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Embodidelics: A New Perspective on Psychedelics for Eating Disorder Recovery
Have you ever considered the somatic dimension of psychedelics? Let’s explore "Embodidelics," a term I created to shine a light on the body’s role in the psychedelic journey — and its potential to transform the healing process, especially in eating disorder recovery.
What Are Embodidelics?
Embodidelics emphasizes the somatic aspects of psychedelic experiences. While “psychedelics” means "mind manifesting," this term often overlooks the body's role in the healing process. Shout to Dr Ben Malcom who also coined a term with a similar sentiment: “psychosomatodelics”.
The embodied experience in a plant medicine journey includes:
Physical releases: Tears, shaking, sweating, or even vomiting.
Energy in motion: Moving through and processing unmetabolized emotions.
Postural changes: Shifts in the body that reflect inner transformation.
Unlike the mind-centered focus of traditional psychedelic interpretations, "Embodidelics" highlights the profound ways the body participates in the healing journey.
Psychedelics and the Body's Manifestation
The body holds unmetabolized emotions, sensations, and ancestral memories. In an embodidelic journey, these layers are processed, creating space within the body and mind.
How the Body Supports Healing:
Emotion Processing: Emotions (or “energy in motion”) are digested and released, leaving space for inner clarity and alignment.
Mind-Body Synergy: As the body processes stored tension, the mind gains access to deeper insight, values, and perspectives.
Grounded Preparation and Integration: Embodiment practices help expand the body-mind's capacity for resilience, strengthening the results of psychedelic journeys.
Eating Disorder Recovery: A Journey of Nourishing the Soul
When I speak of eating disorder recovery, I often think of it as a return to nourishing the soul through the body.
The Body as a Compass
In recovery, the body becomes a guide, helping us:
Recognize cues that point us toward safety and connection.
Replace reliance on external rules with internal clarity.
Access a deeper sense of alignment and self-trust.
As we strengthen our connection to the body, we also reconnect with the Earth, recognizing that we are not isolated beings but part of an interconnected web of wisdom and life. It is through our embodied experience that we heal and transform.
Your wise body carries ancestral knowledge, memories, and gifts passed down through generations. When you honor this wisdom that resides in the body, recovery becomes not just about healing the self but an embodied reconnecting with a larger sense of belonging.
This deep interconnection can offer a profound sense of orientation — helping you find your path and feel nourished by a life shaped by embodied knowing.
Words Shape Perception
The terms we use influence how we view healing. The words we use reveal what we see and the lenses through which we interpret the world.
While “psychedelics” centers the mind, "Embodidelics" shifts the focus to the body, revealing the importance of somatic preparation and integration in any transformational process.
The body is inherently involved in the psychedelic journey; and as energy in motion (aka emotions) moves, layers drop, space is created, and the mind can then access higher levels of thought, authentically aligned values, clearer perspective and attuned perception.
It's interesting how changing the word from psychedelics to Embodidelics immediately reveals another aspect to the journey, and indicates that part of preparation and integration should also then include embodiment practices to train the body-mind to grow its capacity and resiliency.
What words do you use to describe your psychedelic journey? How do they shape your perception and understanding of the experience and the healing it offers?
Embodidelics invites us to expand our view of psychedelics and recovery, emphasizing the body’s role in healing. Whether you're navigating eating disorder recovery or exploring plant medicine, consider how reconnecting with your body can open new doors to clarity, trust, and soulful nourishment.
What does the term "Embodidelics" spark in you? How does it shift your understanding of healing and transformation?
How Psychedelics Foster Connection and Healing in Eating Disorder Recovery
For those navigating eating disorders, the experience often feels like an endless search to fill a void —a deep hunger for wholeness, belonging, and connection. Psychedelics and plant medicines offer a unique path toward this healing by awakening a sense of interconnectedness with ourselves, others, and the larger web of life.
Maybe you have experienced this in a plant medicine ceremony:
I am part of something greater.
My place in this web of life matters and is needed.
I am made of the same stuff as the Earth; my body is the Earth body.
I am nourished on all levels when I feel in my bones that I am held by the Earth.
In plant medicine ceremonies, many describe a profound remembering:
We are part of something greater.
Our presence in this web of life is vital and meaningful.
Our bodies and the Earth are deeply interconnected.
This reconnection nourishes us on every level — physically, emotionally, and spiritually — offering a sense of being held by something greater than ourselves. This connection is the pathway to healing
How Psychedelics Work in Eating Disorder Recovery
Psychedelics create a hyper-connected brain state known as "entropic," where pathways that are usually separate begin communicating in new and creative ways. This state allows us to access buried emotions, reprocess trauma, and reframe long-held patterns of disconnection.
From a shamanic lens, eating disorders are attempts to heal and communicate unmet needs. Behaviours like restriction, bingeing, or over-exercising often stem from:
A lack of spiritual connection; a hunger for something deeper.
Unresolved trauma, whether personal or ancestral.
A diminished sense of self-love and worth.
Rather than pathologizing these behaviours or reducing them to mere coping mechanisms, psychedelics encourage us to view eating disorder behaviours with compassion and curiosity. They invite us to ask:
What is my body trying to communicate?
What unmet needs is “my” eating disorder attempting to fulfill?
What does my soul need to thrive?
By addressing these questions, plant medicine facilitates a profound shift from shame to understanding, from disconnection to wholeness.
The Holistic Power of Psychedelics
Unlike traditional treatments, psychedelics work on multiple dimensions of an eating disorder, addressing:
Physical: Reconnection with bodily sensations and cues.
Emotional: Processing, digesting, and releasing unresolved emotions.
Mental: Reshaping thought patterns and beliefs about self and body.
Spiritual: Reconnecting with a larger sense of purpose, meaning, and wholeness.
This approach is highly multidimensional, holistic, works on the root level causes, and importantly addresses the spiritual aspect. Plant medicine seem to catalyze one’s connection with nature, or larger spiritual force or intelligence, providing them with unparalleled “spiritual and existential introspection and physical healing” that is beneficial for their eating disorder recovery process (study).
People often describe an increased sense of embodied wholeness after a psychedelic journey. This wholeness arises from clearing energetic blockages, integrating trauma, and reconnecting with the deep truth of being enough, just as we are.
From what I have personally experienced in psychedelic journeys, heard from my clients, and have read in academic articles, specifically “Getting to the Root": Ayahuasca Ceremony Leaders' Perspectives on Eating Disorders” (published in 2023 by Lefrance, et al), people navigating eating disorders are struggling with spiritual disconnection, spiritual starvation, and a hunger of wholeness.
This happens to be the exact teachings that psychedelics and plant medicines offer: a remembering of being interconnected to this great web of life.
Eating disorders are protective strategies of disconnection and so with the support of these medicines, the soul can return to and recover this knowing that we are connected to something greater and meaningful, and that our presence in this interconnected web is vital and needed.
Eating Disorders as Protective Strategies
It’s important to reframe eating disorders not as failures but as intelligent attempts to find safety in the face of unmet needs and incomplete stress responses. Psychedelics help to gently unravel these protective mechanisms by:
Clearing unresolved survival energies like fight, flight, or freeze.
Facilitating spiritual and existential introspection.
Reorganizing relationships — with self, others, and the eating disorder itself.
By nurturing connection, psychedelics catalyze a shift from survival mode to a state of thriving.
The Transformational Journey Toward Connection
Recovery is not about returning to an old version of yourself — it’s about becoming whole. Our bodies inherently know how moving towards healing, integration and wholeness. Given the right conditions, this healing is possible. When we feel whole and connected, we naturally we feel more connected to the world around us. As within so without.
Plant medicine provides a gateway to reconnect with nature, spirit, and your inner truth. This process fosters resilience, emotional regulation, and a sense of purpose that naturally diminishes the pull of disordered eating behaviors.
Through this journey of reconnection, you’ll begin to:
Find new meaning and purpose in your life.
Experience identity shifts that align with your authentic self.
Cultivate lasting behavioural changes rooted in connection and compassion.
At its core, recovery is about unlearning disconnection and relearning love — for yourself, your body, and the life you’re a part of.
Psychedelics remind us of this truth: healing happens in the nourishment of unconditional connection.
This journey takes courage, patience, and support, but it’s a path worth walking. As you reconnect with the wisdom of your heart and the beauty of the world around you, you’ll discover that the healing you seek is already within you.
You are whole. You are enough. And your presence in this web of life is needed.
Embracing the Unknown: Finding Trust and Courage in Eating Disorder Recovery
Liminality — the space between an ending and a new beginning — can feel overwhelming, especially for those navigating eating disorders. The food cycle is a powerful metaphor for this: the end of a meal and the pause before the next is often where discomfort surfaces.
For many, this space feels too expansive, too uncertain. Instead of meeting it, we might overeat to prolong the moment, purge or exercise to jump over it, or avoid finishing or starting meals altogether. These behaviours, while protective, keep us from fully experiencing the rest, digestion, and clarity this space offers.
These liminal moments go beyond food; it’s a fertile ground for reconnecting with our inherent enoughness. In this pause, we’re reminded that our worth isn’t tied to what we’ve done, achieved, or controlled — it simply exists because we are.
The Fear of Rest and Stillness
At the core of many disordered eating patterns lies a mistrust of rest, pausing, and the unknown. Endings — whether of a meal, a task, or a chapter in life — can bring up discomfort, fear, or anxiety.
This discomfort mirrors how we approach food:
Do you struggle to fully finish a meal?
Does hunger feel overwhelming, making it hard to start eating?
Do you turn to behaviours like overeating, purging, or overexercising to avoid the stillness between meals?
These patterns highlight our relationship with endings, surrender, and the idea of simply being and belonging. They invite us to explore our beliefs about rest and non-doing. What do you notice within yourself when you ask the question, “Do I trust myself in the unknown?”
Trusting the Wilderness Within
Reconnecting with our inner truth is often messy, wild, and deeply courageous. For years, I struggled with self-doubt, often seeking external rules and validation instead of trusting my own inner guidance.
The process of listening to and trusting the quiet whispers of my inner voice has been one of profound transformation. Stripping away masks, people-pleasing, and the need to shape-shift left me raw, vulnerable, and fully present with myself.
This journey isn’t about perfection; it’s about presence. It’s about meeting the full spectrum of your emotions — pain, joy, anxiety, grief, love — and letting them belong. When we allow ourselves to feel, pause, and breathe through it all, we reconnect with the wisdom of our hearts.
Connecting to the truth of who we are is a journey into the wild, vast, oceanic human experience. So often we want to disassociate from this wild ocean that is the body because of what it contains, hold and longs for. Often, we don’t trust what we see and quickly brush over it, suppress it or change it. We don’t often pause with it.
Indeed, it can be excruciating to feel and scary to acknowledge all that we meet — and yet when we muster the courage to meet it, pause with it, breathe with it, and let all of it belong, we make a fundamental shift in our trajectory towards returning to wholeness.
When we pause, we step into presence with the wisdom of the heart. In the liminal space is a chance to see yourself clearly, soften into your inner waves and currents, and hear deep’s longing and hungers emerge.
What do you know to be true? Can you trust it?
Questions to Explore
As you navigate your recovery, consider these reflections:
How do you handle endings, both with food and in life?
What beliefs do you hold about pausing, resting, or letting go?
What arises when you face the unknown without a clear next step?
Can you meet yourself — your feelings, your body — with compassion and courage without the need to earn or prove it?
The Rewards of Meeting the Unknown
When we allow ourselves to rest in liminal spaces, we open the door to clarity, trust, and a sense of deep belonging. These pauses are where we learn that we are enough, not because of what we’ve done or achieved, but simply because we exist.
The more we practice surrender — whether at the end of a meal or in daily moments of uncertainty — the more we grow. With each breath, we expand our capacity to trust ourselves, to navigate the unknown with courage, and to experience the fullness of life. Let the ending of your meal be a practice of surrender.
In this open space, we can land into a sense of inherent enoughness — not based on what we’ve done or achieved but simply because we are here on this Earth. The liminal space is where we clear the canvas to allow for our inner clarity and wisdom to arise, informing us of the aligned next step to take.
You deserve to feel this sense of aliveness. You deserve to trust yourself. The journey into the unknown isn’t just about what you’ll find — it’s about returning home to who you already are.
How to Stop Blocking Joy and Embrace Happiness in Eating Disorder Recovery
Experiencing joy can be a challenge for people navigating eating disorders.
Joy, playfulness, and excitement are emotions that can feel overwhelming when your nervous system is compromised by trauma or disordered eating patterns. Eating disorders can act as "joy blockers" and at the core, they represent our relationship to joy, the narratives and wounding we hold around this expansive feeling.
Continue reading to explore why joy can feel threatening and offers insights into how to reconnect with this essential part of life during eating disorder recovery.
Why Joy Feels Threatening to the Nervous System
Eating disorders are often rooted in a fear of emotions rather than a fear of food itself. While much attention is given to fear, pain, and discomfort, less is said about the fear of joy, pleasure, or playfulness. Emotions with high energy — even positive ones like excitement — can register as danger for a dysregulated nervous system. The body struggles to differentiate between excitement and anxiety due to unresolved trauma.
If caregivers in childhood didn’t offer attuned co-regulation, the nervous system’s capacity to handle heightened emotions remains underdeveloped. Joy can feel unsafe because the body lacks the tools to self-regulate in response to increased energy.
Maybe when you were younger, your spontaneous expressions of joy through dancing, singing, creativity, or affection were met with shame or misunderstanding. You might have even been punished for it, or your joy was weaponized against you. As such, when you notice joy, fear, guilt or shame might quickly arise as a defensive shield is put up to block the feeling entirely. It is at this point where we see eating disorders manifesting.
Eating disorders can act as "joy blockers" and they represent our relationship to joy, the narratives and wounding we hold around this expansive energy.
The Science of Emotions and the Nervous System
Emotions are neither inherently good nor bad — they simply are. Yet, our tendency to label them as positive or negative often influences how we experience them.
Both joy and threat activate the sympathetic nervous system, which prepares the body to respond to high-energy states. To truly embrace joy, a well-functioning parasympathetic system — particularly the ventral vagal nerve — is essential. This nerve helps balance heightened energy with a sense of safety and calm, allowing us to feel energized without feeling overwhelmed.
If the ventral vagal nerve didn’t fully develop during childhood due to a lack of co-regulation from caregivers, experiencing positive emotions can feel challenging.
But this isn’t the end of the story. As adults, we have the power to strengthen our nervous system through practices that promote regulation and create a safe foundation for joy to flourish. By learning to nurture this connection, we open the door to a richer emotional life.
Disordered Eating as a Defense Against Joy
Disordered eating behaviors such as restriction, bingeing, purging, or over-exercising often serve as a shield against overwhelming emotions, including joy. These food and body strategies create a sense of safety by numbing the body’s capacity to feel.
Within the context of eating disorders, that it is sometimes hard to feel joy because the body is in some kind of physiological deficit; and there is only enough energy to keep basic biological process going. There isn’t enough “in the bank” other than to just keep the person alive.
However, by narrowing your range of emotions, consciosly or subconsciously, these behaviours block the full spectrum of life, cutting you off from connection, fulfillment, and joy.
When we use these strategies, we create a smaller world, one where risk is minimized but so is growth. The paradox is that the safety these behaviours offer is an illusion — it leaves us disconnected from the vitality and richness that joy brings. Recognizing this opens the path to healing and reclaiming the joy you deserve.
Steps to Reconnect with Joy
Reconnecting with joy is not about forcing yourself to “just be happy.” It’s a gradual, gentle process that honours where you are and helps you expand your capacity to feel.
Since joy is an emotion — and not a state we need to work towards or achieve — we can all access it and experience it no matter what we've been through.
This is an embodied process not a cognitive one. Here’s how to begin:
Notice the Spark of Joy
Pay close attention to the moments when a spark of joy arises, however small. What sensations come up in your body? Are there stories or judgements attached to this experience? You might notice the thought: "Will this feeling keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger?" Thoughts like these are clues. Bringing awareness to these patterns is the first step in reconnecting with joy. Start where you are, not where you aren’t.Drop the Storylines
Rather than focusing on the mental narratives that might surround joy — such as "I don’t deserve this" or "this won’t last" or “joy is a time waster; it’s indulgent and frivolous” — shift your attention to the raw sensations in your body (e.g. bubbling in the chest, rush of energy through the limbs, change in temperature etc). Allow yourself to experience these feelings without overanalyzing or resisting them.Practice Gratitude
Gratitude is a powerful way to gently expand your emotional capacity. Start small: notice the things you feel thankful for in your daily life. Keep it simple. Extend your gratitude outward by sending good wishes to others or to the Earth itself. Joy wants to spread and be shared with others. Over time, this practice helps you connect with the greater world and softens the barriers around joy.Expand Your Capacity Gradually
Let joy in slowly, step by step. The suggestion to “just smile” is just as useless as “just eat”. Give yourself time. Allow yourself to feel small doses of it and observe how your body responds. As you build trust in these experiences, your capacity to hold bigger feelings will grow naturally and safely. Over time, these small moments of joy will create a foundation for greater aliveness and connection.
Reconnecting with joy is an act of courage and self-love. As you gradually expand your capacity to feel joy, you’ll begin to experience life in a deeper, more fulfilling way. Joy awakens a sense of aliveness and embodied connection — not just to yourself, but to others and the world around you.
This journey also eases the reliance on food or body-focused behaviours as a way to suppress emotions. Instead, feelings are allowed to flow freely and safely through your body, creating space for holistic, inside-out, body-first healing.
Allow yourself to be fed and nourished by joy. You deserve to feel the full range of life’s beauty, including the warmth and vitality of joy. By embracing it, you open yourself to a world of possibilities and reclaim the wholeness that has always been your birthright.
Further reading:
Smiling Is The Key For Eating Disorder Recovery
Eating Disorder Recovery Is A Process Of Relaxing
Photo by Daniel Schludi on Unsplash
Somatic Healing and Embodiment: How Intuitive Eating Supports Nervous System Health
Transforming our relationship with food doesn’t start in the mind or thoughts — it begins in the body. By deepening into embodiment, we cultivate a sense of trust, empowerment, and discernment, not only in our approach to eating but in how we live our lives.
Keep reading to learn how to deepen into embodiment and how this supports our relationship with food. Explore the importance of somatic healing, intuitive eating, and nervous system health in the context of embodiment, along with common factors that disrupt this process. Let’s dive in!
What is Embodiment?
To be embodied means to:
Connect with your felt sense and body's signals.
Experience an organized sensory system that promotes clarity and flow.
Trust and respond to your body's biological impulses and needs.
Move and inhabit your body with congruency — what you say and do align.
Discern when to engage with or disconnect from external influences.
In essence, embodiment creates a foundation of agency and clarity, enabling you to nourish yourself in ways that feel intuitive and aligned with your body's needs.
Supporting a sense of embodiment allows you to feel more yourself. When consciousness merges with physical form (i.e. the body), there is a feeling of coming home to yourself.
What Disrupts Embodiment?
Certain life experiences can disconnect us from our bodies, making the process of eating and nourishment feel challenging. Below are six key factors that interfere with our ability to stay embodied:
1. Birth Trauma
The birth process plays a foundational role in our embodiment. A traumatic birth can lead to developmental interruptions, affecting our ability to fully inhabit our bodies. Interwoven in this is generational and ancestral trauma that influences home life within the womb from conception through pregnancy.
2. Injury, Illness, or Chronic Pain
When the body feels unsafe due to internal threats like pain, injury or illness, inhabiting the body can become distressing. This disconnect makes it harder to trust and care for our vessel.
3. Physical Safety Risks
External threats, whether real or perceived, activate the autonomic nervous system into hyperarousal or hypoarousal.
Acute trauma, in the form of a boundary violation, often causes dissociation as a survival mechanism.
Pervasive external threats, such as toxic relationships or societal pressures (e.g., diet culture), can result in chronic disembodiment.
4. Attachment Injuries & Early Developmental Trauma
When caregivers provide inconsistent or misattuned attachment experiences, we may hold back parts of ourselves to avoid rejection or abandonment. This leads to dysregulation and a diminished sense of embodiment.
5. Sensory Processing Issues
Sensory processing challenges can disrupt our ability to feel connected to our bodies. These issues may stem from:
Birth trauma or early developmental trauma.
High levels of energetic sensitivity, common among those with eating disorders.
Learning to work with these sensitivities (as superpowers!) can support deeper embodiment and healing.
6. Gender Dysphoria
For individuals whose bodies do not align with their gender identity, the disconnect can impact their ability to feel fully embodied. The body may not feel like a safe or affirming space to inhabit.
How Embodiment Supports Intuitive Eating
As we deepen into embodiment, we naturally strengthen our ability to eat intuitively. When we are connected to our felt sense, we can discern:
How to hear and honour our hunger and fullness cues.
What nourishment our body needs.
What food preferences we like and dislike.
When to eat, rest, or move.
Embodiment fosters nervous system regulation, which is essential for normative eating, and digesting food and life experiences.
Reflective Questions for Embodiment Practice
What does “embodiment” mean to you?
How do you recognize when someone is embodied?
What practices or environments help you feel more connected to your body?
Practical Tips for Deepening Into Embodiment
Engage in Somatic Practices: Yoga, mindful movement, or body scans can help connect you to your felt sense.
Work with Your Nervous System: Practices that support vagal toning and regulation like sounding, grounding exercises, or co-regulation with a safe person can promote nervous system health.
Explore Sensory Processing: Understand your sensory needs and integrate tools (like weighted blankets or specific textures) to support regulation.
Seek Safe Spaces: Surround yourself with environments and relationships that feel safe and affirming to your identity and needs.
By understanding and addressing the factors that disrupt embodiment, we can move closer to a state of balance, where food and nourishment feel natural and intuitive.
Transforming our relationship with food doesn't have happen in the mind or in our thoughts but it happens through the body.
Embodiment is not a destination but an ongoing practice — a journey of inhabiting your body with compassion, curiosity, and trust.
Photo by Jamie Brown on Unsplash
Using Psychedelics Safely in Eating Disorder Recovery: What to Consider Before Your Journey
Exploring psychedelics for eating disorder recovery can be transformative but also requires careful consideration. Ensuring a safe, supportive environment, and preparation aligned with your current state in recovery is essential. Here’s a guide to understanding when it might be best to wait before embarking on a psychedelic journey and how to make the experience safe and supportive when the time is right.
Why Timing Matters in Recovery
Psychedelic experiences often involve deep processing and trauma healing, impacting the autonomic nervous system. Some plant medicines, like Ayahuasca, require a dieta — a preparation involving fasting or dietary limitations that could be triggering for those in recovery. Also, disrupted sleep and emotional intensity are common. Depending on your recovery stage, consult with your recovery team to evaluate if now is the right time to engage.
Questions to Consider:
What emotional triggers could arise from dietary restrictions or fasting?
How could the psychedelic journey disrupt my current recovery progress?
Am I comfortable discussing psychedelics with my treatment team (e.g., therapist, dietitian)?
Preparation: Safety First
Before engaging in psychedelics, explore your readiness with questions around your physical and mental health, your ability to self-regulate, and your support network. Ensure that your heart health, nervous system, and emotional stability are in check. Understand any medication interactions, and create a detailed preparation plan with the guidance of a knowledgeable facilitator should you need to taper off any medications.
Key Considerations:
Health: Do I need a medical check-up (e.g., heart rate, liver, kidney functions)?
Mental well-being: Do I feel able to ground myself and handle strong emotions?
Support: Do I have friends or family who will support me, even if they don’t use plant medicine themselves?
Managing Dietary Requirements in Recovery
Some psychedelics require dietary adjustments. If these are triggering, talk with your facilitator about options. Some journeys recommend fasting for a few hours; if this is challenging, consider alternative preparations, such as microdosing, which typically involve fewer restrictions. Other practices like breathwork, mindful movement, and art-making can also provide altered states without diets that might feel restrictive.
Diet-Related Questions:
How might changing my food rhythm affect my recovery?
Could I omit or adapt dietary requirements without compromising safety?
How can I support myself before, during, and after the journey to avoid triggering behaviours?
Working with Your Facilitator
Find a facilitator who understands your recovery background and will accommodate any specific needs. Ask about support options, such as bringing snacks into the session if necessary, and whether they’re prepared to offer tailored integration guidance post-journey.
Facilitator Questions:
Do they understand my eating disorder history? Are they willing to take enough time with me to get to know my history?
Are they comfortable with my bringing food or other resources?
Will they support my needs during the preparation, journey and integration?
The Importance of Integration
Proper integration after a journey is critical, especially for those in recovery. Plan for both immediate and long-term integration phases, focusing on how to nourish your body and mind post-journey. The acute period (first 72 hours) is particularly crucial for consolidating insights in ways that support recovery.
Integration Considerations:
What food and practices can support me immediately post-journey?
How might I want to explore new ways of engaging with food after my experience?
What steps will I take to ensure long-term integration and healing?
Eating Disorders and Psychedelics: When to Wait Before Journeying
Exploring psychedelics for eating disorder recovery can be transformative but also requires careful consideration. Ensuring a safe, supportive environment, and preparation aligned with your current state in recovery is essential. Here’s a guide to understanding when it might be best to wait before embarking on a psychedelic journey and how to make the experience safe and supportive when the time is right.
Why Timing Matters in Recovery
Psychedelic experiences often involve deep processing, trauma healing, and autonomic nervous system impacts. Some plant medicines, like Ayahuasca, require a dieta—a restrictive preparation involving fasting or dietary limitations that could be triggering for those in recovery. Also, disrupted sleep and emotional intensity are common. Depending on your recovery stage, consult with your recovery team to evaluate if now is the right time to engage.
Questions to Consider:
What emotional triggers could arise from dietary restrictions or fasting?
Would the journey disrupt my current recovery progress?
Am I comfortable discussing psychedelics with my treatment team (e.g., therapist, dietitian)?
Preparation: Safety First
Before engaging in psychedelics, explore your readiness with questions around your physical and mental health, your ability to self-regulate, and your support network. Ensure that your heart health, nervous system, and emotional stability are in check. Understand any medication interactions, and create a detailed preparation plan with the guidance of a knowledgeable facilitator.
Key Considerations:
Health: Do I need a medical check-up (e.g., heart rate, liver, kidney functions)?
Mental Well-being: Do I feel able to ground myself and handle strong emotions?
Support: Do I have friends or family who will support me, even if they don’t use plant medicine themselves?
Managing Dietary Requirements in Recovery
Many psychedelics require dietary adjustments. If these are triggering, talk with your facilitator about options. Some journeys recommend fasting; if this is challenging, consider alternative preparations, such as microdosing, which typically involve fewer restrictions. Other practices like breathwork, mindful movement, and art-making can also provide altered states without restrictive diets.
Diet-Related Questions:
How might fasting affect my recovery?
Could I omit or adapt dietary requirements without compromising safety?
How can I support myself before, during, and after the journey to avoid triggering behaviors?
Working with Your Facilitator
Find a facilitator who understands your recovery background and will accommodate any specific needs. Ask about support options, such as bringing snacks into the session if necessary, and whether they’re prepared to offer tailored integration guidance post-journey.
Facilitator Questions:
Do they understand my eating disorder history?
Are they comfortable with my bringing food or other resources?
Will they support my needs during both the journey and integration?
The Importance of Integration
Proper integration after a journey is critical, especially for those in recovery. Plan for both immediate and long-term integration phases, focusing on how to nourish your body and mind post-journey. The acute period (first 72 hours) is particularly crucial for consolidating insights in ways that support recovery.
Integration Considerations:
What food and practices can support me immediately post-journey?
How might I want to explore new ways of engaging with food after my experience?
What steps will I take to ensure long-term integration and healing?
Ready to Dive Deeper?
If you’re interested in further preparation and integration resources, I offer a free micro and macrodose preparation guide on my website. For those ready for a personalized approach, reach out to me directly for individual preparation and integration coaching sessions.
Psychedelics for Recovery: FAQs
Can psychedelics hinder eating disorder recovery?
Yes, if approached without adequate preparation. Ensuring the timing aligns with your recovery and using safe, mindful practices can prevent setbacks.
What if I’m unable to fast or adhere to a restrictive diet?
Many facilitators can accommodate special needs. Discuss alternatives, like microdosing or adapting dieta requirements, to avoid triggering behaviours.
What support is recommended post-journey?
Surround yourself with supportive people and integrate practices that ground and nourish you. Working with a coach or therapist experienced in psychedelic integration can also help.
Psychedelics can be a powerful tool in eating disorder recovery when approached with consideration, preparation, and adequate support. Take the time you need, consult with your support network, and ensure all steps align with your mental, emotional, and physical well-being. Remember, there is plenty of time and space for you to prepare your body, heart and mind for a psychedelic journey. The healing is in the journey, not the destination.
Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash
Belonging vs. Inclusion: Finding Connection in Eating Disorder Recovery Through Somatics and Psychedelics
Do You Feel Like You Belong or Are Just Included?
Understanding True Belonging in Eating Disorder Recovery
If you’re on a journey of eating disorder recovery and curious about psychedelics and somatic therapy, the concept of belonging might resonate with you. True belonging goes beyond just feeling included — it’s about embracing your authentic self without needing to conform.
Lately, I’ve been reflecting on this, facing some of my own edges. You know that feeling like an unseen authority is waiting for you to perform or deliver? I felt it, too. Rather than forcing myself to create something just to "keep up," I paused. I allowed myself to soften, tapping into deeper, authentic truths.
Learning to Honor Your Natural Rhythms
In eating disorder recovery, you may discover how your body mirrors the natural rhythms of the Earth. These patterns of peaks and valleys remind us that we are inherently connected to a greater whole. For a long time, I struggled, fighting against my body’s natural ebbs and flows, trying to be "perfect." But as I began honoring these rhythms, I found peace. This realization became a pivotal part of my healing journey and somatic therapy practice.
Reconnecting with Belonging Through Psychedelic Integration
For many, plant medicine and psychedelic therapy offer profound insights, helping us remember that we belong to the Earth just as we are.
This has been one of the greatest gifts psychedelics has given me, and from what I hear from others too: this deep in-your-bones remembrance of how we are the Earth and each one of us are interconnected in this greater web, made up of the seen and unseen.
In eating disorder recovery, where feelings of isolation and shame are common, this remembrance of our inherent worth can be transformative. We belong — not because of what we do or how we look — but because we simply exist. Just like every tree, animal, or body of water, each of us has a place in this world.
As Brené Brown beautifully says, "True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are."
In recovery, learning self-acceptance and compassion is vital. When we truly accept ourselves (and belong to ourselves first), we connect authentically with others and feel safe in our own bodies in the world.
Indeed, the journey of eating disorder recovery is a process of becoming radically, courageously, compassionately accepting of ourselves. Self-acceptance is a direct pathway to belonging because when we believe that who we are is enough, worthy and deserving - unconditionally - we have the courage to show up to ourselves and in the world authentically and vulnerably.
The Difference Between Inclusion and True Belonging
For those struggling with eating disorders, this distinction can be crucial. Inclusion often means conforming to fit into society or certain groups (hello diet culture!) — through appearance, achievements, or social behaviors. Many of us adapt to these expectations, sometimes at the cost of our mental and physical health, to feel connected.
As mammals, we cannot survive without connection as such, will seek out any way to feel some form of connection even if it’s a crumb.
And as we all know, diet culture and hustle culture play into this big time! In these realities, inclusion is achieved through output and outward appearance. If someone choses to not subscribe to those rules, there are sometimes very real repercussions, where one’s sense of belonging is threatened.
So, it takes courage and the support of resonant community to stand up against these outdated and disconnected paradigms, and to shift the attention to the medicine that resides within each of us and celebrating that together.
True belonging doesn’t depend on external validation. It’s an internal state, grounded in self-trust and a sense of worthiness. It’s a powerful realization that you don’t have to perform or change to be valued.
Somatic Therapy: Building Connection with the Body
Somatic therapy is a powerful approach to healing that helps reconnect the body and mind, especially for those navigating disordered eating. By tuning into our bodies, we can shift from a state of anxiety and vigilance to one of ease and groundedness. This process helps restores our nervous systems from a defensive state to a more socially connected state.
When we are in a “social engagement” state, we are able to experience genuine connection, safety and overall regulation.
In eating disorder recovery, many find that somatic therapy helps them reframe their understanding of self-worth from a body-first, bottom-up approach, enabling a healthier, deeper relationship with both their bodies and the world around them from the inside-out.
How to Cultivate Belonging in Eating Disorder Recovery
Recognize When You’re Seeking Belonging Through Inclusion Tactics: Notice when you feel the need to "fit in." Are you changing parts of yourself to gain approval?
Connect with Nature: Ground yourself in nature. Yielding to the Earth’s rhythms reminds us of our inherent place in the world.
Embrace Your Authentic Self: Cultivate self-acceptance. As you embrace your unique identity, you’ll feel more connected and at peace.
And to each one of you reading this, I see you. We are here together, and we are doing it with each small step, focused and clear on the future we dream for ourselves, for our beloved future generations, and for the Earth.
May this future be a future where all begins feel and know that they belong.
Reflect on These Questions
How does your body respond to the statements “You belong here” vs. “You are included here”?
What parts of you feel included but not truly belonging?
How can you cultivate a sense of belonging without compromising your true self?
It’s important to remember that belonging and inclusion are different, and both are necessary parts of being human. It’s about knowing which one we are seeking and observing whether we are trying to have a substitute for the other. Sometimes we have to strategically leave parts of ourselves at the door to be included and accepted into a certain field or profession. But this doesn’t detract from your innate wholeness.
The issue we run into is when we rely on inclusion-based tactics to feel a sense of belonging, such as malnourishing ourselves to fit into cultural or familial standards. We hold back or over-amplify parts of ourselves which can lead to feelings of misalignment.
Belonging is inherent to all of us. It can never be lost. We can never be cut off from the wider web. Through it all, may we remind one another of our enoughness and be clarifying and resonant reflections for each other, allowing us to remember our innate belonging
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Let’s walk this path of recovery and self-discovery together, remembering that true belonging lies in being unapologetically ourselves.
Here’s to embracing our innate belonging.
How the Nervous System Influences Eating Disorders: Understanding the Mind-Body Connection for Recovery
Understanding eating disorders goes beyond food — it’s about how the body signals its sense of safety, regulation, and survival.
Our nervous system communicates essential information, guiding us to recognize when we feel safe, secure, and thriving, or, on the other hand, stressed, unsafe, and struggling. By tuning into these signals, we can uncover what our bodies need not only to survive but to thrive.
Eating disorders often reflect deeper nervous system dysregulation, rooted in survival responses to chronic stress or early developmental trauma. Understanding how the nervous system influences eating behaviors can guide us toward compassion and healing.
Understanding the Role of the Nervous System in Eating Disorders
When someone faces an eating disorder, their body is frequently in a state of survival—flight, fight, or freeze—due to accumulated stress. This response arises when the body feels unsafe or lacks the secure attachment needed to feel at ease.
Fight Response: The body prepares to confront perceived threats.
Flight Response: The body feels the need to escape.
Freeze Response: The body shuts down to avoid overwhelm.
How Nervous System States Influence Eating Disorder Behaviors
Based on past experiences, personality, and environment, each person’s nervous system may respond uniquely. Here’s how different states manifest in thought patterns and eating disorder behaviors:
Freeze State (Shutdown)
When in a freeze or shutdown state, the nervous system sends messages like “I feel helpless, hopeless, and numb.” This can lead to:
Digestive issues, such as inhibited digestion
Binge eating to induce a shutdown feeling
Excessive exercise to combat numbness (aka to feel alive)
Restricted eating due to reduced hunger or fullness cues (cues are hard to detect, heard or perceive due to muted interoception)
Emotional and physical disassociation
Fight State (Confrontation)
In a fight state, thoughts may include “I feel irritated, restless, and mistrustful.” Related eating disorder behaviors might include:
Bingeing or purging
Compulsive exercise
Chewing and spitting food
Restricting others from controlling or preparing food
Nail-biting or gum-chewing
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Flee State (Avoidance)
In the flee state, individuals may feel “anxious, fidgety, and fearful.” Associated eating disorder behaviors include:
Rigid dietary restrictions or food rules or specific food rituals
Avoidance of eating in front of others
Compulsive exercise
Food phobias
Constipation due to high stress
Finding Safety and Healing through the Nervous System
Healing begins with recognizing where the body currently operates within these states. By listening to the body’s signals, we can introduce supportive resources that address these needs and gradually move towards a state of safety. Safety is experienced in many different ways, primarily through connection and co-regulation with other people.
Ventral Vagal State: The Nervous System’s Safe Zone
When in a ventral vagal state, thoughts shift to “I feel open, safe, and curious.” Here’s how a ventral vagal state changes our relationship with food:
Eating and digestion become smoother and more effective; there’s a reduction in GI issues
Greater clarity on hunger and food choices
Feeling satiety becomes a more regular experience
Reduced focus on disordered eating behaviors
In this state, the eating disorder’s influence softens, allowing for a sense of grounding and connectedness within and towards others. As the body finds homeostasis, food becomes a nourishing experience rather than a battleground.
In this state of ventral vagal connection when our nervous system feels safe and connected to the world around us, there are very few eating behaviours and thoughts that exist. When we land in this place in our nervous system, it is like the eating disorder can naturally let go of us - because less defense responses (fight, slight, freeze) are needed.
Connecting with Safety in the Present Moment
By establishing a safe, supportive environment with others, the nervous system can let go of protective behaviors. Feeling safe, connected, and embodied allows the eating disorder to release its hold, making way for a renewed sense of self.
Decoding the nervous system’s messages reveals that eating disorders aren’t just about food—they’re about safety, connection, and understanding our body’s needs. By embracing supportive relationships and fostering safe spaces, we can gently guide our nervous system back to balance.
Key Takeaways:
Recognize the nervous system state: Understand how fight, flight, freeze, or ventral vagal states influence thoughts and eating behaviors.
Listen to the body: Decode its signals to address underlying needs and emotions through refining interoceptive awareness.
Seek relational support: A trusted connection helps the nervous system feel safe, reducing disordered behaviors over time.
No longer needing to protect and in a place of relational safety, the nervous system can fully land in the present moment. This is when we feel embodied - and at home in our own skin.
Ready to Take the Next Step in Your Journey?
If these words resonate with you and you’re ready to explore a deeper path to healing, I invite you to reach out. Together, we can work to unlock the messages your body holds and gently guide you toward a place of balance, safety, and self-compassion. For details on my one-on-one eating disorder recovery coaching, contact me here.
Photo by Scott Carroll on Unsplash
Connection Is Our First Form Of Nourishment
Many people with eating disorders experience a deep yearning for connection. This stems from not receiving the warmth and safety of healthy attachment. Connection is not just a want—it's a fundamental need, especially for those struggling with disordered eating.
Why Connection Matters for Eating Disorders
When thinking about eating disorders, it's essential to look beyond food. Our primary source of nourishment is relationships—how we connect with others shapes our experience of nourishment in all forms, including food. Humans, as social beings, need connection to survive and thrive.
The way we relate to ourselves and the world around us is heavily influenced by our early relationships with caregivers, societal norms, and cultural structures. These relationships not only shape our emotional well-being but also impact our relationship with food, another crucial form of nourishment.
How Relationships Influence Our Connection with Food
Food provides the physical energy and life force our bodies need. Just like connection, eating is an intimate act—taking something from the outside and bringing it inside us. Our relationship with food often mirrors the way we connect with others.
For those with eating disorders, this relationship can be distorted. How we were taught to relate to food is often tied to the attachment patterns we developed in early life. If we didn’t receive the care we needed from caregivers or society, it can affect our nervous system and lead us to believe the world is unsafe and nourishment is scarce.
The Role of the Nervous System in Eating Disorders
Over the course of our first seven years, the development of the ventral portion of our autonomic nervous system forms. This is established via the act of co-regulation, which is the quality of connection that primary caregivers offer their children.
By “borrowing” our caregiver’s nervous system, our inner source of regulation, how we deal with stress, and how we relate to our emotions is developed. The primary wiring of the autonomic nervous system shapes and molds how we connect with the world and others, and how we connect with ourselves.
As children, when we don’t receive the emotional nourishment we need, it dysregulates our nervous system. We may develop beliefs such as, "My needs don't matter," or "I can't trust others to meet my needs." In response, we find ways to survive, even if they are unhealthy.
This is where disordered eating comes in. The behaviors associated with eating disorders are often the body’s way of communicating unmet needs. They are attempts to find the connection, safety, and regulation that were missing in our early attachments.
Healing Through Connection: A Path to Recovery
Recovery from an eating disorder involves adding the support and resources that were missing in the attachment system. By creating safety in the body, we can begin to heal the parts of ourselves that are holding on to past traumas. This helps the body grow its capacity to hold the fullness of our emotions and experiences.
Connection is hardwired into us, and it's through safe, nurturing relationships that we develop a sense of self and learn how to relate to the world. Healing from disordered eating involves reconnecting with our bodies and learning to trust again.
The Impact of Early Trauma on Eating Disorders
For many people with eating disorders, early developmental trauma plays a significant role. Misattuned co-regulation from caregivers during childhood can lead to feelings of shame, confusion, and disconnection from the body.
When our caregivers fail to reflect our emotions accurately or meet our needs, we start to doubt our own experiences. This can lead to looking outside of ourselves for validation and disconnecting from our true feelings, bodies, and intuition.
Eating disorder behaviours are simply 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.
Understanding Eating Disorders as Survival Mechanisms
Disordered eating behaviors are not dysfunctional strategies but are strategies of survival. They are ways to avoid the pain and fear associated with intimacy and connection. Many people with eating disorders have been hurt in relationships, and these behaviors act as protective mechanisms to prevent further harm.
However, these survival strategies prevent us from fully connecting with ourselves, others, and life. Recovery is about bringing compassion to the body and relearning how to connect in safe, nourishing ways.
Reflecting on Our Relationship with Food and Connection
Eating disorders mirror one’s ability to connect with oneself and with others.
Take a moment to reflect on your relationship with food and connection:
How connected do you feel to your hunger and fullness cues?
How attuned are you to your needs, desires, and emotions?
How do you digest your emotions?
Do you feel any shame around wanting?
How comfortable are you with intimacy and allowing others in?
Complete the sentence: When I feel connected, I am…
Complete the sentence: When I feel connected to the world around me, I notice in my body…
Complete the sentence: When I feel safe, I connect to…
These questions can help bring awareness to the patterns that shape your relationship with food and connection.
As we restore capacity, trust, and safety with our bodies and with others, the eating disorder strategies soften.
Connection becomes available within and with the outside world, and with that a source of regulation, empowerment and nourishment.
Creating Safety in the Body for Healing
To heal from an eating disorder, it's crucial to create safety in the body. When the body feels safe, the protective layers begin to soften, and we can open up to connection. Safety allows us to experience the present moment, which is where healing happens.
By connecting to the present moment and the sensations in the body, we can start to heal the underlying wounds.
In order to access a sense of connection with our bodies, in relationship, and in the world at large, it requires enough safety.
Opening to connect is vulnerable. This is why safety is key to support this process of softening and opening up.
Reflect on a time when you have felt a sense of safety. Who was with you, where were you and what were you doing? How did you feel? How did you relate to food and eating and your body? How present was the eating disorder voice?
When the body recognises safety in the external environment and feels that internally, there is an embodied alignment between the outside and the inside experience that registers “I can put the guard down”.
When we feel safe, there is an opportunity for the protective layers to slowly dethaw, including the defensive walls of the eating disorder - and we can let in the nourishment of connection.
The ruminative, looping mind that is associated with a nervous system that is in fear and dysregulation quietens, making space for the body innate intelligence towards healing to guide.
An eating disorder cannot exist when we reside in the present moment.
The eating disorder feels most protected when we are focused cognitively on the past or future (e.g. thinking about a meal from the past or what we will eat in the future) rather than the present - which is where the body lives.
To connect to the present moment means we have to connect with the body, which includes all of the feelings and sensations that it holds.
Connecting to the body is the gateway to recovery. And opening to this connection needs to be done slowly so that trust and safety can be firmly established.
The Role of Connection in Thriving Beyond Eating Disorders
True recovery is about learning to receive (rather than restrict) nourishment in all forms—through food, relationships, creativity, and love.
We are allowed, deserving and worthy of these forms of nourishment.
Part of eating disorder recovery is learning how to deepen our embodied presence, to safely grow the capacity to let more of life in whilst staying regulated and connected to the body and the environment around us.
We need connection to not just survive, but to thrive. Attuning to our bodies with self-compassion and forming healthy, supportive relationships helps us build the safety and trust we need so that the eating disorder can let go of us.
Eating Disorder Recovery Is A Creative Act
Eating disorder recovery is a creative process from rigidity and repetition to new ways of thinking and being.
Like most of my blogs, newsletters and articles, when I get started with the process of writing it can feel clumsy and awkward.
As I sit down, I put on some music to help me get into the zone and take a moment to pinpoint what that original spark was that brought me to write in the first place.
That spark was just a feeling that tells me, “It’s time to write”.
Armed with only a gut feeling to create, I start by playing with words with a sense of curiosity and lightness. I begin to type out and delete sentences over and over again before I feel something land.
When that “thing” lands, the writing begins to flow with a bit more ease. There’s a river to move with and a current to follow.
I share this bite of #bts because it reminds me of a similar process that many of us go on when we embark on the journey of transformation.
Maybe you can relate to this: Sometimes we have no idea why we signed up for those coaching sessions, or joined that support group, or how we even got ourselves to a plant medicine ceremony.
Yet here we are.
And somehow, we know we are exactly where we are meant to be even if we have no idea where we are going.
We followed a spark.
Something deeper was pulling us closer to ourselves. The logical, cognitive mind often cannot rationalize or make sense of the reasons why, but the intuitive, feeling body just knows that this path must be followed.
This brings us to a concept called “organicity” which is a core principle of Hakomi Therapy, a form of somatic therapy. This concept is based on the premise that as organic beings, all humans are inherently able to self-correct, heal, and reorient to inner alignment.
This is a natural process that exists in all human beings, and when we are in a safe and supportive environment (and the nervous system recognizes this safety internally too), this movement towards healing and regulation organically unfolds (without us having to will it or force it to happen).
This shift our focus from what is wrong to what is already whole. In fact, the eating disorder behaviours themselves are also not wrong.
Rather than focusing on how the eating disorder behaviours are maladaptive or “disordered”, we can notice how these food and body behaviours are strategies of survival rather than strategies of dysfunction.
Just like the Hakomi principle of organicity, the body is always trying to return to balance and healing; although like with disordered eating behaviours, that attempt towards wholeness doesn’t quite bring resolution.
I believe an eating disorder is the body’s creative adaptation to find some sort of regulation (inner harmony) and sense of protection.
Sometimes, the eating disorder behaviours are the only strategies we have access to in order to stay connected to and functioning in the world.
At the core, an eating disorder represents a deep yearning to reach out to connect with others but, for many reasons that I won’t get into too much detail here, there quite simply isn’t a hand that we can trust to grasp onto and pull in close to attach to and feel safe with.
So, when I see an eating disorder, I see an opportunity for those who are in supporting roles to reach out our hands and meet it, because the body is communicating, “Even though I can’t reach out my hand, see me. I’m still here, I’ve survived, and I want to thrive - and I can’t do it alone.”
This is the spark.
This is the spark of creativity.
It is the spark that finds its way to healing, organically, adaptively, and creatively.
This is the spark that knows something can be different.
It is the spark that guides us towards practices, people, and places that inspire new ways of thinking and feeling. This path of thinking and embodying something different is the same path of living a creative life.
Eating disorder recovery requires creativity. I’m sure many of you reading this know that eating disorder behaviours are often rigid and repetitive, with little room for something different to occur.
Addiction recovery and healing from trauma require similar creative pathways. And so, creativity is the way through from the old status quo to the new status quo.
To access creativity requires a particular nervous system state. We have to shift from a narrow vison of protection and defense (ie. flight, fight or freeze) to a more open vision (ie. social engagement), where our somatic architecture is shaped by a sense of groundedness, belonging, dignity, and presence.
This can be achieved through co-regulation, through feeling the warm support and loving awareness of another human, animal, or nature being.
It can also be achieved through nourishing and soothing the senses, thus resourcing the body from the inside out.
A creative outlook can be achieved through practices that tease apart and soften the neural connections that strongly enforce and rigidly hold onto old beliefs and embedded constructs, such as meditation, microdosing, and plant medicine or psychedelic journey work.
And when we start to lean into the belief that, “I deserve to heal, and I am worthy of live a life that feels good for me” we create more possibility to try something other than the eating disorder. This is further strengthened when we know there is support around us.
Indeed, it takes great courage to try something different, new, or unknown!
All creative people (which includes you) know that the first word on a page, first mark on a canvas, or first step on the dance floor require bravery because in that moment of open, liminal space we have no idea where it will lead.
However, when we know in our bones, when the hairs on our neck stand up, when our when heart flutters, or when we have that gut knowing, that this is the path to follow.
When we listen to the innate intelligence of the body, we know what direction to go towards. Recovery is the practice of developing and integrating sustainable and adaptable tools and resources to face the unknown with courage and creativity.
Rather than contracting and becoming small in the face of change, we can open towards it and be transformed by it.
Recovery, which is an act of surrender (which is different to giving up), can feed us and nourish us and change us, bringing us deeper into our own embodiment, breath by breath, step by step, choice by choice.
As I sit here, I look back at what I have written. I had no idea that this is what I would write, but I trusted that spark of creativity, and with patience arrived that these 1328 words.
Writing this has been a nourishing act for me. Most the time, I end up writing and sharing is the medicine that I so desperately need. It is not just the content that feeds and inspires me, but it is the creative act itself that is deeply soul-nourishing.
In this creative state where so many people report a sense of flow, presence, spaciousness, connection and alignment, the inner chatter quietens.
It is in this state of being where eating disorders cannot exist. (Read that again).
There are many ways to walk the path of recovery. The recovery path is a creative path, where anything can be considered a resource and an ally as long as it resonates and lands within you.
That resonance will communicate in and through your body.
I trust you in finding your way to hearing the body, and I trust your body and its cues and signals.
You know what direction you need to go in. Trust it. Follow that spark of resonance.
It’s that same resonance that has brought us all here together, united by a similar feeling. Each of us followed a spark within, a spark from the body, to walk this path of recovery.
I am so glad we are here together, co-creating a reality that support body trust, connection, and love.
Sending you all of my deepest appreciation and gratitude.
To read more on psychedelics and microdosing:
6 Ways Microdosing Psychedelics Can Support Eating Disorder Recovery
Psychedelics Can Help People In Eating Disorder Recovery Establish Self-Trust
Envisioning The Embodiment Of Authenticity With The Help Of Psychedelics
6 Ways Microdosing Psychedelics Can Support Eating Disorder Recovery
Can mindful microdosing practices provide support and healing for people navigating eating disorders?
Plant medicine and psychedelics can offer a window into a life without an eating disorder, helping people envision and embody a state of being that is free from the repressive, controlling, imposing eating disorder voice, and contracted somatic organization.
Microdosing can begin to open up that window, little bits at a time, through the ingestion of small amounts of a psychedelic (usually with psilocybin - or magic mushrooms) over the course of a few weeks.
The subtle effects of microdosing can support the arc of self-discovery, transformation and healing. I consider microdosing to be a relatively safe and kind practice, when combined with somatic-based healing modalities, time in Nature, creative outlets and support from trusted others.
Microdosing psychedelics brings us to the root level of why we might struggle with body insecurities, overwhelm or confusion around food or emotional dysregulation. These plant medicines go beyond the symptoms and help us excavate what is happening underneath the surface.
This means we might explore core beliefs and hidden assumptions or expectations and how our bodies have shaped to these beliefs, and how our behaviours around food and body stem directly from these deeply rooted places within us.
Here are the 6 ways microdosing can support eating disorder recovery:
1. Micro-dosing enhances our interoceptive awareness (aka our ability to feel and identify internal bodily sensations).
2. And because of this heightened inner clarity, we feel more connected to our biological impulses that support homeostasis, safety and regulation. When basic biological processes are in flow, our ability to flow with emotions becomes easier.
Biological impulses include hearing hunger and fullness cues, signals to rest, move, get into nature and sunshine, go to the toilet instead of holding it in, connect with a friend, or hydrate.
3. Refined interoception helps our capacity to discern and identify needs and wants. We are able to then ask for support and ask for what we want more clearly because that information is more easily accessible. Getting our needs met in resonate ways brings a sense of contentment, fulfillment and empowerment.
4. As we connect with body, we might come across feelings. Feelings that were hidden, suppressed, ignored or forgotten about are be more easily accessed and expressed with the support of the medicine.
When emotions are able to digest because they have been processed, we inevitably feel more spacious and with greater capacity. This enhances our emotional intelligence and ability to self-regulate.
5. Patterns of thought and rigid mental loops have more space around them as the medicine helps us sit in a more observer role. Instead of getting swept up and sucked into another ruminating narrative, the medicines give us capacity to see more clearly.
With a wider perspective, we can see the thought patterns with more distance and compassion. With a lighter grip, they can move.
6. This wider perspective shifts us from a narrow mind to a more open mind. With this more flexible lens combined with a more body attunement, synchronicity appears. We slip into a flow, a stream with life, that carries us towards a remembrance of our belonging and interconnection with the greater Earth body.
Overall, microdosing can support us in the process of:
Expanding embodied awareness.
Being present with one’s whole self.
Reconnecting to and trusting the voice within.
Developing inner clarity and refined dicernment.
Practicing how to navigate the unknown with perspective and resilience.
Shining light on areas of one’s life that ask for acknowledgement and acceptance.
Developing nervous system regulation tools to be with big sensations and emotions.
Creating one’s inspired reality that is authentically aligned with the core of your being (through taking aligned and authentic choice and wise action).
How has microdosing supported your reconnection to your body? Has it brought a greater sense of home within and in the wider world? I would love to hear in the comments below!
To dive deeper, get my free Psychedelic Preparation Handbook for People in Eating Disorder Recovery here. Learn how to safely and intentionally prepare how to microdose or for journeys at a larger dose.
Further reading:
Psychedelics Can Help People In Eating Disorder Recovery Establish Self-Trust
Envisioning The Embodiment Of Authenticity With The Help Of Psychedelics [Eating Disorder Recovery]
Soul Nourishment: How Psychedelics Can Support Eating Disorder Recovery
Four Reasons To Work With A Psychedelic Guide For People In Eating Disorder Recovery
Photo by Rob Mulally on Unsplash
We Can't Eat If We Don't Feel Safe - And How Podcasts Can Restore Regulation
The same part of our nervous system that governs our ability to eat in regulated ways is the same part of our nervous system that allows us to socially connect with others.
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By supporting the nervous system to find regulation through human connection, we inherently support the overall workings of the digestive system. If we live alone or don't have access to social interact, podcasts can be an amazing recovery resource.
If our nervous system is in a state of dysregulation and disconnection, our body is In defensive mode. This makes for digesting food challenging.
A lack of safety in the nervous system can show up troubles with digestion, sensory sensitivities, or challenges around detecting fullness or hunger cues, or around food preferences.
And it makes connecting with others challenging too. If we are in defense, we will see those around us as a threat in some way. This can show up as social anxiety, depression, aggression, numb affect, or disassociation when engaging with other people, in intimacy, or in moments of conflict.
When our body is recruited to defend rather than connect, it becomes hard to take in the nourishment of food and of connection - because on a neurological level, they are linked and affect each other.
Eating disorder recovery is the body communicating to us that it is longing for safe connection.
The body is in a defensive state because we haven’t yet landed in the presence of safe and trusted other.
There is a difference between feeling protected and feeling safe.
When we are protected, the danger may be gone but the nervous system is still on the run or ready to fight. When we are safe, the danger is no longer present and we have a safe environment to put down the armour and rest.
For people with eating disorders, they are still in protection mode.
This means that we can approach eating disorder recovery by becoming curious about what is missing within the attachment system, by adding in resources that aid social engagement and connection.
When we feel connected to another, our nervous system can soften in a sense of “I am safe now.”
But what happens if we live alone or don’t have access to regular social interactions? What if we want human connection but don’t feel quite ready to reach out just yet?
This is why listening to a podcast or music whilst eating can be super regulating.
Especially for folks who live alone or who have a lot more time by themselves, eating in silence can be deafening and can increase nervous system activation.
To support the part of our nervous system that helps us connect socially to turn online, we can either be in the presence of another person, but simply hearing the voice and resonance of another can bring us into a more socially connected space.
When we reside in this part of our nervous system we are more regulated, grounded, and present. We are mammals and as such need human connection to both survive and thrive - and it’s in this part of our nervous system where eating disorder behaviours don’t exist (because we feel so much more resourced through co-regulation).
if you find yourself eating alone and reaching for things that have another human talking (podcast, music, TV etc), you are naturally activating the social engagement system that supports your ability to eat.
We can often demonize the use of technology when eating but for some people, it brings greater regulation and more capacity to eat. Asking people to be “mindful” when eating by switching off technology can actually bring dysregulation and ironically less mindfulness!
As the part of the nervous system that governs social connection turns online, our capacity to eat becomes more accessible.
This is because the same part of our nervous system that governs our sense of safety is linked to our ability to resonantly ingest and effectively digest.
Through working with this part of the nervous system, we inherently support the overall workings of the digestive system, which when it returns to a place of regulation, the body’s inner cues (such as fullness, hunger, preference, satisfaction, and need to rest and digest) begin to become clearer.
The more we can bring in connection, love, and community to the eating disorder recovery roadmap, the greater the ability to heal.
This brings greater capacity to the complex process of eating and taking in nourishment - from both food and loving connection.
Photo by Pavel Anoshin on Unsplash
What To Expect When Microdosing For Eating Disorder Recovery
What might you expect when microdosing for eating disorder recovery?
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Experiencing hunger, bigger emotions, tiredness, more spontaneity and openness, and a desire to create may be some of many things you might encounter.
With the help of psychedelics, the repetitive inner chatter softens into the background, and in that newfound space, we have more access to the wisdom of the body through sensations and the embodied experience.
When that innate wisdom gets to speak and guide, we have the opportunity to explore hidden or new aspects of ourselves that we might not have had access to before.
This new information that microdosing with psychedelics can help us access can sometimes be uncomfortable to receive and integrate.
Indeed, anything that is new or unfamiliar can be edgy because it’s unknown! This is normal to experience and as such, having support for the microdosing journey as well as other complementary practices, like mediation, time in nature, support from others, movement or art, to titrate and sustainably smooth out the gradual process of unlearning, relearning, rewiring, and transforming are suggested.
When you start microdosing, it is common to encounter these themes (in your own unique way of course):
Increased Hunger Cues
Microdosing softens the chatter of the mind, giving us more access to the body and its cues and signals. If you’ve previously ignored subtle or obvious hunger cues, they become easier to hear and harder to ignore. If you feel hungrier, do your best to listen and respond to your body’s needs and eat. You might also have a clearer sense on what you truly desire to eat (not what diet culture tells you is appropriate or acceptable).
You might also have more access to what feelings or thoughts come up with more spaciousness and compassion when you allow yourself to eat. Notice what it’s like to hold yourself with more open-hearted presence as you eat. Does eating with compassion affect your digestive system in any way?
Feeling the feels
Microdosing increases our emotional and energetic sensitivities. If there have been suppressed emotions, they have easier access to come up to be felt because the habitual gating of emotions loosens up. We may also have greater connection to our emotions in our day to day.
With the veil thinner, it is important on the days that you microdose that you engage in soul-nourishing activities that allow for self-reflection and feeling, such as journaling, spending time in nature, engaging in creative activities, or breathwork. It is also suggested to not have too much stimulation on the days that you microdose (ie. try to avoid traffic, stressful deadlines, over-crowded places) as the nervous system is already a lot more sensitive and the sensory system is heightened.
Feeling Tired
If we have been chronically and habitually moving from one thing to the next, doing, doing (hello diet culture), microdosing may reveal the depth of our tiredness. Rather than pushing through it, allow yourself to yield and rest. Notice what thoughts and feelings come up when you give yourself permission to slow down with compassion and curiosity.
You might want to sleep, lie on the Earth, cuddle up with a pet, do yoga Nidra, or listen to soothing music whilst you cozy up in next made of pillows and blankets.
More spontaneity and openness
Be prepared to ditch your plans and to-do lists. You might become aware of what is truly inspiring you, lighting you up, or where your soul wants to be placing attention. Rather than doing what you should be doing, you might want to have open-ended space to explore what feels good, following those subtle cues of your heart.
This may bring up all kinds of feels for the eating disorder. If you notice anxiety arise in these more open-ended moments, make direct contact with the raw sensation - just as sensation. Then ask that part that is feeling the anxiety, what it may need to feel safe as you explore in this more open-ended way.
Be open to spending more time journalling, dancing, meditating, creating art, listening to music, singing, or being in nature. Notice what it’s like to let go of expectations and agendas and surrender to the flow.
Desire to create
Mircrodosing offers us a chance to place a subtle pause on the habitual ruts of thinking, feeling and doing. Leaving the familiar shores of the known and entering the river of the unknown, we have an opportunity to create something new. Rather than following the repetitive rules set out by the eating disorder mindset, use the days that you microdose to create something new.
Creativity comes in many forms, including art-making, envisioning the future, creating a new belief, or responding to a situation differently. Heck, even choosing to eat at a different time, or cooking with a new ingredient is creativity in the making. Healing is itself a creative process as it requires us to do think, feel, believe differently in order to access greater levels of healing.
What have you noticed when you microdose? I’m curious to know what has come up for you when you have microdosed for your eating disorder recovery!
Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash
When You Reach The End Of A Meal
Living nomadically taught me a lot about eating disorders. This is what I learnt…
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coming home after eight months of travelling has left me feeling like I’ve reached the end of big meal. I can finally lie down by the fire and rest - and let the food digest.
And whilst I’m digesting my experiences from Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico, the States, and the UK, there is also certainly a lot to digest on a collective level from this year which I am sure many of you acknowledge, sense, and feel.
The ability to digest our food, emotions, and experiences is a deep and complex process.
Our digestive system is governed by our autonomic nervous system which is like our inner surveillance that oversees of all of the automatic processes in our body, including our ability to perceive and scan for safety and threat.
Being on the lookout safety and danger is something our nervous system does behind the scenes and influences what we move towards or move away from, or if we stay neutral.
The ability to do this is essential for our survival. It is quite mind-blowing when you think about it!
If there’s a history of developmental trauma and chronic daily stress, what we perceive as safe or dangerous isn’t always accurate. It’s like the dial is tuned into the wrong station.
Stored trauma energies (aka fight, flight, freeze) and accumulated stress send constant signals to the body that it needs to be on guard and in protection mode.
We might feel afraid to face the stored stress survival energies (they are indeed powerful energies - they are here to keep us alive after all!) within us and as such, put up walls and armour to ensure these feelings stay hidden out of sight - from ourselves and others.
And if we internally feel fear, we begin to see the world through a similar lens as a scary place. As within so without.
This occurs because we always looking to establish and maintain a coherent sense of self. If our internal world is filled with fear, we will find evidence and data from the outside world to keep this inner narrative of self coherent.
It is very discombobulating when our internal narratives of who we are and what the world is like are shaken up - either through big life transitions, psychedelic journeys, or confronting changes - because we are forced to find new information as a way to update our story of self, along with rewiring the nervous system to reflect this new version of reality.
This is embodied change from the inside out.
Polyvagal Theory points to the neurological link between regulated eating with our sense of safety. We now know from a physiological standpoint that to effectively take in food, we have to feel safe.
So, it makes sense why we can’t really sit down and have a meal whilst trying to run from a bear!
But for many of us, experiencing urgency, anxiety, or armoring (aka running from the bear) is often the state we find ourselves in when we eat, and which later leads to issues like IBS, constipation, or inhibited digestive functioning.
This occurs when survival energies of flight, fight and freeze from past traumatic experiences accumulate and get stuck in the body causing dysregulation - which shows up as rigidity, narrow perspective, anxiety, depression, chronic pain, addiction, and eating disorders.
Over time, this dysregulation becomes the baseline or the new normal. We simply get used to it even if it doesn’t feel all that great.
And it’s from this (dysregulated) baseline of how we feel on the inside that influences how and what we perceive the world around us, how we engage with the others, the decisions we make, and the choices we take.
As such, Polyvagal Theory states that when we feel safe we can effectively digest our food when we reach the end of a meal.
Me looking out to the sunrise in Tulum, Mexico
So what we do to begin to quiet the inner storm, put down the armour, widen our perspective, and Notice Safety that is around us? How about we practice together:
First, let’s take a breath.
Feel your feet on the ground, allowing roots to grow from the soles of your feet into the soul of the Earth.
Orient to your surroundings, taking in light, shadows, colours, shapes, sights and sounds in and around your space.
Notice where you are, right now, right here, in this present moment.
I’m going to assume that if you’re reading this right now that your environment is safe, your body is safe, and you are safe.
Recognize the safety there is here right now by attuning to yourself and yourself in your environment and check in with your body and see if there’s any part of you that wants to soften in this recognition.
Perhaps your eyes, jaw, chest, shoulders, fingers, or lower belly can release a little bit of tension by leaning into and receiving the support of the ground and the containment from your environment.
This ground that is underneath you isn’t going anywhere, and it has the capacity to hold all of you, including mixed feelings, contradicting thoughts, and opposing parts. All of you is held.
There is nothing to prove, achieve, fix, or get right. You are enough as you are and you are held in that.
Check in again. Is there anything else within you that can drop, release, or open into this support - this support that is right underneath you?
Notice how your ability to soften and put down a little bit of armour (aka tension) is relational. It is through relationship - in this case, with the stable, unwavering support of the ground and the holding container of your space - that we have the space to shift from protection to safety.
And one last time, notice your breath.
Our sense of safety doesn’t come from just the absence of threat, but when we land in the presence of a trusted, accepting other.
On a nervous system level, safety comes from sensing that there is something reliable and trustworthy with us. This is something we can play with by noticing the ground underneath and connecting to the environment around us.
as mammals we are hardwired for connection, and our sense safety and ability to establish self-regulation comes through co-regulating - which is the process of grounding, balancing, and centering ourselves through having the presence of someone else with us.
When we are with another human who we trust, our body can finally let out a big sigh.
The armour can be put down. On a nervous system level, we move from dorsal vagal parasympathetic shutdown (freeze) and sympathetic arousal (flight or fight) into ventral vagal connection (social engagement).
When we are in ventral, we feel expansive and grounded, connected within and to the world around us, curious and creative, present and regulated.
Internally, the chaos subsides, and we can perceive the world as more welcoming and inviting.
How we feel in our bodies improves and we feel less of an urge to critique, harm, or judge our bodies.
As we feel more regulated inside, our capacity to eat widens naturally. Our digestive system also smooths out, leading to better nutrient absorption and excretion.
Emotions can flow more easily, and we can let go with greater trust.
The pervasive narrative of “I don’t know who I am without this eating disorder” has less grip and we begin to explore and embody a more aligned story of self.
As we start recognizing moments of safety, noticing how it feels in the body, and orienting to those people, places, and things that support our nervous system, the eating disorder can naturally let go of us.
This, for me, is the true process of recovery, that is sustainable, long-lasting, and deeply authentic. Recovery is a natural process that works with the capacity of the nervous system. It doesn’t require fear tactics, will, grit, or more sympathetic force or rigidity. It is an organic unfolding.
Recovery is a practice, not perfect.
Making my way back to South Africa, I am filled with appreciation. These eight months weren’t always easy. There were ebbs and flows, ups and downs, shadows and light. There were several hard-to-swallow moments and digestive challenges, so to speak, and also a lot of beauty, expansion, and discovery. And through it all, it was all held.
I am now sitting at my metaphorical dinner table and looking at my plate. I feel complete. My tummy communicates to my brain, “we have had enough”. And with that, I wash the plates and cutlery. I go sit by the fire and let my body rest so it can process this eighth-month meal. Patience and gentleness are my allies right now as I digest and integrate.
By the warmth of the fire, I remember that there is enough for me, I have done enough, and I am enough.
I invite you feel into and explore your own sense of enoughness.
There is enough for you, there is enough for everyone, you have done enough, and you are enough.
This is the pinnacle expression of the digestive system.
I am wishing you all a smooth and nourishing last month of 2023. May this year and all that it contained integrate with ease so that you can step into the new meal that is 2024 with refined clarity.
The Ingredients For Eating Disorder Recovery
Eating disorder recovery is a creative process, unique to each person.
It’s a process that organically unfolds. It is the process of breaking out of habitual ways of thinking, feeling and believing and trying on something different, connecting new dots, and making fresh associations.
Like a creative process, recovery cannot be rushed or forced as it moves at the pace and capacity of the nervous system.
It is useful to know what the basic, overarching ingredients are as we enter the recovery journey. Similarity, like in any creative process, it is useful to have a framework or a scaffolding to hold and trust the unknowns that come with the territory.
The four foundational ingredients include social connection, sensory nourishment, interoceptive awareness and resting and digesting.
With these four ingredients to form the base, there is a lot that we can explore in eating disorder recovery.:
Social connection, established through co-regulation, is the process of regulating our nervous system with the support of someone, either through trusted friends, a therapist, attuned group support healing spaces, and even pets.
When the nervous system is in a state of regulation, the process if ingesting digesting is more neurologically accessible, and the eating disorder voice is quieter.
You can read more about the impact that co-regulation has in this article. Whilst it is focused on the importance of psychedelic guides, it has relevant gems pertinent to this first ingredient.
Sensory nourishment is the exploration of resourcing the body in different ways so that it feels regulated enough to engage in the complex process of eating.
Some people with eating disorders have sensory sensitivity so when we support from a bottom-up, body-first approach we integrate the sensory system in order to take in food in a regulated way. Supporting what is either overwhelmed or underwhelmed by adding in nourishing sensory-based resources, fortifies the whole body-mind, softening the edges around eating in general.
There are many ways to resource the body that doesn’t only involve food. Working with the far senses (sight, touch, smell, hearing, taste) and near sense (vestibular, proprioception and interoception systems) are ways to support the modulation, discernment and responding processes that happen when someone comes into contact with information/input from the outside and inside world.
To read more about how recovery is an additive process, head this article for further reading.
Since there is often a disconnection from the body and often a focus on the outside image of the body, practicing interoceptive awareness is fundamental to reconnect from inside-out.
Many people with eating disorders are often energetically sensitive so the boundaries between self and other are blurred, making it challenging to distinguish what is theirs’s and what is someone else’s stuff. Practicing different ways of clarifying one’s own inner cues is part of establishing healthy boundaries.
If you are curious about the link between interoceptive awareness and recovery, this article on cultivating self-intimacy goes deeper into this fascinating topic.
Resting and digesting includes exploring our relationship with rest (not always easy in a world of diet culture!) and our sense of worth that is not based on achievement or performance.
Spending time in Nature can remind us that there are cycles to life rather than one monotonous hustle culture drumbeat. Mother Nature can invoke a deep remembrance of our enoughness, belonging and worth.
This article on slowing down and this article that goes into my personal journey with relearning how to rest speaks further to this ingredient.
These four ingredients when added appropriately provide a delicious scaffolding for creative, sustainable eating disorder recovery, allowing for greater cognitive flexibility, emotional intelligence, somatic safety, nervous system regulation, and a sense of hope, possibility, clarity and direction.
What ingredients or elements have helped you in your journey of shifting out of rigidity to greater flexibility, and exploring new patterns or trying new things? I would love to hear from you!
Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash
Why I Travel The World For My Eating Disorder
Traveling has been one of the most important tools I have utilized in my eating disorder recovery journey.
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Along with the Inner journeying with psychedelics, traveling has expanded My awareness.
I have always loved traveling. I remember my first-ever solo trip when I was 25.
It was the first time I felt mentally stable enough to travel alone. Unlike many people I knew who went traveling after school, I needed a few years to work through my eating disorder to feel capable to meet the wider world on my own two feet.
Right after finishing school, I went into an in-patient clinic, and thereafter spent a number of years finding safety and trust with food and my body.
When I decided to go traveling, I knew it was time to meet another layer of my eating disorder. I was ready to break down the routine, familiarities, repetitive patterns, and all what I knew in order to connect with the part of me that deeply feared change.
The eating disorder part of me didn't like change. It didn't like my body changing. It wanted food to be predicable. It desperately wanted certainty. It wanted to cling to the shores of the known.
When I decided to go traveling, I took a breath and consciously chose to push off the shore and figure out how to swim in the middle of the river.
When people ask me what helped me in my recovery, traveling is one of the things I mention.
By moving the literal ground from underneath me, traveling requires me to develop resources and practice tools that support in finding my inner ground and that help me keep my head above water regardless of where I am in the world.
Traveling is a tool that helps me clearly see where I am still gripping to the shores of the known.
It is a light that shines on the places that fear change - these places can often hide when I am in the routine of everyday life but are hard to ignore when I'm in the constant change of travel.
Through traveling, we meet our most tender parts. We also have a chance to meet our hearts in a new way. We can step outside of the habitual ways of perceiving ourselves and reality and connect with our deepest longings and what we care about on a soul level.
Traveling acts like a compass that helps us excavate our values and find our centered alignment that offers direction on how to move forward on the recovery journey.
Along with plant medicine, which is a journey within, the literal act of traveling expands awareness.
Since eating disorders and disordered eating are in a sense a narrowing of awareness by hyper-focusing on food and the body, inner psychedelic journeying and outer travel become tools for recovery because they help widen our focus and help us seeing wider, deeper, higher, and further.
Throughout all of my travels over the years, I am always reminded of this potent medicine of travel.
It hasn't been easy - I have been stretched in more ways than I could have imagined, but I am emerging with new perspectives, fresh eyes, refined resources, and a newfound compass, guiding me towards what I deeply care about.
Moving closer to what we care about brings us deeper into our aligned embodiment. And this is what eating disorder recovery is all about.
Download my free ebook, One Way Ticket To The Soul! It’s an eating disorder recovery handbook that was created for folks who are navigating an eating disorder or disordered eating and who desire to travel in a way that supports their recovery journey. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to download it.
Orthorexia And The Fear Of Death
Orthorexia is the expression from the body sharing its fear of dying.
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Orthorexia is the obsession with super healthy or clean eating. People may restrict certain foods or food groups and be particular about how meals are cooked. They may choose to not eat out at restaurants or at social events or have set Meal times.
These rules are created to support someone’s personal idea of health. Whilst there is nothing wrong with choosing health, people navigating orthorexia experience extreme guilt or shame when they “break” their rules, which usually results in self-punishment.
The healthy eating rules are often very rigid, and if people don’t seek support, these rules become narrower and harder to get out of.
Orthorexia impacts many people, in subtle and extreme ways, especially in diet culture where certain foods are moralized and others are demonized (to read more on diet culture, I highly recommend the extensive work by Chrisy Harrison). Diet culture can make orthorexia hard to identify since we live in matrix where many orthorexia tendencies are normalized or championed.
When I came across the term “orthorexia” a many years ago, I started to see how I was also struggling with it.
I could trace Orthorexic tendencies to my childhood where being seen as healthy by those around me gave me a sense of “I’m doing ok and I’m a good human.”
Seeing where this restrictive form of eating came from made sense, but it didn’t explain why I still felt terror when eating “unhealthy” foods in the presence of others who loved me for me and who thought I was a good human regardless.
When I went underneath the fear of eating “unhealthy” foods, I met a deeper fear.
I started to see how much fear I held around dying.
The orthorexic voice was trying to keep me alive by having me eat only the cleanest of clean foods.
Little did I know at the time that my obsession with healthy eating was actually killing me due to restriction I was placing on certain kinds of foods.
I don’t think death is spoken often enough in eating disorder recovery.
I don’t think death is spoken often enough. Period.
At the core, I think this what many of us are afraid of - and all of the maladaptive behaviours and addictions are in some way attempts to push away the reality of death.
This fear is totally understandable in a world that tries to defy aging, ignores wisdom from elders, vilifies the season of winter, leaves out any rituals that signify the ending of something, runs away from grief and forgets about the exhale.
Our culture doesn’t support death. And diet culture certainly doesn’t. We are instead filled with fear when we are reminded of impermanence.
Orthorexia is an expression of the fear of death. This means that the body and the nervous system are in a state of fear - and so how we go about supporting folks who are navigating orthorexia should be done with a lot of kindness, compassion and safety.
Any eating disorder recovery treatment that instills more fear, shame or pathology only leads to the nervous system putting up more defense and protection.
For a nervous system to come out of fear, we have to greet it with safety, containment and attunement.
As such, eating disorder recovery is the process of allowing the feelings of fear be authentically felt whilst held in a safe way. We don’t have to ask the body to do anything else than what it is authentically experiencing.
Over time, we learn about what it means to accept change and impermanence in day-to-day life, and preparing the nervous system to hold the diversity of feels that arise in that process of accepting that things end.
Recovery is allowing the old body to evolve so that our new body - that can hold more of life with greater capacity - can be embodied, carving the way forward for our greatest aspirations and dreams to come to life.
Eating disorder recovery is about exploring nature’s seasons and the seasons within, giving permission to the body to move through its inner cycles of change.
Eating disorder and Orthorexia Recovery Are about noticing what things we grip onto for stability and familiarity, and to practice being curious about th things that we hold onto so tightly, whilst learning how to adapt, change and be in the ever-changing landscape of life.
Recovery is practicing making space internally rather than constricting when the opportunity to transform arises.
Recovery is learning about making peace with the fundamental nature of reality, which is inherently impermanent.
It’s about slowly developing capacity to step more and more into the vast unknown with grounded presence.
It’s about accepting that at the end of the day, we don’t know and that the only thing that is for certain is that all of this majesty and chaos, and tragic comedy of life, is all impermanent.
Psychedelics Can Help People In Eating Disorder Recovery Establish Self-Trust
Eating disorder recovery is learning how to trust in ourselves - and this is the essence of plant medicine and psychedelics teachings.
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Trust. This is probably the word that I hear the most with clients and when I speak to other people who are also in recovery.
So often, I hear my 1:1 clients as well as those attend my Eating Disorder Recovery Support Groups say something along the following:
I want to trust my body.
I want to trust my hunger and fullness cues.
I want to listen to and trust what my body desires to eat in this moment.
I want to trust the rest.
I want to trust my voice and express my wants and needs.
I want to trust that I'm ok and enough even if I don't do all the things.
I want to trust that I won't be forgotten or alone.
I want to trust in my relationships that love me, that I can receive their love.
I want to trust myself enough to let go.
Which one of these sentences resonate with you the most?
In a world of diet culture where we are told that we can't trust our inner cues and instead have to rely on external rules, it can feel challenging to lean into trust.
However, trust is what forms the basis of our intuition, interoceptive awareness, inner wisdom, and transformation.
Plant medicines are powerful allies in supporting us to practice how to trust. And trust, like most things, is something we can cultivate through practice and over time get better at.
With the support of plant medicine and psychedelics, we journey quite literally in the space of non-ground, whereby all of the rigidly held ideas, beliefs, and constructs begin to degrade.
As a flooding of serotonin system occurs, the default mode network diminishes in activity, and "the story of me" and the concepts that we have about the world flattens and no longer sits at the top of the hierarchy.
In this liminality of a psychedelic journey, without anything to hold onto, we are left with the inevitable: to lean into and begin trusting the ground within which is our unshakeable, ever-present essential nature.
This essence is not based on what we've achieved or how we look. To trust in this, is to trust in our inherent enoughness and goodness that also present in all beings.
As our small story of self no longer takes front and center, this then gives space for a different kind of information to emerge. This information is the body's communication, signals, cues, and messages that can begin to rise up in the clear field of our awareness. This is our intuition: the body's deep knowing and wisdom.
It can be hard to trust this inner voice especially in a distracted diet culture world, but when we become quiet, slow down, and drop in, this voice floats up to be heard. Psychedelics help us enter more of a trance-like state whereby our mind chatter can quieten, we have more access to pausing and witnessing, and subconsious material which is housed in the body has room to reveal itself to us.
The body often carries answers to questions that the rational mind doesn't even know how to ask.
With the support of the psychedelic journey, preparation and integration, the more we can intentionally practice trust, and naturally the less we need to rely on the eating disorder.
Trusting ourselves on this essential level means that we can rely less on the eating disorder. When we can root into ourselves in this deep way, we don’t have to rely on something external and outside of us to provide us with a sense of meaning and value.
And I’m sure many of you who have experienced the depths of an eating disorder may be able to recognize a moment where you believed that an eating disorder felt part of your identity.
I know I have. In the early years of struggling with an eating disorder, I remember thinking that I couldn't imagine myself without it. I had forgotten who I was without the eating disorder. It felt like it me.
And then in one of my first group psychedelic ceremony, I realized the eating disorder was something I was holding onto really tightly, but it wasn't inside of me. I could put the eating disorder down if I wanted to.
In that psychedelic journey, it was the first time I realized on an embodied level that the eating disorder wasn't me and as such, it was something I could separate from.
With the support of plant medicine, I began to see that the story of "I am someone with an eating disorder" was from a time in the past and started to hold less grip. My attachment to “my” eating disorder was becoming less and less relevant. I also started to question whether this belief was one that I wanted to keep reinforcing and telling myself.
In psychedelic journey space, the concrete sense of self is disrupted and story of who we think we are degrades.
With brain in a hyper-connected, entropic state, there is space for new associations and perspectives to curiously arise. Additionally, we are more sensitive to sensory input and signals from the body, impacting how we sense ourselves and ourselves in the world.
We can start to see the reasons why we attached to the eating disorder and why we felt the need to hold onto it so tightly. Usually when we are in a process like this, in an altered state with psychedelics, there is access to self-compassion and loving attention so we can explore these roots and reasons with a great degree of kindness to ourselves. This is super helpful as you can imagine! In the psychedelic journey, we might also be able to practice what it could be like to loosen our grip around these stories and identity constructs.
Psychedelics offer us directions to reimagine, reconstruct, and reconnect to a more aligned embodiment that reflects this deeper nature of being.
Underneath the eating disorder, who are we truly?
This question is what plant medicines support us in uncovering, discovering, recovering - and trusting.
I have personally been investigating this question over the 16 years of uncovering and discovering myself through my own eating disorder recovery journey - with the support of plant medicines.
Recovery has required me reconnect with my body by slowing down, listening, and doing the work that actually brings to closer to being in my body.
I have learnt that crossing thresholds from the known into the unknown is the work, with each day bringing micro moments to practice leaning into liminality with greater trust, resilience and curiosity.
It has been a journey that has brought me back to relearning the signals of my body and thereby stepping more and more into my authentic rhythm with life.
Recovery has been about giving myself permission let more of life in, which includes everything from grief to love and all that is in between. And through that, for my soul to feel nourished by this expansion that is experienced through the body, the senses, physical sensations and emotions.
Through this embodied expansion, my vision and mind has broadened, allowing me to see new possibilities and connections. This flexible and more open perception has brought greater creativity to my life that has directly resulted in my healing.
I have allowed more of myself to be seen in this process as I let go of the rigid need to know, get it perfect, or shape myself into someone else’s expectation of who I should be.
Recovery has brought me back to the deep remembrance of what I am part of: which is that I am inherently interconnected with the greater body of the Earth.
Eating disorder recovery has for me been a journey back to the Mother, to learn from her cycles and rhythms of birth, death and rebirth, and to expand my awareness to all that I am intimately connected to and thus influence.
And when I nourish my own body in ways that feel inspiring, aligned and meaningful for me, I am nourishing the greater whole.
My recovery is not just for me - it ripples out and touches the lives of many other beings. This interconnection brings great motivation, courage and trust to keep walking the path of authentic embodiment.
![Envisioning The Embodiment Of Authenticity With The Help Of Psychedelics [Eating Disorder Recovery]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/57da64f81b631b43099f4008/1698096036836-5IISIP36W2DDX8XGPC3W/bud-helisson-kqguzgvYrtM-unsplash.jpg)
Envisioning The Embodiment Of Authenticity With The Help Of Psychedelics [Eating Disorder Recovery]
For people who want to explore plant medicine or psychedelics to support their eating disorder recovery, the first step before any journey is to practice ways of connecting with the body.
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The more we can practice listening and attuning the body (aka develop our interoceptive awareness), the more we drop out of the (often overthinking) mind and into the feeling body. This is a key skill for any psychedelic work, including microdosing.
Why is this important within the context of plant medicine?
For people with eating disorders or disordered eating, we are often disconnected from the body, living from the neck up.
We often approach plant medicine because we want to heal something. We recognise that something feels out of balance, not clear, stuck or stagnant, and we need a fresh perspective.
For people navigating disordered eating, there usually a desire to reconnect in some way. Oftentimes, there is a yearning for the repetitive, dominating eating disorder voice, rigid rituals, and restrictions placed around food, pleasure, and connection to quieten.
Feeling disconnected is often due to past trauma where one had to disconnect from overwhelming feelings that were felt in the body in order to survive and make it through a bad, scary, or confusion experience.
If we have to disconnect from our body over and over again, we develop an inaccurate perception of what is going on inside. Our interoceptive capacity is limited.
Another way of looking at it is that we are simply out of practice, so and what we perceive internally is not always correct.
When we make contact with the body, the sensations in the body are either hard to reach or the sensations are right in our face. Connecting to the body brings up feelings of fear, shame, resistance, apathy or doubt.
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 action because on the inside things are not fully clear.
If we cannot perceive what is happening internally, we may misinterpret hunger or fullness cue, choose to eat something we don’t actually want, or brush over the time needed to rest and digest.
As such, recovery and preparation for a psychedelic journey is about practicing and refining our interoceptive awareness.
This is something we can practice, and over time can get better and better at it.
When we make contact with the vast body of knowledge, this very same wisdom that plant medicine speak to directly.
The more accurately we can observe our interoception during our preparation phase before the journey (which is something we practice with a coach, therapist, or with a guide), the more we practice stepping out the way, giving the analyzing part of the brain a break and give permission to the body to express.
There are many ways to develop interoceptive awareness. Noticing what resonates in your own body, what lands, or feels inspiring or curious to explore, are cues that your body gives you - and cues you can follow - to learn about what your body wants or needs.
In a world that champions cognition, we have turned away from the body's wisdom that is communicated via movement, the felt sense, and five senses.
Let us remember that when we were young, we learnt about the world and how to be in it by moving, understanding proprioception, balance and relationship to gravity.
We learnt about the world through using our senses, like touch, smell, taste, hearing, and sight.
We established a relationship with the world and in relationship with others through learning developmental movement patterns, including pushing, reaching, pulling, grasping, and yielding.
Plant medicine teaches us how to turn within and how to focus on the inner cues rather than on external rules. Psychedelics teach us how to turn towards and trust the body's forms of communication.
By listening without judgement and slowing down enough to hear its subtle shares we give the body space to speak.
Psychedelics bring us into a more trance-like state, whereby the default mode network that forms the narrative of self quietens down, giving us more space for the feeling body to express.
This gives the body a chance to digest any feelings that have been stuck over our lifetime(s). As we digest these past feelings, we can land in the present.
Learning how to contact, process, and release stuck sensations and feelings from the past, is a skill we can develop and is a crucial one to practice in the preparation phase because the psychedelic experience can often bring up past material that has been hidden, ignored, or pushed aside in order to be released.
When this material is released, the entire nervous system begins to inhabit more and more of the present moment. This results in a feeling of more connection, groundedness, mindfulness, and regulation.
The innate intelligence of the body meets the innate intelligence of the plant medicine, supporting us in making choices grounded in our centered alignment.
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.
Since plant medicines and psychedelics speak to the body directly, we are able to embody this vision of life without an eating disorder, and feel in our bodies the state of freedom, compassion, acceptance, and peace within.
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).
Plant medicines don't cure eating disorders. Rather, their innate intelligence speaks directly to the innate intelligence of the body to help us imagine and teach us how to embody our authentic, aligned expression.
When we reside in this frequency, the eating disorder naturally lets go of us.
If you are curious about exploring how plant medicine can support your recovery journey, you are welcome to join my upcoming microdosing program, Journey To Wholeness. The program begins August 2024 and runs for eight weeks. Open to eight participants. Get the program details here.
Photo by Bud Helisson on Unsplash
Psychedelic Integration In A World Of Diet Culture
We often focus on set and setting when preparing for a plant medicine journey, but we often forget about the environment from which we come from and return to after the psychedelic experience.
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Set refers to the person's mindset and emotional state, and setting refers to the environment that holds the individual through the journey.
Another layer that we need to consider is the overall societal context that a person comes from and returns to. This is called the “matrix”, coined by Betty Eisner. The matrix impacts how someone prepares and integrates a plant medicine experience.
If we are curious about incorporating plant medicine for eating disorder recovery, we need to be cognizant of the fact that many of us live in diet culture, where messaging around food and body are pervasive and insidious - and returning to this after a journey can be challenging.
Psychedelics bring us closer to our inner cues and authentic truth, so it can be confronting when the greater environment doesn't align with the person we are becoming.
It can also be challenging to face the beliefs that we inherited from the larger collective growing up (from family, communities, institutions etc) - and facing the possibility of these letting these beliefs go. This can bring up grief, gratitude, excitement and fear.
In this void of letting go of old beliefs, we stand open. The opportunity to carve an aligned path and connect new and radiant dots awaits.
This path gets carved in the journey and in the integration phase. Many people return to the place from which they came before journey - and for many of us that means re-meeting diet culture.
Psychedelics can help us become more aware of diet culture, and how deeply rooted and hidden it is.
When become more and more aware of the hidden beliefs perpetuated by diet culture that equates our weight to our worth, we can stand up against it and stand up for our unshakeable worth that is not Dependent on our external appearance.
The sensitivity that we feel after a plant medicine ceremony means that the rules and rigidity set by diet culture can be rough on our senses.
As such, it is particularly important in integration to surround ourselves with people who are also committed to stepping out of diet culture - and creating a new vision of how to be a human in a body in the world.
Integration requires support, patience, and resources to become clear on what we value and care about as a way to anchor in what we find meaningful and worth standing for.
In the face of diet culture, it is vital more than ever for us to center around our personal values (rather than diet culture's priorities), to listen to our inner cues (aka develop interoception rather than following diet culture's external rules), and to keep returning to our inherent worthiness.
For people who support folks in integration, remember that this is a delicate re-meaning making moment amidst the pervasiveness of diet culture.
This work requires lots of holding and co-regulating, the cultivation of sustainable tools, and practice as people develop trust and courage to align with the authentic expression of who they are truly meant to be.
Photo by Benjamin Wong on Unsplash