What is Embodiment? The Key to Somatic Eating™

I truly believe that to heal anything in our lives the way OUT is THROUGH. We need to go into the symptom, the habit, the pattern, the belief and we need to get into our body to hear the lessons we were meant to learn. For many that can be the scariest place to be.

I know it was for me for a long period of time. I would have done anything to not be in my body. I have binged to the point of feeling uncomfortably full. I have overexercised as a way to get out of my body not more into it. I have over worried about things I didn't even need to be concerned about just to distract myself from being in this body. I have even used my symptoms as a distraction as something I needed to fix before I could really be with me.

I started practicing yoga and meditation when I was 18 years old. Look, I know yoga and meditation aren't for everyone. I even normalize that with my clients that we have to find the self care acts that feel most nourishing and grounding to you and that may look very different for you than it does for anyone else. For me, learning meditation felt like a sense of coming home to myself. It taught me how to really sit with what is without judgment or criticism. All the answers I was ever looking for were within myself and I remind anyone I work with of that too.

The answers you're looking for won't come from a book, or a certain way of eating, or having the body shape some part of you believes you're supposed to have. The sense of connection, completeness, wholeness, wellness, lightness, and vitality are within you in this moment.

Your patterns with food and your body image aren't IN the way, they ARE the way.

To heal your relationship with your food and body means slowing down and getting into your body while you engage in your patterns. It can mean detaching from the story that shows up when you engage in a familiar pattern with your food and body image that says that means something about your character and get curious about how that pattern is serving you in some way.

Disembodiment fuels everything we're trying to heal. When we abandon our body, binging, undereating, overeating, overexercising, and self-judgment are all external ways to try to get us to come back in. When we focus too much on the external pattern, like overly focusing on how to heal a pattern of stress eating or what our body looks like, it is like we're looking at the body from the outside in instead of the inside out.

Embodiment can be noticing and observing your body's experience of life.

This isn't about quieting the mind or always feeling at peace. It is noticing how your body responds to different foods, people, environments, smells, sights, sounds, and without judgment or trying to change your reaction, you simply take it as an opportunity to learn more about yourself. Then you get to take that information to explore what supports you most in thriving and begin to understand why your body responds the way it does.

For example, let's say you stress eat every night. Often you might already feel disembodied and numbed out before the eating even begins. Because of the potential judgment that arises from engaging in that pattern, you push yourself even further away from you. This pattern will continue as the intention of eating to bring you closer to yourself isn't happening.

Take two. Let's view this situation again through Somatic Eating™ and practicing embodiment. The point here is not to stop the pattern from happening. We often first have to cultivate awareness and understanding around WHY a pattern is happening before we can change it. So, it is the evening. You get the urge to reach for food. Practicing Somatic Eating™, we would first pause and notice. Instead of immediately acting on the impulse, we can invite our attention into our body. We can notice what sensations and emotions are present. We can make space for the stress or the tension or the sadness or the anger that might be wanting your attention.

In this space, you can describe to yourself how your body feels wanting to reach for food. Coming into relationship with your body, you're practicing embodiment and making decisions from the information you're receiving from your body instead of your mind or some external cue. If after coming into a deeper connection with your body, you still want to reach for the food, no problem! Go ahead. The eating experience will be entirely different as you have slowed down first to make an empowered decision that this is actually what you want to bring you closer to yourself instead of further away. You then can eat that food somatically, connected to your body, and noticing how eating that food makes you feel to continue to stay connected to self.

This is a practice and a process. If you have been engaging in patterns of stress eating, binging, undereating, overexercising, judging your body, often the body has become a battle zone that you don't want to be in. The first step can be to make the body a safe place to be again and the first step to do that can be coming back into the body slowly to experience that it is a safe place to be. If you're ever looking for support on that path, reach out anytime!