The Forest Guide Book

Devotion to the Self:
A Beauteous Rebellion

May 2026

by Hannah Fraser Moore

“To take the world into one’s arms and act towards it in a soul-filled and
soul-strengthening manner is a
powerful act of wildish spirit...”

Clarissa Pinkola Estés

About this Guide

Our lives become smaller without us noticing.
Worn down in the details of everyday life:

the meal eaten standing up
the room that serves a function but holds no one
the body treated as transport for the mind’s agenda
the clothes we wear, without consciously choosing
the grey knickers
the chipped mug
the ill-fitting duvet cover
the people and conversations we surround ourselves with that don’t nourish us.

Overtime these choices shape our world.

And we find ourselves in a life that is managed, but not fully inhabited.

Something important has been lost.

In this module we go back and find it.

Much psychological work looks to the past. The ways of being laid down in childhood, the structures and defences that shape our choices without our consent.

This matters. It helps us understand how we came to live as we do.

But life is also shaped by the way we live now - in the spaces we move through and in the small details of our days.

Beauty is one way we come back into the life we are living.

When we lay the table with the type of care and attention we would if a lover was coming for dinner, our soul breathes.

When we think about what we want people to feel when they enter a room, our surroundings begin to communicate.

When we treat our body as an important ally, rather than chastise it or try to manage every inch, it comes back into relationship with us.

When we think about colours, fabrics, smells, lighting as ways to work on the senses, we anchor parts of ourselves into our spaces.

This is complicated work as we have been taught what beauty should mean to us.

A way to appeal, shaped by an ideal we are meant to meet, or something frivolous and shallow that we reject to varying degrees.

But when we live by these beliefs, meaning drains from daily life.

On the following pages we find ways to invite the soul back in.

These practices are a form of devotion.
The kind that runs deeper than self-improvement, and gives access to a life that feels full, alive and responsive.

As you work through this notice what comes up.

When we've learned to abandon ourselves, self-care can feel uncomfortable, indulgent and even cringey.

Rather than moving past those reactions, stay with them a little longer. Because the discomfort, boredom, and restlessness - the sense that this is a poor use of time - are part of the way the pattern is maintained.

These feelings keep life organised around what is required, rather than what is experienced.

They return you to routine, function, and busyness.

And these feelings keep us compliant.

This work is a form of rebellion against the structures that have kept women at a distance from the vitality of their own lives.

This is where we dig in and make the mundane magical.

Six Devotional Acts

1. The First Devotional Act: Body

The body is easy to ignore, and override. We speak to it in ways we wouldn't tolerate anywhere else. Even those of us who like our bodies still use it rather than be in relationship with it.

The body is moved through the day, directed, organised, pushed past, silenced.

Signals come and go without much attention.

What it wants, what it needs, what it desires, what it is asking for is often the first thing to go when something else feels important.

This devotional act interrupts that.

Set time aside this week to turn toward your body and ask a different question.

What does she want.

Really sit with her – and listen.

Does she want to be touched. A deep hot bath. A massage. Beautiful oils worked into the skin, clean sheets, fresh towels, new socks?

Does she want to be outside. To feel the night air on her face. To look up at the stars. To listen to the birds. What pleasures is your body asking for?

How does your body want to move?

Make a playlist for your body.

Choose music that lights up your body.

Let it be specific. Let it be strange.

Let it stretch beyond what you usually allow. Let it be wild. Let it demand you dance.

Put it on and see what happens.

Where does the body go.

What kind of movement does she find.

Follow her rhythm, let her take her time.

This is a dance with no one watching, done entirely for the body.

Notice where the impulse to stop appears.

Do you feel clumsy, silly or alive and instinctual.

Notice any urge to contain her, or to bring her back into something more familiar.

Stay there a little longer.

Return to this more than once. Think yourself a dancer.

This is how the relationship begins to change.

2. The Second Act of Devotion: Appetite

Food and women. It’s political. It’s controlled. It’s layered with meanings we didn’t choose. It’s exhausting. The idea that food is there to nourish us feels almost controversial.

This devotional act changes that.

Choose one meal this week and treat it as something ceremonial.

Start with the food itself.

What do you actually want to eat?
Set aside what makes sense.

What you want.

Think about texture. Do you want something with crunch. Something warm.

Soft, sharp, sweet, sour, rich, fresh.

Do you want to bite?

Choose it.

Put on some music.

Then cook.

Pay attention to what you are doing. The sound of the food bubbling in the pan. The movement of your hands. The way you stir, chop, taste.

What are you inviting into it as you cook.

Hopes, wishes, plans, spells, love, joy.

Imagine pouring how you want to feel into the pot.

Think about the art of making something for yourself.

Where did the ingredients come from, who grew them, watered them, tended to them just for you?

Then lay the table.

How would you do this if it was for the love of your life?

A plate you like. Cutlery that feels weighted and good to hold.

A beautiful glass that you want to drink from.

Candles, flowers, tablecloth, be creative and make the meal feel sacred.

Sit down.

Eat it slowly.

Taste.

Taste it fully. Texture, temperature, flavour. Smell.

Biting, chewing, swallowing.

Notice whether you actually like it.

Notice where you would usually rush, stand up, move on.

Stay.

This is how appetite returns.

3. The Third Devotional Act: A Sacred Home

How much of your home do you walk past without seeing.

Clutter.

Objects you don’t like.

The lighting. The colours. The overall feel.

Rooms are often given a function without much thought.

They hold what they need to hold. They serve a purpose.

You move through spaces that look like they work, but they don't.

This devotional act changes that.

Choose one space this week.

Not the entire house. One room. One corner. One surface.

Look at it properly.

Do you like the way it looks, or have you stopped actually seeing it.

What is here because it belongs.

What is here because it has never been questioned.

Are you 'making do' with the way something looks?

If this space were to say something about you, what would it be saying?

If it held psychological meaning, what would its role be?

If this place was a metaphor for something in your life what would it point to?

Can this place tell you things about how you operate elsewhere?

What does it reflect back into you, day after day?

Then begin.

Remove something that does not need to be there.

Keep something that does.

Shift the way things are placed. Light, texture, objects.

Let the space work on all the senses.

The way a chair faces. The way a surface is held. What is visible, what is not.

Bring something in. Bring lots of things in.

Branches. Stones. A feather. A candle. A piece of fabric.

Something that means something to you, something that alters the feel of the place.

Make this space yours. Feel your true self there.

Return to it.

Sit in it. Move through it. Notice what has shifted.

This is where the environment begins to hold you differently and reflect you back, to you.

4. The Fourth Act of Devotion: Adornment

Who are you dressing when you get dressed in the morning - you or the version of you that feels acceptable?

Clothing is often chosen quickly at best, defensively at worst.

We think about what works, what fits, what is expected.

It serves a function. It gets you out of the door.

A rotation of the same things. Chosen without much attention. Worn without much feeling. Some black. All black. Daily black.

And beneath that, a set of questions running quickly, seamlessly, intrusively.

What’s flattering.
What makes me palatable.
What is inoffensive.
What fits my age.
What doesn’t say too much about me.
What will other people think?
Can I get away with it.
Is it better that it looks okay than feels okay.

This devotional act interrupts that.

Choose what you wear this week with the same attention you have been bringing elsewhere.

Start before you get dressed.

Look at what you have.

Then ask a different question.

What do I want to wear.

How can I use my clothes, jewellery, make-up as an extension of me in the world today?

What draws you.

What feels right against your skin.

The fabric, the weight, the colour.

How do your clothes wear you?

Stay with the choice.

Let the choice come from you.

Dress consciously. Let yourself become art.

What shifts when the decision is made in relation to you, rather than to an imagined observer?

Clothing can be used to disappear.

It can also be used to extend you into the world.

Return to this.

Let what you place on your body reflect you more closely. Wear the damn lipstick!

5. The Fifth Act of Devotion: The World You Let In

When you think of the world, does it feel outside you, or as something you are already part of?

This devotional act shifts your relationship with the world around you.

With nature. With buildings. With mountains. With the ocean. Even with the weather.

Step outside and stay for a moment.

Let the air meet you. Notice the temperature, the density of the air?

Does it feel damp, dry?

What is the atmosphere like?

Does it feel dull and familiar or is it alive and full of possibility?

Meet it through the senses.

Look at it properly.

Trees, buildings, sky, whatever is there.

Not as scenery, but as something you are in the presence of.

If this were a scene in a film, what would it be doing?

Signally a plot twist?

Teasing a metaphor, amplifying an emotional atmosphere?

What would it be saying about your life?

Listen

Birds, distant sound, movement, silence, is there a message you need to hear?

And if there was, what would it be?

Speak

If you could speak into this moment, what you would you say?

Touch

Let your hands touch. Earth, stone, wood, brick.

Imagine who has walked in these places before, what creatures, what humans, what stories were told here.

Taste

Open your mouth, what can you taste?

In the Forest, can you forage. In the city can you buy something to eat that is unspeakably delicious. Eat it, taste it.

Imagine what went into this food. The making, the baking, the planting, the growing, all so that it could be here for you, now at this point in this place, in this time.

This is how we bring the world in.

There is an internal shift that happens when attention animates the world.

It begins to feel responsive.

As though you are not the only one present.

As though the world were there for us.

If you want to take this further start a mood board with images of your Forest, paint, cut up magazines, pin poems, quotes anything that you feel belongs there.

Begin to map it.

Work from what you feel first. Then extend it.

What would your own forest be like.

What grows there. What holds you. What feels alive, what feels still.

Who do you want to meet there?

What messengers and journeymen?

What magic will you discover.

Something happens when we work this way.

The imagination comes online and the world no longer feels separate.

This matters because when there is little sense of being met elsewhere, the world itself can begin to take on that function.

We learn that there are ways to create our own support system.

The senses are the entry point.

Attention deepens the bond.

The world begins to hold us.

6. The Sixth Act of Devotion: Stillness

We all know how easily time fills up.

The day becomes organised around what needs to be done. One thing leads to the next. Attention gets swept up. There is always somewhere to get to. More to do.

Almost unnoticed busyness becomes the normal pace of living.

This act changes your relationship to time.

Set aside some time intentionally.

Even a short period, and leave it wide open.

No plan.

No outcome.

No phone.

No distraction.

No purpose beyond being there.

Sit. Walk. Stay. Lie down.

Let it be what it is without directing it.

And notice what happens in the quiet.

Silence can sound neutral, but it can have spiky edges. It can be uncomfortable, activating and make us really restless.

If you have lived in a way that required hypervigilance, where something in you was always on alert for what might happen next, then stillness can feel deeply exposing.

Silence can feel activating, difficult and even annihilating.

It can take time for it to feel safe.

Silence is a practice.

So give it some structure.

A place you return to, to do this act. A chair. An altar.

A walk you take at the same time of day.

Let it become yours..

Stay for a set amount of time.

Five Minutes. Ten Minutes. Even one.

Long enough to notice the discomfort and listen to what it needs you to hear.

Allow your attention to settle.

What is here when I stop moving.
What am I aware of when nothing is required of me.
What matters, when I give it space.

What happens when curiosity replaces the need to move away.

Let the questions remain open.

Return to this more than once.

Over time, our relationship to time and silence expands.

The space you create externally begins to take shape internally.

It becomes something you can draw on.

A capacity to stay with your own experience for longer.

To feel without immediately rushing to fix or move away.

To think before responding.

To allow new possibilities to take root.

It gives you the room to know yourself and recognise what you want.

Archetype: Aphrodite

In myth, Aphrodite is the force that moves toward life.

Aphrodite feeds on the senses.

She orientates through the body - deep, sensual and visceral - outside instruction or external approval.

For Aphrodite, appetite and instincts matter.

They are the ground of feminine wisdom and desire.

Through culture, family and daily life, appetite becomes interrupted.

We override hunger, deny it, or organise it until it falls out of reach.

The body is managed.

Desire seeks permission.

Attention orbits others.

In this process we lose pieces of who we are.

This work brings those pieces back.

What Aphrodite reintroduces is a relationship with what has fallen away.

Parts of the self edited out over time.

Exiled to the edges.

Sensations flattened.

Preferences dismissed.

Taking sensuality seriously can feel disruptive.

Aphrodite interrupts the version of the self that has learned to live within polite boundaries.

Working With This Part of You

Where in my life am I organising myself around what is expected, rather than what I want?

What do I feel drawn toward that I have learned to dismiss as unnecessary, excessive, or indulgent?

What would it mean, in one small way, to take myself seriously?

Where do I make myself more acceptable at the cost of something alive in me?

What feels like a risk to follow?

What would devotion to myself look like in practice?

In The Forest: The Serpent

In the forest, we move closer to the ground.

The snake is attuned, sensing through the body as much as through sight. It exists in continuous contact with what surrounds it, reading the smallest shifts in temperature, vibration, atmosphere, the air and responding from sensory information.

The snake has long been held as a symbol of the feminine. Of cycles, of renewal, of sacred knowledge. It has been associated with fertility, with healing, with a form of intelligence that is instinctive and difficult to control.

What it represents has often been pushed to the margins, rebranded, made suspect.

In The Forest, this becomes away of knowing that comes through proximity. Through being within experience rather than standing outside it.

A knowing that lives in the body, in the skin, in the subtle signals that are often overridden in a life organised around speed and thought.

When something no longer fits, it begins to crack.

The old form gives way.

What replaces it has already begun.

““An enchanted world is one that speaks to the soul, to the mysterious depths of the heart and imagination where we find value, love, and union with the world around us.”

Thomas Moore

Closing

You have spent this time paying attention differently.

To the body.

To what you want.

To the spaces you occupy.

To what you place on yourself.

To time that is usually filled before you can feel it.

Now step back into your life, and take this with you.

Let the world come in and meet you.