Self-Intimacy: Connecting to the Body in Eating Disorder Recovery
In the world of living in diet and fitness culture, it is likely that many of us will feel some kind of disconnection from our bodies. This is because diet and fitness culture are inherently built on the foundations of separation and comparison.
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In the world of fitness culture, we are end up looking outside of ourselves, competing against others to win the race of the “thin ideal”, trying to be the strongest, smallest or fittest as ways to feel a sense of validation, acceptance, belonging, and Lovability.
In this reality, the body is objectified; we view the body in parts and judge it for its aesthetics.
Through these competitions that keep us looking outward, we lose touch with our center and stray from our true self. This external focus knocks us off balance. We move further away from ourselves, feeling detached, lost, and just not quite ourselves.
After walking the eating disorder recovery path, some years later I realised that even though great strides had been made, I was living in diet culture.
I had not yet built a bridge down from my overthinking mind into my own body. Despite being in recovery for many years by that point, I admitted to myself that I had yet to make a genuine connection with my body.
I noticed that I still held residual patterns towards my body that were punishing and othering.
I noticed I was still in some ways disconnected and disassociated from my body.
When I acknowledged my body, I observed I felt anxious, urgent or disgust.
I remembered how as a child I allowed my body to express, communicate and move in ways it wanted, not for anyone else but simply to feel my own heart dancing and alive.
Stepping onto the path of healing after years of ignoring my body and subjecting it to restrictive and punishing behaviours, I connected to my inner dance that was yearning to be reignited, for its embers to be fanned, and for its warmth to glow through. My body, despite what it had been through and where diet culture had pushed it, wanted to be so softly and kindly held.
And so, I reached down and held out a hand. At first it felt awkward, sometimes scary and sometimes confusing, but over time, communication between me and my body was established, where slowly bridges of trust, safety and connection were built.
It takes time, patience and practice to disentangle from the external rules and old programming - and to start trusting the internal whispers that slowly unfold from deep within.
Connecting to the body is a relationship that gradually develops. This relationship has no destination or outcome. It asks us to let go, trust the unknown, and to allow the body to communicate and guide rather than the mind.
We learn to connect with our body, listening to and trusting internal cues rather than following external rules.
Through engaging with embodiment practices, nervous system regulation practices and learning about somatic education, my body was resourced in many ways. Greater capacity, regulation, attunement, and trust developed.
Eventually my body became a resource in my own eating disorder recovery journey and my heart could dance once again.
I deepened my embodiment, and this is the process of recovery.
The practice of deepening into embodiment encourages us to reside in the body so that the inner world and the outer world start to match up. When things start to line up, we are able to inhabit the present moment with greater ease and understanding.
As we get more comfortable with being in the here-and-now, the body is able to move with more congruency, one step, one motion flowing to the next.
To move through the world in this way is to move with things as they are: always changing, interconnected, fluid, dynamic, never stuck, evolving, and transforming.
Deepening into embodiment tests our ability to be with the fluid unknown, to embrace whatever arises with non-judgement, and to trust the organic flow of life, rather than resisting, holding, hiding, repressing, gripping, or perfecting.
When we lean back a little, surrender, trust, we enter a deeper state of embodiment. Embodiment leads to feelings of presence, wholeness and interconnectedness.
Rather than pushing life away, embodiment brings us closer to life. We become more intimate with all of life.
Indeed, eating disorder recovery is the practice of deepening into intimacy.
This means as we walk the recovery road, we develop more capacity to take down more of the armour and protection of the food and body strategies, and let life come in closer.
Eating disorder recovery is the practice of discerning what to move closer towards that resonates and feels right - and what to move away from that doesn’t feel right.
In this way, we become more intimate with our gut and inner cues, listening to and honouring the rhythms of our internal cues that guide us into aligned connection or disconnection.
Eating disorder recovery as a self-intimacy practice is the journey of attuning to our most deepest needs and wants, and developing ways to reach out for them, expanding more of ourselves into the world in order to grasp onto our desires.
It’s the practice of being aware of the intimate movements of our digestive processes, gurgles and all.
It’s the practice of letting food come in all the way so that it can digest, allowing the nutrients to nourish the intimate places within the physical body.
Eating disorder recovery is the practice of touching those harder to reach emotions, like grief, anger, and love - and being with them and feeling them and allowing others to witness us in them.
Above all, eating disorder recovery is the practice of becoming intimate with oneself, whereby we find self-understanding and self-acceptance with the many layers that make us.
Photo by Hala Al-Asadi on Unsplash