Fighting Rhythms as a Relational Path, not Pathology
Instead of racing to the quickest fix to solve distress, to eradicate unruly behavior, to demand a child to focus, or to stop a tantrum at any age, what about listening deeper for the relational and developmental cry for help? Here’s an opportunity for caregivers to get curious, to pause, to stay with the heat that arises, and to invite embodied connection that celebrates the mismatch. If mismatch, sometimes viewed as “opposition” is not relationally met in a trauma-informed way, it’s bound to appear later in another form.
Mind Your Belly-brain, Not Your Head-brain for a Fresh Relationship with Food, Body-Image and Exercise
Sometimes I hear clients say, “If I could just think differently, I wouldn’t feel so stuck with food/body/exercise!” I say, "What if it’s not all in your head? What if we invite you to shift from your Head-brain to sensing with your Belly-brain?"
M-Bodied: Mindful Movement as Mindful Medicine offers body-based practices we can experience repeatedly with curiosity, compassion and care.
When we begin feeling an inkling of distress or recognize unsustainable patterns that keep us stuck (like the diet/exercise roller coaster), sometimes we want answers and we want them now! We want to know what/when/where to eat. We want to know what/when/where to move. However, these corrective thought patterns and/or prescriptive behavioral adjustments eventually leave us yearning for deeper nourishment.
How M-Bodied Nourishment Continuing Education Courses Can Offer Deeper Nourishment to All Clients
Are you a helping professional looking for the path to nourishment? Are you polyvagal curious?
I received a question by email the other day from a helping professional interested in the M-Bodied Nourishment series I offer with Dee Wagner. This question seemed so important that it occurred to me to share both the question and the answer in a blog post.
Question: Are the M-Bodied Nourishment series courses specifically geared towards disordered eating, or can the skills the courses teach be applied more generally?
Pandemic Food, Eating and Weight Struggles: Using Mindful Movement to Self-Soothe
Whether you feel too frantic to eat sometimes or your pantry beckons you to snack five minutes after having lunch, emotional eating or struggling with food is a common coping mechanism during stressful times. Pandemic living requires most of us to stay home with more limitations, stressors and grief than we have ever experienced.
You tell yourself: You need to nourish your body with quality fuel and regular movement. That can be a tall order if you’re riddled with spells of anxiety or depression.
Perhaps it’s tempting to invest in a rigid program that the January Diet Culture promises will solve all your problems. But, take it from someone who waved farewell to the Diet Train a long time ago: Pausing to understand your push-pull relationship with food is a more peaceful and promising approach.
Pandemic Parenting: Oppositional Movement is Key
Parents and caregivers—are you trying to manage children who seem insatiable?
Children hunger for attention, snacks, screens, play and then more attention. How does one help their child to find what they are truly hungry for from moment to moment—love and comfort, belly hunger, video game limits, peer connection, more parent/caregiver contact?
What is an M-Bodied Deep Nourishment Practice?
An Invitation for Belly-brain Messages
We often get so many messages from the outside: We should, we ought to, go this way, move that way, don’t you think? Sometimes when we lean on outside messaging too much, we forget to pay attention to what messages might exist from within our wisest, most intuitive place in the body. And that's our Belly. Our Gut. Our second brain.
What are You Really Hungry For?
Photo credits:
© 2020 bobmahoney.com - Chi for Two© Practices Celebrate Healthy Oppositional Dances
© 2020 John Cargile - Let’s dig deeper into the Chi for Two© practices of Push and Reach/Grab/Pull