Hello there,
My name is Katie, and it is my mission to help you, as a unique human being, better understand your own self in relation to the problems you may be facing and the circumstances that you find yourself in. Along the way, this involves learning to make better decisions that more fully support your own self – mentally & physically – as you work through the complex challenges you may be facing, including:
- specific health problems
- crippling anxiety
- trauma
To do this, my mission is to help you find balance between the power of your human mind and the intelligence of your own body. It’s a relationship that many have lost as we’ve chosen to leave behind our bodies in pursuit of abstract goals and greater technologies.
It is a relationship we are being asked to heal, because in these trying times, we are being forced to face up to deep wounds that span our population and out into the very Earth we live upon.
In these trying times we face many grand challenges. The path forward through these – to better health & brighter days – begins with a recognition of our full selves. From this space, we move forward making choices that more fully support our own health and well-being, while simultaneously enabling us to come together to find solutions that move us all forward.
I have a theory, and it goes like this:
The roots of our widespread problems arise from the disconnection of our full, embodied selves.
Disconnection – of our minds from our bodies
Disconnection – of our full selves from the greater biological systems that make up our world
Hypothesis: If we make an effort to reconnect – both our minds and bodies and greater biological systems – we will heal our deep wounds and be better able to solve these grand problems.
This high-level idea is one that I will stand behind, because if I know anything given my years of studying human health and biology, it is that us humans are biological beings, and that routine behaviors that separate us from our natural world tend to go hand-in-hand with poor health outcomes.
On top of this, my more recent years spent as a yogi, training as a yoga teacher and yoga therapist, have brought me to the same conclusion (albeit it with a very different philosophical and practical route).
I continue to witness – and experience for my own self – that when we put our attention towards healing our full selves, we automatically make choices that support the health of the greater systems around us.
It also works the other way around: when we put more effort into caring for the planet, we automatically support the healing of our own bodies.
This isn’t a coincidence. It happens to be the case that we are biological beings living on a planet made up of many different biological species.
And in biological systems, different species are often all working together, creating a dynamic state of equilibrium.
Balanced, biological systems
That is how I have come to understand good health.
Balanced, biological systems
That is what we are working towards here on this platform.
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An Imperfect Theory
The roots of our widespread health problems arise from the disconnection of our full, embodied selves. If we want to take on these health problems, we must take action to return to lifestlye practices that better align with the natural, biological world we evolved in.
I believe in this idea, but as I write these words, my analytical, science & engineering mind must speak up:
When working to understand truths and create useful solutions, there is a need for far more than belief based on observational data. Observations are an important first step of the scientific process, but drawing conclusions from observations and then teaching these as methods for achieving guaranteed outcomes – well, if I know anything, it’s that this path can lead into serious harm.
Since harm is what we want to move away from, in the name of helping you take action that truly leads towards better health, I can help help you with a set of frameworks designed to put safety and well-being first, working forward through tough challenges guided by clear practices grounded in a balance between science and your own moment-to-moment experience.
Applying these processes and practices to other challenges
Here at Upward Slopes, I teach a process for overcoming any complex challenge.
A complex challenge is one that is made up of too many variables to be able to make sense of from one point in time and space. It is one that has too much going on – one that is too big and scary – to approach in a way in which we know all the information we will need for the journey from where we stand right now.
Yet, we overcome complex challenges all the time. All that is required is a different approach – one that is put into action as a process that enables us to learn as we go, being open to new ideas and shifting strategies as we move forward.
It is all about moving forward as we face what is directly in front of us. Step by step, following a cyclical process: that is how we overcome complex challenges.
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I believe this process is of utmost importance for all individuals to understand so that we can take the action that is needed from us to make forward progress towards:
- tackling climate change
- overcoming metabolic health crisis
- moving through pandemic
- healing a divided nation
The list goes on, and unfortunately, when it comes to results, we have done so little to make progress towards overcoming these complex challenges.
To do this, we must be able to step away from the simple, linear, and reductionist framework that has been programmed into us. This simple framework works for some problems, but not for the ones that we are facing here.
Now, you must understand that these challenges – they may look far too complex to overcome, but I promise you that the answers are not actually that complicated. Rather, all that is necessary for us to make significant leaps forward to better days are some simple shifts in perspective.
Shifts in perspective, followed by a short and iterative process
That’s what I have to offer.
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My process can be applied to any complex challenge, but my own mission is a clear one: to improve the health of our population while also supporting the health of the planet.
It’s a big mission – one made up of all sorts of complex challenges. And, I will admit that it is one that I am not always so confident that we will achieve.
However, given the horrendous state of health in our modern world, it is one that I refuse to turn away from.
Plus, I have hope, combined with a fierce plan, and it all arises from some fundamental principles of biology that I have come to understand as key to saving us and our dear planet.