Eating, Drinking, Exercise, Body Image
Discover freedom from food, exercise and body image struggles using a blend of talk therapy, somatic movement practices and Intuitive Eating counseling grounded in a relational approach and nervous system science
"The things that [people] reclaim are often their own voice, their own values, their imagination, their clairvoyance, their stories, their ancient memories. If we go for the deeper, and the darker, and the less known we will touch the bones.”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With The Wolves
M-Bodied® Nourishment
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Disordered Eating, Drinking, Exercise, Body Image
Do you feel stuck with an eating disorder, exercise addiction, alcohol or other substance use concerns, or body image wars? If you feel embarrassed, out of control, powerless or shameful for behaviors or urges, it can feel overwhelming and isolating, but you aren’t alone. There is hope.
When your relationship to food, substances and/or 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, how we stuff pain, and how we energetically take up space every day.
There is a way to untangle yourself from the body, food and substance 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 practicing curiosity and compassion for yourself as you grow.
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Family Therapy for Relational Nourishment
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 an integrative body-mind approach with a unique focus on invitational practices, supporting relational dynamics, and teaching practical body-based techniques for nervous system regulation.
When parents, or caregivers, are better supported in their own nervous system functioning through therapeutic support and tools, they can better provide the necessary co-regulation for their children. This paves a path for the physiological and symbolic hungers to be better fed.
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Intuitive Eating Counseling
Interested in a sustainable way to feed yourself? Perhaps you want to create flexible and fulfilling food, feeding and body-connection habits for your whole family. 🌀
Intuitive Eating Counseling is appropriate for individuals and families interested in a sustainable, holistic, body-mind, non-diet approach to eating. Intuitive Eating is an evidence-based approach to help you restore trusting your own body’s hungers (literal and figurative) based on principles of nourishment from the inside-out. Intuitive Eating is a personal process, based on each unique individual, not another diet (yay!).
M-Bodied offers a trauma-sensitive approach, meaning it’s always invitational. No shoulds, musts, shaming. Your “NO” is celebrated, your preferences are welcome. No quick-fixing. M-Bodied is also a supporter of Healthy at Every Size (HAES).
When people of all genders, all ages/stages, have a hard time listening to their body’s signals/hungers, M-Bodied helps them see how their body, or the actual food or “behavior” or blockage is not the problem, nothing is “wrong” with them, it’s all actually trying to lead them toward their unique self, their unique hungers! 🌟
M-Bodied® as a Mothering Metaphor
M-Bodied appreciates the intersection of attachment theory, trauma healing informed by nervous system science, and developmental movement and relational patterns to help connect the dots and symbolically redo body-mind areas of focus that need re-patterning for healthy functioning. Ultimately, the relational somatic practices serve as “holding environments”, or Circles of Support, and serve as mothering metaphors for symbolic redos, a pathway to birth one’s inner parent, one’s ability to self-handle, to self-regulate.
When “Mother” is referenced, we are inviting the “mothering quality of oxytocin,” which plays a major role in signaling safety within our Social Engagement system functioning as related to nervous system science. Therefore, those who identify as female, male, or non-binary may offer and embody that “Mother” quality.
M-Bodied is offered through psychotherapy in the state of Georgia or embodiment coaching and somatic movement education worldwide. M-Bodied is grounded in the principles and practices of Chi for Two®, a mindful embodiment method that synthesizes many trauma healing methods and is an ISMETA-Approved Training Program.
To learn more about M-Bodied when working with eating, food, body and exercise struggles, you can listen to Caroline’s November 2020 interview with Soul-Centred Psychotherapist and Mind Body Eating Coach Jodie Gale at The Soul Centre right here.
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