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.

 You might consider how one begins to access the harder-to-reach feelings—the deep hungers that often have traumatic roots. Accessing the harder-to-reach feelings can seem like a tall order, especially when it’s tempting to scroll through social media and grasp for accelerated and/or popular thought recommendations that ultimately keep one on an unsustainable hamster wheel of unhealthy relationships with food, body-image and exercise. So...

How do we tenderly mine the roots of deeper hungers? 

We explore embodiment practices within a welcoming relationship with a helping professional who understands infant development patterns and how they affect our nervous system functioning. 

This photograph shows my hand cradling the back of my newborn baby's head. Newborn babies’ heads make up about a quarter of their body size, so they have some growing to do before holding up their own heads. It's the caregiver's job to provide head support for the baby as the baby develops the outward-extending strength from the navel area—support for eventual head control—Navel Radiation. 

Chi for Two®—The Energetic Dance of Healthy Relationship recognizes Navel Radiation as the first emanation of embodiment. M-Bodied focuses various Chi for Two practices to help re-pattern and re-nourish our eating/feeding dances. When we can begin to reconnect with our Belly-brain for guidance, we can eventually create more headway for nourishing our thinking. 

How okay or not okay does it feel to rely on something bigger than me to support me as I sense, grow, expand and individuate from the inside-outward, from infancy to adulthood? 

The support of a trauma-sensitive helper trained in the M-Bodied focused Chi for Two practices can help us to slowly and sustainably:

·      Notice bodily sensations.

·      Become curious about the rainbow of harder-to-reach feelings.

·      Develop Embodied Cognition—the ability to Handle our bodily sensations in ways that facilitate creative problem-solving. 

We can go from “I have to know it all now,” to “I get to explore presence and relational support to gain physical and emotional awareness, cognitive flexibility and a full-feeling life.”