About

Intro to Laura

I spent most of my life

very,

very Mormon.

Like, the kind of Mormon who would use one of her only babysitting nights of the year to go on an anniversary date to the Temple—

the kind who would go meet the missionaries on vacation—

the kind that totally believed everything General Authorities said would feel spiritual if I just obeyed harder.

Obviously, living like this was taxing. It also set me up for a rude awakening.

In my 30s, an act of ancestral grace jolted me awake and led me into deconstructing everything from my underwear to my groceries. It was a big terrible experience in some ways. It was also incredibly freeing and expansive. I found tools like Feminine Embodiment Coaching to help leave harmful beliefs and behaviors behind and used those tools to help my husband and kids too.

(My story from “All-in” to “Pretty Done” with the Church)

Feminine Embodiment Coaching gave me a way to leave harmful beliefs and behaviors behind.

Now, life is pretty different.

We drink coffee,

swear,

geek out about tattoos,

a lot of typical “Postmo” stuff. But the biggest difference in life now is how I feel. I’m not haunted by a misogynist afterlife. I don’t feel like I have to defend anyone’s crappy 19th century life decisions. I am not wasting any more life energy explaining why Jesus would probably maybe be okay with my church leaders hoarding hundreds of billions…

On a grand scale, this change in my life is not super consequential. But I believe it still matters. Actually, I have a crazy amount of faith that living a small life with integrity matters. It matters to my kids, to my friends, to my partner, and to every other life that each of us touches. As my Mormon-self would quip: these are the “small and simple things by which great things are brought to pass.”

Faith Transitions are small, great things. Mine was. Your’s will be too, I bet. We’re all doing our part to change the world, one brave, simple decision at a time.

Meet Me On a Discovery Call Listen to More Stories on the Podcast

My Mini Mormon Story: Art, Faith, and Deconstruction (2022)

My Specialties

Grounded Spirituality

Recover your unique, authentic spirituality without dogma.

Exploring Safely

Tether your fun Post-mormon experiments to your innate wisdom.

Partnered Transitions

Keep your most important relationships strong.

My Method

The Embodied Faith Transition

01

Get Grounded

Where are you now? Where do you want to be?

02

Nourish Yourself

Resource yourself with self-care and spiritual practice.

03

Meet Your Pillar of Fire

Your Rage is a sacred guide.

04

Spice Things Up!

Experimentation is the best (and sometimes scariest) part of leaving. Let’s make sure your adventures become great memories.

05

Let Love Win

Build your soul a new spiritual home based on your values and the people you love.

Get Started

Discovery Call
Embodied Faith Transition Coaching
My Philosophy:

We Grow Faster When We Grow Together

Connect to the Earth
Nurture Relationships
Have Fun

My Tools

About Feminine Embodiment Coaching

Feminine Embodiment Coaching is a versatile and powerful tool for transformation that was developed by Jenna Ward. It is gentle, enjoyable, trauma-sensitive, and adaptable to any body type or life situation. It is especially well-suited for those looking to enhance their pleasure with life, make meaningful life decisions, transition through big changes, release creative blocks, or engage more deeply in relationships.

Feminine Embodiment Coaching represents a fundamentally different way of approaching success and transformation than what we find in our hyper-masculine culture or hyper-masculine Church. Those systems use a “top-down” approach of accomplishment that exerts pressure through authority to extract results. This often leaves people feeling dry, hollowed out, and depersonalized. Feminine Embodiment Coaching works differently. Instead of strategizing for how to force a result, we soften our approach to the body, which allows hidden treasures of energy and creativity to emerge naturally. FEC prioritizes the felt experience of the body.

Through sensing all the living parts of ourselves (especially parts that were rejected or labeled unworthy by masculine systems), we expand in all parts of our lives, inside and out. We thaw our own numbness, feel our own pain, grieve our own losses and we get back more joy, wholeness, aliveness in return.

Rather than overlaying strategies to force a numerical metric of success, Feminine Embodiment Coaching invites organic, orgasmic living. We still set goals and labor for the fruits of those goals, but it is the labor of a food-forest gardener rather than a mechanized mono-cropper. In other words: it’s not about results for results sake, it about allowing success, accomplishment, delight, and fulfillment to emerge naturally from a life that is fully felt.

The Importance of “Feminine” in Embodiment Coaching

“Feminine” in this context does not relate to gender identity, but rather to the energetic polarity of feminine that contrasts with the energetic masculine. “The Feminine” in this sense is the fluid, sensual, creative aspect of our life force. For more information on this word usage, you can read more about how Laura uses this term here:“The Cultural Reappropriation of the “Feminine”.

Feminine Embodiment is about allowing your body’s felt sense guide you to the best solution.

The B.I.T.E Model & Cult Education

Leading cult-expert Stephen Hassan describes cults as “high-demand groups” that usurp power over a person’s decisions by controlling their behavior, their thinking, the information they have access to, and their emotions (he calls this the B.I.T.E. model). In practical terms, this means that cults and high-demand groups pressure people to label all their feelings and desires as either good and worthy or bad and unworthy. Whenever an “unworthy” feeling pops up, the person must feel guilty and seek purification through practicing cult-approved behaviors. Cult-ees are often taught to feel desperately grateful for being approved as “worthy” or forgiven by the group and this cathartic release of emotion creates a self-feeding cycle of desperation, dependency, and relief managed by the group.

(See here for a more thorough breakdown of Stephen Hassan’s B.I.T.E. Model.)

When leaving this kind of environment, there are two complementary disciplines: 1) analysis work (the mind-labor of cult patterns and reclaiming our language) and 2) integration work (the emotional labor of feeling the many things that have been forgotten or suppressed). Regularly strengthening both sides of our understanding is essential if we really want to detangle from a cult. This means allowing all experiences–sensual, delightful, funny, tender, as well as creepy, scary, kinky, disempowered, messy, shameful etc– to be included under the umbrella of selfhood so that all of a person’s life experiences can be known, felt, and healed.

Feminine Embodiment Coaching is extremely effective at integration work. It is also a nurturing modality to facilitate healing mental, emotional, and spiritual wounds, such as those we obtain when leaving religion or other high-demand groups. Not everyone wants to think of their experience in Mormonism or religion as being a cult experience, but this has been true of my experience, my husband’s, and many others. I have found that combining cult-deprogramming techniques with Feminine Embodiment Coaching, accelerates transformation.

My Embodied Faith Transition Coaching Package is the only offering to combine both cult de-programming skills with embodied integration work to help clients both remove the old patterns and nurture authentic self-expression for the future.

Lineage Work & the Natural World

Connection with the natural world is essential for creative and spiritual wholeness. Personal experience has also taught me that our sense of belonging through ancestry and ancestral places is important even if we don’t explain those phenomena with a specific belief set. In my work as coach, I often invite clients to explore themselves more deeply by going on nature walks, symbolic journeys with the natural world, or by researching ancestors.

Combining Cult de-programming with nurturing integration work is key to lasting recovery.

Journaling

I highly recommend journaling for Faith Transitions. Writing organizes our brainwaves and helps us to self-regulate. It is creates a record of what we’ve processed so that we can refer back to our own research later. It also creates a treasure trove of ideas for you to use in art or other creative projects. I use both digital and paper journals at all times to keep thoughts flowing. For clients, one journal option is a must, but it would be better to have at least one digital journal and at least one paper journal. If this sounds intimidating, don’t worry! This isn’t an English class–journaling is fun, easy, and freeing. When you pour it all out on the page, you will find you have more ease and presence in the rest of your life.

For digital journaling, a Docs App works great! I also love the Day One Journal App: it’s smart, easy, and syncs between desktop and mobile clients.

For paper journaling: literally any notebook that you enjoy using will work. If you like to draw alongside writing, blank pages would be good. If you like to see a full page of crisp text, go with lined paper. Get one of each, if you want to experiment. The important thing is that you get your thoughts moving through you and out onto the page so that they don’t fester inside.

Credentials

Feminine Embodiment Coaching is a trauma-sensitive method of coaching, recognized as a modality through the International Institute of Complementary Therapies (IICT) and taught by Jenna Ward, founder of the School of Embodied Arts (SOEA). I also have certifications in writing, art, yoga teaching, and reflexology-based bodywork.

Badge, certified SOEA embodiment coach
Badge, member of international institute for complimentary therapists
Badge, registered yoga teacher alliance
Embodiment Coaching Session Book a Discovery Call

Recognizing the Church organization as a cult gave us valuable clues in how we could best recover.

“So you left the Church but you can’t leave it alone.”

If you are an active member or close to it, this line probably crossed your mind while reading my story. Lines like this one are thought-stopping techniques that believing members use to dismiss the experiences of members who leave. They aren’t original responses, nor do they reflect the personal intelligence of the speaker–but they are effective conversation-killers. And they are one of the ways high-demand groups like the LDS Church corral people away from curiosity.

I have tried to respond genuinely to the real concerns I hear beneath thought-stopping lines like these. If you’re struggling with some of these lines from others, your spouse, or even inside yourself, I offer these responses in the hopes that they help you get beneath the fear of outsiders and find your own words about your experience:

Don’t we know it’s the last days because the elect are being deceived?

Why would I risk my Eternal Family just because you had a faith crisis?

Aren’t you doing more harm than good through talking about this?

Why can’t you just be content to have your journey and let Church members be?

All I want to know if, how do I NOT end up apostate like you?

…And a bunch of others.

 “…only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.”

Audre Lorde
Read or Watch

My Responses to Apologetics

The Anti-Polygamy Posts
Social Media Archive
A pile of rolled up newspapers
SortaMormon TikTok Archive

I don’t know where you will go, but I am confident that it can be better than what you are leaving behind.

BEGIN NOW

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