The Understory: An Experiential Membership for Sensitive, Neurodiverse People Who Want to Grow Within a Community, Without Being Overwhelmed By It

A rolling, always-open membership for sensitive people who are ready to stop fighting their nature — and start learning from it.


Monthly gatherings. A resource library for independent use. A community of people who are growing along side you. And zero pressure to produce.

Understory on forest therapy walk with Lori L Cangilla PHD certified forest therapy guide (CFTG) licensed psychologist mentor coach community for HSPs Singularly Sensitive Pittsburgh PA

Imagine: once a month, you step away from the noise and into a shared space where sensitivity is required, not just tolerated.

You experience a forest therapy practice.

You share with others about navigating similar terrain.

You carry something small but real back into your everyday life.

You have a backpack of “gear”—tools you can use if you want or need them—on standby for you.



That's the Understory.

This isn’t another course or a program with a finish line for you to push yourself across.

The Understory isn’t something you complete (or feel guilty about when you don’t finish it). It’s a place you come back to. It’s like a forest you return to across seasons, noticing what has changed, what has stayed, what you can finally hear now that you couldn't before.

You've felt it — the quiet pull toward something slower. Something more rooted. Something that doesn't ask you to perform your way through another season.

The Understory is where you begin to answer that pull. It’s built around two things: a rhythm of time spent with other sensitive people and a library of resources to nurture yourself.

The community gatherings are the heartbeat of the Understory, the lifeblood that help you grow and thrive:

  • A 90-minute monthly forest therapy session, done virtually from wherever you are, because the benefits of nature and community aren’t limited to the times when you can run away to the woods

  • Four times a year, a Seasonal Sync gathering and field guide of practices to ceremonially mark the passing of one season and the start of another

The library is a curated collection of resources you can return to anytime, like a gear pack to support you on your path, with tools like:

  • a new guided meditation each month to take you into the forest in your imagination, deepen your mindfulness, and open your heart to new possibilities for your growth

  • forest therapy practices that you can use between our gatherings

  • gentle joy prompts to strengthen your discernment process and help you appreciate the process of your daily life journey

  • guided journal prompts to help you deepen your reflection and practices

Sunflower nature walk certified forest therapy guide CFTG licensed psychologist mentor coach author Lori Cangilla founder Singularly Sensitive HSP highly sensitive women leader community membership development confidence environmental activist witch

Simplicity is Intentionally Built into The Understory

There’s no group chat.

No email from me with even the softest invitation to do more.

We build community in the room when we gather and carry it out into the world in our own way.

You use the library for individual support, if and when it adds to your journey.


No homework, no pressure, no rigid agendas.


And no failing or falling behind.


Just space to connect with each other and tools to grow in your own way, in the Understory of our share ecosystem as sensitive people.

What People Say About the Singularly Sensitive Community

  • On Having a New Kind of Group Experience:

    "As a group leader, Lori is highly tuned in to participants, extremely knowledgeable about HSPs, and an excellent group facilitator. She is present, transparent, self-disclosing in appropriate ways, respectful and supportive of all participants. She is gifted in helping to make sure everyone's thoughts get heard in a way that is understandable to all." ~ Rebecca

  • On Being Heard and Connecting:

    “Lori is a thoughtful and compassionate group leader who creates a powerful experience for group members. I appreciated how closely she listened to each of us and how she was able to weave together our varying threads of discussion so we could connect." ~ Carol

  • On Working on Goals in New Ways:

    "Singularly Sensitive brings the power of nature and a wise guide, Lori, united to give you a new perspective on your dilemma. Great for anyone who is goals-oriented and wants to try something new." ~ M. B.

What Becomes Possible for Sensitive People in The Understory?

The Understory isn't designed to push you to make dramatic breakthroughs through a rigid curriculum. It's designed for something quieter and, for many sensitive people, more lasting: a gradual, seasonal return to yourself.

Here is what members tend to notice over time:

  • One of the most painful parts of being highly sensitive is the sense that no one quite understands the texture of your experience. In the Understory, you meet people who do. The relief of that is hard to overstate.

  • When you're surrounded by others who are learning to listen to their nature rather than fight it, something begins to shift in how you hold your own. It becomes less of a problem to manage and more of a way of knowing.

  • Through the forest therapy practices and seasonal gatherings, the more-than-human world stops being backdrop and starts becoming company, companion, and recipient of your care and love. There’s a quiet, stabilizing effect that comes from having a vibrant sense of your interconnectedness to all that is.

  • The Understory moves with the seasons and cycles of nature. Over time, you begin to notice that you should, too. Here, you’ll grow with other people who are aligned with the same rhythms.

  • Because there's nothing to finish, nothing to keep up with, no one tracking your progress, the part of you that was braced for failure begins to unclench. You learn what it feels like to simply be in a community, not try to earn your place.

  • The Understory isn’t based on a one-size-fits-all approach. Use the tools when and how they work for you (or don’t use them at all if the gatherings meet your needs). Your only requirement is to listen to your intuitive as you develop a authentic, sustainable practice for becoming a Singularly Sensitive person.

None of this happens all at once. The forest doesn't rush, and neither does the Understory. But something is always quietly growing — even in the seasons when you can't see it yet. Can you feel it?

The Understory is perfect for people who:

  • are ready to stop managing their sensitivity and start listening to it

  • want ongoing, seasonal support that moves at the pace of a living ecosystem, not a productivity timeline

  • are curious about what leadership, creativity, and daily life could feel like if nature and gentle joy were actually guiding them

  • may not be ready for six months of deep private work like in the Root System

  • know that what you need right now is community: a place to be witnessed, to return to, to grow inside alongside others who understand what it means to live in a world that isn’t set up for us

Be Among the First to Step Inside The Understory


Summer is a season of quiet, steady growth — and this is The Understory's first summer. I'm opening the membership at a summer rate of $39/month for everyone who joins by August 31, 2026. Come grow alongside us during the long, hazy days of summer and see what blossoms by fall. When September arrives, the rate for new members shifts to $49 — but your summer rate stays with you for as long as you remain in The Understory.

Interested in private mentoring as well? The Root System provides six months of 1:1 mentorship that can be done in conjunction with the Understory or separately.