to teach the essential skills for the modern human being.

I also created this series because I want to make this point loud and clear: the spiritual path is not a linear, step-wise path to be perfected. It does not require that you master A to get to B so that you ever have a chance of seeing X, Y, and Z.

Rather, the spiritual path offers a broad set of skills and practices to be developed as you make your way through the challenges that arise in life (and open to the gifts to be received along the way). Yes, you may find that it becomes important (perhaps even essential) to practice a particular skill before you do much anything else.

But please, for the love of all things holy, do not get caught in the too-common belief that just because you experienced life and spirituality in a certain way, others have to experience it in the same way, too. When this happens, spirituality becomes dogma, and the masses suffocate under rules when we could all be out here free to explore, learn, awaken, and experience life in a soulful way.

Please understand this: spirituality consists of a range of practices and skills. There need not be a hierarchy of these skills. Instead, it is worth it to explore their variety - to practice them - and in doing so, cultivate a routine practice while developing a skillset that best serves you (in turn, best serving this world).

Focusing your attention is an important skill. So is expanding it.

This is why next time we will dive into Practice #4 - the ability to expand your consciousness, and in doing so, become capable of walking through life receiving all of the important and necessary input that serves for you to be present to.

Understand that this upcoming practice is especially important for those who walk through life with their heads down, focused on only that which is immediately in front of them - no care for what else may be happening around them, while also missing out on the joy and other gifts that are waiting.

Please, also understand that this person is in all of us. Expanding our awareness outward to Life that is unfolding beyond what we have been programmed to pay attention to - this will gift your life just as it will gift the whole of Planet Earth.

Recall that this, here, is our true mission.

If you take nothing else away from this post, understand that when we can skillfully control our own consciousness - focusing it when appropriate, expanding it when appropriate - we become a master of Life. And, while this doesn’t outright solve all the problems in our lives and in this world, it certainly creates a beautiful foundation for us to begin.

Final notes: This article is posted in two places - here on Substack and on my website at ForestBody.com. To experience the full depth of the work we are doing here, I invite you to subscribe here on Substack and to check out ForestBody.com for a more organized teaching framework of The Embodied Path.

Move your body every day, throughout the day. It doesn’t matter so much what you do, so long as you do, indeed, go move.

Walk. Run. Dance. Bike. Lift. Wander. Swim. Do yoga.

It doesn’t matter so much what you do, as long as you do, indeed, move!

Furthermore, do not just do this as a one-off. Make it a part of your day, throughout your day! Get in the habit of being in motion. Toss your sedentary lifestyle away!

As you move, there is an invitation to release distractions. Let go of external metrics and tech. In their place, turn inward.

Connect consciously with your body.

Move. As you do, go within. Connect with your body as you are in motion:

• Feel into your body - your muscles, bones, and other tissues in motion

• Ground into your body - feeling the support that your body holds (as well as the Earth as she holds you)

• Experience fluidity - breathe in sync with movement and get into the flow of life

Let this experience bring you joy, bring you healing, and bring you into sacred connection with all that you are.

A note to the reader: The following is the second practice in our series of 11 Embodiment Practices that Form the Foundation of Your Healing and Awakening. It follows Practice #1, an invitation to settle into Stillness, and in doing so sets up a polarity between movement and stillness (both of which are important aspects of a holistic life).

I created this series as an invitation to explore the top list of practices that I know to have a positive impact on the spiritual seeker - one who is seeking healing (as Self, and as a collective), as well as an awakening to higher truth, meaning, and purpose. With this piece, I invite you into the second practice, one that now brings our attention to the practice of movement.

Please understand that while this conversation will touch upon the physical health aspects of exercise (we all know these exist), I primarily write it to explore movement as an embodiment practice and a spiritual practice: an experience where we each may find the joy, fulfillment, healing, and other depths of experience that bring real meaning to this life.

A world that enforces sedation

When I was 24 years old, I began my first job in corporate America. I was invited into my cube. I was given my computer. I was told I needed to be there from 8 - 5. Internally, I calculated the extra hour that was required to sit in traffic to and from the office. 10 hours. Maybe split up by a brief interlude at lunch. That’s how much I would have to sit still and let my body disappear while my mind became one with the technology in front of me.

Forget this.

I lasted 3 years, each day planning my escape! Where I would go, I didn’t know! All I knew is that the system in which I was playing my role was not aligned with what it promised (that is, healthcare). Especially if I, as one of its workers, was being set into a role of sedation. How twisted was this!? I knew it had to change.

What I didn’t know was how deep I would have to go before I understood what was truly at play. Yes, healthcare needed a revolution. More than this, the entirety of the way we relate to Self would need to change.

Yes, this was a healthcare problem. More than this, it was a spiritual problem.
For, changing the way we relate to Self, and changing what lives within as Self, is a significant part of the spiritual path.

Where to begin? How about the step you are already in!

Given my extensive study of metabolic health, I knew that being healthy was far simpler than our society was making it. Really, in theory, all we needed to do was eat healthier foods and move our bodies regularly. This, and of course alleviate the extreme burden of stress that is placed upon us from this wild capitalistic and patriarchal world we are forced to live in. Well, that and also heal the systems that put toxins in the earth and in our food and in the water and air and… Yea, so in practice we have many steps to take: but in theory, the health of our bodies really boils down to this:

• removing toxins

• eating healthy foods

• moving our bodies regularly

• applying the right kinds of stress, and not doing so to the extreme that we know too well

I thought that my path would continue down the road of healthcare, but instead, it took a wild turn when the world around me showed me a deeper root of the problem. Perhaps the reason we eat so poorly, and exercise so little, and allow society to keep putting extreme stress not only on our own selves, but on this planet as a whole - perhaps the root of it all lives in the very narrative that is handed down from one generation to the next.

That is, our dis-embodiment.

Dis-embodiment. Disconnection from the whole of who we are:

• as biological beings

• as spiritual beings

• as beings that have the right to express ourselves, and to put our efforts into that which actually matters in this world

Dis-embodiment is telling us not to feel. Dis-embodiment is telling us that the answers we seek can best (or only) be provided by sources of wisdom outside of Self. Dis-embodiment is telling us not to trust our inner knowings (call it heart, call it intuition).

Dis-embodiment is telling us that we are separate from (and superior to) this Earth. It is the pull that takes us up and out of our bodies, ungrounding us from land and from the very tissue that houses us.

Dis-embodiment is making a nuisance out of the food we eat as we ignore the lands and animals from which it came. And, most importantly for our purposes today, dis-embodiment is making a chore out of what is a fundamental right and joy in this life: that is, movement!

Movement beyond exercise as just another “need-to-do”

This leads us into another piece to this puzzle - yet another tragedy alive in our world - and it has to do with the way our modern culture speaks to movement (and, even deeper, the whole of our relationship to movement). On the whole, when it comes to our relationship to movement, we tend to bottle it up and label it as “exercise”- another “to-do” on your daily checklist for healthy living.

The truth is that the benefits of movement extend far beyond the direct health impacts (as important as these are!). Yes, we can put metrics on these effects, and we can tie these to specific exercises and package it all up with clear benefit. We can plan and strategize and use our willpower to hold us to what we are told (and come to understand) as beneficial to our physical health. We can hold ourselves accountable to specific exercises to produce that benefit.

Still, what if, for the moment, we disregarded movement for its positive physical benefits? What if, instead, we stepped into a space of relating to body, and did so through movement in any form that brings prana, flow, and vitality into existence?

And, what if, for the moment, we guided our attention to the pure right that is a connection to the whole that we are - body included. For it is, indeed, a birthright to be in connection to your body!

Moving our bodies is freedom. It is a pure and authentic expression of Self in a holistic form. It may not be the answer to everything, but it is one powerful doorway through which your healing and awakening, as well as your fulfillment lies.

Movement is healthy for your physical body.
Movement is healthy for your mental and emotional bodies.
And, movement is a spiritual practice that connects you into flow, bringing joy and healing as well as the many other qualities that bring you into alignment with Life!

Best get to putting it into practice.

I introduced the practice of movement poetically at the introduction of this post. At this point, let us get clear on how you may best be in relationship, and be in practice. Because, let’s be honest: there are an infinite number of ways you could go practice this one.:

• go for a walk

• go for a run

• go for a hike

• go for a bike ride

• do yoga

• go swim

• go play a sport

• go to the gym and lift weights

• go lift your body weight wherever you are right now

• get on an exercise machine

• and on and on and on

Again, what matters is not what you are doing, but how you are doing it, as well as the feelings that you experience as you move. Let me explain, because this is when all of those embodied spirituality principles that I am always talking about come into the picture. Such as:

• presence

• grounding

• discernment

• alignment

• and so much more!

Practice - An Invitation

Try this:

Come into a standing position (or, if inconvenient at this time, remain seated). Place your arms at your side, palms facing up. Take a full breath, and let it go: One full inhale, then one full exhale.

Now, on your next inhale, lift your arms up. Raise them only as high as feels comfortable. No straining here. Find ease in this movement.
Exhale, lowering them down.

Repeat several times:
Inhale, lift.
Exhale, lower.

Try it. Seriously - do it! Invite in the simplicity of this movement, giving yourself several breaths to do so:

• What do you feel in your body - in your chest, in your limbs? In your core, in your heart?

• What do you feel in your mind?

• What do you feel as a whole?

Then, if you wish, take this practice and expand it into more complicated movement patterns:

• Go for a walk/hike, syncing your breath with the movement of your lower limbs. Perhaps you even bring in an arm raise. Inhale lift, exhale lower

• Take a full yoga class, continuing to sync your breath with your movement as you bring as much consciousness as you can to the whole practice (An invitation to try it out in this free 20-minute practice I offer for free on YouTube)

• Go do anything at all: bike, climb, swim, dance: bring your breath to your movement as you sync up, bringing deeper consciousness each step of the way

A second invitation for conscious connection in movement:

Come into a standing position (again, you can do this seated if standing is not safe, is painful, or is too uncomfortable).

Bring your feet together about hip-width apart. Press one foot down into the floor, then the other.

Begin a gentle rocking back and forth, either pressing down on one foot/leg, or bringing the whole of your body weight from one foot/leg to the next.

As you do this, feel into the bottom of your feet. Feel into the activation of the muscles in your leg.

As you move, you may invite in the following:

• sync your breath with your movement, inhaling and exhaling in rhythm

• try pressing different areas of your feet harder into the ground: your heal, your big toe, the ball of your foot

• bonus: invite in the first practice from today, lifting your arms in sync with breath and this rocking motion

Bring your full attention to the sensations in your legs. And, if it feels good to do so, perhaps even explore sensation throughout your body:

• what feels good?

• what might feel uncomfortable?

Note: we are not here to focus only on the good and ignore the bad. We are here to be in full relationship with that which is actually alive in our bodies. This being said, if you normally feel uncomfortable in motion, be open to deepening into those feelings and sensations that do feel good. Even if they are small and subtle at first, with time and attention, they often grow!

To finish up this post, there are two more points that I would like to make at this time. Of course, there are many other points I would like to make if we had the time, but considering what is most important, I invite you to leave this post holding the following:

• An invitation to bring more consciousness to your movement, including your exercise, but also any movement that you perform throughout the day

• An invitation to bring even more movement into your life! For some, this may mean more “exercise.” For others, this may mean more unstructured movement, and/or movement for the pure joy of it

• Motivation to go do the two practices above in the next 24 hours (try at least one of them before exiting this post!). They will only take you a couple minutes, and they do truly have the power to change your life

Lastly, there is an invitation to ensure you are subscribed to this blog so that you receive all other posts related to movement and to all 11 Embodiment Practices in this series.

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Healing relationship to body, even through pain and discomfort

I’ve spent the majority of my adulthood in varying forms of healthcare. One loud complaint I’ve heard that reaches to my core and stabs at my heart and soul:

• complaints that speak to the body as an inconvenience

It makes sense. The body does bring pain and discomfort, and it is easy to be averse to this experience. The problem is that dis-embodiment (again, a movement away from present, conscious connection to body) is part of a feedback loop that progresses this pain and discomfort.

Healing doesn’t necessarily mean that all of the pain and discomfort goes away. Really, healing means that perhaps some of the pain goes away as we become more comfortable with what is here.

Sometimes, this is problem-solving. Sometimes, this is strengthening. Sometimes, this is tolerance.

No matter what exactly is unfolding, it begins with presence: that is, your conscious connection to what is.

Again, this is embodiment, which is your ability to be conscious of, and present with, the whole of who you are - most notably, your body, including the sensations and other feelings that are here.

Moving away from what is here is dis-embodiment, and it is a path that most often leads to more pain because of the loss of the ability to listen and discern based on what is truly unfolding.

Today I teach embodiment because I recognize this as the most empowering path to your spiritual freedom, as well as healing on all levels.

Yes, this has to do with your physical health and well-being. More than this, it has to do with a systemic set of problems that all arise from the same festering root system.

We must return to felt, present, conscious connection with our bodies. As we do this, we not only become capable of making wise and skillful decisions for our own well-being, but we also step into a remembering of who and what we really are.

That is, humans, embodied as biological beings.

Yes, this often requires that we come to peace with pain and discomfort. Because this is part of what we are, and what we are here to experience and know.

Perhaps once you leave this world, you will find yourself in spirit without a body to cause you pain. But, until then, you get to be here experiencing the fullness of what exists. And, that includes discomfort and sometimes it even includes pain. Best make peace with it.

I am what many would call an extreme mover

I run ultra marathons. I quit corporate engineering so that I could become a yoga therapist. Movement is a regular requirement for my body (else, I go mad!).

You don’t have to be like me, but what I do request is that you open up to a skillful, conscious, and even heart-centered relationship with movement in a way you never have before.

For most of us human beings, movement is a birthright (there are exceptions, and if you are one of these people, then you fall under the umbrella of “not all 11 practices in this series are for you”). With this comes the ability to sink into the joy of what it is to have life through your limbs!

There is no one best way to do it, other than to be open to the ways that call to you, and to say yes to them (even if it means saying no to other patterns that you have programmed into your life).

As movement becomes a regular part of life, you find that a list of problems seem to fall away (as other joys, opportunities, and intriguing challenges open up)!

Offering to go explore movement through a 20 minute gentle yoga class:

A note to the reader: This is the first practice-centered post in our series of “Your Daily Ritual: 11 Embodiment Practices for Presence and Transformation” Series. We will begin with the practice itself - a short and simple opportunity for you to experience that which we will then be discussing. Then, we will move into a deeper dive into the topic of physical stillness and the cultivation of all those spiritual qualities we desire (e.g., inner stillness, peace, clarity, focus, etc.)

May it serve your spiritual evolution and embodiment path.

The Purpose: To guide you through a practice of physical stillness, through which I intend to open many doors to the inner spiritual qualities that we all wish to experience, including:

• inner stillness, peace, and clarity

• centering, alignment, discernment

• and so much more!

The reality is, the ability to slow down, and to do so to a degree that you are able to settle into complete stillness - this is a practice and a skill that is mostly lost on our modern population.

Still, the ability to find it within yourself to do so - to slow down, and to do so to a degree that you are able to settle into complete stillness - this is a practice that is likely to offer you the peace, the clarity, and all of those other skillful inner states that you are seeking.

However, before getting too carried away, I want you to know: each one of us is different. The practices that serve one individual does not necessarily serve all. Therefore, by saying yes to the following practice, you may receive immediate gifts in the form of those inner qualities you are seeking. And, from continued devotion to this practice, you may find that one doorway after the next invites you into a greater depth of your spiritual path - including deeper presence and skillful transformation!

Alternatively, it may happen that you receive a different gift - that which comes in the form of information - coming from your own awareness that this practice is just not serving you at this time. Let me explain…

What happens when this practice is too challenging and is not producing direct results?

For some, it may be the case that a stillness practice is not directly peaceful and clarifying, and it is not guiding you into a meditative state. For these people, it could be the case that the practice is misaligned, causing more distress than benefit.

If you find that this practice is “too crunchy” (e.g., anxiety-provoking), then don’t get too caught up in it. Fortunately, the realm of spiritual embodiment practice exists in abundance, and there are countless other tools that you can call upon to help you cultivate those inner states that you desire.

If you find that this practice is not serving you, then you can try out any of the other 10 practices offered in this series.

Note: At the time of this writing, this is the 1st in-depth look at the practices. A full exploration of all 11 practices will be done in-depth in the upcoming months.

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Now that you have a basic understanding of what you are getting into, it is time to practice. I invite you to set some space, read through the practice in its entirety, then sit down and complete the practice to the best of your ability.

A guided audio version is included at the end of this post.

Practice:

Take a moment to settle into a comfortable seated position -
Cross-legged, or with your feet on the floor - it doesn’t matter.
What matters is that you find a seated, upright position that feels comfortable.

Set a timer. Perhaps for a minute, or 5 minutes.
Choose the allotted time, and press go.
Then, simply, cease all activity
as you sit in stillness.
If need be, focus on your inhale and exhale.
Or, watch your thoughts as they flow in and out.
Give your mind a simple task, if it needs it.

Otherwise, your task is as simple as it gets:
Do nothing, except sit.
Witness what flows through your consciousness.
But do not move.

Got it?

Your task is to do nothing,
except to be witness
until the timer goes off.

I strongly encourage you to complete the practice before continuing, even if it is just for a single minute. Know that you are free to return to a longer practice after the completion of this post (something I will, indeed, encourage).

Reflection and further commentary

Upon completion of the practice, the first thing I need you to know is the following:

1. This practice may be one that readily invites you into a state of inner stillness.

2. This practice may be one that is challenging, yet with dedication still offers a powerful path to understanding your inner world, and with time, cultivating that inner stillness (and all those other qualities) that you are here for

3. It may be the case that this practice was not just challenging, but wholly terrible. Know that if this is the case for you, then it might just happen to be that this is not your practice (at least, not at this time). Not to worry, because I have 10 more practices that might just be able to support you at time time! Know that, if this is the case for you, I am open to answering questions and offering suggestion about where to go. Do this by leaving a comment below, or emailing me directly at forestbodyhealing.com

A physical stillness practice may or may not serve you at this moment in time

The fact of the matter is, there are some people in this world who settle into complete stillness, close down their eyes, and move into a peaceful state of inner stillness. However, most of us modern human beings - us who have been programmed to go-go-go - we find that an invitation into physical stillness is not one that readily correlates to inner stillness. In fact, the path from physical stillness to inner stillness is one that often takes time, and during this time a steady devotion to the practice is a necessity.

In other words, if you are to embrace this practice of physical stillness as a gateway to inner stillness, then what you may do looks something like the following:

• Set a reasonable time to sit in physical stillness. Perhaps that is 5 minutes to begin with. For some, it could look like starting with 20 minutes.

• Dedicate yourself to a daily practice. Each day, find that quiet, comfortable seated position, press the timer, and do not move from it until the timer goes off.

• Until the timer goes off, your only task is to detach from everything that is arising and falling away. This includes sound in the room, thoughts in your mind sensation in your body, and all else.

  • To do this, the practice is to become witness. Yes, thoughts and sensations will arise in your mind - this is inevitable! The practice is becoming non-attached to them. Do not get caught up in those thoughts and sounds. Do not react to them. Continue to sit in witness until the timer goes off.

  • A second note, keep in mind that this is a practice, and it is not something to do in perfection. For example, every time your mind does get caught up in a stream of thoughts (it will happen, believe me), take advantage of the moment you realize what has happened, and return to the state of witness without being hard on yourself.

• Once the practice is complete, take some time to reflect:

  • Was it easy or challenging to sit for the full duration?

    • If it was too challenging, do you need to shorten the duration?

    • If it was too uncomfortable in your body, to you need to modify your physical position?

    • Were there disturbances during the practices that you can take action to stop (for example, someone entered the room because you didn’t tell them not to).

  • Did you find that you moved into moments of inner peace, or deeper meditation?

  • Did you find that you are ready to extend the duration of the practice?

Over time, you might set a goal to extend the length of time of the practice (for example, be able to move from 5 minutes of stillness to 30 minutes of stillness). Or, it may be the case that you only have 20 minutes, and you will make the most of those 20 minutes as often as you get them by staying devoted to the practice and going deeper and deeper in as you go.

Over time, you might embrace a deeper meditation practice (for example, making the practice fully about setting your mind as witness to your thoughts, or meditating on a mantra - really, the possibilities are endless).

One point of all of this is to say, make the practice your own. Feel free to make it a game for yourself, a fun little challenge, if you will!

However, if you do, please please please be gentle on yourself, and whatever you do, do NOT fall into the trap of making the practice look like something you think it should instead of being fully present for what it is.

If you would like to join a structured approach to the practice, I have just what you need! Check out my Stillness Speaks course, which I created specifically for those who want structured support through this practice.

If you would like personalized guidance, send me an email at forestbodyhealing@gmail.com, and we’ll set up a time to chat about what this looks like!

Physical Stillness vs. Inner Stillness

Before wrapping up, we need to speak to a common misconception regarding stillness and meditation, because although many people think all of this is the same thing, the truth is there are many different practices and experiences that we can tease apart here.

1. Physical stillness is not the same thing as inner stillness. In fact, for most people, settling into physical stillness may actually stir up thoughts, feelings, emotions, and sensations. For many, it takes time and dedication to allow these waves to settle, and to allow inner stillness to set in. With this, it can take time for physical stillness to be a gateway that readily takes you into inner stillness.

   1. This can be accomplished in a single practice for some (meaning, one may sit in physical stillness, experience waves of thoughts/feelings/sensations arise, then stay dedicated to the practice and become witness to the settling of these waves)

   2. For others, it may take a commitment to a series of practices to at last experience the settling of these waves, and the inner stillness that comes as a result

   3. For others, a physical stillness practice may need to be accompanied by other practices so that inner stillness is ultimately reached. For example - taking a walk or doing yoga to get some movement in before settling into stillness (this is practice 2 that we will be doing next month, by the way),

2. Physical stillness is not for everyone, because it can stir things up too intensely! I say this one with emphasis, because I personally went through it. For quite some time I tried to force myself to stay in physical stillness to my detriment! There was too much fiery energy within me, and it had to be healed/alchemized by other practices first! With time, I could then embrace a physical stillness practice. But it did take time and devotion to my own path, along with an ability to be creative.

3. Physical stillness is but one of many practices that are on offer. I have said this many times before, and I will say it again! There are many ways to cultivate inner stillness, along with all those other spiritual qualities that you are seeking (presence, clarity, peace, etc.). If physical stillness is challenging, I invite you to stick with it. Chances are, time and devotion to practice will get you to where you want to be. If physical stillness is aggravating and producing negative results, then stop the practice. Try something different.

Over the next year, we as a community will be exploring 11 Embodiment Practices for Presence and Transformation.

Make sure you are subscribed to the We Are The Forest Substack so that you receive the guidance each month that can help carry you deeper into presence, stillness, and your own unfolding path of transformation.

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Guided audio practice for cultivating stillness

This practice comes from my course, Stillness Speaks: A course designed to help you cultivate a physical stillness practice as part of your embodiment path. Use code FORESTSTILLNESS to get 25% off your purchase of the full program.

I offer the following practice as a gift for you all today. May it serve.

Practice

Take a moment to settle into a comfortable seated position where you will not be disturbed for the next 17 minutes.
Cross-legged, or with your feet on the floor - it doesn’t matter.
What matters is that you find a seated, upright position that feels comfortable.

Back in the spring of 2024, I was invited to begin a Circle centered on New Earth Embodiment and what it means to be a Visionary Earth Priestess. Since then, I have continuously held Circle each month; and, with time and the devoted energy of all of our beautiful participants, I have been a continuous witness to the magic that unfolds as it is embodied, and made manifest in this world.

This post comes out of practice and conversation held within Circle. To learn more about joining this Circle, visit upwardslopes.com/circle

What does it mean to be a modern day Earth Priestess?

An Invitation to Begin with Gentle Practice

Take a moment to breathe down into your root. Take several deep breaths to guide you here, easing into your own body as you turn your awareness to your connection to Earth beneath you. Feel into ground. Feel into Earth.

Tune into your root, in connection to this Earth.

Breathe deeply, down into your body… and even further, descending slowly, with care, into Earth herself.

Do not force this. It is not a “pushing.” Rather, it is an allowing. Let yourself be guided as your consciousness descends down into loving connection with this Earth.

Grounded.
Rooted.
Lovingly connected.

Rest here as long as you would like. Then, I invite you to continue reading.

What on Earth are we doing here?

It’s a question I ask often as I show up to facilitate another Circle: What are we doing here - just a small community intent on helping to shepherd in New Earth (whatever the hell that means) such that the vision that our hearts and minds know is possible can become manifest?

What on Earth are we doing here?

After all, I was never handed all the answers - no validated plan that ensures an outcome that we are all here to make happen. No, this was not handed to me.

Instead, what I have been handed is one open door after the next. Invitations. Would you like to enter? Would you like to explore this practice, this opportunity to open up and to see, feel, and otherwise know what is possible when we allow ourselves, indeed, to be open; curious; loving; intent on co-creating that brighter world as One?

Those doors never lead to a clear teaching plan. Nope.

Instead, what does happen is that I show up, and I get out of my own way, and I create my own embodied and heart-centered connection to Earth, and I let myself be guided.

Guided where? Into practice! Into heart-centered, embodied practice as we come into conscious connection with all that we are.

Which includes, of course, this Earth. Because we are Her. We are this Earth; Embodied, as these wildly complex and beautiful human beings that we are.

An Invitation to Practice

The following audio offers an opportunity to join into practice. Recorded during one of our February 2026 Circles, I offer you an opportunity to dip your toes into the powerful energy that is here in this space.

Please note, this is not necessarily a beginner’s practice. Still, I offer it to you, and if you’ve found your way here, there is a good chance that there is something powerful here for you to receive from the practice. Know that if you are new to this sort of practice, be ready to jump straight into the following:

• Centering within self

• Grounding into your roots (as guided in the opening practice of this post)

• Opening your crown and higher heart to “the heights” - which is that light up above - Divine light, higher Self, God, higher consciousness, or whatever words resonate with your ability to open to something wiser than self

Try out the practice. Then, if it speaks to you to do so, go try out some of the practices in The Forest Library, my membership portal that offers a long, ever-growing list of guided meditations, embodiment practice, and New Earth Activations.

You can also dive deeper into the Priest/esses of a New Earth Path with my course, created directly from the powerful central practices co-created in Circle.

Practice: Find a quiet space and comfortable seated position where you will not be interrupted for the next 15 minutes. Get settled in, start to feel into your root:

• breathing consciously down into your body

• feeling your feet/seat in connection to ground

• connected in: mind, heart, body

• a willingness to be open to the higher guidance that is here to serve you, just as you serve this Earth

So I ask again, what does it mean to be a Modern Day Earth Priest/ess

(alternative language, a New Earth Priest/ess, because I do believe that we are here to midwife in “New Earth” - not as some esoteric, airy fairy vision; but instead, a grounded, manifest reality that is lived here and now)

A “Modern Day Earth Priest/ess” is someone who is devoted to Life on this Planet Earth. S/he is someone who is in a sort of love affair with Nature, and spends a good deal of time connecting consciously and lovingly with the natural world beyond self.

A “Modern Day Earth Priest/ess” is likely involved in some sort of regular service to this Earth. This may look like a tree planting project (like I, myself, am involved in as I hope to regenerate the forest that my homeland has lost). This may also look like service to children or other parts of humanity (for humans, too, are Earth’s children). The point is, the Modern Day Earth Priest/ess is one who has service on his/her mind, but this service can look like anything - so long as it comes from the heart and is in true devotion to the authentic expression of life on Planet Earth.

The Modern Day Earth Pries/tess is not a fixed archetype. In fact, s/he is being co-created as we (and others like us) show up in devoted practice, and also come together in community to share about our experience.

You can hear me talk more about this in a short excerpt from Circle.

Does a Modern Day Earth Priest/ess require specific, specialized rituals? Is there a specific wardrobe? Does s/he have to get away from modern society and give him/herself fully to Earth?

You already know the answer to these questions. No, of course not.

Rather, saying yes to this path (even if it is a small yes at first) has nothing to do with embracing any sort of external framework put upon you by me.

Instead, saying yes to this path is a yes to Self, and to Earth, herself, to explore as you authentically connect and do what you are able to as you serve.

As we talk about all the time in Circle, this looks different for everyone.

Here are few more points to wrap up this post as I orient you towards your own Earth Priest/essing path:

What can help serve your path over time?

1. Spending large amounts of time in direct connection to Earth, herself. This may look like hikes or slow wanders across the land where you are consciously connected to Earth (i.e., present to the land)

2. Developing your own practice and rituals that serve your life, your personality, and your heart-and-soul-centered connection to Earth

3. Coming together in community with like-minded and like-hearted fellow humans, so that you can share about your experience, stay grounded, and stay committed to your path

On a similar note, what I do NOT believe serves the path looks like the following:

• Finding a guru and doing everything he/she tells you to

• Following specific protocols/rituals, sticking to them even if your direct experience is telling you to stop

• Believing yourself as “high and mighty” because you are so awake and aware while others aren’t

If you get lost, keep these simple. Return to these roots:

• Return to center

• Find your grounded connection to this Earth

• Be willing to listen. Open up, not just to guidance out side of self, but also to your own, inner voice of wisdom

Take a moment to pause. Take a seat, or if needed, come into stillness while standing. Feel your feet/seat in connection to ground. Then, take several slow, full breaths.

• With each breath, invite in a slowing. You can do this by deepening and/or lengthening your breath.

• With each breath, invite in deeper grounding. Breathe all the way down into your root: your feet/seat in connection to that physical surface beneath you.

Other than this gentle focus on your breath, let go of all “doing.”

• Cease all moving and invite your mind to come to rest

• With each thought that arises, refrain from getting caught up in thinking

• On a similar note, with each thought that arises telling you to stop this practice and do something else, simply notice it, then return to the simple practice of breathing consciously (it will happen; simply notice when it does happen, and like all other thoughts, let it rise and fall away)

As you take each breath, your job becomes one of noticing:

• Notice as your breath moves through your body

• Notice as your thoughts move in and out

• Notice as sound, or other stimulus from your environment meets you, perhaps invoking a chain of thoughts.

As you notice, refrain from reacting or getting caught up in any of it. Remember, there is no “doing” now. There is simply being as you breathe deeply, grounding into your body, and noticing what is arising and falling away.

Ready for a second layer of noticing?

With time, notice how you are responding to the practice:

• Are you becoming agitated, the energy of your thoughts building as energy in your body builds?

• Or, are you experiencing deeper peace, an inner stillness developing within?

Understand, this is the main point of today’s practice. It is not to perfect your ability to be in a state of inner stillness; rather, the main point of today’s practice is to cultivate awareness of your response to this simple stillness practice.

More commentary below…

How do you respond to stillness? Cultivating awareness as Step 1

As you ask yourself to come into physical stillness, there are different ways that your body/mind/nervous system may respond. For some, we welcome in stillness, letting physical stillness be the simple doorway into inner stillness. Cease all doing, and your mind may, in turn, come to settle in a peaceful stillness. However, for others, physical stillness may actually stir up the mind! It’s as if the cessation of movement (or other forms of “doing”) causes the mind to create wild waves of chaos. The result is altogether unpleasant, and may not serve the practitioner.

Because of this, your first step is one of noticing. What happens when you move into physical stillness? Is this helpful or not when it comes to the goal of creating a state of inner stillness? Become aware of what is happening for you. With this information, we proceed with different approaches.

One more note on this topic. Please know that the response to physical stillness is not always all-or-nothing. Many will experience much of both, especially if this practice is performed over time (for 10, 20, or 30 minutes). For example, when I move into physical stillness, I often experience a wave of wild thoughts, and I allow this wave to build, and then to fall away. With time (perhaps 5 or 10 minutes) my mind may then move into stillness (at least for a short time).

However, other days I invite in physical stillness, and the wave of thoughts actually grows and grows in intensity. Despite calling upon all the fancy tools I have (lengthening my exhale, box breathing, calling in a waterfall of light, etc.), I just don’t have what is needed to force inner stillness.

Fortunately, I know what is needed on these days! My own personal solution? Movement!

Let movement guide you into a state of Inner Stillness

Yes, it’s true. One powerful way to create inner stillness is often through physical movement. Personally, I best find this in yoga or trail running, but the point is, for many of us, the energies in our bodies simply need the physical energy in our bodies to be moved before the mind will begin to settle.

Understand that this is written throughout longstanding traditions. For example, The Yoga Sutras place asana, the physical posture portion of yoga, before they place meditation. They understand that we have to address the physical body before the energies in the mind can be worked with (although, I do not find it true that we always have to do physical movement before meditation / inner stillness practices; again, we are all different, and we arrive to practice in different states each day).

Of course, other longstanding traditions (Qi Gong, for example) focus on moving energy in the body. This is important, and we cannot fall into the “mind over matter” trap that the modern world embraces too enthusiastically

All of this being said, do you have to find a long-standing tradition that teaches you how to move energy in your body before you can begin working on stillness practice? Of course not! One of my own favorite practices is to get into motion (go out and run on the trails, for example). The simple act of moving my body, preferably in nature, is one that readily moves and syncs the energies in my body:

• releasing the more anxious and fiery ones

• invigorating the sleepy/dormant ones

• smoothing it all out such that, when I later move into physical stillness, I have a much better chance of syncing into a peaceful, still state.

For myself, after a movement practice, it may be time to then go sit in meditation. And/Or it may be the case that short pauses while out on the trail is the physical stillness (and mental stillness) that I need for the day (for instance, finding a nice rock, or a great view, or a shady spot beneath a tree becomes the welcome I need to go settle fully into stillness, forget my trail run, and find that peace, joy, and connection with this world that I am seeking).

Know Thyself

The key point, here, is to understand your relationship to the practice of physical stillness. Does asking your body to move into stillness promote peace, or does it promote agitation? Does it do both, and if it does, can you sit with the waves of rising peace and rising agitation?

Also, is movement a useful tool to help guide your mind into inner stillness? Can you find the peace and clarity that you are seeking while in motion?

Can you combine these two in a way that better helps move the agitated energies out of your body so you can then settle into a deeper state of stillness?

One last note before diving into guidance on where to go from here:

Keep in mind, this practice serves as a great baseline for your spiritual practice. It provides powerful information as to your internal state.

For some, it can be a powerful path directly into inner stillness.

For others, it simply offers information regarding the work to be done to guide yourself out of a nervous system state of hyper-mobility - of that need to constantly be doing that our modern, industrialized world knows too well.

Beginning next month, our exploration of The Embodied Path will take us into a monthly deep dive into the 11 Spiritual Practices to Build Your Own Sacred Daily Routine.

To get us started, we will begin this March exploring the practice of physical stillness as gateway into inner stillness.

Please understand that these two are not the same:

• Physical stillness being a practice, one that is done with your physical body

• Inner stillness is an experience, and it is one that cannot be forced, yet is spontaneously experienced when the conditions are right

Each of the 11 Spiritual Practices will offer opportunities to cultivate inner stillness, along with all those other spiritual qualities that we are here for (peace, bliss, clarity, connection, insight, love, compassion, etc.)

With time, we will explore all 11 Spiritual Practices, including many variations of each and opportunity to make each practice your own.

But again, we begin with the first step: a practice of physical stillness. Whether this is a practice that you come to embrace wholeheartedly as a guide into your inner stillness, or whether this becomes a powerful piece of information that guides you to the next practice that can help support you… well, you’ve got to go find out!

Make sure you are there to join in:

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Practice

Take a moment to pause.
Feel your feet on the floor.
Feel your seat in your chair.
Breathe deeply, with ease, for several slow breaths.
Let your body be filled with breath:
Your lungs, your abdomen…
All the way down to your root.
Be filled with breath.

Then,
let go of your focus on your breath and body,
and open your awareness.
Listen. Receive.
What is here for you to know?
What is here for you to do?
Do not dive straight into the first thing that pops into your head.
Rather, sit for several minutes.
Breathing.
Listening.

Listen, out there.
Listen, within.

What do you hear?
What do you feel?
What do you know?

Sit still and listen.
Then, when it is time to do so, respond.

Learning to listen

It happened back in 2020: A time of chaos, and of great uncertainty. Pandemic hit. All of our lives had been disordered. Many of us were facing deep fear. Many of us were experiencing grief.

Amidst it all, we were all asked to do one thing:

• to pause - to take a BIG step out of our daily lives, to retreat to our homes, and to cease the high-paced lives we had all been living

It drove us mad! And in this madness our voices got louder. Chaos was added to chaos. Flame upon flame. Human-made chaos flourished with a hellish resounding that this Earth could not withstand.

Amidst it all, I heard a small voice, and it told me to do something different. Alone in my tiny apartment, closed off from the city around me, I was asked to stop doing.

Stop working. Stop writing. Stop posting. Stop adding to the noise.

And, instead, simply listen.

-
What happens when we pause? When we withdraw our chaotic energy from the mix? When we let the waves of chaos cease to beat upon one another?

What happens when we turn our attention towards reception - meeting what is here with our full, centered awareness?

What happens?

Facing Current Needs

We got through the pandemic. And now we are facing the next wave of both national and global issues. In some ways, things are better. In a lot of ways, things are far worse.

In fact, when I look back on the Covid-19 pandemic days, what I see them as is a sort of “warm up” for the times we are in now: times when the American people are literally facing down fascism - the force of an oppressive government that is instilling fear and violence to control its population.

It sucks to be here, especially when I know that our time and energy really needs to be placed on other deep problems:

• climate change

• metabolic disease (brought about by stressful and sedentary lives combined with poor quality of agriculture and other food systems)

• mental health crisis

• and more

Yes, it is true. We have so much work to do! But instead of having the time and freedom to focus our attention here, we are forced to face the latest wave of fascism. And in these modern times! Who would’ve thought?

Ugh.

Amidst my own frustration, I call upon the practice I learned back in 2020. Instead of meeting overwhelm and anxiety with more chaos, I allow myself to retreat:

• return to stillness

• return to breath

• allow my mind to quiet

• allow my spirit to open

• allow my whole self to listen

It is in this listening that this voice of wisdom reminds me of why we are facing this latest wave of evil. And, while it’s a long story (not one to be fully explained in this post), I will share that it goes something like this:

Going back in human history, our population has been hell-bent on certain narratives of progress. We race forward, egos at the wheel as we pursue that which brings those dopamine hits and gold stars.

We lift ourselves up, and in doing so, we forget that we exist as a collective. We neglect our waters and forests. We let many in our communities suffer so that we may pursue that which instantly gratifies our wants.

But we were not meant to live like this. As humans, we were meant to exist in community, as one with our lands and ecosystems. We were meant to work and heal and grow as a collective.

However, in our pursuit of individualistic gain, we lost sight of our ability to rise as one. Communities and ecosystems got pushed down so that the few could rise higher than they were meant to.

The sad truth? In this type of ascension, nobody wins.

But now the question remains. What do we do to dissolve the patriarchal narrative that has taken us here, and to move into a holistic way of being that honors all of life in all its rich diversity? How do we live the true narrative that we all exist in connection, and that true fulfillment and joy and expression unfolds as we shine our light?

Here, there is no “one right” nor easy answer. Rather, what unfolds is a paradigm shift as we each and all wake up, take aligned action, and become the change that is needed in this world.

And, my loves, it begins with the ability to listen.

Listening with your whole body

We may think of listening as a process that is done with our ears. But this is, really, only one of the many senses that you, as a human being, are equipped with.

In fact, my favorite practice of listening is to close down all of my senses. Eyes and ears closed, I turn my full attention inward. And, I listen.

I listen to my breath as it moves through my body. I listen to my cells as they vibrate. I listen to my thoughts as they swirl around in my mind. I listen to the stillness as it settles in.

And, from here, I open to listen to the voice that I know to be most important. What you call it - that doesn’t much matter. Call it your higher self. Call it the voice of god. Call it the voice of wisdom.

Whatever words you choose, know that this quiet, inner voice, is the one that will guide you in the most important and powerful way. Once all the noise of the world has quieted down, this, now, is when you can truly listen.

Okay, but what about all those important voices out in the world?

This is when the process gets a little bit more complicated. Not to worry, for we are all capable of navigating this space.

Because, the truth is that there are many, many important voices out in the world that we need to listen to, too.

We need to listen to the cries of those being directly hurt in these times. We need to listen to the voice of real fear in those who know what may be around the corner. And, we need to listen to the voice of hope, and the voice of logic that points us down useful paths that we can take.

Yes, we need to listen to those external voices, too.

The problem?

The problem, as I have experienced it, is that the noise becomes too overwhelming. Too many voices. Too much hurt. Too much fear.

And because it’s too much, I can’t handle it all in a way that leads to skillful action. I cannot be discerning. I cannot think and act with skillful clarity when the noise is all too much.

This is why I teach a practice of slowing down:

• Finding your grounding

• Finding your center

• Coming into alignment

• And, from this space, listening

Listen to the voices “out there.”

And, as you are filtering through it all doing the best you can take discern and take skillful action, you get to become better and better at listening to that higher voice of wisdom within here.

This is a practice. It takes time. It takes intention. It takes practice.

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Final notes.

I would be remiss to publish this post without further expanding on my naivete at the time I mentioned during the 2020 pandemic. It is these times that I speak to as my own initial “great awakening” - waking up out of the narratives that had been engrained within me in my youth and had propelled me into a stagnant, misaligned life in a shitty career; and, opening me up to my work as a spiritual teacher and embodiment coach.

Much of this awakening included a deeper realization of the harm that my country was founded on, and how it continues to cause deep harm to its people, and to those across the globe.

It is this that I speak to when I say that I am no longer surprised we are facing fascism. Because, in truth, the roots of those who cling to power and will literally kill to keep it have been here since our beginning. I may have thought we were past this (my naïve white privilege)). In truth, it has always been here, and America continues to be on its own sort of healing and awakening path. Progress - that which is grounded and meaningful, positively impacting the lives of the masses.

In truth, we have deep work to do as we do a great level of healing and transformational work. Much love to you all as you each walk your own healing and awakening path, and as you navigate these wild, dark and tumultuous times.

It finally happened. My world received snow!!! A delight to the senses, and also an invitation from Winter herself to slow things down, to get cozy, and to soak in the light that is here right now.

Slow down.
Slow down.
Slow down.

Soak in the feeling of all that is here right now.
Find rest.
Find peace.
Find joy.

Oh, but sometimes I’m not so good at that “resting” part. For, with this latest snowstorm, where you’re more likely to find me is out in the forest, running and hiking, moving through forest and up and down through the mountains. In motion as I move my body in connection to this glorious, glittering land.

But then I come home,
And I listen to that whisper of winter:
Now, slow it down.
Nourish.
Settle.
Relax.
Replenish.

The truth is, every moment of life is a balance. It’s not a static, fixed balance, but a dynamic one. We weave in and out - movement, stillness.

The problem is that our world is fixated on movement. If you aren’t stressed and overworked, filling every moment with “doing,” then you’re lazy, and you’re failing.

This narrative needs to die out.

In its place, I offer a path into deepening presence: an ability to listen, and to know what is calling you in this moment:

• what does your body need?

• what does your nervous system need?

• what does your heart need?

• what does your mind need?

Do you need action: “doing” as you move, as you think, as you work?
Or, do you need slowing, or a settling into full stillness?

Please know that the answers to these questions are not all-or-none. Rather, it is a dance, a weaving as you listen, inwards and outwards, for what is needed most.

The ability to listen inward - to your whole Self - and to respond with aligned action that best supports your needs and desires. And, the ability to open up your senses, and to receive all the intelligent ways that your surroundings are guiding you in a collective weaving. To listen, inwards and outwards, and to align as you discern and act with the greatest of skills possible to you in the moment. This is the practice, and this is the path.

The Gifts of Winter

I hear you. We don’t all love winter. But for those who do, we are eager to share the gifts of the moment - especially when that moment reveals a glistening forest floor surrounding my humble abode.

And, in celebration, I wanted to share with you several winter offerings that I have created in the past two years.

In alignment with winter, these conversations and practices have to do with:

• stillness

• peace

• joy

• and more

What is here for you as you enter into the magical energy of winter?
What is here for you?

Winter Offerings

Happy New Year. The beginning of a whole new opportunity to situate ourselves in the reality we live in:

• to see clearly what is here, real and true

• to know our role within all of it

• to be as discerning and loving as possible as we navigate the wild nature of it all

To help support you in this endeavor, I have been hard at work over the past many years searching for the teachings (especially the embodied practices) that can help you to know thyself, and to heal as you otherwise grow and transform into the version of Self that gets to receive the greatest of joys and the deepest of fulfillment, just as you are able to show up for others as you shine your light and offer healing, guidance, and nurturing.

Loves, this is how we heal the great mess of things humanity has made on Planet Earth. This is how we help humanity, just as it is how we help to heal and nurture all of the wild and beautiful and diverse ecosystems that make up this Planet Earth.

It begins within. It begins with Self.

I am not talking about the small, self-centered, egoic self, but your whole Self; your true Self. This is the version of YOU that is connected: heart and soul, spirit and body, Self and nature. This is the version of you that is aligned (or, at least moving further into alignment) as all parts of Self learn to speak to one another, and to move forward in a way that is further aligned with what serves this world.

The journey is an inward one. But the key is that, in going inward, you actually get to open up and awaken to all the beautiful, powerful, and intelligent ways that you are naturally wired to be in connection to that which expands beyond self.

Isn’t this beautiful?

Us humans - we aren’t wired for isolation. We aren’t wired to disconnect our heads from our hearts, nor our minds from our bodies. We aren’t meant to put up walls and electric boundaries between one another. We aren’t meant to close off to others as we pursue egoic, self-centered interests. At least, we aren’t wired in this way when we get to the heart-centered, soul-centered, as well as biological truth of who we are.

As human beings, we are wired for connection. We are wired to know ourselves as part of a living web that pulses far beyond that which lives within our limited thoughts and beliefs.

The real problem? The one that lives at the root of all these grand problems humanity now faces?

It is the narratives that humanity has told ourselves for centuries that speak of disconnection; that speak of hierarchy: mind over matter, human over nature, me vs. you, and us vs. them.

It has destroyed us, just as it has destroyed the face of Planet Earth, herself.

Now, the most important question of all: What do we do about it? What do we do about “this great mess of things” that humanity has made on Planet Earth? What do we do with the fact that humanity has centered our lives and societies based on bullshit narratives of hierarchy, causing the great harm that lives in our bodies and our lands?

An Embodied Spiritual Path

For much of my early adulthood, I stayed far away from spirituality. I couldn’t stand the way it bypassed our very real, serious problems that plague our minds, bodies, and this Earth. My science and engineering self couldn’t stand it!

With time, I learned from great teachers about embodiment: A practice-centered space that demands that we don’t let our stories take us away into pretenses of “love and light,” but that we walk the talk: living it, breathing it, thinking it, radiating it.

Embodiment demands that our stories and teachings manifest as the change we desire. It demands it, because the result is lived within our very own bodies.

We feel it. We know it.

There is no room for bullshit here as we pursue the spiritual quests that call to us, opening up to call in that love and that light through healing and growth as well as direct experience lived now.

What this is, truly, is an invitation to be in freedom, and to express ourselves soulfully. This isn’t a path to eternal peace and bliss. This is a path working for what matters, and to experiencing the paths that are meaningful, even if they do cause pain and distress. Because these paths, they are ones that are worth it - that brings fulfillment just as they serve their higher purpose: healing, growth, joy, connection.

The problem is, the narratives that humanity tells ourselves - and that live deep within the synaptic connections of our neurons and nerves - they tell us that this soulful path can’t exist.

I am here to tell you it can. But it won’t happen without your intention, and your aligned action.

We have a long road to take to align with life in this way. Fortunately, you don’t have to do it alone, and you don’t have to do it all at once. Instead, we do it as we each take one step, then the next, then the next.

We do this here, as we walk The Embodied Path.

Shall we begin?

----

Introducing ForestBody and The Embodied Path

For the past many months, I have been hard at work taking everything that I have taught and putting it into a structure that I hope can serve our community in better learning and embodying the teachings that can best serve.

To do this, I created ​a whole new website centered on mind/body/earth connection​.

To bring this to life, know that I will be teaching The Embodied Path and New Earth Embodiment. We’ll talk more about the latter in posts to come. For now, let us remain focused on the core of our work together.

The Embodied Path

2026 will be devoted to teaching what I call The Embodied Path. It is a compilation of the most important spiritual and embodiment teachings that I believe can best serve us as individuals AND as a collective humanity as we set our sights on healing, and otherwise transforming, this great mess of things we humans have made on Planet Earth:

• Grounding down into the truth, and the reality of who we are as human beings - living beings - connected to the great web of life here on Earth

• Centering into the heart of what matters most (which means disconnecting from all the narratives that mine our attention and energy as we are pulled in misaligned directions)

• Aligning our whole Selves (body and mind, heart and soul, spirit and biology, etc.), as we align to the greater web of life that we are all part of

• Discerning - learning to make the most skillful decisions possible as we take action, navigating through the wild nature of it all

This, in short, is The Embodied Path - teaching Grounding, Centering, Alignment, and Discernment as a path to be walked; never reaching for perfection or idealization, but instead, rooting into what is here, now, in this moment.

It begins here, but it certainly doesn’t end here - for these four steps merely serve as a foundation: stepping stones to guide us through the practices and supporting teachings that can help us each and all move through this life with increasing skill, while holding greater and greater amounts of love.

While my central axis for these teachings will come through the ForestBody Newsletter based at ForestBody.com, know that all blog posts will come through this medium, here on Substack.

To ensure you receive all written blogs, make sure you are subscribed here on Substack at We Are The Forest.

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For further offerings, consider visiting ForestBody.com and subscribing over there, as well as reading on below.

Further Offerings

1:1 Embodiment Coaching

To support your own embodiment path, I offer 1:1 Coaching so that I can meet you exactly where you are at, offering guidance and embodied practice (yoga, meditation, breath practice, etc.) that serves in your healing and expansion.

Know that this coaching comes from a wealth of study and formal training across diverse backgrounds.

​You can book a free call to chat about how I can help you here.​

​You can learn more about exactly what this coaching offer includes here.​

Membership

I created The Forest as a library of guided meditations, embodied practice, and new earth activations so that you have access to more guided practice than you could ever need!

This is a space where we get to do the important embodiment work that we are here to do, while having some fun following creative guided practice that can help you both deepen and expand your practice.

Learn more: ​Membership: We Are The Forest – We Are The Forest​

Today I sat in my own sacred circle, a candle lit as I called in all the guidance I know is available to me. Surrounded by stones, sticks, and other relics I’ve gathered among my many adventures across this Earth, I sat in stillness, and in silence, as I asked for guidance on the most powerful thing I could be doing right now.

You see, I want to be outside doing my most favorite thing: running up mountains, and through the forest; being in direct connection to this Earth as I move my body freely, the best way I can. Here is where I know life in its fullness. Here is where I experience joy, and peace, and oneness.

What else do I want to be doing? Writing! Teaching! Recording practices for the big launch of our new organization coming up ahead! Movement! Creation! I want to be here - big light-filled energy flowing through me!

Alas, I return to the truth of reality. The day is short. The land rests under the last of the snow from the latest snowstorm. And my lungs - my poor lungs - still recover from last month’s respiratory infection. My energy is very little. My brain lives under a thick fog.

I want to be doing so much, but in truth, I am guided to slow down, and to turn inward; for it is here that the most powerful thing I can be doing now exists.

It is, to slow… to slow and to slow again. To close my eyes, and to turn inward:
Resting,
Listening,
Healing,
Receiving.

Following my own practice, I wrote these words. Know that they come to you from a full-blooded Sagittarius - a 7X Sagittarius (Sun, Rising, Moon, North Node, and 3 planets all in Sag!) as we move towards this New Moon in Sag.

Sagittarius Invocation:

I want to move forward. I feel as if I always need to push forward!
There is just so much to do,
So much to see,
So much to be!

But we aren’t here to do it all;
Nor, to be it all.

Rather, we are here to do our part -
At the deepest level;
In line with the highest truth!

For, it is here,
Grounded,
Embodied,
Aligned,
That we are able to experience the greatest of joys,
and the deepest fulfillment.
And, it is here that we are able to serve this world in the best ways we can.

Sag season, as it leads us into the winter solstice and further into these winter months:
It is not about doing all that you think you want to (because your mind and heart are lit up over all the possibilities that one could possibly do!).
Instead, it is about finding the alignment that will enable you to experience life at your highest, most soulful, most aligned, and fully embodied potential.

This doesn’t happen by continuously racing forward towards the next thing, and the next, and the next.

It doesn’t happen by being pulled in one direction, then the next, then the next.

Rather, it happens by taking those times that call to you to slow down, to turn inward, and listen.

What is here for you to hear? To know?

So that, when the time comes to align yourself, and to shoot off into the ethers (that fire arrow flying forward through it all) you know that you are, indeed, aligned, as you head towards the greatest of joys, and the deepest of fulfilment.

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Dear friends, as I write this we are moving towards the New Moon in Sagittarius, which soon will be followed by the Winter Solstice.

While society might tell you this is a time of busyness - working frantically to keep up with all your work while you simultaneously travel and/or spend enormous amounts of time with friends and family - well, the truth is this:

This New Moon and Winter Solstice is a time of slowing down and going inward.

The following practice is here to guide you inward, deep into your own soulful depths: the only space from which you can become fully in tune with your soul fire; with your soul truth.

It is from this space - in tune with your soul fire - that you can be assured you are moving through life in alignment: heading towards all those beautiful places that you are meant to go to receive the joy, the healing, and the deep fulfillment that you are ready for.

You can listen to all my guided recordings when you join membership for as little as $7/mo. Learn more and join us at https://upwardslopes.com/forestmembership/

We think the enlightenment process is continuous ascension.
Let me float higher and higher, ever higher as I become lighter!
Closer to the heavens! Closer to the sun!

What we don’t realize about enlightenment, is that with every pull towards ascension, we require a corresponding deepening.

Deepening towards what, you ask?

Deepening - Into Self:

• Into Self

• Into your body

• Into your shadow, your depths!

Deepening - Into this Earth:

• Into ground

• Into environment

• Into community

Deepening - Into the whole of Life, Herself!

Yes, be filled with flight. Let it lift you, and soak in the joy and the wonder where this takes you!!!

And, let it deepen you! Let it bring you heart-and-soul centered connection;
Connection to this very Life!
Life, as it is lived within you; and, as it is lived outside of you.

Meanwhile, let it reveal the shadow that keeps you perpetuating the harm that this world knows too well. Let it light up this shadow, so that you can perform the healing, and the alchemy that you are ready for. And, that this Earth is ready for.

-

Practice

In my Priestess tradition, we often call in The Tree of Life -
Not as any external spiritual symbol, but as an archetype to be embodied; to be lived.

Reach out those branches:
Expand;
Reach for that light;
Let that light fill you, fully and completely.

AND:

Deepen those roots:
Let them grow down directly from your own root;
Feet on this Earth, Pelvis in connection to ground;
Feel those roots as they descend down… down… down…

Deeper into Self. Deeper into Earth, herself.

But don’t you dare force this! Don’t push those roots down. Don’t make it an effort to exert your will where your patterned self thinks you ought to go.

No. Let Her guide you. Let Her speak to your soul as she awakens your heart; and, from here, let her guide you down… down… down into where you best ought to go.

Deeper, into Self. Deeper, into Earth, herself.

Last piece: Every moment of this practice, I invite you to feel.
It is far less about you thinking and understanding.
Your mind - it does not need to be here.

Instead, feel it, as you know what you are meant to know.
Your mind may join in, in due time.

However, for now:
Feel this practice.
Embody this practice.
Then, go out and live this practice.

Enlightenment, as the practice of embodying more light!
Not to ascend higher and higher on some self-centered narrative of superiority.
But to ground ever-more-fully, here and now, alive and enlightened,
for this Planet Earth.

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Some further thoughts from present life to guide us all

I’ve been hitting the books hard these past many months, doing my best to read through as many ancient wisdom traditions as possible. From Buddhism to Abrahamic tradition (the roots of Christianity, Kabbalah).

I’ve also been diving back into some of my favorite modern teachers (Paul Selig, Caroline Myss). They’ve each done their own studies of religion, and have had many more decades than I on this planet to cultivate the wisdom that guides us directly into truth.

As I read, there are several themes that keep coming up. Questions and answers. And, always more questions.

It is the higher level questions that most often take up space in my mind:
What, truly, is ascension?
What is it’s point?
What relevance does it have in my life?
Is this work actually making this world a better place (because, as well know, this world needs so much right now).

This journey meets me, today, entering into the holiday season - a wild time for the spiritually inclined being trying to be alive in a capitalistic, materialistic world.

The holidays are wild. What is meant to be a sacred time of honoring both light and dark becomes plastered in business and “making sure you buy all the right gifts!”

It’s exhausting. And, in my humble opinion, a bit disgusting.

There is something interesting that happens each year around this time: I get really sick.

Last year it was a month of walking pneumonia. I don’t what it is this year, but I’m going three weeks strong on my lungs, and sometimes what feels like my whole body, purging.

Now, my formally trained Bioengineer self could offer biological explanations for this. Why germs spread more rampantly this time of year. It’s an important part of the story - germ theory and the immune system, that is - and just like all else in the physical world, it’s not to be overlooked.

At the same time, we must also attune ourselves to the other happenings at play:

How these long, dark days are meant to be times of slowing down, of doing less, and of taking more time to rest, to turn inward, and to simply, be.

But we aren’t given this time in our modern world, are we? No. Work doesn’t slow down. Family life doesn’t slow down. If anything, it speeds up as the stress piles on not to miss too much work so that I can buy all the presents; not to get too sick, so that I miss all the gatherings!

All-the-while, we miss the point; so the point, somehow, makes its way to us!

Unfortunately, this often happens by getting sick. Life forces us to pull away from all the “need-to-do’s” so that we can get in touch with the “best-ought-to-be’s!”

In my case, it is once again a forced slowing, and three weeks of my body communicating with me forcefully, and unpleasantly. Yes, I need even more time to slow down, and to be in direct attunement with what is alive, within.

I invite you into a practice of slowing down, of deepening in, and of not only calling in that light, but of embodying it!

If you would like some guidance along the way, you can check out The Forest - A Library of Guided Meditations and Embodiment Practices. When you enter The Forest, you’ll receive immediate access to dozens of practices that guide you inward, deeper into Self, and forward along your highest spiritual path.

Whether or not you join in our community in this way, I do invite you to participate in our sacred community through your devotion to your practice. It can be as deeply spiritual as you want it to be (for example, following religious or otherwise spiritual practice- meditation, ritual, prayer, etc.).

It can also be Earthly, embodied: a daily hike in nature with your full presence given to your body, your Self, and the land.

It can take the form of yoga - a movement based spiritual practice that beautiful weaves together everything we are talking about here.

My point is, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you open up to the practices that are here to serve your path:

• your ascension

• your deepening

For your own Self, and for the whole of Life on Planet Earth.

In addition to The Forest Memnbership, know that I am also opening a small selection of 1:1 spaces to work in an embodied spirituality. This is a space where I get to support you as a Priestess (as well as a yoga and meditation teacher, a holistic health guide, etc.)

You can book a call at https://calendly.com/katiehemphill and we can talk further about how I can support your path through 1:1 guidance and individualized practice.

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I’ve been thinking about alignment almost constantly for the past weeks. Alignment - being a sort of skillful connection:

• all parts of self, aligned

• whole self, aligned with that which exists beyond self

Alignment is about no longer living disjointed - one part of self (perhaps your head) telling you one thing while your heart guides you in a different direction. No longer. Here and now, aligned such that you know the best course of action.

You know it, because you feel it in your heart, just as your head is on board.
You know it, because you feel a full resonance in your whole being.

You feel it, just as you know it, within.

But this is only the first half.

Then, of course, there is the part where what lives within manifests in the external realm. Not only do you know what is right, but you show up and live it.

• You don’t just think it, you speak it

• You don’t just feel it, you share it with the world through action and vibration

Alignment is about showing up in all those places in life as your highest, best self. You think it, you know it, AND you live it.

Beyond this, you do it everywhere you go. You don’t bucket life into personas. You live your true, authentic self everywhere you go.

No longer living one persona in one realm (at work, for example) and another persona in another realm (with your family at church, as another example).

Alignment is congruence. It is stepping into your authenticity, as your whole being, AND being that person in all walks of life.

As within, so without.

Congruent, aligned.

Let the Gemini Full Moon (And Sagittarius Sun) move you into higher alignment

I don’t always speak to astrology, but when I do, it’s because the astrology is speaking loudly to me. And, as it is the case that we are in my home season of Sagittarius, and we are at the Full Moon in Gemini (translation: the sun is in Sag and the moon is in Gemini), that fact of the matter is, this powerful energy cannot help but flow through me right now.

Add to this that this is a Supermoon, and it is the final full moon of 2025 (and, again, I am a 7X Sagittarius and we are in Sagittarius season), I just can’t help but share this energy with everything I’ve got!

Watch the replay of Wednesday’s Part 1 Full Moon in Gemini Transmission:

Join in Thursday evening at 6 PM MST to participate in Part 2:

In Part 1 of this 2-Part Series, I talk about Gemini as “your mind.”

Gemini is an air sign. Traditionally, air corresponds to thought and the intellect.
Gemini is also “the twins.” It is duality.

Together, Gemini is the mind that works by dividing reality into parts. Once divided, the mind can work its magic by analyzing the workings of each part; and, how each part works together to form a coherent whole.

Recognize how powerful this is. Through intellect, we can understand the workings of each part of our reality, and we can piece it back together again to create understanding; and, to make decisions.

But what happens when we spend our days dividing, dividing some more, then dividing even more? What happens is that we learn to walk through life seeing separation. And, what happens is we lose the ability to see union in the world.

What happens is mis-alignment. Our minds take us in different directions. We feel disjointed. We experience reality as individual parts, and not as one coherent whole.

-

Have you been feeling disjointed? Pulled in differing directions, unable to be a whole, authentic you that is confident in your decisions?

Let today’s Full Supermoon move you into alignment. Let it show you through an experiential journey.

Watch the videos (and, join today’s Live call if you’re able) to learn how.

Watch The Part 1 replay: https://youtube.com/live/aXQjLzufk7U?feature=share

Join Part 2 at 6 PM MST today, 12/4/2025: https://youtube.com/live/w13CkRdZFhM?feature=share

Hello Beautiful Souls!

Welcome to November, an interesting time of year when the energy of the world gets pulled down... down... deep down into those potent spaces that are inviting you into next level transformation:

• Not the kind that requires any more extensive doing, nor any sort of working hard to achieve the next big thing!

• But instead, the quieter kind, one that invites you in with a gentle downward pull: An offer for nourishment, and for healing, and of letting go so that you create more space for the being that you are, indeed, meant to be

November is one of those months that we could easily complain about. The fall colors have, well, fallen away, and the dark days are getting even darker as the cold sets in. Ugh.

Alternatively, we can look at November for the power it holds. For one, we just passed Halloween, which is traditionally a time of honoring the thinning of the veils and the ability to listen in more powerfully to guidance.

For another, the season of harvest is coming to a close, which is symbolic of the high-energy and hard-working days being replaced by more time for stillness:

• For resting

• For listening

• For healing

• For letting go

In fact, these late Autumn months are a powerful time to go inward, and to allow whatever you are still clinging onto to fall away, so that you are ready to be born again anew (when the time comes).

Two powerful practices to work on this month:

1. Stillness - As we move into the late portion of Autumn and the beginning of Winter, we find that the Earth is settling down. The leaves lay nestled on the Earth, and they create a nurturing home for the insects and other small beings that are resting, waiting for the Spring when they will once again emerge anew.

You can take a cue from nature and find more time to settle into stillness. Sit or lay down, focus on deep, slow breaths, and hold intention to let go of all that is not serving you to hold any longer.

You can do this in practice in this Guided Autumn Meditation recorded in 2022. This is actually one of the first meditations I ever recorded - an oldie but a goodie!

2. Listening - As Earth slows down and the veils thin, this is a powerful time to practice your listening. You can do this by going out in nature and listening to the trees, or the very ground. You can do this by gazing at the sky, or down at the brown Earth, and inviting in emptying (as you open to whatever replaces that normal noise in your head).

While there, you may find that this Earth has more to it than you once believed, and the depths of which it is here to nurture you, to care for you, and to guide you.

What else is happening?
​Priestesses of a New Earth meets this Thursday!

This month we are reaching our 20th ongoing month of Priestesses of a New Earth - A Visionary Circle centered on embodiment practice that has us healing, alchemizing, and otherwise transforming as we recognize ourselves as fully interwoven with the world that expands beyond Self.

This includes Earth (our ecosystems), and this also includes humanity (our communities) as we do the important work that is healing, while simultaneously calling in and embodying that higher vision of what could be.

It’s big work. It’s beautiful work. And I am over-the-moon honored that I have been gifted the ability to continue to guide and facilitate in this space.

If you are not yet a member of Circle, you can join in simply by entering you name and email at https://upwardslopes.com/circle/

Go Deeper Into Scorpio Season and The Power of Descending in last week’s Blog Post:

One more note on the times we are in

For those of you still reading down this Newsletter, I want to close by offering you a look at the bigger picture of what is happening right now.

I say it all the time: We are in BIG times. And just like these times are asking us to step up, and to be in action where is needed, there is a simultaneous ask that we allow ourselves to descend....

To fall away upon this Earth...

To allow ourselves to fall away as we dissolve...

To allow ourselves to dissolve away as we re-become...

There is a great re-becoming that is happening right now, and it is asking that we allow that all those beliefs and patterns that keep us stuck in the “old world” dissolve away so that we can emerge, and to stand powerfully, skillfully, intelligently, and lovingly in what many of us know to be “the new world.”

For those who are resonating with this, I’ve got another special opportunity for you to dive into a powerful activation with my teacher Sabrina at ReWilding. It was just released, and even I haven’t done it yet! Although, that is probably on my next on the to-do list after hitting send, because I know it will be powerful. More on this offer to come in a future post.

​

Big love,

Katie

Take a deep breath in.
Slowly, fully, inhale as you feel your rib cage expanding.
Exhale fully.
Then, take another breath.
With each breath, let your attention be guided down into self:

• breathe into the expansion of your rib cage

• breathe into your diaphragm

• breathe into your abdomen

With each breath, hold the intention to go deeper, while also holding the intention for grounding, nourishing breaths. If your breath gets too uncomfortable, then feel breathe a little lighter and/or higher. If things really start to feel dicey, then take a break. Go back to that breathing pattern that felt so safe, so nourishing.

With time (perhaps 10-15 breaths), you will end up slowing down as your awareness descends deep into self. Hold the intention to go to the deepest part of self that you are comfortable with today:

• perhaps it’s your heart

• perhaps it’s your abdomen

• perhaps it’s your womb

• perhaps it’s your root

• perhaps it’s down into that Earthy connection with Earth, herself

Once more, hold the intention to be guided to the place that you are meant to today. As you find your way here, notice what is here for you:

• that simple, yet profound feeling of grounding

• nourishment

• a possibility for healing

• anything else?

-

The power of descending

When I first got started on my meditation path, I was taught to live up in my head as I noticed the phenomena going on within:

• thoughts

• feelings

• emotions

• sounds

• sensations

On occasion, I would be guided down into my body. Perhaps, to spend some time in my heart as I felt love and sent love. On other times, I might be asked to feel my breath rising in my chest, or my belly.

This second task was often one of noticing: cultivating mindfulness as I developed awareness of the parts of self. It was a practice of cultivating consciousness up in my head - yes, noticing how feeling and emotion and thought and sensation arose, but staying detached until it all fell away again.

In this way, what was being taught was a masculine hand of spirituality, one in which we detach from our embodied experience and go on a journey into pure consciousness.

It can be a powerful path and certainly has its uses.

But alone, without the feminine path, oh how it fucks up this world.

Allow me to explain…

Take this opportunity to journey with The Feminine

The Masculine Path: Consciousness

The “Masculine Path” in spirituality is an important one. The ability to cultivate consciousness at higher levels, and to hold self detached from everything happening in this world: it serves a purpose as we come to understand one core aspect of our spiritual nature.

However, we currently live in a largely patriarchal world. Because of this, mind OVER matter is an ethos that shows up with more power than, say, the mind AND matter narrative.

In “mind over matter,” we tell ourselves that we can overcome our problems by dis-entangling ourselves from them:

• If you are caught up in unskillful thoughts, then do a thought-based meditation in which you become witness to your thoughts. With time, you will notice that you are the consciousness witnessing the thoughts, and not the thoughts themselves. Therefore, you are not your thoughts, and your thoughts cannot control you (amidst other revelations)

• If you are getting caught up in unskillful emotion, then do a meditation where you become witness to the feeling and emotion in your body. Feel free to label it, feel free to sense it, but hold yourself distant from it as you let it run its course. In this way, you recognize that you are not your emotions. And, from this, revelations may unfold.

Now, hear me out, because this is the important piece: I am not here to shut this sort of practice down. It can be incredibly powerful for one who is in the beginning of his/her/their spiritual path, and it can be incredibly healing for one who is caught up in mental chaos (spinning/spiraling thoughts, anxiety, etc.).

What I am here to say is that, by doing only these sort of “masculine” practices, you are not engaged in a holistic spirituality. At best, this means that there is more you could be benefiting from. At worst (as it happened to me) this unbalanced practice can send you deep into a dis-embodied worldview (and the fiery chaos that lives in this space).

• Because, if you are caught up in all the pain and chaos happening around you, then you now know how to detach from it. Simply, know yourself as the higher consciousness and spiritual being that you are. No need to sense and to feel, and therefore, no need to act!

Does this sound truly spiritually aligned to you? Or does it sound like a whole bunch of bypassing, and of allowing the pain and suffering of this world to perpetuate?

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The question becomes, what are we to do as practitioners seeking a grounded, holistic spiritual path?

One where we can bring more conscious to our lives, ascend in the spiritual directions we would like to go, and simultaneously help to heal, and to otherwise transform ourselves and this world for the better?

Try this again:

Take a deep breath in.
Slowly, fully, inhale as you feel your rib cage expanding.
Exhale fully.
Then, take another breath.
With each breath, let your attention be guided down into self:
- breathe into the expansion of your rib cage
- breathe into your diaphragm
- breathe into your abdomen

With each breath, hold the intention to go deeper, while also holding the intention for grounding, nourishing breaths. If your breath gets uncomfortable, then breathe a little lighter and/or higher.

With time (perhaps 10-15 breaths), you will end up slowing down as your awareness descends deep into self. Hold the intention to go to the deepest part of self that you are comfortable with today.

Calling in The Feminine: Embodiment as a grounded, holistic spiritual path

The first time I was guided to breathe down into my womb, I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I had spent some time in my heart, and I’d done many yoga nidras that had guided me to different body parts (left foot, right foot, left knee, right knee…..), but you’re asking me to bring my consciousness into my womb and hold it there?

What on Earth?

But here’s the fact, loves. You are this Earth. You are biological. You are an embodied being.

And this means that bringing consciousness to all parts of self gets to be part of your spiritual journey. Because, when we leave parts of self “in the dark,” then they get to fester. Meanwhile, important parts of self stay hidden, and you lose out on portions of who you were meant to be.

If The Masculine path of spirituality is about cultivating higher consciousness, then The Feminine path is about being embodied as the conscious being that you are:

• As the whole Self that you are, body and mind, heart and soul

• As one part of a whole Web of Life here on Planet Earth.

This is The Feminine Path, and this is embodiment.

And this gets to be just as much of your spiritual path as any other meditation, whether head or heart based.

Masculine and Feminine in Union: A holistic spiritual path for all

What I teach today has nothing to do with arguing for The Masculine or The Feminine. Nah, those days are over, because it turns out that they just lead to the fiery destruction that our world knows too well.

What I teach today has everything to do with The Embodied Path that holds both The Masculine and The Feminine as we take each step forward through our own, unique journeys, always asking what is needed in each moment:

• Could you use more masculine? Could you use more energy and attention placed on those higher consciousness sort of practices? Could you benefit from becoming more detached? Could you benefit from seeing things from a higher perspective?

• Or, could you use more feminine? Could you use more of a direct, felt present connection with reality? With self, including your body (and all of the energy it holds), and/or with the world that expands beyond self (with the communities and ecosystems you are part of?)

As you walk your unique path through this wild world, you get to experience the fullness of it all. Along the way, you get to be discerning, becoming wiser and wiser about what it is that can serve you; and, in turn, that can serve the whole of this world.

As for your next steps, you could benefit from doing all those trendy spiritual practices and transmissions that keep you feeling light, detached from reality. I mean this, you could.

Or, you might better benefit from taking that deep dive into feminine embodiment, a journey that promises wilder experiences, and also just might awaken you in a way you never thought possible.

I have an opportunity for you to dive DEEP into feminine embodiment.

And it’s through one of the powerful schools that helped teach me, and guide into this space.

There are three powerful Dark Goddess Workshops available for the next few days, and I cannot recommend them enough.

Work with all 3 Goddesses Now

With this option you get all three workshops and get a chance to work with the dark goddesses Medusa, Lilith, and Eris. This powerful series of workshops is meant to break you out of the chains that the world binds you with, and to express yourself as freely as possible in this one beautiful life you get to live.

Work with Medusa

A powerful Dark Goddess that helps you to strip away your unauthentic self, and to bring through the radiant being that you are meant to be. If you aren’t ready to sign up for the big three, this is a great option to dip your toes into the ReWilding space. I promise if you do it will be a lifechanging experience.

What do you seek as you walk though life? Where are you going? Why is it you want to go that way?

Along the way, how do you want to feel?

What do you wish to call in, so that you can feel it as you otherwise know it?

What do you wish to achieve so that you are fulfilled?

And, more than anything, how do you want to know yourself as part of a greater whole? How do you want to know yourself in connection to your fellow humanity? How do you want to know yourself in connection to all of life on this Earth?

How do you want to be in service to that which is greater than yourself? At the same time, how can you be in service to self (because, after all, aren’t you a part of the whole?).

These are the sorts of questions that can help us point to what spirituality is, and more importantly, to help us each cultivate a spirituality that aligns with who we are. Uniquely, yes, but also collectively, as we each and all come to know ourselves for the spiritual, and also embodied beings that we are:

Here to shine our own light as we heal what is ready to be healed, and as we otherwise step into the ways of being that will allow for our true freedom of expression to shine through.

-

The purpose of this post is to outline, and begin to speak to, the spirituality that I practice and teach today.

As a yoga and meditation teacher, spiritual coach, and circle facilitator, I have had the honor to not only teach the practices and principles that have been taught to me, but to also explore my own understanding of spirituality, cultivating a deeply rooted system that not only benefits my own Self, but also benefits those who work with me; and, that benefits the whole of life on Planet Earth.

Working collectively, as we work within our selves, growing that felt and known sense of connection to the world that we are fully interwoven with.

It is practice that I often speak to as The Embodied Path, and other times, New Earth Embodiment.

The words don’t matter so much. What does matter is the heart, as well as the deep roots that we are each and all here to cultivate.

Cultivating deep roots, so that we may ground ourselves wholesomely into reality, as is known through self; and, as is learned through connection to that which expands beyond self.

• In this way, may we heal the deep wounds that continue to perpetuate harm placed on one another and on this Earth.

• In this way, may we call in the light (through joy, through fulfillment, through connection, through healing, through love) that is here to be embodied; that is here to be lived as it is known.

The purpose of today’s post is to get right to the point. I know myself as long-winded, which is why I plan on more posts that will further explain how I got here and why I teach what I do. (Until I write those posts, you can also read about it in the archives).

Still, before jumping into things, there is something you must know about me.

I never thought I would call myself a spiritual teacher.

Yoga teacher, no way! Let alone Priestess.

In truth, it was the shiny science titles that I sought out as I moved forward on the path laid down before me. That PhD in neuroscience sure sounded good. The shiny publications on PubMed in Cell, or in Neuron, sounded like the kind of light I needed in my life.

But my heart and soul had a different plan. It would just take some time to get that strong-willed head of mine on board.

I was not born onto any sort of wholesome spiritual path. In truth, as a modern, western, white millennial, I was first taught to view life through the worldview that has to do with science and technology. In the patriarchal worldview I was taught, it is our minds that serve the highest path, and all else is just a distraction that keeps our ingenuity from driving us into the world that we could be living.

But how does mind, separate from heart, and uprooted from Earth, know where it ought to be going? How does mind discern that which is worthy of learning, and of creating, if it does not exist in the wholesome connection to all that is?

It doesn’t, and this is a problem that I learned firsthand as I pursued the path of a scientist and engineer. This happened personally, as I experienced firsthand what it is like to live as a being disconnected from feeling, from heart, from soul. This also happened as I witnessed collectively a world that burns when those with power live the same way.

At some point, I left the world of science and engineering. My heart would not let myself become another techie profiting off of the problems of humanity while doing nothing to solve the root of what is wrong here. More than this, my heart would not let me devote my life to “innovating” for the sake of my own, egoic gain.

No. I needed to know true fulfillment. This could happen by helping our world to resolve ourselves of the fundamental problems at play.

-

When it comes to spirituality, modern day humanity is facing two challenges that keep us removed from that grounded, wholesome, aligned, and light-filled existence that our world is ready for.

The first, being the one that most of you reading this page are probably well aware of, is the clinging to old, outdated, overly patriarchal worldviews that preach fear and separation, hierarchy, and other traits that largely aim to control instead of liberate.

As for those modern spiritual seekers who have broken free from the bonds of over-controlling, or otherwise toxic religions, we face a new problem: that of discerning our way into a spirituality that is truly grounded, wholesome, and aligned in a way that it brings the peace, the joy, the happiness, and all those good feeling experiences that we each and all deserve to have during our time here on Planet Earth:

• The ability to feel good in our bodies, experiencing joy and happiness, fulfillment, all-the-while free of suffering that holds us down

• The ability to express ourselves free, creating and otherwise experiencing life in a way that fills us up

• Healing what is ready to be healed

• Shining our light in the directions we best be going

The answer, as I see it, lives in the realm of embodiment, because this is the only space in which we can be rooted, grounded within our own discerning selves as we know ourselves ever-more-fully as interconnected with the world around us.

• Knowing self, not in a self-centered, egoic way, but in a wholesome, truth-centered, loving way.

• Knowing self as just one part of a much, much greater whole; including the whole of Earth and all of life that exists here, as well as all that expands beyond it.

Once again, I could go on forever about why I teach what I teach. This is why I have not just one, but two Substacks available for you to read through (as well as a Podcast and YouTube channel).

• We Are The Forest Substack

• The Mountain Mystic Substack

For now, let us move into the teaching of the spiritual path, itself. May it serve you in the highest and deepest of ways it can.

Foundational Spiritual Principles: The Embodied Path

The number one problem I have with most spiritual traditions (especially religions) is that they offer rules (or hard guidelines) that make promise on linear paths to guaranteed outcomes (only if followed precisely). In softer traditions, specific paths or protocols are freely offered: follow x, y, then z, and you will achieve the outcome you desire.

Now, hear me out. It is quite possible that you could embrace a Buddhist, Yogic, Christian, or other traditional path, embrace the path offered, and achieve the outcome desired (Enlightenment, Nirvana, Oneness, Heaven, etc.). I am not here to discredit, or otherwise hate on paths that may offer us the help we seek.

What I am speaking to is that the linear, step-wise spiritual path that promises the outcome you desire if only you can fit yourself to the mold… yea, well this I personally have a problem with, because I for one (and I know others too) have never been able to fit ourselves onto any linear, idealized path to a perfected outcome.

In truth, I know reality to be messy. I know that some days I need one thing, and other days I need another. Sometimes, I can stick to a clear path. Other times, I need to free flow that can only be known when I let my own intuition guide me.

What I am speaking to is not the dismantling of the masculine traditions that offer clear, often linear paths to where we best be going. What I am speaking to is the ability to bring in the feminine, allowing her to dance in union with the masculine as you, yourself, take each step along your own messy, wild, beautiful path!

Because of this, I do not write about idealized paths to promised outcomes. Instead, I offer you tools, including practices and words of wisdom, so that you may try them on for size, discern what works for you, and let all the rest fall away.

The following 11 practices are here as an offering to you to try out.

They are NOT here as guaranteed tools to achieve the outcome you want or think you need. Instead, they are here as powerful guides to direct you into what it is, in truth, you ready for.

Perhaps that is peace. Perhaps that is clarity. Perhaps that is alleviation of suffering.

Alternatively, this might be a bit of a shaking, or a stirring as you open your internal eye to that which you need to know. Just being honest here. A true spiritual path is not necessarily a direct line to eternal peace and bliss. Sometimes, an unravelling, or a descent must occur so that we can open up to how deeply misaligned us modern human beings actually are.

The following 11 practices are here to serve you, given where you are at in this moment. They are not here as some idealized path of perfection to guaranteed eternal bliss.

They are here to meet you in your truth, given your reality. As they do, they are here to heal, and to otherwise guide you in the direction that best serves your soulful path in this life.

Disclaimer 1: This is a blog post. I am not working 1:1 with you and, therefore, am not here to help you directly navigate the obstacles that will arise for you. Therefore, if you choose to read and practice, you are at your own discernment. If you do wish to have direct support and guidance by myself so that I can help you navigate the obstacles that will arise, you can book a call here.

Disclaimer 2 (Trauma disclaimer): As I learned first hand, trauma and spiritual practice is a tricky space to navigate. If you find that practices are serving as triggers and dragging you into a trauma state, then I highly recommend direct, 1:1 guidance. I offer free calls to have a conversation centered on this. You can chat with me by setting up a call here. This space is tricky, but I have been there, personally, and with the help of my own teachers, a wealth of tools, and my own fierce devotion to moving through it all, I moved past much of the horror I once knew too well.

11 Powerful Spiritual Practices to Build Your Own Sacred Daily Routine

How this works:

The following practices are here on offer for you to practice, at your own discernment. Try them.

• If one creates a positive result, that’s amazing! Continue to practice it.

• If one seems trivial, or boring, then go deeper with it.

• If one creates a negative result, question in. Are you practicing it in a way that is unskillful? Or, maybe the whole of the practice just is not aligned for you at this time. Move past it and try something different.

The point here is not to perfect all practices. The point here is to try practices that might help you, and to cultivate your own discernment as to whether or not they do.

As you try them out, you heal, you learn, and you transform.

As you try them out, you are walking a spiritual path: one that is grounded in your own body, your own experience, and your own discernment.

I cannot think of something more powerful to give you, which is why I write this for you: so that you can, indeed, become more powerful in a way that serves:

• that serves you

• that serves this world

I cannot think of something more powerful to hand you. Use these well.

-

One more note before jumping into the practices: The following offers you a brief glimpse into each practice. To go further into practice, make sure you are subscribed to the We Are The Forest Substack to receive the deeper dives as we move forward.

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Practice 1: Give yourself a few moments each day to sit in stillness.

Seek out a quiet space, and let go of any state of “doing.” Come into physical stillness. Do your best to let the noise of the world fall away.

As you settle into physical stillness, you will notice that your internal world comes to life. In this moment, you will notice that your experience of reality is anything but “still.” Now you are ready for the real practice.

Of course, the obvious question is what one is to do while doing nothing! The answer, once again, is to simply be in a state of noticing. You might notice the pattern of your breath. You might notice the track of your thoughts. You might notice the sounds in the room, or the vibrations in your heart. The fact is, there are an endless number of things to notice, so in reality, we find that while in stillness, there are endless ways to be occupied!

Alternative practice for those who cannot find full stillness: Slow down. Walk a little slower. Move a little slower. Wash the dishes a little slower. What happens in your thoughts, feeling, emotions, sensations as you ask yourself to slow down?

Practice 2: Move your body every day.

It does not matter so much how you move, just as long as you do move, and you do so in a way that feels good to you! If your movement practice brings you joy, and/or peace, and/or reward, even better. Still, bottom line, seek movement every day.

Practice 3: Practice Focused Consciousness

Practice focusing your consciousness on a single point/task. There are endless options for this: breath, mantras, objects, a candle, etc. You can also simply focus on stillness, and the space between thoughts. The point is, pick something - one thing - and set a firm time that you will spend in focused concentration on that object. You might begin with 5 minutes, then build up over time until 30 minutes. The practice becomes maintaining your focus on the object you’ve chosen. Maintain it here. When your attention falters (which it inevitably will) bring it back to the object of meditation.

Practice 4: Practice Expanded Consciousness

Practice expanding your awareness beyond your own self and the routine people/happenings in your own life. Expand your consciousness outward, letting it fall upon the objects, the living beings, the sounds, and all else that is unfolding beyond self and your limited world. Rest your consciousness here. Allow the world around you to be brought into your field. Notice what is here. Do not pull it in, and do not let yourself get pulled out into it. Simply, expand your consciousness, let it rest in the spaces outside of self, and be present to what is unfolding, just as you did in your stillness practice.

Practice 5: Meditate with your whole body

It is important to spend time in meditation while present and centered in your head — calling in stillness as you seek quiet and clarity there is lovely. But don’t stop at your head. Make sure to also find time to meditate with your whole body.

Just as traditional meditation brings your full attention and awareness to the mind, you can bring that same attention and awareness into your body: your limbs, your chest, your heart, your lungs, your abdomen, your womb, and beyond. Explore each part of yourself with conscious connection, and then rest in conscious connection to your wholeness.

You might find this challenging to do in stillness — or you might find it deeply nourishing and grounding. Chances are, your experience will shift depending on exactly where you place your attention. A part of your body holding a lot of wounding, for instance, may be harder to sit with than another.

Practice 6: Befriend your breath

Your breath is your greatest guide and companion inward, in connection to self. Through breath, you can guide your attention. Through breath you can, in part, come to control your nervous systems. Breath helps us focus. Breath helps us shed the chaos of our minds and bodies. There are endless practices to help you do this. Try many of them out, and select 1 or 2 or 3 to do regularly. Some will be better than others for you. Some will meet your needs, and work with your unique wiring. Others will not. Be ready to let go of any breath practices that do not truly serve you.

Practice 7: Practice Non-Attachment

Take time away from the people/things/experiences that you cling to most. Let yourself be in the discomfort that arises. Watch your thoughts as it unfolds. It might feel like you are losing the thing that matters most, but in fact, you will gain what matters most.

Please know that non-attachment is not the same as relinquishing all that matters to you. Instead, practicing non-attachment is about cultivating awareness to how clinging is unskillful. By practicing non-attachment, you learn what actually matters to you, and how you can pursue desire with skill.

To read further, consider my post:

Practice 8: Practice Connection with Spirit

I recognize that this one may be difficult to open to, especially for those accustomed to a modern spirituality which, ironically, has divorced itself from spirit. But the truth is, spirituality is, in one important sense, about connection to spirit. If this rubs you the wrong way, then perhaps you begin with the following:

Open to connection to the sky, the sun, the moon. Simply, open your consciousness to this space. Invite in connection as you hold yourself in light and love.

You may also try this with a tree, or a plant.

With time, you may find yourself opening to more spirit that is here to help you: to guide you and to heal you.

Practice 9: Eat good food. Do it, consciously

Remember, you are what you eat. Your physicality, which includes the basis for your energy, is literally what you consume.

Make eating a mindfulness practice. Slow down. Bring conscious awareness to how you prepare food, how you eat food, and how you feel afterwards.

This is not about dieting nor eating in an ideal way.

As with everything in spirituality, it begins with awareness and conscious connection. From this space, discernment is cultivated about what is helpful and what is hurtful.

Practice 10: Spend large amounts of time in nature

Get out of your head. Disconnect from all tech. Ideally, go move your body in nature. Then, find time in stillness.

While you are out there, bring your full awareness to the present moment. Call upon all of your senses. Feel the wind on your skin as you hear it rustle the trees. Take in all the sounds around you. Touch the dirt, as well as rocks and trees.

Feel the Earth beneath you. Sense that dirt, rock, root, and soil as it holds you.

Open. Invite in that which is here to help nourish you.

Give back. Let your heart flow freely with gratitude for all that nature brings.

Practice 11: Spend time in your heart

Do this while sitting in stillness. Do this while moving. Do this while out in nature.

Keep it simple. Bring your conscious attention fully to your heart space. With time, go deeper and deeper inward.

Open to the wisdom that arises simply by placing your attention here.

The art of practice

As spoken to, there are linear, prescribed paths that one may follow in life. For example, first do practice 1, then 2, then 3, etc.

I don’t like this way of practicing, because I realize that life is not linear.

This is why I offer a platter of practices. Try one out. If it brings you the experience you are seeking, then beautiful! Do it again.

If it does not give you the experience you are seeking, then don’t do it!

As you practice, you will cultivate discernment:

• yes, this is for me

• no, this is not for me

Discernment is one of the most important skills to develop, so know that as you practice, you are working on multiple levels:

• Receiving the gift of the practice, itself

• Cultivating discernment for your own path

• Cultivating attention and discipline, including the ability to stick with the practices that are serving you

• Cultivating the ability to let go of what is not yours (even if it does serve someone else)

• etc., etc.

The main point is, that when we hold devotion to our spiritual path, the practices that we need will show up for you. And, if we actually get ourselves to practice (which is, really, the toughest part of it all), then we get to heal as we grow and learn and otherwise transform.

Sound beautiful? Try it out, and leave a comment to let us all know what practices are serving you.

Take another deep breath in. Slowly. Tenderly. Then, exhale it all out fully.

As you breathe, feel into that physical expansion of your ribcage. Deeper still: feel all the way down into that expansion of your abdominal wall.

Inhale fully. Inhale deeply. Inhale with ease.

Then, exhale it all out, letting go of anything that does not belong here.

What I love most about Autumn (beyond its spectacular display of color), is that, as with any season, it is here to teach us, just as it is here to guide us, and otherwise help us to be in the cyclical nature of all things.

As for Autumn, she does not hide her secrets. The lesson is clear and obvious for any observer.

And it is, of course, the power of letting go.

The fact of the matter is, we are not meant to carry all that comes our way in life.

For some things, we are only meant to hold them for a time.

For others, we were never meant to hold them at all!

When it comes to Autumn, she is here to guide you to let go of it all - so long as it is not yours to carry any longer as you make your way down all those wild and wonderful paths you are best meant to go.

So, take a deep breath; a full breath; an ease-filled breath. Then, let it all go!

All that does not serve your highest path forward.

The following practices are here to assist you in this practice. May they serve you on your wild and beautiful life journeys through it all.

Dear We Are The Forest Subscribers,

It has been a minute since I have written over here. Not because I have forgotten you all, but because I have been diving deep into my own spiritual path as I continue to do the thing that I teach here:

• healing what is ready to be healed

• alchemizing what is ready to fall away so that we can move forward anew

• moving further into alignment

• opening to what is here to be experienced, and otherwise known

The fact of the matter is, we are in big times. The year 2025 is here to shake us all. As it does, we have the opportunity to be taken down with the chaos and eruptions; or, to be moved into a truer, more skillful version of selves.

Here at We Are The Forest, it is my continued intent to bring you the embodiment-centered wisdom and practice that supports our paths of healing and light-filled transformation. I honor this space, and promise I will be back soon with more pieces centered on our work here.

At the same time, as I write in this space, I often find myself putting a filter on that which I want to share - not because I don’t want to share it, but because this just doesn’t seem to be “the right space” to share it.

Still, the truth is that there is more that wants to be shared through me as it relates to our work here on Planet Earth during these transformational times. And I’d love for you to be part of that, too.

-

Introducing The Mountain Mystic Substack

I have, at last, come to a conclusion on how to remedy this situation, and it is to create a second Substack. This will enable us to keep our grounded embodiment work here, enabling us to continue to fully center on the skillful connection to self, and connection to the ecosystems that expand beyond self. As we know, this is healing work for self, and for the whole of Planet Earth.

In addition, for those of you interested, a second Substack is now available for those who wish to open up to what I know to be a more magical, mystical way of working and experiencing life. The Mountain Mystic Substack thus becomes our space to explore more of of the magic and mysteries that are alive here on Planet Earth; still, to do so from a grounded, embodied space that demands that we do not get taken away into the land of the airy fairy, but that we remain discerning, cultivating skill as we navigate through it all.

To be clear, while this is a new Substack, this is not new to me. In truth, I began my training as an Earth Priestess years ago, and since then have been off on a wild series of mystical experiences that continue to bring me into wild connection to the lands that make up this Planet Earth.

As a community, we have been sharing in these experiences in our Priestesses of a New Earth Circle since April of 2024.

Here and now, with The Mountain Mystic Substack, I wish to expand upon this body of work, bringing it through one of my favorite avenues, the written word.

-

One final note on embodying the mystical and magical

I know it to be the case that the embodiment work we do here with We Are The Forest is essential to being able to do the work that is taking shape in this second space. We are not here, in any of my spaces, to lose ourselves in fairy land. We are here to be grounded, and to ground ourselves ever-more-fully into truth and reality, so that we can more skillfully navigate this world that humanity resides in:

• to heal as a collective

• to transform as skillfully as possible, as a collective

At the same time, may we all open up to the mystery of what else is here to be experienced. Because this too is real, and it matters, and it would love for you to be part of it too.

Read the first post