Eating, Drinking, Exercise, Body Image
Discover your deeper hungers using a blend of talk therapy, somatic movement exploration and expressive arts grounded in a relational approach and nervous system science
A healthy woman is much like a wolf: robust, chock-full, strong life force, life-giving, territorially aware, inventive, loyal, roving. - Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run with the Wolves
You are Not Alone
Do you feel stuck with food, exercise, alcohol or other substances, or body image wars? If you feel embarrassed or shameful for tendencies or urges you can’t seem to shake, it can feel overwhelming and isolating, but you aren’t alone. There is hope. It can get better, much better.
When your dance with food and movement has become prescriptive instead of intuitive, you might tend to reach for nourishment and energy based on shoulds, musts, ought-to and have-to. How might this lead you to sweeten, stuff or restrict your core hungers?
Ideally, what we consume should be both pleasurable, intuitive and energizing, but our confusing diet-focused culture and many times underlying trauma can both contribute to a dysfunctional dance and unhelpful narratives surrounding what we put into our bodies, how we restrict sustenance, and how we take up space every day.
There is a way to untangle yourself from the body and food wars; There is a way to gain clarity and relief from food, exercise, alcohol and other take-the-edge-off, quick-fix urges and habits. It first takes courage to ask for help, and then it takes a lot of curiosity and compassion for yourself as you grow.
M-Bodied® Therapy Offers Nervous System Psycho-education, Attachment-Based Resourcing, and Body-Based Practices
M-Bodied® Therapy offers:
psycho-education related to nervous system science as well as how early attachment patterns and developmental trauma—both from a multi-generational lens—can wire our nervous system and impact how we sense our hungers and feed ourselves literally and figuratively.
how these multi-generational patterns and family dances can be used as a valuable resource with which to connect and re-pattern for healthy embodiment and reconnection with the body and mind, individually and collectively.
specific body-based co-regulation practices for nervous system regulation to invite a more rhythmic digestive pace and deeper relationship with your body-mind-spirit as well as a richer connection with others.
Eventually, with more bodily awareness and knowledge about relational patterns—with self and others—as well as eventual cognitive therapeutic skills, you can begin to more easily connect the dots and find new ways to love yourself, nourish yourself, and healthily connect with others.
A Family Therapy Approach for Reconnection and Deep Nourishment
Family therapy that helps to make meaning of both emotions and behaviors can be a rich serving of reconnection for a family by supporting a unique combination of what works best for each family. One meal at a time, one session at a time, one bite at a time, one expression of a feeling at a time, families explore how to reconnect in a sustainable way. This makes it easier and more enjoyable to create new family rituals together, renew mealtime connection, and re-feed the family literally and figuratively on a deeper level.
The M-Bodied Family Approach offers body-based, cognitive, and relational ways to use presence at the family table to help support the relational dynamics that crave tenderness and attention. Instead of focusing on behaviors or compliance, or instead of only focusing on roots of the distress, or instead of only focusing on changing thoughts, M-Bodied offers this integrative body-mind approach with a heavy focus on the relational dynamics and practical body-based techniques for nervous system regulation.
When families are more aware of power differences, nervous system awareness, and relational areas that are hungry for support, parents and caregivers are better supported in their own nervous system and ability to self-handle in order to provide the necessary co-regulation for their children. This paves a path for the physiological and metaphorical hungers to be better fed.
Sometimes a collaborative approach with other trauma-informed clinicians to oversee the nutritional or medical aspects is necessary and helpful. However, it’s important to seek trauma-informed providers along the continuum of care to help offer sensitivity, empowerment and competent support for sensitive matters.