Hey, I’m Koral!
Big fan of being barefoot & near water
I’m really happy you’ve crossed my path.
I know the path is full of rocks, twists, sneaky holes and pits, steep inclines and requires trekking through thick, heavy muck. I’ve also come to learn - no mud, no lotus.
I’ve stumbled upon the most beautiful waters, swam in the Great(est) Lakes, sensing how each carries its own story.
I’m a Michigander who thought I hated Michigan, so I left. Then I came back, pretty quickly. But, I learned a lot while I was away earning my law degree in Vermont and chasing my former dreams of becoming a judge.
Once voted the most likely to become a politician, I am a licensed attorney in Michigan, and I do use my legal passion to teach undergraduate legal courses in Northern Michigan.
However, I’ve retired from private practice. Despite loving the inside of the court room and the process of the law, working as an associate always felt wrong.
The kind of wrong you don’t understand fully, so you deny it until it blows up in your face. Yea, that kind of wrong.
And that is just what happened. It blew up in my face twice because I missed the first message.
It was years after these blow ups that I finally realized what that wrong feeling was. It turns out that the toxicity, demand for perfectionism, and lack of understanding in law offices had me living on cortisol running familiar laps around my childhood trauma.
In 2019, I was left without a job once local and federal restrictions crippled businesses. That was when I had to get creative.
Or as it turns out, it was time to listen to myself.
“I want to teach.”
I’m Listening . . .
When I was questioning what the next career move was, someone I asked for help pointed out that I kept talking about teaching.
I laughed. What? Teaching, really?
By this time in life I had already operated as a life guard, swim instructor, and was teaching a class on fermentation to the local 4H program in Grand Rapids. I was also volunteering at an Urban farm on the weekends raking compost, cleaning compost program buckets, and playing with chickens.
Now, I can see that I was filing every second away from the law firm with things I really loved. I couldn’t stand the judgment, unhealthy competition, and lack of support in the legal community. I sought refuge in a yoga practice I had picked up my junior of college, and I cried on the AM Yoga floor most days only to go one to another emergency assignment that had to be done that night.
In so many ways, teaching made sense. It wasn’t the traditional path or what I was “supposed” to do. But, it had that feeling, the one where you know something is “right” even if you’re not sure how.
Yea, this feels better than those blow ups. But, in the thick of the blow ups, I was so afraid to fail at lawyering, to release an idea myself and others had about what my career was going to look like. And, without being forced, I don’t know if I would have ever allowed myself to step away from a place that was killing me.
Because of my long-lived fascination with our food system, my legal expertise rests in food and drug law. Products with higher than 0.3% THC became legal for adult use in Michigan 2018, and I had worked on some green client files while at the firms.
So when I was scrolling through Michigan universities for potential job options, I found there was a need for educators to teach about the newly legal substance.
I used to get frustrated when people told me, “I just landed here,” when I asked them about their amazing careers. But now I get.
I’m an attorney who accidently landed in academia.
Becoming an assistant professor, also came with a new title, YOOPER!
“Blow up your TV, throw away your paper
Go to the country, build you a home
Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches
Try and find Jesus on your own”
Is this freedom?
Days after my partner, Reilly, lost his mom, we were scheduled to move to the Upper Peninsula (U.P.) of Michigan for my new job.
Even as a native Michigander, I’d only ever crossed the Mackinac Bridge once in my life in a turn-around trip, just to say we’d done it.
Now, I was driving a 26-ft box truck over the Mighty Mac to move my things to the first of several (unfortunate) rentals.
Teaching threw me a new learning curve, and I liked it. While I definitely found ways to let the new role and my high expectations keep me working long hours, life in the U.P. offered a slow pace.
Reilly and I starting really exploring. I learned to camp, and we’ve walked so many amazing miles with our dog, Waylon.
After I realized that I had great qualities that made my work life fun, an old dream kept visiting me.
Having practiced yoga for nine years, by 2022, I wanted to commit to yoga teacher training. This was something I had wanted to do years prior, but I held myself back based on other’s comments and my own fear.
During summer break, I earned my 200 hour teaching certificate from Cannmore Counseling Trauma-Informed Yoga Psychology School.
I created Kommon Ground after completing my YTT with fear that it wouldn’t turn into anything. I was still afraid to be seen on the day I went around town asking local business to put up my first flyer.
Reilly was the only person at my first class. When I was ready to pack up in defeat, he insisted that we stay and practice so that the world would know KG was real.
Bringing It All Together
As my life slowed down there was a lot still processing in the background. I was a few years into talk therapy, where I’d been unravelling childhood trauma, and I was feeling and learning so much.
For a bit, I dove head first into all the self-help books, tried all the routine combos, and was charting my trauma, choices, and patterns in a way I’d soon learn also pointed toward neurodiversity.
With time, I shifted to other practices, including EMDR, free form yoga movement, dancing, and singing. These modalities have helped me make meaningful and lasting change.
They’ve helped me expand my capacity to feel - anger, sadness, joy, excitement, and more. They’ve helped me grow in my relationships and gain confidence to break the rules and do things wildly and intentionally.
Most importantly to me, these practices have given me time and means to hold myself in love. That has allowed me to lower iron-clad defensive walls and to explore what self-sustained safety looks like.
Here’s the thing though, the unlock was NOT just from these practices. I believe in the practices and want you to learn about them. BUT the change came from within. It came from a lifetime of enduring, questioning, losing, and sometimes outright fighting.
It came from withering, burning in the embers, and than learning how to fly into the sky.
I’m a phoenix, reborn.
I continue to come home to myself again and again.
From here, I teach and love.
Watch My Tedx Talk (2023)
When the university where I teach hosted a Tedx event, I was excited to nerd out. It took a few months of sitting on the floor scribbling notes to find the words to condense much of the learning I had picked up in the prior years. This talk shares a ways that we can grow by using different types of mirrors. Creating this talk was a practice in letting go of perfect. It was healing.
Important note: Since creating the talk, I’ve learned more about the overlap of trauma and neurodiversity. If I knew then what I know now, I would have spoken more about ASD and trauma in my personal story and how the modalities discussed may offer support in unmasking and receiving a later-in-life diagnosis.
KG Mission
Guiding community in heart-minded practices to cultivate connection to mind, body, and earth
KG History
Koral Brady created Kommon Ground LLC in 2022 to offer yoga, meditation & movement sessions to the Northern Michigan community. Now, KG reaches worldwide with online courses, resources, and publications.
KG has hosted Sunset Yoga at Sherman Park in SSM, MI for three summer season.
Signature offerings include movement based book clubs and angry yoga workshops.
What People Are Saying
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"A Worthy Read"
Sandi, commenting on The Sunday Series on Substack
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"The instructor adds movement into our practice and it's so helpful. Koral's practice is overwhelmingly the best I have experienced. The sessions bring movement and self awareness into the meditation. I leave feeling calm, clear minded and ready to take on the rest of my day."
Corporate participant
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"I support your work because you bring your authentic self.
Jody via Substack