Caitlin Wood

Open Floor, Embodiment & Holistic Integration

of praying, through various teachers of mixed lineage. These interweaving paths have been a source of profound personal healing for myself, and allowed me to contribute to the tending of the sacred and a deepening of soul work in the communities I work with. With the support of Indigenous teachers from North and South America, I have learnt so much about the interconnectedness of the human and non-human worlds, about healthy community, boundaries, and self-care, about how to support healing for others in individual and group experiences, and what it is to live a life of devotion and service to something much greater than myself.

I feel that working somatically with the body is vital in order to ground the experiences of plant medicine ceremony. The movement practices of Dancing Freedom and Open Floor are well designed to support connection and learning and help to bring what we learn in these spaces into lived experience. I have been offering the medicine of dance through Dancing Freedom for 11 years and Open Floor for 5 years, with movement classes, DJ sets, workshops, retreats and one-on-one sessions in Australia, online and around the world.

A foundational training in Transpersonal Art Therapy back in 2012, with much professional development since has supported me in creating trauma-informed spaces that bridge the needs of those from modern Western cultures with the ancient wisdom of Indigenous traditions of healing.

My work over the last 13 years has led me to understand and value the importance of integration and preparation for working with plant medicines, including how to build frameworks of personal and community support in order to apply what is learnt in these spaces into daily life and lived experience. I am a strong advocate for community supported engagement with plant medicine traditions, as well as ecological and social reciprocity, giving-back to the communities and cultures that protect these plants and the ecosystems where they live.

I offer my respect and thanks to all of the Indigenous teachers and lineages that I have been honoured to learn from, and to the elders and traditional custodians of the lands on which I live and work.