Soul Nourishment: How Psychedelics Can Support Eating Disorder Recovery

Sacred plant medicines and psychedelics can support the healing of eating disorders and disordered eating by nourishing the soul.

Eating disorders are not about the food. Underneath the disordered eating behaviours is a greater struggle to nourish oneself - not just with food - but with the primary nourishment of love and connection.

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The roots of an eating disorder very often lie in attachment wounding, whereby there was a malnourishment of attuned connection.

Without love and connection, the soul becomes hungry.

When one is afraid to receive, allow or take in love and connection, the soul starves.

So how can we develop courage and a sense of deservingness to heal the wound of connection in order to fully drink it in?

Sacred plant medicines go beyond the eating disorder related symptoms and dive deep into the root causes, bringing up whatever is restricting the intake of love and connection.

In a psychedelic journey, we can face the rules and restrictions we have placed around love, the protective armour we have built up to keep intimacy at bay, the young parts of ourselves that hold the burdens related to our early attachment wounding, and undigested feelings related to abandonment, shame, not enoughness, confusion, and even terror.

This challenging but necessary material arises during a plant medicine ceremony as a way to make space for love to metabolize.

As the ruminative mind (which is often the hindrance to our healing - indeed, we are oftentimes our biggest block in our transformation) slows down under the influence of a psychedelic, the wisdom of the body can emerge.

The innate intelligence of the plant medicine is in direct communication with the innate intelligence of the body.

The body’s organic orientation towards healing means that anything that is stuck, stagnant or holding us back will come up to be processed and released.

This material is not easy to face and can be uncomfortable, hence why good preparation (with a focus on preparing the nervous system), a safe environment and an attuned and loving facilitator/guide/friend are all needed.

These elements are key so we that we feel safe enough to soften the defenses, process the fear, open up to vulnerability, and ultimately to be nourished in and by love.

This is love that our deepest authentic self knows we deserve.

These experiences with plant medicines, when supported with integration practices, can carve new pathways of relating with oneself and with others, establishing intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal relationships that are aligned, attuned and deeply accepting of our authentic expression.

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

What Are You Hungry For? Navigating Appetite When On Psychedelics

Consider this: “I have a history of disordered eating and notice that when I am on psychedelics that I have a decreased appetite. I find this triggering after having done so much work to repair trust with my hunger and fullness cues.”

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This is a great question for anyone who is navigating eating disorder or disordered eating recovery and who are curious to weaving in plant medicines for their recovery. Having a decreased appetite when in the psychedelic journey something people may experience.

If we have been working for a long time on no longer restricting or dieting, and eating regularly without deprivation, it can be triggering when in an altered state to notice a change in the rhythms of your appetite, and observing that your appetite is lower than usual.

The effects of psychedelic drugs vary depending on the person. Factors such as the type of psychedelic and dosage can affect one’s appetite in different ways. It is possible to experience an increase or a decrease in appetite depending on what the psychedelic was and how much was consumed.

This shift in appetite occurs because psychedelics that target the serotonin receptors that alter the neural circuits are linked to mood and appetite.

As such, during a psychedelic experience it is possible to have a change in hunger or fullness cues, but it can be helpful to remember that once the experience wears off, the automatic biological processes, including digestion return to normal.

If you find yourself in a plant medicine journey, in an altered state, and you notice that there is something trigging about having a decreased appetite, with the support of the medicine, you can reflect on these triggers, diving into the emotions, fears, and needs that our bodies may hold when we sense a decrease in appetite.

We can work with our learned patterns of food intake and eating behaviours, as well as the wounds that our ancestors may have passed down around food scarcity or food abundance.

Additionally, it is important to nourish ourselves well before and after a psychedelic journey. The material that can come up in these journeys can be challenging, confronting, and require a lot of energy from the body-mind to process. Good nutritional support will help us prepare, digest, and integrate the experiences in regulated ways. This may require additional support, such as consulting an anti-diet dietician and HAES-oriented nutritionist.

 These medicines are powerful and they can shine light on how we relate to food, appetite, and our sense of fullness and emptiness in multidimensional ways.

When you notice a decrease in appetite, reflect on what you may be hungry for.

We are all hungry for something. We are all hungry for a need to be met. And an eating disorder is pointing to a deep and important need.

Those needs may revolve around the need to feel safe, to belong, to be understood, to connect, to feel regulated, or to restore a sense of worth, dignity or purpose.

In some ways, the eating disorder is an attempt, albeit maladaptive, to try to meet those needs.

Possibly those needs were never met when we were younger, or we never had role models around us to show us how to meet those needs in positive ways, or our needs were not understood or attuned to in ways that considered our sensitivity.

And so, we learn how to try meet those needs ourselves and somewhere along the way, we figure out that the eating disorder and its behaviours can somehow meet that need.

the ways in which the eating disorder works means that the need is not met in a sustainable or healthy way, nor does it address the need from the inside out – so we are always left empty, hungry. The need isn’t truly met. We never feel satisfied.

Take some time to reflect on, underneath the eating disorder, what is your soul hungry for? What need is asking to be met?

And what kind of food or soul-nourishment are required for that hunger to be met and digested with a sense of satisfaction?

Is the “food” a hug, a listening ear, nature, stillness, movement, a safe container, a boundary, emotional expression, or loving and attuned support?

And what is required for that soul food to be on your plate, right in front of you for you to drink in? 

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

Psychedelics Help Us Envision And Embody A Life Free From The Eating Disorder

We often approach plant medicine because we want to heal something. Often times, we recognise that something feels out of balance or stuck, and we need a fresh perspective.

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With the support of psychedelics, we can Expand our vision to imagine and embody a life that is free from the eating disorder.

For people with eating disorders, it can sometimes feel like there is not out. The repetitive eating disorder voice, rigid rituals, and restrictions placed around food, pleasure, and connection means that many people feel stuck and scared to make change.

When people work with plant medicine, the business-as-usual perspectives and lenses dissolve, and this creates space for new associations, connections and possibilities to arise.

Seeing the world and oneself with a new lens is incredibly refreshing. The eating disorder voice quietens down, and the rules and restrictions are reevaluated.

As the eating disorder sits in the backseat, the authentic self can take the driver's seat.

With the authentic self guiding the way, we point our inner compass towards the things we value and care about.

No longer being dragged by the eating disorder's wants, needs and priorities, the authentic self centers and aligns us with the deeper truths of our heart's longing.

We start to think bigger and have the capacity to envision a life without the eating disorder. We embody the state of freedom, compassion, acceptance, and peace with our bodies.

Plant medicines show us how to think and feel bigger.

Moving from narrow focus to a wider, open focus, we have the space (and the knowing of what we deserve) to creatively dream into being a life that is aligned with the deeper truths and values (that are often shrouded by the eating disorder).

It is important to note that these experiences are expansive by nature. The part of the brain that controls how much we feel and take in in our everyday life becomes a lot looser.

This means that we experience sensations and feelings that are often bigger, fuller, or more expansive than what we experience in daily life.

Additionally, the part of the brain that is involved with strategizing and analyzing quietens down, creating more space for the body and its sensations to be felt more acutely.

As such, it is important for people who want to explore plant medicine to support their eating disorder recovery, the first step is to practice ways of connecting with the body.

The more we can practice listening, attuning, and hearing the body (aka develop our interoceptive awareness), the more we drop out of the (often overthinking) mind and into the feeling body.

Why is this important within the context of plant medicine?

For people with eating disorders, we are often disconnected from the body, living from the neck up. The sensations in the body are either hard to reach or the sensations are right in our face.

Connecting to the body often brings up fear, shame, resistance, apathy or doubt for people who have learnt to disconnect from it.

If we are unable to accurately perceive what is going on inside, it is hard to establish an authentic sense of self. It is also challenging to make wise decisions and take aligned actions.

When we can practice and refine our interoceptive awareness, we make contact with the vast body of knowledge that we inhabit.

It is this wisdom that plant medicine speak to directly.

The more accurately we can observe our interoception during our preparation phase before the journey itself, the more we practice stepping out the way, giving the analyzing and interpreting parts a break, and give permission to the body to express.

And we have to learn how to trust the body's way of communicating. In a world that champions cognition, we have forgotten the body's wisdom that comes through via the senses, felt sense and movement.

Plant medicine teaches us how to turn within, and how to focus on the inner cues rather than the external rules and conditionings.

By listening without judgement and slowing down enough to hear its subtle shares, we give the body space to speak. This also gives the body a chance to digest any feelings that have been stuck over our lifetime(s). As we digest these feelings from the past and land more fully in the present.

It is from this place that we connect to our body in the fullness of the present moment.

The innate intelligence of the body meets the innate intelligence of the medicine, supporting us in making choices grounded in our centered alignment.

Plant medicines don't cure eating disorders. With a wider lens of perception, our ability to expand beyond what we thought was possible grows. Psychedelics help us imagine and teach us how to embody our authentic, aligned expression.

When we reside in this frequency, the eating disorder naturally let’s go of us.

Eating Disorder Recovery Is A Journey Into The Unknown

Eating disorder recovery is not about stopping or getting rid of disordered eating behaviours. It’s about meeting whatever lies underneath these behaviours, patterns and rituals.

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By working safely and curiously with the nervous system and supported through psychedelics, there is more capacity to step into the unknowns of recovery - and life as a whole.

We first need to understand that the eating disorder behaviours are here because they are protecting something very vulnerable.

These behaviours are working hard to keep whatever is painful, shameful, or scary away. These vulnerable things are often related to aspects of undigested sensations, feelings, or memories from past trauma (usually early developmental trauma).

If we take away the eating disorder, we will come face-to-face with this undigested material. And this can be confronting and terrifying - just like the trauma event itself.

As such, it is paramount to develop resources and skills to meet what is underneath before just trying to take the eating disorder away from someone.

Remember, no one chooses an eating disorder. It filters in and roots into someone’s life because it is the only way the body knows how to communicate about its state of embodiment.

Indeed, the body is often communicating that it is in a state of protection and fear. Eating disorders are an indication that someone’s nervous system is in a state of dysregulation and is holding an accumulation of stored up fight, flight and freeze energies.

Developing sustainable resources *alongside* the eating disorder, builds capacity in an integrated way, without frightening or threatening the eating disorder that is working hard to protect the individual from experiencing the scary undigested energies from the past.

It’s about adding support alongside it so that we can gradually face the vulnerabilities that lie beneath the eating disorder in bite-sized ways.

This is a multi-layered journey that is non-linear and requires curiosity, practice and compassion.

It is not about taking the eating disorder away.

Over time, as the past slowly digests, and the fragmented parts integrate back to wholeness, the eating disorder behaviours can naturally soften.

This is what results in long-last recovery where new sustainable skills are built and capacity to be with the present moment, embodied, are established.

This is a journey into the unknown. Walking the eating disorder recovery road in this way requires a letting go to any outcome. What the body communicates about its experience, and how it communicates, can never be controlled.

Reconnecting to the fragmented parts of ourselves is a surrendering into the unknown.

As we reach out a hand into the dark places within, and connect with those hidden, forgotten, or shunned parts, we will meet new edges and territories that are revealed one step at a time.

Eating disorder recovery is learning how to be with change and the unknown.

This can be tricky since the eating disorder likes to control things so that the outcome can be planned for and where things can be measured. Think calorie counting, diet plans, exercise regimes, weight checking, not eating in social situations, eating at the same time etc etc etc.

Wanting to know is very common in eating disorders.

This is because eating disorder patterns often stem from experiences where something happened where there no choice, that felt out of one’s control and disorienting and fracturing, and where safety couldn’t be found.

The deficiency in finding safety is what causes an eating disorder not the trauma event itself.

Rigid, repetitive and ritualized behaviours that are seen in disordered eating indicate that something happened in someone’s life that was overwhelming, uncontainable, uncontrollable - and ultimately unsupported - resulting in the belief that life cannot be trusted.

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The eating disorder is the body’s way of communicating to us that it’s still in protection mode and is ultimately yearning for safe connection.

This is why identifying sustainable resources and anchor points during times of transition, change, and recovery are key as they bring a felt sense of safety to the nervous system.

The body can then move from survival to safety - and in a state of safety, the eating disorder naturally softens (without us having to fight it off or push it away). When working directly with the nervous system and resourcing it to anchor into present moment safety, the eating disorder can naturally loosen its grip.

When the body feels safe enough, there is more capacity to trust the unknown.

There is a sense of “I’ve got this” because we have more regulation on board and adaptable resources added to our toolkit.

And we aren’t meant to do it alone. We need trusted others, community and support alongside us so that we can safely dip our toes into the yet-to-be-known.

Over time, we can practice being with and trusting the fundamental nature of life, which is that it is always unknown.

Recovery is the journey from the known to the unknown - which I think to be quite psychedelic, right?!

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Indeed, psychedelics and plant medicine break down rigid loops so that new associations and perspectives can arise.

In an altered state with the support of plant medicine, brain networks communicate with one another that don’t connect in normal waking life.

This results in new neural connections leading to refreshing insights that can literally shift one’s reality.

Eating disorders are often characterized with rigid thinking or cognitive inflexibility and perseverative behaviour around food and body – which describes a behaviour that loops or is stuck, almost as if it’s involuntary.

Through breaking down the holding pattern upheld by the eating disorder part, and thus creating space for new associations and connection to emerge, plant medicine has the potential to alleviate these characteristics that relate to eating disorders.

As the eating disorder voice quietens and the hard protective edges softens, a new embodiment can arise.

By plant medicines increasing cognitive flexibility and bringing the nervous system into a more parasympathetic state, there is a break from the pattern that the ordinary mind is looping in and a loosening of the belief systems that the eating disorder is so rigidly held by.

This can result in a quietening of the critic and the repetitive disordered eating loops, which includes the behaviours, thought patterns, emotional states, and beliefs that go along with it.

The temporary dissolution (or softening) of the eating disorder voice means that there is space for another perspective to arise.

From this new perspective where the hard and rigid eating disorder walls have softened or dissolved, one can embody a state of being that is a more aligned way of being and a clarification of what one truly values on a soul level.

It is a deep journey into the unknown.

It is a deep journey of discovery.

It is a deep journey of integrating all aspects of oneself into wholeness.

Authenticity arises.

Truth cracks through.

Acceptance melts and warms.

Vitality is felt.

Freedom from the inside out is anchored.

Inner balance is restored.

The taste of liberation.

Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash

Psychedelics Help Establish Body Trust [Eating Disorder Recovery]

Restoring body trust is an embodied process and is a fundamental part of eating disorder recovery - and psychedelics can support this process of reconnection.

People navigating an eating disorder often feel like they are not enough, like something is disconnected within themselves and in the world. These beliefs affect individuals at a deep, core level, resulting in a sense of unworthiness, anxiety, depression, and complexities around food and body.

With traditional eating disorder recovery treatment unable to illuminate the illusion of these beliefs, psychedelics seem to be able, reintegrating fragmentation into wholeness. This is the path of eating disorder recovery.

Plant medicine and psychedelics enhance connectivity between brain regions typically disconnected in our normal waking state. This increased connectivity can lead to a profound sense of embodied unity and interconnectedness.

When the boundaries between self and the external world are blurred, new perspectives arise.

Since an eating disorder brings about isolation and disconnection, experiencing the energetic and embodied frequency of connection can be healing, validating, and reality-shifting.

An eating disorder represents a body that is still stuck in a past trauma. The individual hasn’t yet been able to digest the traumatic survival energies in a safe and supported environment, and so the body has accumulated and stored these stress survival energies (fight, flight, freeze) resulting in dysregulation.

Someone may start to experience complexities around food and body as a result for an eating disorder is the body’s way of speaking in its native language about what it needs to survive and thrive. And if we listen to the body by regarding the disordered eating behaviours as its way of communicating, we might find clues as to what the body find safe or unsafe, and regulating or dysregulating. This then offers a pathway towards how to best support and nourish the body so that the old, stuck trauma energies can digest and release.

Indeed, if the trauma experience couldn’t be processed at the time, whatever had to disconnect and disassociate during the bad and scary moment to protect the individual from complete overwhelm, remains fragmented, leaving one to feel disconnected on many levels and just not quite oneself.

Trauma is a fragmenting experience, and an eating disorder represents that same fragmentation through the disconnection from the body itself.

However, this fragmentation that we see in eating disorders is an opportunity to wake us up to what is waiting to be restored to wholeness. 

And plant medicines and psychedelics remind us that connected wholeness is possible. As the brain connects in new ways, the parts of ourselves that we had to disconnect from for years re-emerge as a way to be reintegrated back to wholeness.

By coming into direct contact with these fragmented aspects of ourselves in a safe setting with the help of plant medicine, we can call back the forgotten, painful and hurt parts that got cast to the corner during the time of the trauma.

When this is done with compassion and with the support of a co-regulating other, we can walk the path back home towards greater inner harmony, connection and wholeness.

Psychedelics can support us in shifting the focus from viewing the body from the outside to perceiving the body from the inside out. From this space of Congruent Connection, we can begin to reestablish trust with the body, and the body with us.

In our normal waking life, we have a default way of thinking and viewing the world - and with the support of plant medicine, those structures loosen, resulting in new ways of seeing and perceiving.

When we are focused on an image, we become trapped by it, obsessed by it, and consumed by it. The static image keeps us stuck.

Additionally, if we don’t have a strong, centered sense of self, we may focus on an external image of who we are and what we can attempt to achieve (aka weight loss), and what society insidiously and overly dictates as acceptable.

If the default way of going through life has been overly focused on body image and the external, it is possible to view oneself from the inside out as these new connections form under psychedelics.

We can inhabit the place that is inside of us. Worthy and whole from the inside out.

This place, unlike a static image, is always changing. Sensations, feelings, breath are always in motion. The body is adaptable, fluid and capable of change. This is the process of inhabiting. This is the process of embodiment.

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This path of reclaiming and restoring trust with the body is indeed a process. Often there are layers of old, stuck stress survival energies that first need to be processed and digested before we can begin to feel more at home in our own skin.

Eating disorders represent undigested trauma response energies (aka fight, flight, freeze) that were unable to metabolize at the time of an overwhelming, traumatic experience.

This means that the road of recovery requires a processing and eventual releasing of these energies that have been stored in the body for years (and sometimes lifetimes).

For folks who are curious about incorporating plant medicine for their eating disorder recovery journey, it is possible that these old survival energies will arise in journey spaces.

This is because plant medicine helps lower the walls and armour that we have built up over the years to avoid the scary, painful memories and feelings that reside alongside the thwarted fight, flight, freeze defensive responses in order to restore flow, ease and space in the body.

The body wants to heal and when given the space to release what is no longer needed, it will do so. And psychedelics can open up the door for that process to happen.

The part of the brain that is responsible for gate-keeping our emotions becomes more flexible, meaning that we can sometimes end up experiencing big feelings, strong physical sensations and intense memories in a journey.

If there has been sufficient preparation prior to the journey that focuses on nervous system regulation and education on understanding one’s own current nervous system wiring, it is possible to meet these stuck stress survival energies from the past and process and ultimately release them.

With good preparation that works on developing resources and skills to meet these energies, we can enter the journey space with acceptance, compassion, confidence and courage.

When the journey space is held in a clear and safe way, with good external support, we can go to those deeper places that house the defense responses.

Bit by bit, we can process and eventually release these old stress survival energies from the past in journey as well as in preparation and integration phases. Over time, the eating disorder behaviours naturally lessen. This leads to feelings of inner space, presence, capacity, regulation and connection.

Plant medicine can help us remember our inherent worth, belonging and deservingness not based on how we look but simply because we are here.

Psychedelics gives us the chance to see through the external conditionings and the opportunity to embody our inner experience, that is by connecting to our bodies from the inside out, we reclaim what is authentically ours - and in doing so, re-establishing body trust.

Photo by Elmer Cañas on Unsplash

Are You Hungry For Wholeness?

Eating disorders indicate that the soul is hungry for wholeness. Recovery is the process of discovering what “foods” helps us feel whole.

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What I have learnt from my psychedelic journeys is that eating disorders are not just a starvation from food, but a spiritual starvation, emotional, connection , and love starvation.

Whilst we need to address the food and find ways to nourish ourselves from a nutritional standpoint, we also need to look deeper. We need to ask the question of why does food - something that gives nourishment, vitality, energy, and life – become something that is feared and used to dim one’s energy and life force?

Psychedelics can help us understand this very complex, delicate question by looking at both the symptoms and beyond to the causes that led to them.

What I have discovered for myself and what I hear from my clients, is that psychedelics can restore our sense of belonging into the web of life. There is an embodied remembering that we are part of this creation too, and that our bodies are part of this greater body of the Earth.

From this place, we feel spiritually full.

When we feel spiritually full, there is a sense of wholeness and embodied connection towards our own bodies and with the bodies of those around us.

We learn that we can trust our internal cues rather than following hollow external rules.

There is a feeling of purpose, clear values, and an inner compass that guides us.

When we reside in this place, a deep contentment arises from within - like how a good, wholesome meal feels after eating.

Satisfied. Satiated. Nourished. Whole.

On the flip side, what keeps us spiritually starved and hungry for wholeness are the life-sucking paradigms of diet culture that many of us are swimming in.

We need to address these greater societal issues that are perpetuated by diet culture and that lead to a sense of our disembodiment, discombobulation, and disconnection from our values, passions, and purpose.

In the world of diet culture, we land up disconnected from the Earth, in a frenzied pursuit of the thin ideal, in a state of hyper-vigilance around food (especially those foods that have become demonized and shamed), and feeling broken or experiencing oppression and discrimination if our bodies don’t fit within the narrow box.

These societal issues that emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and physically starve us need to be addressed.

The normalization of oppressive diet culture norms that sever us from the body - and its magic - must be challenged.

And at the same time, it is vital that we do our inner work that fills up our cup and brings a sense of fullness and wholeness from the inside out.

This is where, for me personally, the support of psychedelics and plant medicine have brought inspiration, encouragement, clarity, resolve, and a deep remembering of my full, whole, authentic truth.

Working on this restoring this wholeness over and over again, in the quiet temple of our own hearts, means that we feel more free, empowered, and capable to be with the many ebbs and flows and challenges of this world.

This results in each one of us having more space, strength, resolve, and resiliency to shift the restrictive external rules diet culture, thus changing the dominant cultural norms that leave us disembodied, exhausted, dysregulated, off our center, and far from our internal cues.

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It is time from oppressive top-down societal conditionings to dismantle that have resulted in generational trauma, and disconnection from nature, from the wisdom of the body, and from the ineffable human spirit.

Eating disorder recovery is an individual and collective undertaking. Imagine a world without eating disorders…

What would have to change?

What systems would transform or fall away?

What institutions would cease to exist?

How would we relate to each other, the Earth and our bodies?

What would happen if we were living from a place of spiritual fullness and wholeness?

Imagine. And then embody it.

Photo by Erika Osberg on Unsplash

How Psychedelics Can Support Eating Disorder Recovery and Treatment

The ability to shift from eating disorders symptoms to more root-based causes of disordered eating are what psychedelics are helping us awaken to.

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We need to readdress the treatment of eating disorders, including how we understand eating disorders so that we can find a way forward in supporting people - and the reframing power of psychedelics and plant medicine can help us with that.

For me, this is the power of plant medicine; they are supporting us in offering new perspectives on what eating disorders and disordered eating behaviours are and as such, the ways in which we go about treating them.

We know that the traditional treatment options for eating disorders don’t often result in long-term success. Globally, the status of full recovery from an eating disorder is low, and the risk of relapse is high.

There are so many people across all walks of life, around the world, who are struggling in silence, who have reached the end of their options, or who are simply needing a different recovery approach and understanding in order to find a peaceful, free relationship with food and with their bodies.

When we shift from focusing on the symptoms and move closer to the root, we find much more complex issues that need addressing:

• A sense of lack of safety in the world.

• A sense of not belonging in the world.

• Early childhood developmental trauma.

• Lack of or misunderstood care, attunement, validation, support from caregivers growing up.

• Sexual abuse.

• Physical, verbal, emotional abuse.

• Chronic stress and daily pressures.

• Patriarchal gender norms and standards.

• Ancestral wounding and international trauma.

• Sensory processing challenges.

• Living in a hard world od diet culture where external looks, in particular where the thin ideal body size or hardness are championed.

• Living in a go-go world where capitalistic, extractive, objectifying, and misogynistic values are normalized.

• Fear of emotional overwhelm.

• Challenges in identifying, naming, articulating, and expressing emotions and feelings.

• Living in a world where it is best to harden the heart and put on protective armour (causing toxicity in the body) than to show too much emotion.

• Not having good role models growing up on how to be with emotions, authentic impulses, and self-expression.

• Lack of having a voice.

• Not having a clear sense of true agency or independence.

• Living in a world that decries closeness as a form of weakness.

• Nervous system dysregulation.

• Living in a world that is afraid of women (of all ages) in their power.

• Disconnection from the Earth and the natural elements.

Psychedelics help us move beyond the food and rather towards these deeper, core themes. Plant medicines highlight how food is a place where all of these complex issues get projected onto. Psychedelics help us see how food becomes strategies to try resolve, balance, and manage these very complicated, sensitive, generational, and collective issues.

Psychedelics and plant medicine help us drop from the surface to the deeper layers by:

• Softening rigid neural pathways that govern stuck maladaptive rituals, rules, critical thoughts, and emotional ruts.

• Allowing different brain networks to communicate, helping us move from small, narrow focus to open, wider, creative, divergent, and imaginative focus.

• Increasing sensitivity of the 5-sense perception, thus heightening intuition and body connection.

• Quietening the critical and judgmental ego and its demands.

• Opening the heart space and possibility for self-compassion, empathy, and love by shifting brain chemicals.

• Allowing for insights to emerge on an embodied experience, not just on through a top-down understanding.

• Offering an opportunity to re-experience and remember on an embodied level what it is like to exist without the grips of the eating disorder, free, empowered, authentic, trusting.

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A main focus of traditional eating disorder treatment is to put in measures to stop an individual from engaging in the eating disorder and its behaviours.

This can result in a panic or fear because the eating disorder - the one thing in the person’s toolbox that brings a sense of stability, control, and safety - is now taken away. This is why we see many people relapsing and holding onto the eating disorder even tighter once they leave traditional treatment. They are so scared that their one tool - that they can trust and rely upon - vanishes and restricted from them.

And when we see how these food and body behaviours are not just extreme tactics to lose weight but are strategies that are trying help someone navigate a disordered culture, a dysregulated society, and a history of traumatized generations behind them, it begs the question: what needs to be recovered?

Psychedelics are pointing us to look at what is out of alignment not only on an individual level but within the greater collective.

Indeed, for eating disorder recovery to be possible, societal nervous system regulation and collective trauma healing needs to occur.

Psychedelics are highlighting a great and deep need for us to address the societal issues that perpetuate disembodiment from our own bodies, from our relationships, and from the natural world. Our collective nervous system needs restoring and nurturing.

The oppressive diet culture norms, and the normalization of living in the mind and ignoring and being severed from the body must be challenged. The disconnection from the Earth and the natural cycles needs to be restored.

Of course, we need to do our individual recovery work, and of course we need to replenish the physical body with food and good nourishment; working at the level of our own nervous systems means that we feel more free, empowered and capable to be with the many challenges of this world. Supporting our nervous system, and the health of our bodies results in each one of us having more space, strength, resolve, and resiliency to impact the collective nervous system and make change.

And that the same time, dominant cultural norms that leave us disembodied, exhausted and dysregulated need to be addressed.

It is time from oppressive, top-down, societal conditionings to dismantle that have resulted in generational trauma, and disconnection from nature, from the wisdom of the body, and from the ineffable human spirit.

Eating disorder recovery is an individual and collective undertaking. Imagine a world without eating disorders…

What would have to change?

What systems would transform or fall away?

What institutions would cease to exist?

How would we relate to our bodies, each other, and the Earth?

Psychedelics invite us to imagine a world without eating disorders.

Imagine.

Photo by Susan Wilkinson on Unsplash

Psychedelics for Eating Disorder Recovery [Live Online Workshop with WOOP]

Are you curious about how psychedelics can support eating disorder recovery?

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Join me in an exciting workshop collaboration with Women on Psychedelics (WOOP) on June 7th 17:00-18:30 SAST / 10:00 - 11:30 CST. Get your tickets here.

In this workshop, we will delve into the complexities of eating disorders and explore the untapped potential of psychedelics in the recovery process. Having personally experienced the transformative power of psychedelics, Francesca is dedicated to shedding light on their profound impact on healing and personal growth.

Throughout the workshop, we will cover several crucial topics. First, we will discuss the challenges of treating eating disorders and the difficulty many individuals face when trying to let go of their disordered patterns. We will explore the pervasive influence of diet culture and its impact on our relationship with food and our bodies.

Next, we will delve into what exactly constitutes an eating disorder, drawing upon the wisdom and teachings of plant medicine. By examining the perspectives and insights gained through psychedelic experiences, we can gain a deeper understanding of the roots of these disorders and how to approach their healing.

We will then explore the potential of psychedelics as a powerful tool in conjunction with other therapeutic modalities for supporting eating disorder recovery. By incorporating psychedelics into a comprehensive treatment plan, we can open new doors to healing, self-compassion, and personal growth.

Embodiment practice will be a key part of this workshop, and Francesca will guide you through practices inspired by her own plant medicine journeys. These practices will help you cultivate a deeper connection with your body, tap into your inner wisdom, and explore new pathways toward flexibility, acceptance, and self-love.

During the workshop, you will have the opportunity to ask questions, share your thoughts and experiences, and engage in meaningful discussions with fellow participants. This supportive and nurturing environment will foster a sense of community, understanding, and shared growth.

As we approach the end of the workshop, we will conclude with a closing practice that integrates the insights and experiences gained throughout the session. You will leave feeling empowered, inspired, and equipped with valuable tools to continue your journey toward eating disorder recovery.

Don't miss this opportunity to explore the potential of psychedelics for moving from rigidity to flexibility in eating disorder recovery.

Join us for this transformative workshop and discover a new path toward healing and personal growth. We look forward to seeing you live on the 7th :)

Meet the Facilitator

Navigating over 14 years of her own eating disorder recovery, Francesca weaves embodied eating disorder recovery frameworks, sacred plant medicine teachings, trauma-informed integrative somatic coaching modalities, and her life experience into a compassionate approach to food and body recovery. Her eating disorder recovery journey was the catalyst for inner transformation and to trust in her core self. She supports individuals and groups to create an integrated and authentic relationship to food, the body, and towards life that is authentically aligned.

What Psychedelic Research Is Saying About Eating Disorder Recovery

In this current post-Covid world where it seems like eating disorders are on the rise, it is time to reconsider how we go implementing eating disorder recovery treatment plans.

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Plant medicine and psychedelics have great ability in expanding our mind, aligning our hearts, and attuning our bodies so that we can find ways Nourish ourselves on all levels, and envision a world where eating disorders don’t exist.

The post-Covid world has triggered an upsurge in mental health issues. The troublesome blend of social isolation, society anxiety, increased fears of getting sick, more time on social media, and uncertainty about the future, has created a perfect storm in many people’s lives.

As a result, we are seeing a concerning increase in those struggling with depression, anxiety, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge-eating disorder, and other eating disorders. 

Many people around the world are affected by some kind of food or body issue. And there are probably more people than we think, since many eating disorders and disordered eating are hidden in shame or go unnoticed in a culture of diet culture that normalizes many toxic food and body behaviours.

We have yet to find a treatment for eating disorders that seem to work. This is worrying since anorexia has the highest mortality rates among psychiatric disorders, due to physical complications that come with being at a low weight and suicide risk.

I believe that the rise of psychedelics in the collective awareness is because it is truly time to find our way back to the body – and ultimately to the body from which we all came from, the Earth.

The times that we are collectively living in is calling for us to release old, stuck, survival energies from past traumas so that we can reclaim our vitality, remember our purpose, restore trust in our bodies, and reintegrate the fragmented parts of ourselves into embodied wholeness.

It seems that there are universal knowings that psychedelics share - and that on a deep level we also know - when it comes to understanding what eating disorders are and how to navigate recovery (aka nourishment).

The potency of psychedelics is that they go beyond the symptoms and go deep underneath, looking at both the symptoms and what led to them. A lot of traditional treatment will focus on changing the symptoms but without looking at why and how someone landed up where they are at.

Anorexia nervosa, for example, is defined clinically by low body weight and a fear of weight gain, but that is the tip of the iceberg of what is going on underneath. And going underneath the tip is where psychedelics can guide us towards.

Psychedelics also seem to support a shift from rigid and constrained thought patterns that come with eating disorders to more flexible ways of perceiving, thinking, and understanding.

The psychedelic experience is characterized by opening one’s ability to perceive the world around them and breaking the rigidity of thought patterns. Brain networks that never connected to each other in the past are able to communicate with each other leading to fresh insights and perspectives.

Areas of brain that govern one’s sense of self and ego that are usually highly active seem to quieten. For people with eating disorders, getting a break from the internal oppressive, critical voice is a relief.

And in that space, something new can arise.

This is the power of neuroplasticity. After a psychedelic journey, the brain is still plastic, meaning that in the days after of the journey behavioural, cognitive, and somatic changes are more accessible to make.  

Incorporating psychedelics for recovery, when done with thorough and safe preparation (check out my psychedelic preparation handbook here), and with the right support, can change the way people see themselves and the world around them.

With a lot of hype around psychedelics and how it’s like “10 years of therapy in a night”, it’s important to remember that eating disorder recovery is a long process, and that integration takes time and is a non-linear process.

Commitment, courage, and self-compassion are needed for the journey ahead.

Recovery isn’t easy. In a society that hurls weight loss ads, #transformationaltuesdays, social media, calorie counts on menus, diet plans for kids, and the pressure to go-go-go at the expense of the body’s natural cycles, it makes the inner journey of one’s own heart, mind, and body even tougher. As such recovery is a revolution against the generations of oppressive diet culture. This journey is both individual and collective.

For a long time, eating disorders have been viewed as complex conditions to recover from and work with. And we still have lots to uncover when it comes to getting a grip on how psychedelics can support eating disorder recovery.

From my own explorations and from talking to other people, psychedelics can help us see the complexities of eating disorders in a new light that is clear, accessible, encouraging, and direct. And from my experience, they have led me to believe that recovery is right. here. right. now.

I feel optimistic that psychedelics have immense and immeasurable ability in helping us open minds, align our hearts, and attune our bodies so that we can envision and activate a life - and a world - where eating disorders don’t exist.

Photo by Max on Unsplash

What Psychedelics Can Teach Us About Treating Eating Disorders

How can we approach eating disorder recovery and healing from disordered eating in ways that are additive and empowering rather than restrictive or controlled?

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With the global growing interest in how psychedelics and plant medicine can support eating disorder recovery, we are collectively moving towards not only a new understanding of what eating disorders are, but how to address treatment too.

From what I can see, psychedelics are teaching us to expand our understanding of how to treat eating disorders (and trauma), and to reassess our current older methods of treatment that we have been using for centuries.

It is clear that eating disorder treatment doesn’t always work nor does it always last in the long run. It is also very clear that many, many people around the world are suffering with some form of an eating disorder or disordered eating, and that a new approach to treatment is needed

Anorexia nervosa, in particular, is the deadliest psychiatric disorder. The physical implications as well as the high rate of suicide are risk factors. Despite the knowledge that has been gathered over the centuries, there is no drug that has been approved to treat it. Treatment usually is a combo of therapy, antidepressants and nutritional programs aimed at helping the individual regain weight. However, the rate of recovery is low.

Reports of people with eating disorders who have undergone a psychedelic experience say that they feel better afterwards. They notice greater ease to eat, to be in their bodies, to express emotions, to socially engage, to state boundaries, to accept all of themselves, to reconnect with purpose, to feel their capacity to regulate and resource, and to feel a sense of belonging and interconnectedness.

This is because psychedelics and plant medicines help individuals go to the root of their suffering rather than treating the symptoms or focusing on the weight.

Psychedelics are here in full force right now because as a collective we have to change how we relate to, understand, and support the process of eating disorders recovery.

With the expansive lens that plant medicines offer us, we can see the eating disorder in a new light, including why they may have developed as protective strategies, what they are protecting, how it is impacting an individual’s well-being, and the generational and societal threads that make recovery challenging.

However, these insights that emerge in a psychedelic journey don’t exist solely in the mind. They are experienced in the body. Psychedelics offer an embodied experience, where insights and reflections land and digest on a cellular, visceral level.

Indeed, the eating disorder only exists because there are stuck stress survival energies that are trapped in the body. So in order to heal, process and release old traumas - and to step into the fullness of our truth - we must go in the body.

Psychedelics point to the importance of adding the body in the recovery road map.

Psychedelics point to the importance of adding support to the nervous system.

Psychedelics point to the importance of addressing systemic issues, like patriarchy, capitalism, and colonization, and how that impacts and shapes the body.

Psychedelics point to the importance of addressing the impact of generational trauma on the body.

Psychedelics point to the importance of adding tools of compassion, curiosity and creativity for the recovery path.

Psychedelics help us expand our perspective and vision when it comes to looking at the recovery road ahead.

Pland medicine remind us that anything is possible in recovery.

And that anything can be added to support the process.

Recovery is a creative process. There is no “correct” way to go about.

Nothing should be judged, shamed, or condemned.

Recovery should never have the same voice or tone as the eating disorder.

We should not approach treatment from the same restrictive lens of the eating disorder.

Recovery should be expansive, supported, nourishing and empowering, where new tools and skills are added alongside the eating disorder - so that eventually the eating disorder lets go of us.

This is a natural, organic process that requires no doing, forcing, purging, or purifying the eating disorder away.

We let the eating disorder let go of us.

We let the eating disorder let go of us not because of what we have done or not done, but because of us embodying (being) who we truly are.

Psychedelics are showing us a new way to approach eating disorders and recovery.

Let us listen to what they have to teach.

Let us listen.

Let us loosen the grip of what we have known as “correct” in terms of treatment plans and be open to what is yet to be known as a possibility for eating disorder recovery.

In order for recovery to be recovery, let us to approach it with a frequency, an attitude, and an energy that encourages expansion, self-expression, agency, and embodied empowerment.

What has psychedelics or plant medicine taught you about eating disorder recovery? I would love to hear from you.

Photo by Tanzim on Unsplash

The Potential of Psychedelics for Eating Disorder Recovery

Folks who are struggling with an eating disorder often have rigid thinking or cognitive inflexibility and perseverative behaviour – which describes a behaviour that loops or is hard to break free from, almost as if the behaviour is involuntary.

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Psychedelics have the potential to alleviate these characteristics that relate to eating disorders. The potential for psychedelics to increase cognitive flexibility creates a break from the ordinary mind and a loosening of the belief systems that eating disorders are so rigidly held by.

This is important to note because eating disorders have an “ego-syntonic” nature, meaning that the ego’s demands and aspirations drive many of the eating disorder’s values, feelings and behaviours. The eating disorder is regarded as an asset and helpful - and if something is perceived as helpful, why change it?

This is why treatment can be unsuccessful - because the individual doesn’t perceive the eating disorder as a problem.

However with the help of psychedelics, the ego-syntonic nature of the eating disorder lessens, as plant medicine and psychedelics can also offer a temporary dissolution (or softening) of the ego, allowing for the rigid beliefs to break down.

This results in a new perspective, the possibility of transformation, healing, and change of certain behaviours, thought patterns, and beliefs.

Psychedelics can help reorganise the brain into a system that is more supportive for fulfilling, meaningful, inspiring, and connected living; a better connection with one’s body, relationships and community, purpose, and the Earth is remembered and reestablished.

Acceptance and appreciation arises.

Psychedelics help us experience new ways of thinking not just on a cognitive level, but on an embodied cellular level too.

When the body experiences a new way of being on a felt sense level, a different kind of learning, understanding, and transformation occurs.

It is important to note that if there has been a history of disconnecting from the body as a way to survive, if one chooses to engage in psychedelics to support healing and recovery, it’s so important to include preparation practices that focuses on acknowledging the body, resourcing, developing interoceptive capacity, and learning about one’s unique physiology - because the psychedelic experience is an expansive embodied experience!

These practices that support connecting to and turning towards the body, help us listen more deeply and sensitively to its internal cues, biological impulses, and wants and needs so as to not push past or override the nervous system, which could lead to overwhelm and disassociation, or fragmentation.

And when we enter into a psychedelic journey, emotions, sensations, memories, and the environment are more sensitive, expanded, bigger, fuller, more. This can be overwhelming or scary, especially for those who have been cut off from the body for a long time.

In a psychedelic journey, a tidal wave of grief, a boiling pot of anger, or a heartbreaking amount of love can arise. It can be a lot.

And if the nervous system hasn’t been prepared to hold this energy or if we haven’t learnt how to titrate or pendulate the experience, rather than processing the emotion, we can be sent into a shutdown, disassociation, or fragmentation. This can be damaging and possibly retraumatizing.

The more focus we bring to the body and learn how it communicates to us about its needs, the better we can stay regulated and present to the psychedelic experience.

Indeed, it is the body that carries us through the journey.

The body is the resource, and we have to resource (aka nourish) the body on many levels so that it can become a resource for us on the healing path. It can ultimately become an ally.

This is a body-first, bottom-up, embodied approach to eating disorder recovery woven with psychedelics.

Somatic-based preparation support before a journey ideally supports us in resourcing the body so that it can be the ultimate resource during the journey experience - and beyond.

To learn more about psychedelic journey preparation for people in eating disorder recovery, download my free manual here.

Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash

A Message From The Mushrooms

A little mushroom said to me,

“Restoring connection is eating disorder recovery.
An eating disorder keeps you far away;
Armoured and defended by focusing on how much you weigh.
In trying to make yourself small,
Your dying body tries to convey the message of: ‘stay away, once and for all’.
I know it’s hard to start trusting life,
To reach for connection rather than to pull back in strife.
In eating disorder recovery you learn how to take small steps towards intimacy.
Intimacy that feels safe unconditionally.
Do not let food become a place of projection.
Let your soft animal body be held in tender affection.
Yield to the Earth and let her body remind you of your inner direction,
Her soil holding mycelium networks, and her waters glistening reflections.
Nourish yourself with loving connection.”

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It took me many years to realise that I was struggling with an eating disorder. Many people didn’t even realise either. In fact, rather than concern, I received comments from other people saying that they wished they had the control I had.

If only they knew that whilst externally it looked like I was in control, internally I felt overwhelmed, chaotic, and out of control.

The eating disorder was totally ruling the show. I no longer had control over it.

Many, many years later when I was no longer starving and was far into my own recovery, I tapped back into the energetic frequency of anorexia with the support of psychedelics in a journey. I remembered what it was like. I connected with the uncountable number of people around the world caught in the loop of restriction and starvation.

I remembered what it was like to be consumed by anorexia again.

The fear.

The confusion.

The anger.

The grief.

The disconnection.

For people with anorexia there is a deep fear of getting hurt again. Stuck in dysregulation, the body holds the fear, and anorexia is a desperate attempt of keeping that fear away from manifesting again.

Eating disorders stem from trauma of all kinds, including early traumas that people either don’t remember or have written off as insignificant. Trauma occurs in relationship and in the external environment, and so eating disorders are coping strategies that try keep the world and other people far away.

When no one is listening, when the world feels too loud or too quiet, or when no one is attuning to the needs that are trying to be communicated through words or through body language, starving becomes the only way to say, “get away.”

I have heard my clients say (and I can so relate), “When my bones stuck out, people didn’t want to touch me - I felt relief and protected.”

When someone starves to the point of disappearing, then there is no body to touch. In some ways, anorexia is like the walking dead.

This psychedelic journey showed me how some people literally have to disconnect from all living life, from the body and its needs and cues, so that no other body can come near them.

The cost of this is incredibly high, deep and painful. The energy it goes into trying to protect oneself is draining. The veil of life and death can feel so thin at times, draining connection and purpose from the person.

Connecting to this reality that so many people are enduring this at this time, with the support of psychedelics, was sobering.

And it inspired me even more to commit to continuing to understand the complexities (as well as the simplicities) of eating disorders - and - how we can start to create a world where eating disorders do not exist. A world where communities, cultural norms, and paradigms support each individual to live freely, to make empowered choices, and to feel regulated.

Despite the heaviness of this message that came through in the plant medicine journey, I was also reminded that in order to breathe life back into the body is to reconnect and reinvigorate the connection with the Earth – with the great body that nourishes all of us.

I was reminded that to recover, we have to connect with the aliveness of life. And I received the invitation from the Earth herself that this can be found by spending time with the Mother Earth - and to RSVP immediately.

To drink in her nourishment by bowing to the soils.

To sing to her waters.

To listen to the whispers in the wind.

And to remember how all of life is connected – and how our bodies are part of this delicate web.

This is how we recover. Through healing the wound of separation, we integrate the fragmented aspects of ourselves, reconnecting back into the fabric of the whole, only to realize that we in actual fact, we were always connected and that we deservingly belong.

Through reconnecting back to our bodies in relationship with the Earth, we are struck by the fullness and aliveness that is already present, waiting for us, and is that here for us to drink in and be nourished by it.

Photo by Qingbao Meng on Unsplash

Psychedelics and Eating Disorders: It's More Than Just The Food

We need to go deeper than helping people find an intuitive relationship with food.

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We need to address why food - something that is nourishing and that is needed for life - can turn into something that is feared and used as a tool to push life away.

Of course, we need to establish supportive eating patterns to ensure our own (or our loved one’s) physical wellbeing is taken care of, and at the same time, we need to address what drove someone to start using food as a way to:

• try gain a sense of purpose or direction

• control overwhelming feelings

• manage inner and outer chaos

• get people to finally listen and take them seriously

• feel a sense of power, agency or independence

• keep feelings far away

• keep people away

• bring some sense of balance to a dysregulated nervous system  

It is so much more than just the food. The food is a symbol, pointing us towards what is out of balance and thus what is asking to be realigned and rebalanced.

If we follow the food to the root, we get to a very tender place, often a very vulnerable place that requires the deepest nurturing and seeing and tending to.

We then start to recognize that alongside the food and nutrition support, we also need nourishment that support us in aligning with purpose, developing nervous system regulation skills and introceptive awareness, learning how to create boundaries, practicing how to state our wants and needs, attuning to our personal power and true inner authority, trusting in our capacity to feel, and remembering our innate belonging.

There are many layers to recovery. Food is just one aspect. Sometimes we need to nourish ourselves in other ways first before the food can be addressed. Sometimes it’s the other way around. Sometimes they work hand in hand.

It is indeed not a linear process. There are many spirals to journey through and many layers to peel back in order to reach those tender places.   

These layers are not always easy to face. However, it seems that with more research coming out on how psychedelics and plant medicines have the potential to support eating disorder recovery, it seems like facing those layers and the tender parts that are buried underneath with the help of psychedelics, recovery is possible.

There is currently no clear way on how to treat eating disorders, nor is there a single cause. However, psychedelic research and anecdotal reports are telling us that psychedelics and plant medicine may hold potential in support the complex process of eating disorder recovery.

In eating disorders, one often holds negative self-image and feels encouraged to repeat maladaptive behaviors around eating, exercising, and weight monitoring.

Psychedelics and plant medicine are known to affect the structure of the brain that upholds the various cognitive processing related to introspection and self-reflection. No drug has been shown to break these connections, and it seems that psychedelics seem to be able to facilitate that.

Through this process, the rigid patterns of thought break down, leading to new perspectives and ways of seeing oneself, and the root causes of the eating disorder. People may be able to go to the root where right there lies the tender, vulnerable aspects of oneself that have been hidden, rejected, ignored, or feared.

With psychedelics and plant medicine, the brain becomes more malleable and plastic, so people can move from a narrow focus to a wider focus, as they are able to generate new neuronal connections and thinking patterns.

Individuals may see the reasons why the eating disorder developed in the first place, and how it helped them survive and get through challenging times (acting like self-medication). With psychedelics, individuals can perceive themselves, their emotions, their body sensations (including huger and fullness cues), and life with more flexibility.

They may be able to connect with those harder-to-reach, vulnerable parts with greater compassion, patience, understanding, and love.

Despite this, healing is usually nonlinear. Disordered eating behaviours are often deeply ingrained pervasive and require time, patience, and courage – an ongoing chipping away and disentangling of old patterns, a reconnecting to and nurturing of the tender, wounded aspects self, and support to help forge the new, sustainable, life-supporting patterns around relationships with food, body, and the world.

Our ability to digest food improves, as does our system with feelings, interactions, and experiences.

We have clarity around when we are hungry as well as hear when we need to fill up our energetic cups and nourish ourselves with love, connection, embodiment movement, soothing smells, inspiring music, and grounding nature.

We can respond to our food needs, reaching for the foods that we want, as well as asking for help and support in general. We feel satisfied with our food and our body feels nourished, and we discover we engage with other people and activities also nourish our soul.

We can hear our fullness cues and reach a sense of happy completion with our meals, and feel a sense of enoughness with who we are in the world regardless of what we did or didn’t do that day.

With ongoing support, continued bottom-up and top-down integration, and the inner holding of the belief that ‘recovery is possible’ is how the food and body coping strategies and dysregulation are able to release.

Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

How Psychedelics and Plant Medicine Support Embodied Eating Disorder Recovery

For people facing eating disorder recovery, it can sometimes feel like there is a huge mountain to climb. The climb can feel intimidating, unknowable, and full of dread. It is sobering to face the magnitude of an eating disorder.

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And yet – and yet – it is a mountain that can be climbed. Yes, there are many peaks to climb, and one will need to take rests along the way, but it can be done.

As we know however, anorexia nervosa, in particular, has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder, due to both the physical implications of the disorder* and high suicide rates.

There are currently limited pharmacological and therapeutic treatments, and those that are available tend to focus on managing the symptoms rather than tackling the underlying root.

Plant medicines and psychedelics can support going to the root in eating disorder recovery. Firstly, on a pharmacological level, psychedelics target the serotonin system that support mood regulation; this is important since many people with eating disorders or disordered eating struggle with anxiety, depression, OCD, or have some sort of trauma-related issues.

For people navigating eating disorders, there is often pendulum swinging between restriction and bingeing, or malnutrition, or chronic dieting. This has a powerful effect on the serotonin system, impacting mood regulation, clouding our thoughts. We can get stuck in loops and holes, unable to see how to get out.

Indeed, a hallmark of an eating disorder is rigid thinking. Many people tend to have perceptual distortions about their body image and how much they’re eating, and they tend to be inflexible not only around food but around other life decisions in general.

Eating disorders, which stem from trauma and stored up survival stress, often lead to isolation, high degrees of control, trouble accessing emotions, a disconnection from one’s body and the world, and lack of creativity (the higher brain functioning is offline when we are in a survival state).

With the support of psychedelics, one is able see the bigger picture, take healthy risks, be spontaneous, utilize creativity and flexibility to see themselves differently, and the beliefs they hold around their own eating disorder recovery.

Secondly, by shifting away from symptom-focused treatment and rather looking at the root causes that develop changes in self-perception, self-worth, self-compassion, and in one’s somatic organization.

Psychedelics offer a window of breathing room, fresh air, and fresh perspective. With clearer seeing and understanding, one is able to make new choices, and literally shape their lives differently, in ways that feel aligned and true, rooted in worth, deservingness, and authenticity.

Eating disorders are often resistant to treatment due to its “ego-syntonic” nature, meaning many of the behaviours, values and feelings behind the symptoms stem from the needs and goals of the ego.

Softening the ego happens to be a hallmark of the psychedelic experience: In this altered state, people are often able to gain a new perspective on themselves in the world.

Rather than psychedelics acting as a magic drug to cure, they act more like an ally, tool, or resource within a therapeutic framework, that ideally include nervous system regulation tools, and developing somatic awareness that support the deepening of one’s embodied presence.

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I think we're in a point in time where we're realizing we haven't really been human for a large part of the human evolution. We have been disconnected from our bodies and living in survival. This is what plant medicines have been trying to show us for so long. It is what our nervous systems have been trying to tell us too.

Looking at eating disorder recovery through the lens of nervous system regulation and heath is the new medicine, and the new way of healing and creating health.

Our system, our DNA, our organs, and our tissue all want regulation. Our body is built for and thrives on regulation.

Our Earth wants us to get out of survival stress so that we can expand our perspectives and start taking care of others and the body of Earth that sustains and nourishes us (indeed, we cannot access empathy and care for others when our physiology is geared towards trying to keep us alive).

Embodied recovery is the process of becoming aware of what is out of balance and opening up to restoring equilibrium, ease, and empowerment. Plant medicine and psychedelics can support that process by shining light on what is off balance so that we cannot just survive but also to thrive, to feel in flow, regulated, empowered, and aligned.

Through this work of psychedelic embodied eating disorder recovery, we begin to notice patterns of dysregulation (which can show up as holding a lot of tension, chronic illness, burnout, anxiety, depression, rigid thinking, fear of change, unable to tell when we are hungry or full, lacking creativity, looping in toxic relationships, shutting down, panic attacks, over-exercising, unable to state boundaries etc etc etc).

By working from the bottom-up, including the body in the recovery roadmap, we give our whole system a voice, including the organs, bones, breath, joints, guts, and our movements a voice.

And over time, we get back to our center energetically, but also on a visceral level, and in the center in our circle (and in our environment). This is what our body craves and needs to thrive: to be aligned in that core center within.

There is no magic pill – it takes time, integration work, practice, and patience. But armed with inspiration and clarity (which psychedelics can offer), there is encouragement and motivation to keep going, to keep turning towards the body, to keep walking, and to keep climbing the mountain of uncovering, discovering, and recovering.

*I am using the word “disorder” as it is an understandable term, however I believe that eating disorder are more like patterns. They are patterns that have been developed to try solve a need that wasn’t met or attuned to. These patterns indicate trauma or chronic stress and at the core of these food and body patterns is a yearning for safety, attunement and love. Plant medicines can remind of these yearnings and that these patterns can indeed shift. Read more about eating disorders as patterns here.

How a Psychedelic Journey Can Support Eating Disorder Recovery

During a psychedelic experience, intense emotional content may arise. For people navigating eating disorders, big feels can feel unfamiliar, especially since the attempts at trying to keep physically small is a way to not feel big emotions. 

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To help the process of being with big feelings, having solid preparation and support in which you gain tools and context for navigating the experience is key.

And to prepare for this in a psychedelic journey, it is helpful to remember that despite what may arise in your perception or physical experience during the journey, the risk of physical harm is low. You won’t die from feeling the big feeling nor be completely swallowed by it!

Developing body awareness, learning about your nervous system and stress responses, as well as ways to regulate (breath, sound, movement, touch), recalling your intention, and developing a keen eye to spot reactive and unconscious avoidance patterns, are supportive tools to practice during the preparation phase, and to bring these skills into the journey space too.

 These exact skills can be applied throughout one’s eating disorder recovery journey, and so the process of preparing to navigate a psychedelic journey is akin to eating disorder recovery.

It is important to note that preparing for a psychedelic journey is not just a single 90-minute session with a therapist or a coach.

A psychedelic journey is part of an ongoing healing process, that goes at the pace of each individual’s nervous system, taking into account their (trauma) history, their current mindset, and how comfortable they feel with the person who is supporting and holding the journey space alongside.

For people in eating disorder recovery, feel safe with the facilitator is super key otherwise the eating disorder defenses will still be on guard, and this may make it more challenging during the journey itself.

 During the preparation phase, it is vital that there is space for the facilitator to truly take good time to develop rapport with the person who is seeking to journey, to gather information about their background, trauma history, and current medications, clarify expectations, explain logistics, delineate acceptable boundaries.

When there is relational safety, trust and rapport, and clarity one is able to surrender to and deeply engage in the experience. Without this safety, one may try to control the experience, hold back, or resist which can lead to feelings of overwhelm and fear.

With this deep level of understanding between the facilitator and the journeyer, there is flexibility and adaptability.

For people in recovery, developing a safe, co-regulated relationship that honours the inner rhythms of their psyche rather than following external protocols, can be powerful medicine. And when experience within the context of the psychedelic experience, can touch on supporting the healing of early developmental trauma, for example.

When there is enough safety, trust and rapport in the preparation and journey space, one feels empowered within themselves to face and be with whatever they encounter in their Psychedelic experience, and to trust that it will lead to whatever it is they are calling in to be healed.

Through this relational safety, you ultimately seek the answers on your own, access deep inner healing. It takes courage to face this. And having the right support and preparation will bolster self-confidence to face whatever arises.

A psychedelic journey is like an eating disorder recovery, just condensed into a few hours.

During the journey, accepting whatever comes up is exactly what is needed for this moment, rather than resisting, keeps one grounded in the present moment.

Since an eating disorder is a variety of coping strategies that attempt to bring someone out of the present moment (and shoots one into the past or future), reconnecting back to the here-and-now one of the key steps in healing from disordered eating patterns.

Facing the difficult stuff and surrendering is exactly what the eating disorder doesn’t want us to do. When shame, guilt, fear, anxiety, anger, grief, sexual energy, ecstatic joy, and love are experienced, people in eating disorder recovery can use the opportunity offered in plant medicine journeys to stay with these feelings and experience them fully.

Learning to trust oneself to hold and be with the unfamiliar, activating feelings in an embodied way, rather than trying to intellectualize or avoid, we can observe the ever-fluctuating feelings, and meet the eating disorder in a new way.

For people in eating disorder recovery, where there is often a deep fear in things changing and a tight grip on control, realising how quickly things do shift and that the ground under us is always moving, means that finding ground and home within the body is where we find the medicine we have been seeking.

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Working With Plant Medicine Requires a Trauma-Informed Approach [Eating Disorders]

Psychedelics can often bring up traumatic memories for people with eating disorders.

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Even with all preparation work prior to the journey, the unexpected can arise.

Sometimes after a psychedelic journey, one’s symptoms can get worse. For example, some people experience increased suicide ideation after a journey, or during the journey one may recall childhood sexual abuse, re-experience a traumatic event, or become aware of their trauma history whilst experiencing the effects of a psychedelic.

This is why working with a plant medicine facilitator who is trauma-informed and who has a clear understanding of what you’ve been through (your trauma history, your current challenges etc); and for you to learn about your own nervous system, stress survival responses and physiology, can be super supportive when trauma memories surface during a journey.

For people in eating disorder or disordered eating recovery, there is often a history of trauma or chronic stress that the eating disorder is trying to manage.

Working with the body that is holding the unmetabolized stress survival energy and indigested defense imprints, as part of the focus for the psychedelic journey, can support the gradual rewiring and the natural maturation out of the eating disorder patterns.

Even though what comes up may be challenging and evocative in journey spaces, improved mental health outcomes, a nervous system rewiring, and aligned and empowered somatic organisations over the long-term can be sustained, especially when there are trusted others who can support the anchoring in of the new insights, breakthroughs, and increased capacity in integration.

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Psychedelics and Eating Disorder Recovery: What To Expect

If you are looking to sacred plant medicine or psychedelics to support your eating disorder recovery, it is possible that you may experience being challenged on your worldviews, the way you relate to your body, the beliefs around how you perceive yourself, and your place here on this Earth.

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The process of disentangling from an eating disorder can be shocking, painful, and uncomfortable. Many years, decades, and generations of undoing often needs to be faced, and it is to these places inside of ourselves where plant medicine can take us.

These shifts in beliefs may also bring up grief and sadness in seeing from a new perspective, the years (and possibly generations) of how our bodies have been spoken to, punished, hurt, rejected, betrayal, perpetrated, and abandoned.

These shifts in how you view your body may be healing and liberating and positively change the ways in which you treat your body and accept other people and their bodies (aka #droppingoutofdietculture).

It can also bring up anger in seeing the oppressive reality of diet and fitness culture with fresh eyes.

Plant medicine or psychedelics support this undoing by reopening a window of brain development – one in which the brain is more plastic. When there is greater plasticity, there’s more potential to generate new patterns of thought and behaviour. This is called “neuroplasticity” and refers to the ways in which the body’s ability to change, heal, grow, and relearn.

For people navigating eating disorder recovery and the tight rules of diet culture, supporting the process of generating more flexibility and plasticity, allows for:

• A softening of rigid food rituals,

• A reduction in ruminating food and body thoughts and negative self-talk,

• A release of punishing guilt-driven restriction (and subsequent pendulum swing to bingeing which leads to more guilt, shame, and restriction), and

• An increased capacity to with one’s feelings, to be more in one’s own body, tracking sensations, emotions, and impulses in the present moment.

Plant medicine experiences often allow people to access emotions that are usually too intense to process – and for people with eating disorders, feeling the feels is one of the toughest aspects of recovery.

Many people don’t want to get physically big because they don’t want to face big emotions.

Psychedelics and eating disorder recovery: anything is possible

When in a psychedelic experience however, one may experience a rainbow of emotion, insight, wonder, awe, fear, disgust, shame, grief, connection, loneliness, love, and compassion, as it relates to the eating disorder, but it often extends much deeper and wider than that.

It can be empowering to come out the other side of the journey having felt so much and to have not been totally swallowed by the emotion.

This can offer evidence to an individual that they can feel and are not numb or robots, and they have the strength and the softness to feel the real and raw sensation of the present moment.

Good preparation with the help of a coach or guide prior to the psychedelic journey, can really support the process of being able to face and hold bigger feelings in a journey, ultimately increasing one’s capacity in everyday life. To access my free download on how to prepare of a macro or micro plant medicine ceremony for people in eating disorder recovery, head here. I go in-depth into what preparation can look like, and how it can deepen the journey experience as well as the integration thereafter.

What transpires in a journey can be further unpacked in integration sessions and can catalyze individuals into the next chapter of healing their relationship with food, their bodies, and everything else that the food symbolises.

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These medicines take us to these places so we can begin a new template of relating with your bodies; a relationship with greater kindness, forgiveness and acceptance.

In starting to make peace with living in the homes that house us in every moment, with each breath, our bodies become a safe haven. There is a felt sense of belonging: embodied belonging. The cells remember and know on a body level that all parts of you belong and are worthy to be here.

From this inner residing, we treat those around us with more groundedness, generosity and grace, including humans, nature and elemental beings.

We acknowledge.
We listen.
We attend.
We take care.

In the process of this clearly seeing, unlearning, metamorphizing, and transforming our relationship with our bodies, we are also healing our relationship with this greater body that nourishes us: the body of the Mother Earth.

And this is where plant medicine takes us: to ground back into this reality, on this Earth, where we all belong, and to take care of this great body that sustains all life.

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How Psychedelics Can Increase Emotional Capacity in Eating Disorder Recovery

I’ve started to notice a pattern: when things start to feel good, I shut it down.

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Over this year, I have been paying attention to how much joy, love, pleasure, and laughter I allow into my life, and have observed the ways in which I restrict how much goodness I let in.

One of the functions of my eating disorder was to suppress good feelings. For many years, I got stuck in a pattern where I didn’t want to feel good, nor did I want anyone to see me in a good mood.

I felt protected in a numb, dark and moody state because it felt like no one could get near me.

Good feelings also somehow equated with me losing control; I believed that if I started to feel good about myself and life, I would relax and let go, and subsequently everything would spin out control.

And at the deepest core of it all, I believed that I didn’t deserve goodness in my life.

If I didn't deserve it, what was the point of feeling? So why feel at all?

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During the years of puberty, at a critical stage of my life where my body was changing and making space for adulthood, I directed my life towards restricting not only my food, but how much I could allow myself to feel. By directing my life in this way during a developmental stage of rapid learning, change and transformation, the eating disorder imprinted itself in a very foundational way in my psyche, carving out deep grooves of habit.

The food became a symbol for all that I wanted but couldn't allow myself to have. The body became a site where I would punish myself for having desires and feelings.

My recovery has taken me on a path back to feeling, and it continues to be a path of improving my emotional bandwidth and increasing the upper limit of my emotional experience.

This has greatly been supported by sacred plant medicines - more on this below, so keep reading :)

I have been gently nudged to give myself permission to let joy and goodness in - and to feel more - which has meant developing my emotional resilience and increasing my tolerance to be with moments of discomfort rather than numbing away through reactive food or body strategies.

Indeed, recovery for me has been about moving out the numb and grey, and into a more colourful way of being and expressing, slowly developing capacity to hold myself more and more through challenging moments and in the uncertainty of change, as well as amidst the awe-inspiring beauty of life.

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Increasing my emotional bandwidth has meant opening up to relationships rather than shutting away from them.

Increasing my emotional bandwidth has meant allowing myself to laugh and be happy in front of others.

Increasing my emotional bandwidth has meant becoming more adaptable in the face of change

Increasing my emotional bandwidth has meant trusting more in myself, what I can hold, what I can feel, and what I can transform within myself.

Increasing my emotional bandwidth has meant believing in my worth.

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Many people navigating eating disorders experience a stuckness in how much and what they feel; there is a rigidity that is characteristic of an eating disorder that makes the daily ritualized food and body behaviours challenging to shift.

This is because eating disorders lack of plasticity, meaning the habitual thoughts and habitual emotions become deeply ingrained and are hard to change. Over time, it can feel like the eating disorder is who we are, or it seems almost impossible to imagine a life without the eating disorder, because the patterns become deeply entrenched and wedged into the psyche.

This is why it is so important to find ways to repattern the neuropathways that are associated with automatic, habitual disordered eating patterns.

And altered states, such as psychedelic experiences (but also including flow states, embodied movement, art-making, and nature immersions) can support that process of promoting plasticity, reopening windows of new learning, change and adaption.

When we enter a psychedelic experience (microdosing included), these unconscious patterns come to the surface, and we are able to see them in a new way.

The default mode network – the part of our brain that navigates life when are not consciously directing it – become quieter, and as such, so do the unconscious eating disorder patterns.

This means we diverge away from our standard way of operating patterns. Altered states that get us out of our heads and immersed in the present moment, move us out of our default reality and help recode our baseline of what we feel - and how we feel.

Because there is such a high level of daily rumination and need for control, especially around emotions, supporting people with eating disorders to be more adaptive in the face of change and shift from narrow focus to open focus will help the recovery process.

Starting to connect with more emotions, developing resilience to be with uncomfortable emotions, and giving ourselves permission to feel more in our bodies supports the process of deepening into embodiment – which is what recovery is all about.

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The Wisdom of Sacred Plant Medicine for Eating Disorder Recovery

Sacred earth medicines and other psychedelics show you what is happening to you, allow you to see and to experience consciously what is normally unconscious.

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This is the wisdom of plant medicine: they illuminate the unseen, and once we see the unseen, we can no longer unsee it.

An eating disorder keeps pain, stress, and trauma suppressed, numbed, and hidden and out sight through various food and body strategies, such as restriction, over-exercising, purging, or eating past fullness.

As such, when we enter into a psychedelic experience, we must remember that we will very likely encounter aspects of ourselves that we have repressed, forgotten, or ignored.

It is therefore important that foundational preparation work has been laid so that the protectors, managers, and other defending parts have been acknowledged and feel heard, so that they can feel safe to soften and put down their walls and amour.

That means that when the unseen, hidden, or ignored aspects of the psyche are revealed and illuminated in a psychedelic journey (or even when microdosing), there is enough robust grounding, nervous system capacity, and psychological flexibility to hold whatever comes up - because sound preparation work has already been done.

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Approaching Eating Disorder Recovery with the Wisdom of Sacred Plant Medicine Offers Us the Potential To: 

• Hold ourselves in a way that supports our healing, whereby we embody the felt sense of dignity, self-acceptance, and wholeness.

• Illuminate our purpose and re-contextualize our place in the world.

• Open our hearts and remember that our healing ripples out, positively impacting the collective.

• Acknowledge how the disordered eating strategies were needed at a challenging time that supported our survival.

• Widen our capacity to be with the full spectrum of sensations, emotions, and internal thought processes through empowering self-regulation tools.

• Dispel doubts and fears, and question the validity of self-limiting beliefs, including those related to food, weight, and body.

• Activate gratitude and self-compassion towards ourselves and to the greater world around us.

• Widen our perspective from a narrow, rigid focus, to an open mind and heart, restoring our connection in the web of life.

• Move from external rules to internal cues, and attuning to our intuition.

• Embrace and nurture the inner child and other fragmented parts of ourselves.

• Shift our focus into the present moment and to trust its unfolding, releasing the grip of control.

• Reconnect with our inherent worth and true belonging, and believe in our capacity to give and receive love.

Remember who you truly are.

Just as important as the preparation work is to support and deepen the psychedelic journey, integration after the experience is vital. Integration is all about taking the downloads and insights from the plant medicine experience and weaving into the fabric of everyday life.

The euphoria from such an inner journey is not eternal.

Maintaining an open heart,

Weaving the insights into the fabric of daily life,

Navigating moments of trigger and challenge with humility and curiosity,

Practicing developing a coherent nervous system that allows for natural impulses to release, sound, movement and expression to come through,

Reclaiming our space that we deserve and are worthy to take up,

And embodying the energetic frequencies of our authentically aligned expression, is the work we are required to do.

The integration work is to regulate our nervous system and state of mind, and recall and practice feelings of love - and whatever else we aspire to embody and experience more in our lives - in our hearts again, as experienced during the psychedelic journey.

A plant medicine experience brings us closer to the places we have avoided so that we can integrate the fragmented parts within us back into wholeness.

This leads to greater peace and trust in our bodies as we start to learn that we can hold both the darkness and light within our vessels and come out the other side, transformed and whole. As such, we embody the medicine we have been seeking all along.

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How Psychedelics and Nervous System Regulation Supports Digestion in Eating Disorder Recovery

Our digestion is intertwined with our nervous system. When we feel safe, we can digest.

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Sacred plant medicine can support this process of entering into the parasympathetic part of our nervous system which is the state that the body needs to digest our food effectively.

When we feel stressed, anxious, or in danger, our nervous system prepares us to be on high alert to fight or flee, activating our sympathetic nervous system. When this part of our nervous system is activated, our adrenal glands are stimulated causing an increase in heart rate, muscle contractions, and a dry mouth. Additionally, blood gets directed away from the digestive tract, slowing down digestion.

The reason for this is that all non-essential bodily functions slow or shut down (such as the immune and digestive system) so that the body can reserve energy needed by vital organs like the heart and lungs. In this way, the body can concentrate on taking necessary action to alleviate the danger.

For many of us, due to early traumatic experiences and living in the larger environment in which we live in today (characterized by stress, hustling, and diet culture), we remain in this state of heightened alertness, feeling vigilant, on edge, and frazzled. This in turn leads to digestive problems such as IBS, constipation, bloating, or diarrhea.

These digestive issues which cause their own kind of discomfort and stress, can trigger eating disorder or disordered eating behaviours. And eating disorders themselves continue to exacerbate these symptoms, straining the digestive system further.

It is important to support the body and the eating disorder recovery process by entering into the parasympathetic nervous system. We need to be in the rest-and-digest portion of our nervous system to properly digest our food (and our emotions).

The parasympathetic nervous system has two branches: the Ventral Vagus and the Dorsal Vagus. The Ventral Vagus is the part we really want to help us calm down and downregulate. It is the part that governs our ability to socially engage with safe people, make sound, or hear soothing sounds.

The Dorsal Vagus, on the other hand, is more like the emergency brake. When a lot of energy goes into it (aka “High Tone Dorsal”), it activates the freeze, or shutdown response. This will also bring us out of our sympathetic nervous system, but it is a survival response - so not that great when it becomes the go-to option.

On the other hand, “Low Tone Dorsal”, which is also part of the Dorsal Vagus, lets us rest, digest, and repair our cells. It supports immune function and barrier-keeping in the gut. It uses a lesser amount of energy is in this system and is needed for healthy immune function and barrier-keeping in the gut. When we have more access to the Ventral Vagal part of this system, we will also have more access to this healthy ‘Low Tone’ state. This is what we want for coherent, smooth digestion of food, of memories, feelings, and sensations.

With unresolved trauma in the picture though, it is much more common to flip between high sympathetic activation (fight/flight), and High Tone Dorsal (freeze). This leads to our gut being impacted because we don’t have enough access to healthy digestion and barrier keeping in the gut.

One way we can start to access more healthy ventral function is by using a pillow or a weighted blanked on the abdomen, which sends a signal of containment and safety to the organs there, which in turns helps the Vagus.

Additionally, engaging with safe people also stimulates the Ventral Vagus. If there is past trauma, it may result in resistance to engaging with people in general, because our system interprets people as potential threats. So, if we notice an improvement in our ability to interact with others in a grounded, calm way, this is a sign that our Ventral Vagal function is improving and healing, and less energy is going into the survival responses.

Relaxing, resting, pausing, connecting with loved ones, and feeling genuine safety is important to avoid sympathetic overdrive. Our bodies need to register that they can put down the defensive armour and can stop running. Our bodies need to register that it is safe to rest.

When the parasympathetic nervous system is activated, it produces the feelings of connection and calm that allows your body to repair and heal itself. In this state, food is broken down into an absorbable form which is carried to our cells for energy and nourishment – nourishment of body, heart and mind.

Sacred plant medicine and psychedelics can support this process of entering into the parasympathetic part of our nervous system. They interrupt the deeply entrenched habitual patterns of the eating disorder which are often existing in sympathetic energy.

An eating disorder is an accumulation of rigid thought patterns and ritualised behaviours that has slowly imprinted itself more and more deeply into the psyche, taking root and affecting the many aspects of one’s life, including energy levels, digestion, mood stability, and cognitive focus.

Over time, this way of being can start to feel normal. The food thoughts, habits, and digestive issues - that eventually arise after prolonged sympathetic arousal - can become so automatic and unconscious that one doesn’t even realise they occur.

When we enter a psychedelic experience, these unconscious patterns come to the surface, and we are able to see them in a new way. The default mode network – the part of our brain that navigates life when we are not consciously directing it – become quieter, and as such, so do the unconscious disordered eating patterns.

This means that in altered states, we diverge away from the standard way of operating, which can support the recoding of the default mode network activity into more beneficial pathways.

In these critical windows that expanded states offer, especially in the integration period post-journey, we have more space and capacity to shift the eating disorder beliefs into more empowered patterns that support the recovery process.

As such, we also have the opportunity to see the interconnected relationship between our digestion, nervous system, emotions and thoughts. When there is the felt sese of safety, the fight or flight part of the nervous system can soften, allowing for a gentler way of being to take root.

No longer needing to protect and defend, one’s emotional and mental bodies are positively affected, which also supports the energy and vitality of the body, the regulation of the nervous system, and the overall functioning of the digestive system. We need to feel safe in order to digest well. And we need to digest so that we feel safe.

As we shift the nervous system pattern of sympathetic arousal as well as the racing thoughts that come along with this highly charged and into parasympathetic, our digestion, nervous system and overall recovery land in more and more safety and rooted presence, and as such innate heal and transformation emerges.

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