As a culture, we live in our minds. We’re unfamiliar, uncomfortable, even apprehensive, with the sensations of our bodies. We run from discomfort, or ignore it, or try to change it. We medicate internal aches with drink, drugs, shopping, sex, Netflix, money—and food.
Here’s the simple, stunning, life-changing secret: if you’re struggling with compulsive eating, overeating, binging, chronic dieting or any other habitual patterns with food, the change won’t happen in your mind.
Enduring transformation always begins in the body.
And the willingness to be fully, deeply in your physical form is essential for shifting disordered eating. We call that embodiment.
“But,” you might say, “I’m always in my body. Where else would I be?”
Most likely, in your mind. That’s where modern humans spend the bulk of their lives. The mind is bright, witty, cunning; it spins a clever yarn, makes up thrilling stories about the future, dramatizes the past. Meanwhile, we drag the body around like a dog on a leash, paying attention only when something goes dreadfully wrong.
When you become keenly aware of your physical form and its natural impulses, when you’re able to face discomfort with curiosity and openness, instead of turning away—transformation begins.
The practice of embodied eating centers on the body, not the brain: listening to its cues, attending to its needs, noticing how and where thoughts, emotions and stories impact it. By being fully present, by skillfully and tenderly attending to your body, you’ll learn to feel—not think—when you’re hungry, when you’re full, and what would best nourish your whole self.
Here’s my promise: you can change even a lifetime of unhealthy eating habits, patterns, obsessions, rituals, neurosis and fears. It’s possible to unwind yourself from the demons that drive you to eat, and eat, and eat, even when you’re not hungry—or the equally hateful ones that make you starve, then binge, then swear off food, then do the same thing all over again. You can permanently transform the most vexing eating patterns to a peaceful, pleasurable relationship with food. In the process, you’ll deeply reconnect with your internal self, more profoundly than you’ve ever thought possible.
Read more about how embodied eating works, and contact me with questions. Or try it for free: schedule a no-charge introductory session and learn how to end troubled eating, make peace with food, and discover the exhilaration and delight of being fully in your body again.