Yo Coach,
I think that you are not selecting the path properly. In the layers panel, move over to the paths tab, select the path with your mouse holding down shift. The path should then start flashing. Go back to the layers tab, select a layer, any one it doesn’t matter and copy and paste. This should give you a new layer, name this layer BODY CUTOUT or similar.
At this point I’m presuming that you have all of your layers ready to go into the cutout. If so step and repeat the following process.