Lauren Gabrielle Foster
The Traveling Hermit. A real woman leading an unconventional life, sharing stories from everywhere. Helping women find everyday magic in their own lives. Author, interfaith minister, and spiritual guide, devoted to seeing the sacred in the ordinary.
About Your Guide
In December 2023, I gave up my secluded cabin in the Appalachian Mountains, my car, and nearly everything else I owned, and started wandering. I accidentally followed winter across the globe for the first two years. Lesson learned: now I follow summer.
I wake up most days before the sun, and I love every magical new beginning.
There was a moment...
…in Takaka, on the South Island of New Zealand. I was alone on one of those early mornings, in a grove of ancient trees. As I stopped to touch one of these ancient beings, I felt the true meaning of Wu ji, active stillness, my favorite qigong state. The one that is like that tree, perfectly still and yet vibrantly alive.
That moment is the essence of my daily spiritual practice.
I write about what I find out here, the sacred in ordinary moments.
A hitchhiker who turns out to be an Indigenous guide. Water so clear you can see a whole other world within it. The way grief and wonder can live in the same heart with neither pushing out the other.
My publication is called Everyday Magic: The Sacred Ordinary. It lives on Substack and is for women who want real depth and meaning in their lives, but not doctrine or rules.
If that's you, you're in the right place.
Love For Your Body is the First Step
Many of us heard a couple of messages about our bodies early, and they were repeated all our lives until they felt like truth.
The first came from religion. Your body is to be covered, tamed, shamed, disavowed: the source of sin. I was told as a girl that my own body could cause other people to sin, and their sin would be my fault.
The second came from society and culture. Your body is never enough. Never thin enough, smooth enough, fit enough, pretty enough to be appreciated and loved as it is.
So we learned to treat our own bodies as objects, or worse, adversaries. We fought so hard to shape our precious bodies into some ideal: thinner, stronger, prettier.
The truth is, your body is you, and at the same time is your best friend and your greatest ally. It holds the wisdom of the ages in every cell. Being in harmony and communication with your body is a spiritual path to crafting a well-loved life.
This journey is a step toward that relationship. Listening to Your Body helps you tune in and create two-way communication with every part of you, listening for the messages and the mutual love your body has for you. Loving Appreciation for Your Body follows the same path in appreciation, an outpouring of respect and kindness we can learn to live in always, not only during a meditation session. The third piece is channeled and helps unravel the difference between performing confidence and actually feeling it.
35 minutes
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