Are Eating Disorder Coping Strategies or Strategies of Regulation?

Are eating disorders regulation strategies or coping strategies?

*

*

*

Rather than trying to think about makes sense cognitively, can you sense into your embodied wisdom to land on what makes sense for you?

When you read this question, “are eating disorders regulation strategies or coping strategies?”, do you notice a difference in your body between these two different ways of describing eating disorders?

There’s a slight difference between perceiving eating disorders as strategies of regulation versus coping.

Over the years, my perspective has shifted from seeing eating disorders and disordered eating tactics as ways of coping to attempts at regulating.

When we consider an eating disorder as the body’s attempt at regulating the nervous system, we begin to see these food behaviours as strategies of survival rather than dysfunction.

And that ultimately someone has developed these strategies as a way to survive and meet life in the best ways they know how, which is connected to what kinds of rules they learnt around what’s acceptable or unacceptable to be seen by the outside world.

These rules are often transmitted to us way before our language has even formed by our attachment figures, from our caregivers to greater societal and institutional forces.

We inherit these rules before we are able to string coherent sentences together on just how much of who we are we can bring into the world.

These rules impact our sense of embodiment because on some level we have to tuck in and suck back aspects of our authentic self in order to look acceptable and stay in attachment with those around us who set the rules and standards.

This impacts our relationship with other humans. If we cannot show up authentically in connection with others, there will be a sense of something is missing within us.

Either we will have to hold back an aspect of ourselves, become tight, or withdrawn, or we might overdramatize, take up space, or conflate.

If our sources of connection growing up were not enough or too much or not attuned, it affects our nervous system development and ability to self-regulate.

And it is this exact same neural pathway that allows for attuned, safe connection that allows for regulated digestive processing.

This is what Polyvagal theory brought to light: Our ability to nourish ourselves physically with food and through relationships is neurologically linked.

Our relationship to food reflects our relationships. Like food, we need connection and attachment to survive - without it, we can’t survive.

Needing connection is hardwired into our system and it is what helps us develop a sense of self and a self in the world.

Connection is our first form of nourishment and one that we need throughout our lives.

Since food is a primary form of receiving and taking in physical nourishment, how we learnt to relate with others - our first form of nourishment - shows up most acutely with food.

If we didn’t receive the kind of nourishing care we needed from our caregivers and greater societal forces from a young age, the state of our nervous system gets impacted.

For young developing children, it is super dysregulating for the nervous system to have to stay in attachment with another who cannot safely provide us with our needs and wants.

As such, we find really intelligent ways to stay in connection (in order to survive) through disordered eating behaviours, whilst having a semblance of our needs and wants to be provided for in a way that doesn’t totally overwhelm us (this is inherently a regulating tactic, at least in the short-term).

However, when it’s not our authentic needs being met, it is usually not a particularly satisfying experience.

Eating disorder behaviours are the body telling us what is missing in the attachment system, and the behaviours are in some way an attempt to meet those needs and wants in the ways that the body knows how. This is an attempt to try regulate and bring things into balance.

Looking at eating disorders from this perspective means that we need to add in support and resources to meet whatever has been missing in the attachment system that speaks at the level of the body, so that there is an overall sense of regulation in the nervous system.

When we look at eating disorders as strategies of regulation, we start to bring in resources and practices that speak to the nervous and the body, from them bottom-up.

An eating disorder is the use of the senses and the body to try find regulation. It is a bottom-up strategy in and of itself, and as such, adding in support that works in a similar bottom-up way means that there is a greater chance for healing compared to a top-down, cognitive approach.

Indeed, the brain and the nervous system are geared to survival and are in a place of fear. This means, that along with lack of physical nourishment, the higher brain isn’t online.

Top-down processes require the brain to be fully optimal in order for cognitive-based therapy to work. For people with eating disorders, due to their physiology and nervous system capacity, CBT and other top-down therapy processes simply don’t land.

We have to work directly with the body.

When there is a robust regulation that is sustainable and supports overall well-being, the capacity to eat becomes easier.

When we see an eating disorder as an attempt to regulate a nervous system that is in need for safe connection, we can begin to add in supportive elements that don’t shame or pathologize (which creates further defense and disconnection), and instead invite warm and welcoming resources that attune to the part of the nervous system (and the soul) that yearns for love.

Indeed, we all know by now that eating disorders are so much more than just the food.

We know it’s never about the food at the end of the day.

So what are eating disorders actually about?

When we choose eating disorder recovery, what we are practicing is relearning and rediscovering how to receive nourishment.

Nourishment comes in many different forms, the most important one being relationships. As mammals, we are inherently wired for connection. We cannot bypass this - we very literally need it for our survival. Co-regulation with another is the most natural way for our bodies to ground, anchor, settle and regulate.

Rediscovering how to take in honest, supportive and loving connection is at the heart of recovery.

Since most eating disorders represent ruptures or deficits in the attachment system, I see disordered eating patterns as a representation of how one has learn to restrict intimacy from a very young age. Eating disorders symbolize a starvation for connection.

As we continue to walk the recovery road, we start to allow the nourishment of relationships into our lives; our cup feels fuller as our lives take on more meaning. We feel fed through the nourishment of connection.

As we take in more nourishment in this way, our autonomic nervous system is supported through co-regulation, shifting our bodies from a state of protection to a state of connection.

This state of connection is closely linked to the ventral potion of our parasympathetic nervous system, which is exactly where we want to be, on a nervous system level, to ingest and digest food.

When we embark on the journey of rediscovering how we want to be in relationship in a way that regulates, feeds and supports all parts of ourselves, we can naturally be nourished by food too.

By adding in support that speaks to the body and nervous system, we offer scaffolding for the parts that are holding back or holding in from an embodied perspective so that the body-container-temple can grow its capacity to hold the fullness of the soul.

Photo by Jon Flobrant on Unsplash

Eating Disorder Recovery Is A Process Of Relaxing

Healing requires relaxation.

The state of healing is governed by the parasympathetic nervous system which is the same part of our autonomic nervous system that allows us to rest and digest, tend and befriend.

This is the part of our nervous system that repairs, regenerates, and restores into balance and good flow.

This means that if we desire change, growth, healing and transformation, we need the time and space to soften, relax open, and release tension - whether that’s physical tension, an emotion that’s being held back, an overworked thought, or a looping memory.

If someone is navigating an eating disorder, this usually indicates that the body feels unsafe, and is in a state of tension and dysregulation.

An eating disorder is the body communicating to us that its been recruited to protect rather than connect.

When someone is in protection mode rather than connection mode, the sympathetic nervous system is on high activation. This means that the body is armored up, ready to fight or run away at any moment, on the lookout for potential threat.

Being in this state constantly requires a lot of energy and as such, people navigating food or body challenges, who are already in a dysregulated state, experience higher amounts of anxiety. This can cause the sympathetic nervous to loop and build up tension and stress.

As such, to get out of this loop, recovery from an eating disorder or disordered eating requires less sympathetic energy and more parasympathetic ease.

Even adding in a few small moments in one’s day where there is intention practice of exhaling, grounding, orienting to the outside world, and bringing in that energy of rest-digest can be incredibly supportive in slowly rewiring the nervous system to a more regulated state.

Eating disorder recovery is learning how to slowly take the foot off the gas and gradually down gear to a gentle pause.

When we gradually down-gear into parasympathetic, and slow down and eventually come to a pause, we have the space to listen and hear the body’s cues.

All of the cues and signals that we receive from our bodies are messages to support our well-being and guide us back to center. 

Our ability to perceive what is going on inside, which is called interoception, is our body's way of keeping us alive. Biological impulses like thirst, hunger, or needing the bathroom are cues from the body telling us it is time to refuel and nourish or release and empty to keep our internal systems working in harmony and in flow. 

Even the more uncomfortable feeling, like anxiety (which are a cluster of different sensations), act as messengers, letting us know we are urgently keeping up with someone else's expectations, and as such are signs to help us pause and recenter back onto our own path at own rhythm. 

The more we can tune into these signals - and ultimately trust them as signals that are in service to us - the clearer our inner world feels, and ultimately the clearer we become in the choices we make in our lives. 

This sense of coherency and alignment is what it feels like to be at home in our own skins. This is Embodiment.

We feel fed by a sense of belonging in our own vessels. We feel empowered by inhabiting the unshakeable ground within. We feel nourished by our own embodiment. 

We safe to be at home within.

Safety is the domain of the parasympathetic nervous system. No longer needing to protect, the armour can be put down and connection, from a grounded, confident place, can emerge.

---

Reflect on the conditions that best support you to enter this more rest-digest state?

What are you doing?

Where are you?

Who are you with?

How can you add these nourishing elements into your life to support a gentler set and setting?

We can’t approach recovery with the same energy as the eating disorder.

No amount of restriction, denial, self-berating, forcing, or urgently pushing for recovery to happen will work (that’s the mentality of diet culture, right?).

There’s also no specific destination to get to either in recovery either.

Eating disorder recovery is a process of allowing more softness and relaxation into the body.

It’s not something to achieve.

It’s an open, relaxed state that doesn’t have an outcome.

It’s an ongoing process.

It is a process of shifting our embodiment and way of being and showing up in the world.

It’s a journey of no longer marching to the fast-paced, patriarchal drumbeat of diet culture and reclaiming the rhythm and dance that feels good from the inside out.

Recovery is a practice of learning how to be comfortable and soft in the unknown unfolding of our own becoming.

This state naturally shifts our way of eating, relating to our body, and ability to receive nourishment of love and connection.

This is organic and emergent recovery that reveals more of ourselves to ourselves step by step, supported by the warm embrace of our own presence.

Photo by anja. on Unsplash

Why Intuitive Eating Or Mindful Eating May Not Be Your First Step - And You're Not Wrong For Using A Meal Plan

I remember when I started my eating disorder recovery treatment many years ago, and one of the first things my dietician did was get me started on a meal plan.

*

*

*

Together we set goals, identified safe foods, and made room for some challenges that felt within my capacity.

At the time (I was around the age of 17), I was really numb and disconnected from my body.

My nervous system was dysregulated and afraid which made it hard to connect internally and discern my internal cues.

My body was afraid - which I interpreted as me being afraid of my body.

All of this fear made it challenging to hear my authentic fullness and hunger cues or discern what foods I wanted to eat.

It was hard to stay present whilst eating and soon as the meal was done, I tried to find ways to override and distract myself from the rest and digest phase. It was really hard to sit in the quiet stillness and yield into the pause that the rest and digest part of my nervous system was asking me to do.

I also didn’t have a clear sense of self either. The eating disorder was the only thing that I could identify with. Boundaries, likes, dislikes, wants, needs, desires were all a foggy, out-of-reach haze to me. But the eating disorder on the other hand, was something I could grasp onto and orient around.

Not having a clear sense of self is very common for people with eating disorders.

For some people, they were given the message from the outside that their expression and who they are is wrong in some way, and so they learnt to shapeshift into a more palatable version, disconnecting further from their authentic self.

People pleasing and fawning are common tactics amongst people who struggle with disordered eating.

Others may be energetically sensitive, where distinguishing between what is mine and what isn’t mine is foggy. For these people, boundaries may not be easy to enforce, and information from the outside world can be interpreted internally as one’s own.

The eating disorder can provide someone with a sense of having edges through the food and body rigid rules. Identifying with the eating disorder (which is external) can give someone a sense of self when internally the scaffolding of self is shaky.

Looking back, I can see that if I tried to follow intuitive eating, I would have been lost at sea.

During those first few years, I literally needed a meal plan - something visual, something I could hold in my hand, something I could write down, a piece of paper with edges - to begin to connect with my body’s cues.

I could measure out my food which connected me with my visual sense, that helped me integrate my sensory system.

If someone had told me to stop planning my meals from the beginning and try intuitive eating or mindful eating, I would have been completely dysregulated.

For many years, the concept of mindful eating went totally over my head.

“Mindful eating” brought up the image of someone sitting very quietly, chewing very slowly, and being aware of each and every moment of preparing, plating, cutting up food and swallowing food. No thoughts. Totally calm.

As someone who has a history of eating disorders and who supports others on their recovery journeys, I find this concept of mindful eating too idealized.

Eating is a complex and intimate process.

We are taking something outside of us (aka food) and bringing into our own bodies. The steps that the digestive system undertakes to metabolize, assimilate and digest food is complex, and sometimes, we need to nourish the body in other ways so that it is regulated enough to begin to be nourished by food.

Oten in traditional treatment, the focus is nourishing the person with food (either by introducing more food, a meal plan, and/or more variety). But sometimes the body is not regulated enough to meet the complexity of eating.

So instead of mindful eating, I share with my clients (and with myself), the idea of "regulated eating".

Regulated eating is doing whatever is needed to feel a sense of enough safety in order to take in and digest food. 

When the nervous system feels enough safety, we have entered into the parasympathetic portion of our nervous system which is the most effective state for our digestive system to be in to carry out the necessary digestive processes.

If you notice that you are white knuckling through a meal that on the outside looks like a nice and neat version of mindful eating, but inside your panicking, then your nervous system simply isn’t going to feel safe and this impact digestive functioning and the ability to eventually eat intuitively.

For some people, sitting in silence brings up discomfort. Listening to music or a podcast softens the edges. 

For others, eating alone brings up anxiety or uneasiness, and having a conversation with a loved one whilst eating is a healthy distraction. 

Some people, when told to eat slower, feel panic and fear and so rather than slowing down, they need to move, bounce, walk, roll, squish, tap or squeeze something whilst eating to feel regulated.

Sometimes folks need specific kinds of lighting, smells or sounds to be present or tuned off whilst eating to feel grounded and present.

For others, having a meal plan is way more easeful for the nervous system and helps the connect to their bodies in a more direct way.

A large part of my eating disorder included tracking and monitoring, and so my recovery plan needed to meet me where I was at, and meal planning in service to my recovery was just that.

Over time I slowly and naturally transitioned off meal plans as I became more confident in hearing my body’s authentic cues and trusting them to be mine. I began to establish a sense of self and started to fear my body less - and this process of connecting to myself from the inside out had to be done through an external resource first.

I’m grateful that I had this experience where the meal planning wasn’t shamed and as my capacity increased, there was support in slowly letting it melt.

For those of you who are navigating eating disorder recovery and are using a meal plan, you’re not wrong or broken.

There can be many reasons as to why meal plans can be helpful, especially if there’s sensory processing issues or sensitivity, a history of attachment wounding, and/or a nervous system that is in defense or protection.

For people to intuitively eat, the first step is to “connect with your fullness and hunger cues”, and if you fear connecting to your body or haven’t establish clear interoceptive awareness, intuitive is almost impossible.

Being able to eat intuitively is something that must be worked towards over time.

We often need to explore other ways to connect to and nourish the body, through the senses (which include our five senses (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell), but also our near senses which include the interoception, proprioception and vestibular systems), so that the body can be resourced and feels safe enough to take in food.

When resourced enough in these other ways, the body becomes regulated enough to engage in the complex process of eating and can then become a resource and ally for the healing process. This is where our intuition then becomes available as a guide for the journey.

Depending on what you envision for your recovery, intuitive eating may not be the first goal you set. Maybe your goal is finding a sense of regulation when you eat, and that could be supported through meal plans.

Getting clear on your current capacity along with the visions and dreams you have for your healing, is uniquely yours.

How walk your journey is also yours and is an opportunity to embody your authenticity.

Photo by Chad Stembridge on Unsplash

Keeping Our Heads Above Water During Turbulent Times of Change in Eating Disorder Recovery

I hope that you’re finding moments of pause and pockets of grounded ease as you navigate these times.

It’s no question that we are in a turbulent chapter in the world right now.

We may be facing many kinds of feelings and questions that can feel destabilizing or dysregulating. It’s challenging (if not impossible) for our mind-body to hold all this complex, ever-evolving information in one go.

I’m aware that many of you here reading this are extra sensitive souls and you may be feeling overwhelming energies, like grief, anger, confusion, or despair.

Many of us who have a history of disordered eating or eating disorders learnt from a young age to hide or edit our feelings and found out along the way that using food or focusing on the body in certain ways kept the depth of our emotions out of sight.

Perhaps we didn’t learn or get to practice how to be with big emotions. It is possible that growing up we heard the narrative from people around us say things like, “don’t make a mountain out of a molehill” or “there’s no use crying over spilt milk”.

If our emotional expressions and experiences were misunderstood, ignored, or shamed, we end up finding ways to cut off from our authentic truth in order to meet the acceptable standards created by others.

Disconnecting from our emotions simply feels safer.

I believe that disconnecting from our emotions from a young age was a survival response when we were in an environment that did not support the rich fullness of our expression.

I also believe that many people with eating disorders are incredibly sensitive, intuitive, and deep feelers. And underneath the eating disorder behaviours is a colourful tapestry of feelings, sensations, and energy.

This means that the pathway of recovery is one of reclaiming our gift of sensitivity and cultivating that into empathy and attunement that can be shared with others.

The ability to feel is a superpower and when we can fully embrace it as such, it is healing force not just for ourselves but for the hearts of those around us.

---

Eating disorder recovery is the process of:

Learning to trust our inner experience and internal voice.

Validating our feelings as important and worthy.

Befriending our own feelings, and slowly surrendering into the depth of them.

Opening up to the body and practicing how to track and be with raw sensation.

Cultivating compassionate awareness as we allow more space in the body to receive the truth of our experience.

It’s possible that at this time when there are highly charged feelings swirling around on a collective level, we may automatically disconnect from our feelings.

When we find ourselves in the choppy, turbulent waters of disruption and uncertainty, we inevitably reach for the things that we know have worked in the past.

As such, you may notice that the eating disorder voice seems louder. If this is the case for you (at it might not be), remember that we are collectively and individually experiencing big and heavy waves of feelings. It makes sense that when things get extra intense, the eating disorder ramps up too.

However, if we can pay attention to that, we have a choice as to how we want to navigate these turbulent times.

My hope is that you find your way to keep your head above water by perhaps finding a log to hold onto, or a hand to reach out to as way to process in coherent and meaningful ways.

Whatever you’re experiencing right now and however you’re navigating these stormy seas, I see you.

And I trust your body’s ability to digest what you’re experiencing at a pace that feels good for you.

Finding moments of pause, feeling the ground underneath us, inviting space into the body via breath, movement, sound, or being in nature, and co-regulating with loved ones are ways we can support ourselves and our nervous systems to be with whatever we may be feeling in sincere and honest ways.

Rather than editing our feelings or reducing our experience to “it’s not that big of a deal”, we can directly connect with the body through raw sensation and tuning our embodied awareness from the inside-out as a way to hear, witness, and honour how the body is making sense of things, what it needs to feel safe, what it requires to reestablish a sense of regulation, and what it is asking from us to feel nourished and replenished.

The small actions that we take to fill up our cups amidst the bigness of these times accumulate, and significantly ripple out into the world as we build the capacity to show up to ourselves.

Thank you for the courageous and committed work that you do in the quiet temple of your heart.

This work, which is an ongoing practice, is incredibly meaningful not just for our own well-being but for those around us and for the generations to come.

May how we choose to show up in these times, connected to our bodies, and the deep and beautiful feelings that run through them, give permission to others to live whole-heartedly embodied.

Photo by Erik Dungan on Unsplash

Four Reasons To Work With A Psychedelic Guide For People In Eating Disorder Recovery

There’s something to be said for having a guide, trip sitter or therapist to hold a space safe as one navigates different realms of consciousness and embodiment. For folks navigating disordered eating or eating disorders, having someone directly support the psychedelic journey can form part of the healing process.

*

*

*

The presence of a supporter role is added resource that can allow for a deepening of healing that might not have been possible if they weren’t there.

Of course, there are many ways to navigate a psychedelic journey, and I’m all for each one of us in finding our way in these spaces in ways that work for us and meet us where we’re at. Some people enjoy group settings for psychedelic journeys, some prefer 1:1, whilst others like to journey alone. However, it is certainly safer to have someone nearby, either in the room or in the same house as you, should you need help, guidance or TLC when those challenging moments arise in the psychedelic journey.

If you are new to exploring altered states under psychedelics, it is usually advised to have either have a guide, therapist, trip sitter/friend/loved one to be a sturdy anchor as you navigate the waves that psychedelics aim to teach us how to surf. Stay safe and within your capacity, do your research, and go slowly and enjoy the process of being supported, witnessed and celebrated through that.

Here are four ways in which a guide can support your psychedelic journey within the context of recovering from an eating disorder:

1. Practicing Vulnerability

For people with eating disorders there is often a fear of being close or vulnerable with another person.

The heart is guarded and the nervous system is in a state of Protection with the support of the plant medicine, the brain's fear response lowers and the patterns of defense soften, allowing for increased connection.

When this is consciously tracked and worked with, this can leave a somatic imprint that can shift the ways in which one relates and connects with oneself others and the world.

2. Establishing Co-Regulation

Co-regulation is when someone “borrows” the nervous system of another for people with eating disorders, there has often been a history of developmental trauma, which means that one received co-regulation that was likely missattuned. This may have looked like having one’s emotional experience unacknowledged, one’s biological impulses ignored, or growing up in an environment that didn’t feel safe enough for that young person to emit and emote their authentic expression.

Working with a trauma informed guide in a psychedelic or plant medicine journey can be a powerful embodied experience of receiving attuned co-regulation that is validating, understanding and accepting of one's experience. When one receives attuned co-regulation, there is an increased sense of embodiment and capacity to listen to trust one’s internal cues. This then has the profound impact on one's ability to self-regulate.

3. Coming Out Of Functional Freeze

Most people navigating eating disorders are in a state of functional freeze, meaning that their nervous system is storing unmetabolized flight and fight energy underneath a layer of shutdown, numbness and freeze.

In the plant medicine journey, it is possible that the freeze melts and the highest sympathetic energies bubble up. Meeting these energies on wanting to fight or flee can be scary. And so having a guide to safely support the titration of meeting these feelings can be highly supportive, allowing those energies to be processed, digested and released out of the body.

4. Asking For Help

It's very common for people with eating disorders to want to do things alone, not ask for help, override, or will try to figure things out without any support, white knuckling through life. In a psychedelic journey, basic things like going to the bathroom or getting a warm blanket can be more challenging.

The pattern might be to not want to be a burden or take up too much space but one can use this more cognitive flexible experience to rewire that pathway where by intentionally practicing to ask the guide for help can be part of the healing process.

Let me know in the comments: How has having a supporter role in medicine spaces helped you deepen into your healing? What did they mirror back or reveal to you that you might not have seen without their presence?

Photo by Rosie Sun on Unsplash

Redefining Eating Disorder Recovery With The Support of Psychedelics

As someone who has navigated the depths of an eating disorder, I have had a tendency to become rigid.

Predictability, certainty and wanting to know can easily become the prison from which I live.

I often need to consciously choose to break down these hardened walls to keep practicing how to move with the inevitable flows of life with trust and surrender.

Over the years I have had to find ways to shake up my inner snow globe to disrupt any rigidity that may have hardened in my body, heart and mind.

Through psychedelics and plant medicine journeys, traveling around the world, intuitive dance practices, and listening to the always-in-motion movements of my body, I’ve been curious about exploring ways to shake up my well-trodden neural pathways, widen my perspectives, and let go of the familiar shore.

This is what eating disorder recovery is about.

Eating disorder recovery is a gradual letting go of what provides a sense of certainty and ground and learning how to navigate the inherent groundlessness of life.

---

For people with disordered eating or eating disorders, there is usually a history of trauma which means an overwhelming, uncontrollable experience occurred where there wasn’t enough support or containment to make sense of such a big event. This results in a scared and dysregulated nervous system, where the body is holding and suppressing big, undigested emotions from the scary event.

These stored survival energies accumulate and become toxic to the body. This is the point when we see chronic illness, depression, anxiety, addiction, and eating disorders develop.

The body starts to be a scary place to inhabit, filled with big emotions. Living with these emotions takes a lot of energy, and so we inevitably find ways to avoid meeting these emotions as a way to keep living.

By implementing eating disorder-related behaviours, we are trying to continue living life in ways that feel manageable by cutting off from the body through living from the neck up, restricting, calorie counting, dieting, weighing oneself, body checking, bingeing, or purging etc.

However, the more we cut off from the body, the more we continue looping in dysregulation and the deeper the rigid grooves go.

As such, eating disorder recovery is a combination of working through these stuck trauma energies by connecting directly with the body, and building of sustainable and healthy resources that can help us move through the moments where we feel like we are being pummeled by the waves.

Through all of this, it is the body, as our ultimate resource, that provides ground for us we can stand on as the waves crash against the shore.

The body’s innate intelligence humbly resides in the here-now and its signals and cues are what provides us with a sense of self and guides our actions.

The clearer we can hear and trust our body, the easier it becomes to flow down the middle of the river that is life, without being thrown around by the waves.

---

The healing potentials of plant medicines for eating disorders lies in their capacity to support this process of repatterning how we relate to our bodies in the present moment, and how we inhabit the ever-changing moments of life.

Psychedelics and plant medicine Bring An expansion of our awareness, acceptance that things are always changing realignment of what we truly care about and value, and a deepening into our unique embodiment.

When we combine psychedelic preparation support that focuses on connecting to the body, learning about the wiring of our own nervous system, establishing grounding resources and tools, and dedicating time to lean into an inspired intention, we can step into the journey space equipped and ready to face the inevitable: the great unknown, the Great Mystery, the void, raw life force energy, Source itself.

The better prepared and well-practiced we are before the journey begins, the easier it is to ride the inevitable waves of change and emotions (energies in motion) that occur when we embark on a journey with plant medicine.

The mysterious beauty of plant medicines is that they help us move from a state of narrow focus and rigid thinking to a wider and more flexible way of thinking, leading to an expansion of our awareness.

We can see and think bigger, enable to gain fresh perspective and insights.

With this wider lens, we are reminded of the fundamental nature of life: everything is always in motion and always changing.

Seeing these ebbs and flows helps us be more at ease with our emotional landscape and gives the eating disorder part that wants predictability soften.

As things soften and the layers of hardness fall away, we meet the more vulnerable parts of ourselves - we reconnect with our heart space. By residing in our hearts, we remember what our soul - not the eating disorder - truly cares about and value.

By aligning with these deeper values, we open up to living our authentic expression, following internal cues rather than marching to external rules dictated by societal conditioning.

As this begins take root, we start to feel more at home in our own skin. We deepen into our embodiment.

How we feel on the inside matches congruently with how we express ourselves to the outside. Relating to ourselves from the inside out feels innately nourishing and energizing.

We discover it’s possible to trust the body and for the body to trust us.

From this place of trust, we can surrender and let go, releasing expectations and assumptions. From this open state, we experience and discover so much more.

---

Indeed, eating disorder recovery is a journey of discovery. We never end up in the same place from when we began this work.

The eating disorder recovery journey is more than recovery. It is a journey of discovery. This makes it a highly transformative path to walk.

The word “recover” comes from the Latin word “recuperare” which means “a return to health after illness, injury or misfortune.” It has links to “getting back or regaining a normal state of mind, health or strength.”

The idea that an eating disorder is a “disorder” is inherently pathologizing. It indicates that someone is abnormal or sick. From my perspective, “eating disorders” are intelligent strategies that attempt to bring a sense of regulation to a nervous system that is deeply afraid and in a state of protection. For many, this strategy is the only one they have access to or know.

Let us then remember that the language we use carries a frequency. And the current language that we use to describe eating disorders is what keeps us stuck and put the blame on the individual rather than looking at the deeper layers of illness which lie in the foundations of our societal constructs and frames.

And psychedelics are here in a big way to expand our understanding of what eating disorders are, the language we use to describe things, and they offer tools on how to think and feel more creatively.

And let’s be honest, when we walk the eating disorder recovery path, we never truly return to “normal”, nor do we come back to the place where we began.

We don’t recover.

We transform.

---

When we expand our definitions of eating disorders, what else is possible? And plant medicines and psychedelics are helping us widen our frames of embodied cognition to envision a new understanding of disordered eating and recovery realities.

Expanding our definition of what an eating disorder is allows us to listen to those who navigating their relationship with food and body with more curiosity and open presence.

Redefining an eating disorder and choosing a different word to describe it changes how we look at it. It shifts how we engage with people who are navigating disordered eating - and impacts how we choose to treat it.

This is needed more than ever as we see more and more people struggling with being at home their own skin - particularly post-Covid - where our collective sense of belonging is in question, whilst the familiar cycles of our Earth home shift.

With the highest prevalence of death than any other mental health issue, traditional treatment as we currently know it as is no longer enough. This points to a deep and urgent need for an expansion of how we understand eating disorders, how we engage with them, and how we relate to folks who are navigating disordered eating.

This is why we are seeing more people curious about the potentials of psychedelics to support the healing of eating disorders.

Plant medicine and psychedelics shift the focus from behavioural change by going to the deepest roots from which the food and body behaviours developed.

Plant medicine are powerful allies in helping us shift our perspective and widen our lenses, illuminating our perceptions, beliefs and assumptions. Plant medicines give us an opportunity to clarify how we choose to relate to eating disorders by going beyond the narrow definitions amd limited symptomology, expanding our perception.

Plant medicine gives us greater cognitive flexibility, stretching our beliefs, and shifting our perspective so we rediscover our personal body story and envision our unique pathway of healing.

Plant medicines shift us out of the narrow and tight focus that the eating disorder holds, softens the rigid reality from the residue of trauma, regulates the nervous system so we can move out of a survival somatic organization.

When our soma shifts from survival to inner safety and embodied alignment, we naturally expand our creative potential that leads us to see, believe and embody a life where the eating disorder no longer needs to exist. This is where transformation occurs.

How might psychedelics expand our understanding of eating disorders and treatment by opening up our inner windows of perceptions?

If eating disorders may not only be about coping or control, what else might they be trying to communicate, resolve, protect or balance?

How might reframing and expanding our understanding of eating disorders change our self-imposed beliefs and as such, expand our very reality?

In what ways have you experienced plant medicine support you in your healing journey? Have they supported you in shifting the focus and widening the vantage point? If yes, how so?

How can psychedelics co-create a new way forward, helping us uncover and discover how our soul wants to be nourished?

---

We expand into the unknown and discover places within ourselves that we could have imagined at the start of the recovery journey.

We grow and transform beyond, evolving into more of our embodied alignment. This is the alignment of the body-mind, where our beliefs and values are congruent with how we show up and interact with the world around us.

The process of discovery requires a lot of curiosity and openness, and kind-hearted support to let go of the old (enter plant medicines to guide this process).

Along the way, we will certainly recover the parts of ourselves that have been cast away for years (and sometimes generations), but through discovering new ways of being with and relating to our body, sensations and feelings in sustainable and healthy ways, we integrate these fragmented parts back to wholeness.

These new ways of relating to ourselves (influenced also by our language and frames of reference) are grounded in compassion, where we have the capacity to let go of the old and step into the unknown, allowing for embodied self-discovery to lay a fertile soil of transformation to blossom.

“Eating disorder recovery” is one of self-discovery where we embark on a journey aligning with our knowing of who we truly are and courageously embodying that deep remembrance.

And when the actual psychedelic journey ends, we tend to watering these seeds in the integration process, continuing to nurture our inner garden and tending to the path of our transformation.

Photo by S. Widua on Unsplash

The Four Steps: How Psychedelics Help Eating Disorder Recovery

The healing potentials of plant medicines for eating disorders lies in their capacity to support the expansion of our awareness…

…Acceptance that things are always changing, the realignment of what we truly care about and value, and a deepening into our unique embodiment.

*

*

*

When we combine preparation support that focuses on connecting to the body, learning about the wiring of our own nervous system, establishing grounding resources and tools, and dedicating time to lean into an inspired intention, we can step into the journey space equipped and ready.

The better prepared and well-practiced we are before the journey begins, the easier it is to ride the inevitable waves of change and emotions (energies in motion) that occur when we embark on a journey with plant medicine or psychedelics.

---

I have been navigating my own eating disorder recovery journey for over 16 years and serendipitously was introduced to plant medicines a few years into my recovery (after receiving quite traditional eating disorder recovery treatment).

At the time, I didn’t know what to expect from these journeys and didn't know how these medicines could support my eating disorder recovery.

In fact, my intention for my very first psychedelic journey was to not look at my eating disorder. Fun fact: I ended up doing some quite deep recovery work but without realizing the nature of the work I had done years later!

However, over time I began to get a sense of the healing potentials of plant medicine - and to this day, I am still learning the about the diverse, magical and mysterious range of potentials.

Some of the important lessons I have learnt from psychedelic journey work include:

• Pausing and softening

• Trying on a new perspective

• Regulating my nervous system

• Acceptance and self-compassion

• Exploring my body as a resource

• Riding the waves of emotion and coming out the other side

These fundamental teachings have helped immensely in navigating the rigid tendrils of the eating disorder.

As many of you know, disordered eating is so much more than food, and as such the skills and resources (as mentioned above) that we add to support our path often needs to speak to the deeper layers that the body is communicating.

I have found sacred plant medicine allies to help me see these deeper, sometimes hidden, layers (individual, generational and collective) that need holding, tending and nourishment; with the greatest form of nourishment being love.

The great healing potential of psychedelics for supporting the healing of eating disorder or disordered eating comes in four key steps:

1. Expansion of awareness

2. Acceptance of change

3. Realignment of values

4. Deepening into embodiment

The mysterious beauty of plant medicines is that they help us move from a state of narrow focus and rigid thinking to a wider and more flexible way of thinking, leading to an expansion of our awareness.

We can see and think bigger, enable to gain fresh perspective and insights.

With this wider lens, we are reminded of the fundamental nature of life: everything is always in motion and always changing. We find acceptance to be with the change.

Seeing these ebbs and flows helps us be more at ease with our emotional landscape and gives the eating disorder part that wants predictability soften.

As things soften and the layers of hardness fall away, we meet the more vulnerable parts of ourselves - we reconnect with our heart space.

By residing in our hearts, we remember what our soul - not the eating disorder part - truly cares about and value. By aligning with our deeper values, we open up to living our authentic expression, following internal cues rather than marching to external rules.

As this begins take root, we start to feel more at home in our own skin. We deepen into our embodiment. Embodiment is where consciousness and matter intersect. In this case, our consciousness has a soft and receptive place (aka the body) to reside in.

How we feel on the inside matches congruently with how we express ourselves to the outside. Relating to ourselves from the inside out feels nourishing and energizing.

We discover it’s possible to trust the body and tor the body to trust us.

As the journey ends, we water these seeds as part of the integration process, continuing to pave the path of our ever-evolving transformation.

Photo by Samuel Isaac on Unsplash

Smiling Is The Key For Eating Disorder Recovery

This is a picture of Rumi and I in Mexico City sharing a moment of joy :) This is his face as he gets increasingly excited! ^^

I wanted to include this picture as I am currently in a portal of expansion...

I am remembering how to expand my mouth into a smile. Yes, I’m relearning how to smile.

Let me expand ;)

From a young age, I learnt how to hide my emotions by showing very little expression on my face. It became a personal superpower.

Few people could clearly read me or know how their words or actions affected me. Armed with a blank stare, my vulnerabilities could be hidden out of sight. As I got older, some people found my “mysteriousness” alluring, until they got tired of dancing around my walls of protection.

These protective walls showed up in my body as a clamped jaw, tight lips, and a face wiped of expression.

The walls showed up as disordered food behaviours; food was no longer allowed to give me pleasure or satisfaction. And exercise had to be punishing rather than joyful or fun.

There wasn’t much room for smiling (which my eating disorder was pleased about).

Sharing a smile was something that felt dangerous. This was because sharing a smile meant that I was expanding.

Feeling a sincere smile spread across my face, I felt my face grow and expand. I felt energy rising, my heartrate increasing, my spine lengthening, and my inner fire starting to flicker.

In that moment, a knee-jerk reaction would happen.

I was unconsciously interpreting this experience as my nervous system getting ready to take action: to fight or flee. You see, there are similar mechanisms that occur in the body when the nervous system starts to increase its energy to engage in conflict or to jump with joy.

This is our sympathetic nervous system beginning to rev its engine. This part of our nervous system is needed so that we can get up in the morning, complete tasks, play with others, engage in physical activities, have sex, speak in public, debate, and fight off or run away from threat.

When we can’t discern between energy rising to protect and energy rising to connect, we will most likely not trust this energy and shut it away.

As this smile would emerge, I feared I would keep expanding and expanding, taking up space, becoming too big. And in the fear of being seen (aka in the line of fire), I would shut down the smile. And immediately, whatever was starting to warm and rise up would numbly flatten and mute.

Whenever there was a sense of something expanding, of something changing, of something evolving, of something old being disrupted, my eating disorder and other parts of me would find ways to cling onto the shores of the known, resisting, and restricting away from life, keeping me small and shut away.

Have you felt how much energy it takes to stifle a smile (or laughter)?

Resisting and restricting a smile takes an enormous amount of energy from the body.

Denying the body to experience the expansive frequencies of joy (aka healing, growth, change, evolution, and transformation) blocks flow to easefully move through the body.

This process of shutting down energetically locks us off from parts of ourselves, and over time can establish a baseline of physical pain and emotional emptiness that impacts beliefs, relationships, and how we interact with the world.

For people navigating an eating disorder or disordered eating, there is usually an inner conflict in expressing oneself, particularly allowing feelings of joy, pleasure, satisfaction, and love.

Additionally, folks with disordered eating (and a history of some kind of trauma) know the feelings of discomfort and emotional flatness all too well and know how to tolerate them too.

As such, learning that it’s safe to move away from the discomfort that one has known or has become used to - and towards the smiles and joy - is where the work lies.

Trying on a new way of being can bring up many feels! It may be hard to trust that there’s safety in the unknown.

This fear of stepping into the unknown can keep people looping in discomfort even if it’s uncomfortable.

But why do we stay in the discomfort even if sucks?

For some, discomfort may be the exact description of one’s upbringing as a child. Being uncomfortable may be the only thing one has ever known.

Expressing one’s emotions, creativity, spontaneous joy or boundless love may have been misunderstood, not attuned to, or even shamed from a young age. As such, disconnecting from these colourful feelings may have been the only way to survive.

Feelinh ok and safe in expansive emotions can be scary because there may be a fear that the goodness of the moment will be taken away, and/or discomfort is something one has come to know and expect.

The belief is that “If I stick with this discomfort, then at least I know what will happen and I won’t be hurt. If I allow myself to feel good, I will be let down and it’ll hurt even more.”

---

The ways in which we relate to our smiles and expansive feelings show up on our plate and with our bodies. The rules that we have learnt from a young age around how digest our emotions mirror back how we digest food.

Disordered eating behaviours are the body’s way of communicating to us about its internal state.

An eating disorder is the body’s way of letting us know that something is out of balance, and that there’s something isn’t being fully felt or expressed. An eating disorder is pointing us towards change.

An eating disorder is the body telling us that how things are right now need to shift.

Eating disorders indicate that there are undigested feelings that have been stuck inside for a long time that want to be processed and released.

When we meet and digest these feelings, the body can let them go, opening up space for something more aligned to form and shifts the nervous system from existing in the past to embodying the present.

Letting go of the familiar old feelings and the frozen, blank expressions requires great courage, trust, and support as we step off the shores of the known into the expansive - and oftentimes mysterious - unknown.

And in this moment where we have gathered our courage and commitment to curious exploration, we practice our smiles and slowly and safely open up to more joy.

---

It is here, where I would like end with a personal story.

I was in a plant medicine ceremony, and I could feel the conflict between sitting with the familiar blank face and the desire to lean into a smile.

I felt some resistance but remembered that all I needed was one small step. And so, I very subtly allowed a tiny inner smile to develop. If you were looking at me from the outside, you probably wouldn’t have even noticed my smile emerging. But I could feel it and that was all that mattered.

I played with this for some time, feeling how this inner smile affected my cheeks and my eyes, as well as my throat, chest, and belly. I slowly let it ripple and radiate and allowed my smile respond moments in the ceremony where something funny or beautiful occurred.

This practice of the allowing my inner smile helped me stayed socially connected to the group, and in a state of gratitude, openness, and self-compassion. It kept me in flow.

It helped me face feelings of homesickness and grief with resiliency.

My inner smile supported me staying present, adaptable and fluid in the face of every ever-changing moment.

And so, I invite you to join me on this embodied mission to remember our sacred smiles, to notice when it’s gone (and to question why when it disappears), and to continue cultivating it as an ally and resource as we stretch into the unknowns that ultimately bring the healing that we have been seeking.

Find the small crack and let the light in.

Fan that flicker of a flame.

Let it grow slowly.

Eating Disorder Recovery Is A Shift From Protection to Connection

Eating disorders indicate that the body has been recruited to protect rather than connect.

*

*

*

Eating disorders are strategies of survival (they are not dysfunctional or disordered). They represent a body that is in a state of fear and protection.

An eating disorder is the body communicating in its own language about its state of embodiment. It is communicating if it’s embodying safety, fear, protection or connection.

Eating disorders also represent what has been passed through generations and societies, and as such, they represent how the bodies of other people around us growing up modeled their relationship of connecting with (reaching out) and protecting from (recoiling) the world.

Why is the eating disorder the body’s way of communicating that it is a state of protection? An eating disorder is the body saying it’s scared. And it’s scared because the body hasn’t been able to connect to something safe.

There is a difference between feeling protected and feeling safe. When you see these two words - protected and safe - what do these two words draw out of you? What might you notice in your body? How do you feel when you are protecting yourself? How do you feel when you know you are safe?

An eating disorder or disordered eating develops not because of the trauma itself but when there is a deficiency of safety To Digest the traumatic experience.

Safety comes from being with a connected other, with someone we can trust and co-regulate with. When we feel safe in the presence of another, the armour can drop, and the defenses can melt. No longer alone in the world, we can finally rest in the stability of other and be held, seen and witnessed in the initiation that a traumatic experience brings. With another resonate other person, we can start to make meaning, expand our understanding of what happened, and have our feelings and experiences validated. Co-regulation provides orientation.

We need the nourishment of connection to feel safe enough to release the stress survival energies that may have been able to be released at the time of the traumatic event. Through this processing, releasing and digesting, we have more capactiy and space to soften the protective layers that the eating disorder had built.

Connection is the nourishment The Soul needs to thrive.

Even if we cognitively don’t remember safe connection, the body remembers in its own way. The body can sense resonant connection and will find ways to orient to it and find it. The term for this in Polyvagal Theory is “neuroception” (aka the nervous system’s automatic way of perceiving what is dangerous and what is safe).

Recognize that place deep within you that inherently knows the sweet taste of connection.

Nurture that flame. Gently feed it. Let it grow.

Indeed, connection with others is a primary form of nourishment for us as mammals.

When we came into the world, the first thing we need and instinctively seek is safe connection with our primary caregivers. We rely on those around us to love us, hold us, see us, listen to us, and feed us.

The quality of how others connected with us growing up established our beliefs and rules around what we deem is acceptable or ok to attach to and connect with as nourishment - whether that nourishment is love or food.

How we show up in our relationships will show up in our relationship with food.

Our relationship with food is a representation of how we have learnt to be in relationship with others.

The ways in which we were brought up, how we watched people around us interact, and the rules we absorbed around what is an acceptable way to relate with the world around us all impact how we connect with food.

The process of taking in food is a complex one; and the process of forming relationships is also complex.

Here are the steps of how we establish relationships and how they mirror our relationship with food:

1. Establish Clarity. First, I need to establish a clear sense of self in relationship to another by noticing where I begin and end by having the space to push into the environment to feel that sense of clear beginning and ending of my somatic container. This helps to clarify my own boundaries, energetic and physical, through interoceptive awareness and this helps me discern what is mine and what is not mine. This clear sense of self helps me hear when I’m hungry or full and what nutrients I might need.

2. Effective Reach. Second, I need to know that’s safe to reach out to whomever I feel connected with, that my needs and desires are supported so that I can effectively reach for what I want. This helps me reach for the food that I want to eat without shame, and that I can prepare and arrange my food in a way that suits my needs.

3. Allowing for Satisfaction. Third, once I have connected with the other person with whom I feel safe and connected with, I can share authentically and vulnerably (aka unprotected). I can pull them into my orbit and let them into my world. This brings a sense of nourishment as I can be open and real, and be met and accepted for who I am. This supports my ability to take in food and be nourished by it, to find pleasure and joy in it, and feel satisfied.

4. Resting and Digesting. Finally, I take time to return to my own energy field where I digest the connective experience, allowing whatever arose to either assimilate into my being or be released if not needed. In this state of integrating, resting and yielding, I return to my inherent belonging and enoughness. This supports the restful parasympathetic process of digesting, where the body takes the time to pause and yield, repair and rejuvenate.

5. It is from this state of stillness, that clarity emerges guiding me towards discerning action of what is mine and what is mine to do. And so continues the cycle.

A huge thank you to Rachel Lewis-Marlow and Paula Scatoloni of the Embodied Recovery Institute who created this map.

It is same movements (push, reach, grasp/pull and yield) that we use to connect with others are the same that we need to take in food.

If we find it hard to reach out to those who we desire to connect with, we may it hard to reach out for the food that we authentically desire to consume, and instead eat foods that an external diet plan instructs.

If we learnt that our deepest vulnerabilities were not welcomed, we may over-exercise or purge after eating to get rid of the feeling of fullness because the sensation of food sitting inside of the body is an intimate feeling, akin to feeling the depths of what we hold inside.

Eating disorder recovery is not just healing our relationship with food but healing how we nourish ourselves with the relationships around us others, and ultimately how we nourish ourselves.

Nourishing ourselves with loving connection is fundamental in how we nourish our bodies with food and vice versa.

Photo by Anderson Rian on Unsplash

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.

*

*

*

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

From Restriction To Receiving: The Pathway Of Eating Disorder Recovery

At the core of any eating disorder is the frequency of restriction. This means recovery is all about learning how to receive.

*

*

*

Whether it’s restriction of food, subtle dieting, an avoidance of a food group on certain days, eating at specific times, exercise focused on weight-loss, or a suppression of emotions, social connection, or boundaries, or one’s truth, restriction and as such, hunger, is at the core of an eating disorders.

A hallmark of eating disorder recovery is learning how to reconnect to hunger cues.

Hunger says: “I need food”. It signals a basic need that all living beings have: the need for nourishment. Hunger is the drive to stay alive.

We recognize hunger through signals of emptiness, rumbling, thoughts about food, and changes in our mood or attention. 

But hunger isn’t so black and white. 

Sometimes we eat because it sounds good, or the occasion calls for it. Sometimes we eat based on our schedule and have to eat even when we’re not hungry because if we wait until afterwards, we’ll be ravenous. Sometimes we eat to soothe ourselves when we feel sad, tired, or some uncomfortable feelings.

Indeed, hunger isn’t just biological.

Diet culture has taught us that our hunger is bad and is the enemy. Wellness culture has taught us to only eat when we receive the biological signals - and to stop immediately when we feel full.

The external rules, stipulated by diet culture, cause us to bypass, override or ignore our bodies, impacting how we trust ourselves, and connect to our desire. 

Connecting to our hunger cues is a reminder that our bodies are alive and want to live and thrive. Connecting to our hunger is a practice of reclaiming and receiving our desires from the inside out. 

Connecting to our hunger cues is a gateway into reconnecting to our deepest wants, needs, yearnings and desires directly through the body.

Hunger can be an opening into exploring our needs and wants - and what rules we have learnt from society that have limited us in our self-exploration of desire. Listening to our hunger in its many forms gives us clues into our ability to receive.

The stomach is the place where we hear and feel our hunger cues and is the place that also receives the nourishment that we give our bodies.

Restoring relationship with our body’s unique way of expressing when it’s hungry or time to eat gives clarity to the beliefs we hold around trusting our hunger - not just our biological food hunger but the trust we hold (or don’t hold) for our soul’s deeper hunger.

This exploration also invites us to explore what we need in order to feel safe enough within ourselves and in our environments to nourish the deep soul layers of hunger.

Oftentimes, the soul nourishment that folks with eating disorders need is attuned relating. Being attuned to is deeply nourishing. It is the medicine and nourishment that the soul needs to receive.

“Attuned relationships give a traumatized nervous system the ability to recalibrate. When we feel safer, we can better digest trauma, integrate pain, and develop post-traumatic learning. And the more attuned relational environments we create, the more we contribute to the self-healing mechanism of the world.” - Thomas Huebl

Since an eating disorder will find ways to isolate and separate from the world and from the body itself, the medicine that is needed is compassionate connection. Recovery cannot be done alone.

the eating disorder is a reflection of the kind of connection and relational attachment one received from attachment figures that include caregivers, family, work, community, cultural, societal, and spiritual frameworks.

These attachment figures teach us in obvious and insidious rules around connection, belonging, love, and self-expression.

These figures offer conditions of attachment; in order to have safety and connection, one must follow the rules set out by the attachment figures.

And so, we may have learnt that our authentic expression wasn’t accepted or allowed because it wasn’t attuned to, understood, or validated.

In order to belong, feel safe and be in relational connection, people may shut off parts of their authentic selves to receive some form of recognition, and to gain the safety and connection necessary for survival.

It is from these places where the disordered eating behaviours manifest and represent through food the kind of connection rules one had to abide by.

the path of eating disorder recovery is learning to receive (aka metabolize) relational attunement that is in response to our authentic selves.

Receiving this kind of nourishment is deeply healing on a soul level. This is what the eating disorder wants to truly eat and be filled up with.

What is your body hungry for?

What is your soul hungry for?

Is there anything that stands in the way between you and your hunger?

Can you give yourself unconditional permission to explore your hunger and allow yourself to fully receive it?

Our hunger cues can be a gateway to listen to the deep layers of what the body wants to receive, fully.

Photo by Santiago Lacarta 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.”

*

*

*

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

Have You Expressed Compassion To Your Eating Disorder Today?

Self-compassion is one of the greatest tools we can use in eating disorder recovery. Utilizing it with sincerity takes practice and patience, but once integrated into our toolbelt, it becomes one of our most potent and adaptable tools.

*

*

*

Perceiving compassion as a tool means that it becomes something we can pick up, practice with, and become better at utilizing the more we work with it.

For people navigating an eating disorder or disordered eating, the food and body strategies (such as restricting, calorie counting, binge eating, body checking etc) have been the #1 tools in their toolbox to cope through challenging moments in life.

This is why I believe that many traditional treatments for eating disorders don’t work in the long-run. Often the focus is on getting someone to stop the eating disorder behaviour (which is restrictive by nature, and often brings up feelings of shame and fear).

When the main tool in the toolbox gets taken away, there is a pendulum swing that happens whereby the person will do whatever they can to hold onto the eating disorder even tighter.

When treatment is restrictive (which is the same frequency of the eating disorder itself) and does not add, establish, and integrate uniquely resonant and regulatory skills that address directly what need the eating disorder is trying to manage or resolve, the cycle of restriction perpetuates.

This means that rather than turning away from the eating disorder and taking it away from an individual, we need to meet it and turn towards it. We need to give the eating disorder full space to communicate.

Indeed, eating disorders are the body’s attempt at communicating to us about how someone is experiencing and digesting life.

Rather than telling someone that they can no longer engage in the food behaviours, which can be shaming and pathologizing (and silences the body!), we can get compassionately curious about the behaviours instead, and ask what the body trying to communicate about how safe or unsafe the body feels, the level of regulation or dysregulation in the nervous system, and what the needs are that the body is trying to meet in the ways that it knows how.

As such, engaging with the disordered eating from this level requires a deep and sensitive listening to the body – and how the body is communicating.

And the body communicates in a different way to the mind which communicates through talking, cognitive meaning making or thought, but through sensation, 5 sense perception, and movement.

When we recongise that the eating disorder is the body’s way of communicating its needs, the organization of its attachment and defense system, and what it is yearning for to thrive, we need to speak directly to the body – and find ways to nourish and resource the body itself.

By resourcing the body, it can ultimately become an ally and a resource in the recovery process.

And this is the goal – for the body itself to a resource in the recovery process.

The body is not something to be feared or an enemy.

When listened to and collaborated with, trust develops between you and your body, opening the door for its wisdom to be shared.

And ultimately, you then become your own guide for the recovery journey ahead.

This is an approach of adding in compassion as a way to get to know the eating disorder part of ourselves, which is often a younger, scared part of ourselves. Compassion to this younger part of ourselves is the best medicine we can offer ourselves.

With compassion, safety develops, and this allows the body to begin telling its story and stating its needs, honestly, vulnerably, authentically.

When we realize that the eating disorder is trying to meet an important need rather than cause harm, we can get compassionately curious.

What is the need that is trying to be met underneath the food or body strategies?

When we go underneath, we find that usually these needs are rooted in trying to find a sense of connection, safety, belonging, love, attunement, agency, boundaries, dignity, and regulation. These needs were often not met when we were younger, and this points to the kind of attachment wounding we may be carrying - and as such, provides us with evidence as to why the defensive system is on high alert.

When we recognize what the need is, we can add resourcing tools that meet the deeper needs of the eating disorder. These resourcing tools ideally have sustainability, longevity, and can support our overall well-being in the long-run, rather than restrict our vitality.

When we add these tools and skills, the eating disorder doesn’t have to work so hard or all alone to meet those needs because we have other resources alongside to support ourselves.

Recovery from this compassionate perspective means that we can sit next to the eating disorder, whilst adding - and practicing - new support structures and tools at the same time.

From this place, we can practice what it’s like to be in recovery without the pressure of needing to be “recovered” or no longer engaging in the behaviour.

Over time, these new support structures take root, anchoring into our way and transform how we relate to our bodies, with food, and with life. When these additional resources become part of our embodiment, we can naturally mature of out the eating disorder.

From this perspective of recovery, we can practice what it’s like to rely less on the eating behaviours but without shoving the eating disorder into a corner.

After all, the eating disorder wouldn’t have existed in the first place if something within us hadn’t been shoved to the corner.

As such, compassion is needed, restriction not.

Compassion is not just an attitude but a tool that we can apply to our recovery process. It is a tool that forms the foundation from which how we approach all aspects of the eating disorder recovery process.

When these additional tools support us more and more in meeting these important needs, the eating disorder doesn’t have to do all of the work, and we can naturally grow out of the eating disorder.

It can let go of us.

This approach to recovery is additive and compassionate rather than restrictive.

Photo by Chad Madden 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.

*

*

*

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.

The Work Is In The Rest

Nuqui, Colombia

This ^^ was my backyard for the 10 days. I spent some time with a remote part of the Pacific coastline of Colombia, getting in a much-needed dose of sun, sea salt, and sand.

It was delicious -

My skin soaked up the Vitamin D.

It was beautiful -

Jungles flow into ocean.

It was magical -

A mumma turtle laid her eggs a few steps from our cabaña.

And… it was slow.

And when things get slow, it stirs stuff up in me.

You see, the thing is, I’ve had an issue with slowing down for most of my life.

I learnt early on that to be fast, productive, busy, and achieving was good. To be on the go-go-go gave me a sense of enoughness and worth. To always be doing something meant that I was a valid human.

And the strategies of my eating disorder played very well into that narrative.

Through the disordered eating and body behaviours, I could stay distracted, busy, and on the move, and in that way, the eating disorder essentially helped me feel a sense of worth.

What I learnt from the masculine drum beat that our society marches to was that to be slow basically meant I had lost my edge, had let myself go, was lazy, and not enough. Not keeping up with the pace on this drumbeat felt like I didn’t have a place in society, like I didn’t belong, or was worthy enough to belong.

And feeling all of this would put me into an urgent survival response (which would of course exacerbate the eating disorder!).

---

When I took a step back and saw how I was desperately trying to keep up, deep, deep down, beyond the eating disorder, what I was truly looking for was a sense of worth.

It has taken many years to find my innate value outside of what I do or achieve, produce, or succeed at. It has taken many years to find my inherent worth outside of the eating disorder. It has taken many years to trust that rest is vital and nothing to be ashamed of.

And upon noticing some recent triggers arise whilst on the Colombia coast, it is clear that these themes of rest, worth, and enoughness continue to be my “work”.

I’m ok with that. I know that this path isn’t linear. I am aware that lessons often need to be repeated many times. Rather than shaming or blaming (that would only bring more forcing, pushing, and striving), I try to bring self-compassion, curiosity, and perspective.

With this compassion, curiosity, and perspective…

• I remember that the culture that many of us live in champions burning out in the name of service and success.

• I remember that the culture that many of us live in prioritizes juggling all of the plates all of the time.

• I remember that the culture that many of us live in world disconnected from the rhythmical nature of the Earth.

• I remember that the culture that many of us live in has normalized staying busy as a subconscious attempt to avoid our trauma and these exact systemic issues.

---

I am sure many of you who are on the eating disorder recovery path know that slowing down is a big part of the healing process.

And this is something that psychedelics also shine light on again and again.

Psychedelics remind us that in order to restore trust and connection with the body, we need to make space to listen and attune. This requires a slowing down.

In order to build a relationship with the body outside of the eating disorder rules and die culture expectations, we have to relearn how to relate to the body that doesn’t override, push, or force it. 

And when we slow down, we can start to hear the body’s quiet whispers and desires, as well as emotion or energy that has been become stuck, overlooked, or pushed past.

Psychedelics can help us build up the courage and compassion to slow down enough to hear the body’s score.

Indeed, sometimes eating disorder recovery actually requires us to do less. To let go. When we don’t know what step to take on our recovery path, sometimes surrendering is the best action to take.

Letting go and

surrendering

into rest.

These are things that can’t be ticked off a to-do list.

Rest is a deep biological need for our bodies and the overall functioning of our nervous system. When we enter into a rest state, we shift from a sympathetic (survival) state to a parasympathetic state that governs our rest-and-digest functions.

And when we slow things down, we can attune to the body and its deeper rhythms. These biological rhythms are more closely aligned to the rhythms of the Earth rather than the uniform, patriarchal drum beat that most of society marches to.

---

By aligning with this natural rhythm, gradually more space is created for something bigger than us to fill.

Rest makes room for repair, regeneration and healing.

Rest gives space for something to expand.

Rest offers time for us dream into the next steps of our recovery.

Rest allows for meaningful values and direction to become clearer.

Rest gives space for our innate worthiness and enoughness to emerge.

When we slow down, we give an important signal to our bodies that “I have done enough, there’s enough for me, I’m enough, there’s enough for everyone, and I belong” .

Regardless of what we have done or haven’t done, we are enough because we are here. right. now. This is the medicine of rest.

When we practice and build the capacity to slow down, to rest (and digest), we signal to our system that we are enough, simply because we are here on this Earth.

Rest is something we all deserve regardless of what we have done or haven’t done.

 Here’s to taking the bold step out of diet culture and practicing attuning to our authentic rhythms of our own bodies.

Happy resting and digesting.

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.

*

*

*

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.

---

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?!

---

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

Leaving Behind Your Embodied Legacy

I want to offer my gratitude and respect to each one of you who are walking the eating disorder recovery path. I thank you for doing your individual work that is part of this embodied collective transformation.

*

*

*

Your inner work ripples out, affecting the collective’s understanding of what it means to be a human in a body, giving other people permission to live more fully and embodied.

Indeed, this path of eating disorder recovery is the deepening into our own embodiment.

The deeper we explore our own embodiment, we open up to the ways in which we learnt to inhabit our own body based on what we learnt from the bodies of those around us growing up.

From a very young age, we absorb the world and the people around us. What we see shapes and molds our perceptions of reality - and what gets shaped along the way is our understanding of bodies.

Through picking up our caregiver’s body language, tone of voice, posture, movements, gestures and facial expressions, we inherit somatic legacies that get passed down, non-verbally, through the generations.

These inherited somatic legacies are passed down and impacts our somatic organization and sense of embodiment in the world.

It is when we become present to and question our inherited (and unseen, habitual and automatic) somatic legacies, that we can start to realign with our authentic embodiment - and can dream into our somatic legacies that we want to leave behind for future generations to be inspired by.

We can dream into and envision a world that is free from eating disorders and diet culture. This is the path we can pave right now, influencing our collective trajectory towards a more attuned and trusting relationship with our bodies and with life. This is the embodied legacy that we can leave behind for the generations to come.

If eating disorders did not exist…

What would you think about?

How would you show up in the world?

How and what would you eat?

How would you talk? What would you say?

What would your relationships look like (to your body, and to other bodies)?

What would be allowed? What would you say yes to?

What would you say no to?

What feeling would be felt? What walls would drop? What edges would soften?

What would you focus on or create?

What aspects of our society would cease to exist or transform?

What collective narratives would be rewritten around being a human in a body?

How would self-acceptance, self-compassion and worthiness fit into this new world?

What would you recover, uncover, or discover about yourself?

---

As we begin to dream into the embodied legacy that we wish to leave behind, we have to let go of who we once were and to fully grieve the ending that chapter. We let our tears water the seeds of our becoming, nourishing the tree that will provide shade for future generations.

When we walk the recovery path, we transform.

We go further beyond the place where we were before the eating disorder, often exceeding our expectations of what we thought was possible.

And the disordered eating recovery process is a transformational process both for the individual and for the collective.

Through our own process, we have the opportunity to leave behind an embodied legacy that transforms and shapes the ways in which future generations relate to their bodies, the bodies of those around them, and the body of the Earth.

This transformational process takes time (sometimes it takes many generations) and requires plenty of pauses to rest and digest, going at the pace that feels safe in our nervous systems as we stretch into the unknown territories of our inner landscapes.

We build courage strength, softness and patience so that the growth and healing that takes place can integrate, land fully and take root. Let your seeds anchor deep into the soil so that there are strong foundations from which your tree grows.

As you walk your transformational process, I invite you to reflect:

What are your personal values? What do you deeply care about and what brings you great meaning and fulfillment?

What steps need to be taken in order to align with and embody these values?

In embodying these values, how would you show up in your body in the world?

Imagine how this aligned embodiment could inspire and influence those around you in how they relate to their bodies and each other.

Envision how your authentic embodiment could leave behind a powerful and proud legacy that shapes future generations.

What is the somatic legacy that you will leave behind? This vision is possible when we embody it now.

Photo by Nikoline Arns on Unsplash

Let The Fullness of Life In: Embodied Eating Disorder Recovery and Psychedelics

Eating disorders are representations of how we are able to relate to the fullness of life.

*

*

*

For people who are navigating an eating disorder or disordered eating, there is often great sensitivity to fullness.

The world can feel full.

Emotions bubbling from the inside can feel filling.

Social interactions and human dynamics can feel like a lot.

Sensory information coming from outside can overly full.

Physical sensations from inside the body can feel like a lot.

The stomach filled with food can feel intolerably full.

As a way to manage this fullness, strategies in the form of maladaptive food and body behaviours, can develop as ways to numb this intensity, distract from the overwhelm, and relieve sensitive beings from the ferocity of the present moment.

People with eating disorders or disordered eating may find ways to restrict the body and food to try to manage how much of life comes at them.

For people with eating disorders, these coping strategies may offer temporary relief, but soon, the fullness of life comes pouring back in again.

And for those who are extra sensitive and thinly weaved, where energetic boundaries can be more permeable than most, eating disorders develop as protective armour to restrict what comes in because it feels safer than to be in the fullness of the world.

For some, we may have never received role modeling on how to be with the full spectrum of what it means to be human.

Maybe people around us may have been disconnected, numb, or frozen from their deeper, wider feelings and expressions. For others, parents and primary caregivers around them could have been explosive, violent, or uncontained as soon as things got too much or too full.

As such, because we didn’t receive adequate role modelling on how to be with the fullness of life, we have to find our own way. And this is where eating disorders come in as strategies to try to manage, regulate, balance, control, and protect sensitive folks who feel deeply in this big, wide world.

This means that the process of eating disorder recovery is slowly practicing and allowing more of life in, bit by bit, bite by bite - within the context of safe containers, with the support of trusted, co-regulating others.

Recovery means replacing armour and defensive walls with adaptable, flexible, and resilient energetic boundaries.

Recovery is learning new, sustainable ways to regulate the nervous system. Indeed, we can slowly build our nervous system capacity to let the fullness of life grow within and around us.

This is where the medicine of psychedelics and plant medicines can come in.

For me personally, psychedelics have taught me a great deal on how to regulate my nervous system, whilst being with the fullness of the present moment, connected and embodied. Plant medicine journeys have helped me grow my capacity and resiliency to hold more of life.

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. It can feel incredibly full.

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 overwhelming, damaging, or 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 and onto the other side.

The body is the resource, and we have to resource (aka nourish) the body on many levels so that it can become a sustainable and trusted resource for us on the healing path. The body can ultimately become an ally for our recovery journey (and psychedelic journey - though aren’t they all the same? ;).

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

Psychedelic preparation support that focuses on somatic healing principles and education before a journey ideally supports us in resourcing the body so that it can be the ultimate resource during the journey experience - and beyond.

Indeed, preparation for a psychedelic journey that focuses on supporting and nourishing the nervous system ensures that we can gain deeper insights from the journey itself.

When we have prepared the body and the nervous system leading up to the ceremony, we believe in our capacity to go confidently and safely into the fullness, and that there is agency on how deep we can go.

It is safe to be full.

It is safe to be show up fully.

It is safe to be with our full selves on Earth.

Let us be with the fullness of life.

---

Eating disorder recovery and healing from disordered eating means rewriting the narrative so that it feels safe to be in world, that life can be welcomed in, that it is beautiful to experience feelings deeply and widely, and that our fullness of expression is worthy, deserving, and can be trusted.

This process, when done gradually - with or without plant medicine - builds foundational evidence for our nervous system, for our cells, for our bodies, that we have the ability to be with and hold the fullness of life.

Over time, our world begins to open, and we feel an embodied presence and a fresh, inspired, and connected engagement with life, fully.

Recovery is a beautiful practice.

PS: If you require some preparation support for your journey, download my psychedelic preparation ebook for people in eating disorder recovery.

Photo by Martin Adams 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.

---

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

Why I Don't Call An Eating Disorder An "Eating Disorder"

Through personal explorations and through the support of plant medicine and nervous system work, I have come to understand that an eating disorder is not a disorder.

Having been in eating disorder recovery for 15 years, I haven’t yet found the right language of how to describe what an eating disorder is. For me, it doesn’t feel quite right to call it an eating disorder an “eating disorder”.

The eating disorder is not the disorder. It is someone in the process of trying to solve a problem (made up of behaviours, feelings, thoughts and beliefs).

The “disorder” is actually responding and representing an external environment that is dysregulated and disordered that has resulted in one’s individual nervous system to become dysregulated.

If we want to treat eating disorders, we need to reassess how our societies operate.

We have to look at eating patterns/“disorders” from this systemic vantage point because eating “disorders” are pointing us towards what we’re missing as a society, and what’s out of balance within these larger forces.

What is out of balance is a society that simply does not offer enough safety and acceptance for individual survival stress/trauma to be processed and digested.

When we experience something traumatic and don’t have someone safe around us to help us make sense of the event, stress survival energies of flight, fight, and freeze get trapped in our bodies.

Over time, these survival energies form a toxic soup in our bodies and cause havoc on our biological processes and our mental and emotional functioning. In an attempt to restore some form of internal balance, we may reach for food and body coping strategies. This is what an “eating disorder” is.

The eating disorder is pointing to the imbalances and the unprocessed trauma that is stored in an individual’s system due to the trauma that has been passed down through the collective.

At its core, an eating disorder is an attempt to try to restore balance to these micro and macro imbalances.

---

What we are missing within these larger networks are teachings that guide on how to track our own physiology, to listen to our inner cues, to resource and regulate in healthy ways, and to express emotions.

We are missing moments to slow down, co-regulate, and attune with others because our go-go society pushes us to override our own system, our authentic impulses, and erode our boundaries in order to keep up.

We’re missing trust between others and towards our own bodies because society and diet culture champions physical and emotional hardness, competition, and comparison.

We’re missing moments to rest and reflect and so we lose touch with the intuitive nudges from our bodies, and rely on external rules rather than internal, aligned cues and authentic, biological impulses.

We’re missing connection to the great Earth body because society is more concerned with extraction and consumption than reciprocity. The nourishment that we receive from the Earth is lost. The nourishment that we receive in taking care of the Earth is lost.

This results in a feeling of something is missing. A stomach that can never feel full. A spiritual starvation.

I have discovered that the eating disorder behaviours naturally fade when we learn how to regulate and balance the nervous system.

But -

This doesn’t address the larger systems that are inherently dysregulating, disconnecting, and disempowering, and that instill mistrust, not enoughness, comparison and smallness.

What will it take to create foundations that support a regulated society and the structures that uphold it that invites us into a befriending relationship with food and our bodies?

The eating disorder is not “wrong”. And the person navigating an eating disorder is not wrong either.

Eating disorders have wisdom and they are pointing all of us as a society to where the deepest healing and regeneration are possible.

---

And to also remember that an eating disorder is not only not a disorder, but it is not about the food either.

Eating disorders are the body’s attempt at communicating to us about how someone is experiencing and digesting life.

Rather than telling someone that they can no longer engage in the food behaviours, which can be shaming and pathologizing (and silences the body!), we can get compassionately curious about the behaviours instead, and ask what the body trying to communicate about how safe or unsafe the body feels, the level of regulation or dysregulation in the nervous system, and what the needs are that the body is trying to meet in the ways that it knows how.

As such, engaging with the eating disorder from this level requires a deep and sensitive listening to the body – and how the body is communicating.

And the body communicates in a different way – not talking, meaning-making or thought, but through sensation, 5 sense perception, and movement.

When we recongise that the eating disoder is the body’s way of communicating its needs, the organization of its attachment and defense system, and what it is yearning for to thrive, we need to speak directly to the body – and find ways to nourish and resource the body itself.

By resourcing the body, it can ultimately become an ally and a resource in the recovery process.

And this is the goal – for the body itself to a resource in the recovery process.

The body is not something to be feared or an enemy.

When listened to and collaborated with, trust develops between you and your body, opening the door for its wisdom to be shared.

And ultimately, you then become your own guide for the recovery journey ahead.

Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash