Medicine Within: A Nature Retreat for Ceremony, Movement, and Renewal

✨ 5–7 December 2025 | Phakalane Retreat, Hout Bay, Cape Town ✨

In a world that moves fast and demands more, there comes a moment when the body whispers, slow down, come home.

Medicine Within Retreat is that pause: a three-day retreat designed to help you tune out the noise of daily life and reconnect with the quiet wisdom already living inside you.

A Retreat to Reconnect and Remember

Set in the forests of Phakalane Retreat at the foothills of the Hout Bay mountains, Medicine Within brings together guided ceremony, ritual, movement, sound healing, and creative reflection.

Surrounded by indigenous plant life and the sweet sounds of birdsong, you’ll have space to listen, remember, and return to what truly matters.

You’ll be invited to explore how ceremony, nature, and embodied practices can restore clarity, compassion, and creativity: the medicine that already exists within you.

What You’ll Experience

Over the course of three nourishing days, you’ll move through:

• Morning Microdosing Medicine Ceremony with cacao, meditation, movement, and earth-honouring rituals

• Intuitive Movement Sessions to release tension, invite vitality, and play

• Creative Integration Practices through ritual, art collage, journaling, and group sharing

• Sound Healing Journey to ground and rebalance

• Nature Connection via forest hikes to nearby waterfalls

• Sauna and Fireside Gatherings for rest, reflection, and community

Every element is designed to help you re-pattern old ways of being, expand your perspective, and step into more centered, authentic alignment.

Who This Retreat Is For

Medicine Within is ideal for those who:

• Feel called to slow down and integrate the year in nature

• Are exploring ceremonial or psychedelic practices such as microdosing

• Crave embodied ways to reconnect with creativity and purpose

• Appreciate stillness, gentle community, and mindful ritual

• Seek personal growth through movement, reflection, and nature-based spirituality

Whether you’re travelling from South Africa, Europe, or the US, this weekend retreat offers a sanctuary for introspection and renewal, inviting you to remember that the healing you seek already lives within you.

Why Phakalane Retreat

Nestled in a lush forest only 25 minutes from Cape Town, Phakalane Retreat embodies wabi-sabi elegance, and beauty in simplicity. The sanctuary offers sweeping mountain views, access to pristine hiking trails, and spaces curated for stillness and renewal. It’s the perfect blend of nature’s wildness and modern comfort, allowing you to fully unwind without needing to travel far.

Your Facilitator

Francesca Rose Annenberg is a trauma-informed somatic practitioner specializing in nervous system health, microdosing and psychedelic integration, disordered eating and body image, and intuitive movement practices and contact improvisation.

Her work weaves together an animist worldview with frameworks like Polyvagal Theory, IFS, and attachment theory, creating spaces where participants can safely reconnect with their bodies and rediscover trust in their own inner wisdom.

“Your body is your greatest ally and wisest guide. Healing begins when you learn to listen.”

How to Join

Because Medicine Within includes ceremonial work, all participants are asked to book a free 30-minute preparation call with Francesca before attending.

To reserve your place:
Email hello@francescaeatsroses.com

Download the retreat brochure here.

Check out the retreat setting here.

Spaces are limited to ensure an intimate, supportive experience.
Download the retreat brochure below for full details on pricing, accommodation, and preparation.

Beyond the Food: What Psychedelic Healing Is Revealing About Eating Disorders

Eating disorder recovery is often measured in numbers: weight restored, calories consumed, behaviours reduced.

But what if healing isn't just about what’s on the plate, but about reclaiming your place in the world?

Let’s explore what psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) is revealing about the deeper layers of eating disorders, and why recovery is less about fixing a problem and more about remembering who you truly are.

A Different Kind of Recovery
The research on psychedelics and ED recovery is still new, but what's emerging is profound: healing isn’t just behavioural. It’s somatic, relational, and spiritual.

Psychedelics invite people to remember their agency. To rediscover their values. To feel worthy of nourishment, on a physical, emotional, relational, and soulful level.

As one participant in a recent 2024 study, Beyond The Numbers: reimagining healing with psychedelics for eating disorders, said:

“I thought my eating disorder was me being responsible. But after my journey, I felt what it meant to truly participate in my life — to be self-aware, and to choose responsibility in a way that honors me.”

Beyond the Illness: A Tapestry of Forces
This isn’t just about the individual. In my own healing journey, I witnessed something larger than myself unfold:

“An eating disorder is so complex...
Through psychedelics, I began to see the map — my lineage, the collective, my early childhood, cultural and institutional forces, family systems. It was a tapestry. At first it was intimidating… but it also showed me the way through.”

PAT creates a space where people can reframe their eating disorder, not as a personal failure or even a “disorder”, but as a deeply intelligent adaptation. A response to trauma, to absence, to the longing for love, safety, and control.

Redefining Recovery
This new understanding received from psychedelics allows recovery to mean something more than behaviour change.
It can mean:

• Cultivating self-compassion

• Expanding emotional intelligence

• Honouring boundaries

• Releasing shame

• Embracing love, both given and received

In this light, recovery is a spiritual and psychological rebirth. It’s about reconnecting with your body, yes — but also your will, your voice, your place in the world.

A Path Forward
Psychedelics won’t “cure” an eating disorder. But they can open a door, expand awareness, and usher in new possibilties. A door to truth, to tenderness, to hope. The path must still be walked, slowly, safely, with skillful support. But for many, PAT has become the turning point they didn’t know was possible.

May this emerging field continue to center the wisdom of those with lived experience. May it honour the ancestral and cultural roots of these medicines. And may it continue to offer a way through — especially for the individuals who’ve been stuck for far too long, including affected families and friends.

If you're exploring psychedelic support for ED recovery, your experience is welcome here!
Start by tuning in to your own readiness, seek ethical guidance, and trust that healing can look different than you imagined, and deeper than you ever thought possible.

→ Explore my microdosing support program
→ Or reach out for 1:1 integration guidance

A Cloud with a Face: Remembering I Belong

A Cloud with a Face: Remembering I Belong

A few hours into a mushroom journey, I hit yet another wall of confusion, doubt, and uncertainty. I found myself caught between the quiet, intuitive knowing of my body and the louder, rationalizing voices of my mind.

I felt stuck.
Pendulum-swinging.
Taking one step forward, then one step back.

Then, after much inner wriggling, I finally paused — and fear spilled out of me.

At first, I was afraid of the fear itself. But then I softened, became curious, and recognized the feeling:

The deep, human fear of being alone. Of not belonging. Of not being welcomed on this planet.

This fear took me to a much younger part of myself.

She was terrified that if she surrendered to the wisdom of her body — if she let it guide her — she would be swept away, lost in the unknown, and utterly alone. She believed the body was too wild, too dangerous, too unsafe to trust.

The mind, she believed, was where she could strategize, perform, and people-please to minimize the risk of rejection and protect herself from the gut-wrenching pain of being unwelcomed.

I thanked her for protecting me the only way she knew how.

Later, I stepped outside, lifted my arms to the sky, and let my eyes drink in the clouds.

And then — a face appeared in the clouds.

I knew, instantly, I was connecting with something divine.

And just as quickly, I contracted.
“Who am I to receive this?” I thought.
I didn’t feel worthy. I couldn’t welcome in this beauty. Who was I to deserve such a meeting? I had nothing to show. I didn’t believe I deserved such a moment of interconnection.

But then I remembered the young part of me — the one afraid of being alone.
And I gently told her: “Look up.”

And in that moment, we both saw what was true:

There is a mysterious, unbroken, benevolent force that welcomes us — all of us — home with the deepest of love. Not despite our fear, our stuckness, or our shame, but with it. As we are.

My body softened.
Bracing became embracing.
Contraction gave way to curiosity.
Fear transformed into a felt sense of connection and love.

The shape of the cloud shifted.
It became a female form — my form — and I remembered:

God is not outside me. God is within.

I felt my younger part expanding, as she stepped closer towards expressing what her heart knew at birth: she belongs unconditionally.

The Body’s Wisdom Is Not Something to Fear

This moment was a somatic reminder that:

💡 Story follows state.

As my nervous system shifted out of fear and into safety, my worldview softened too.

And that’s when it landed:

Can I trust that as all of me comes forward into existence, I am enough?

It’s the same question I see arise in so many of my clients navigating eating disorder recovery.
And it’s at the heart of the healing path.

When Life Force Wasn’t Met, We Learned to Disappear

For many of us with eating disorders or disordered eating, there is a core wound around not being welcomed in our full, authentic life force.

As children, when we began expanding into the world, expressing, individuating, becoming, we often weren’t met with attunement. Diet culture then capitalizes on this mistrust, convincing us to instead rely on external rules, starving us from our own life force and wisdom.

When our life force hasn’t been allowed to be fully embodied, we can be highly influenced by other people’s wants and needs as we lack inner clarity to know what is it that we are needing, wanting or feeling.

When we can't accurately perceive or interpret the cues that our bodies are giving us, either by hyper-focusing or under-focusing on them, the choices we make lead to dysregulation and stress in the body.

We learned that our aliveness wasn’t safe.
We internalized the belief that our needs were too much, our bodies were a problem, and that being ourselves meant risking rejection.

“It’s not okay for me to exist.”
“I can’t trust my body.”
“I don’t belong.”
“I’m broken and unworthy.”

But when held with compassion, this wound becomes a portal.

A way back to the truth that:

We are inherently welcome here.
Our life force is not dangerous.
It is sacred and is a gift.

Psychedelics Can Help Us Remember What We Forgot

When approached with care, safety, and reverence, psychedelics can transform old wounds into new wisdom.

They support us in:

• Listening to the body’s inner cues (interoception)

• Trusting our intuitive knowing

• Honouring wants, needs, and boundaries

• Returning to the intelligence within

• Plugging us back into our interconnection with the wider web

Resting back into this greater weave of connection is the fuel that can allow us to trust in our bodies, listen to its guidance, and takes leaps of faith into the unknown — because we know on a cellular level that we not alone on this life’s walk. For me, this embodied remembering that psychedelics offer us is one of the life’s greatest gifts.

And often, it begins with one simple, courageous step: Trust the body’s wisdom.

When We Expand Into Embodiment, Food Begins to Feel Different

As we grow our capacity to be with the sensations and signals of our body, our relationship with food naturally begins to shift.

Instead of relying on external rules, we begin to:

• Notice hunger and fullness with more precision

• Explore food preferences with curiosity

• Understand how different foods feel in our bodies

By expanding more awareness into our body container, we begin to explore the edges and depths of our own life force and embodied expression.

When we reclaim our interoception, our body’s inner compass, our choices become more centered, regulated, and aligned.

Indeed, as we deepen into our sense embodiment, we bring sharper focus to our inner state. This is a discovery and a practice of seeing ourselves more clearly.

It is uncovering, recovering and discovering who we truly are underneath the layers of protection, conditioning and fear (which has often been carried through many generations).

This is what recovery is about:

✨ Not fixing ourselves — but finally seeing ourselves clearly.

When we truly see ourselves, we remember that we are inherently enough.

The Clarity Psychedelics Bring Is a Gift

In psychedelic states, the brain’s default mode network quiets, and the rigid stories of who we think we are begin to dissolve.

We are invited to:

• Feel the clarity of our inner compass

• Reclaim exiled or forgotten parts of ourselves

• See our truth beneath the fear

The word clarity comes from clarus — meaning bright, shining, luminous.

And when we reclaim that clarity, we can let our unique life force flow through us — with grace, sovereignty, and trust.

Your Healing Is My Healing

The body wants to heal. It longs to be vibrant, alive, fully expressed.

And when we allow that healing, it doesn't just transform us.
It ripples outward.

💞 Your healing is my healing.
My healing is your healing.
Our healing is all healing.

When we trust the body again, a wise remembering occurs:

I am welcomed on this Earth.
My life force is not a burden.
I am safe to be who I am.

Final Blessing: Look Up

So let this be your gentle reminder:

Your body is not the problem. Your life force is not too much. You are worthy.
You are not alone.

Look up.

You never know what you might receive.

Photo by Tsuyoshi Kozu on Unsplash

What Wants To Warm Up? Coming Out Of Functional Freeze In Eating Disorder Recovery

Change is in the air.

After living nomadically for a few years, I finally found myself on solid ground, only to watch everything I had built dissolve. What followed was a deep season of groundlessness, one that invited me to slow down, step away from being busy, and pause long enough to feel what was beneath it all.

This pause was more than rest. It revealed something I hadn’t seen so clearly before:

I had been living from a nervous system state of functional freeze.

What Is Functional Freeze?

Functional freeze is a state of nervous system dysregulation where mobilizing energy (fight/flight) gets trapped under a blanket of shutdown and numbness. You’re not collapsed or visibly in distress. In fact, on the outside, you're probably highly functional — doing, achieving, showing up.

But internally, it’s like you have the gas and the brake are on at the same time.

With such powerful opposing forces firing simultaneously, over time, the body begins to break down.

This state can insidiously disrupt everything from digestion, sleep, and mood, to immunity and hormonal balance. It’s common in people with addiction and eating disorders, and sadly, it’s also normalized by our hustle culture and diet culture alike.

Functional freeze is often linked to a nervous system that ties the need to prove one’s inner worth and value to external achievements and validation. It’s like you’re running around with an empty cup, giving to others, but unable to nourish and fill up your own cup.

Eating Disorders as Functional Freeze

In my own life, and in the lives of many clients, I’ve come to see eating disorders not just as cognitive distortions, but as somatic strategies — ways the body communicates unmetabolized experiences when words and support are unavailable.

Disordered eating became my body’s way of saying: “Something inside is too much to feel.”

This is why so many people with EDs describe feeling like a “walking head,” numb or robotic. Beneath the freeze is often a highly sensitive, intuitive nervous system that has learned to shut down in order to survive to be in relationship.

What people learn to shut down, numb, repress, block, or invalidate are any feelings that carry a charge that is too big, too much, or unacceptable — as deemed by the people around them. An icy freeze covers everything in order to maintain enough connection, cementing the functional freeze state.

It works for a while until life becomes colourless, dull, tasteless and unfulfilling, starved.

Bottom-Up Healing: Where Change Begins

For years when I was struggling with an eating disorder, I tried top-down approaches to recovery. I focused on stopping behaviours and changing thoughts. But the real shift came when I found polyvagal-informed somatic work and plant medicine.

The changes that have emerged from this healing work has been incremental, over many many years. Breaking the cycle of functional freeze is ancestral and collective, alongside it being an individual journey. The layers are deep, and it takes time to excavate, from the ground up, and to consciously choose to not live or normalize the habitual patterning of functional freeze.

A bottom-up approach is powerful because story follows state.

When we shift the nervous system into regulation (bottom up), the story of the eating disorder (top down) doesn’t need to be fixed or forced away — it begins to transform and dissolve on its own.

In a regulated state:

• Clearer perspective, thought, and rationality returns

• Eating feels more balanced

• Body image improves

• Creativity emerges

• Curiosity blossoms

• Relationships feel safer

• Life feels more possible, naturally, without trying or forcing

This is what bottom-up healing looks like. Rather than pushing ourselves into change, we titrate transformation, adding in sustainable, nourishing tools, practices, and rhythms that help us feel present, safe, and grounded in our bodies again. Rewiring and transforming can only happen when we are present and embodied.

Psychedelics, Flow, and Feeling What Was Frozen

Plant medicines and psychedelics have been an essential part of my journey because they do something very simple yet profound:

They help us feel what we were once unwilling or unable to feel.

In the presence of skilled, somatic-based preparation and integration, psychedelics can support the thawing of freeze, reconnecting us with our bodies, our emotions, and our soul’s deepest longings. This isn’t about forcing catharsis, it’s about returning to an aligned and natural state of warmth, flow, and coherence.

Being able to envision and create a life without an eating disorder-like behaviours becomes accessible as psychedelics widen our vision, soften the limiting beliefs, usher in hope and inspiration, and bring our bodies into a more compassionate and regulated state.

Their visionary capacities helps us widen our space of possibility through helping us dream beyond what we think and embody are possible.

So, How Do We Come Out of Freeze?

Start by asking yourself:

What am I unwilling to feel? (Thank you Tara Brach for this inquiry).

To dethaw the functional freeze, we are required to shift from a state of bracing to one of embracing.

Coming out of functional freeze is not about “doing more.” It’s about accepting and embracing the parts of us we’ve pushed away, especially the tender, fiery, grieving, and longing ones.

Here are some gentle ways to begin:

• Track sensation: Notice what warms you emotionally, physically, spiritually

• Follow pleasure: What brings aliveness? Laughter? Inspiration?

• Welcome parts: Practice self-acceptance towards the frozen or numb states

• Orient to goodness: Let your senses take in beauty, safety, and softness around you

As the freeze begins to thaw and you feel more regulated, digestion improves, intuition returns, relationships feel more connected, and life starts to feel more vibrant, more honest, more you.

This is because when we start coming out of functional freeze, our senses are more accurately perceiving the external environment, we are more attuned to the body and its cues (the internal environment), and we are able to listen to our internal systems that are giving us really important cues for our safety, well-being, and internal sense of balance. This is our intuition coming online.

Functional freeze isn’t a flaw; it’s a brilliant survival strategy that outlived its usefulness. And coming out of it isn’t a race. Dethawing takes time. Let yourself move at the pace of your nervous system.

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I change.” — Carl Rogers

As we embrace ourselves with warmth and honesty, we return to our natural state: regulated, resourced, and resilient.

May you trust your timing. May you listen to the subtle longings within. And may you feel held, always, by your body, by the Earth, by love.

The Surprising Gift of Fear: A Somatic and Psychedelic Approach to Eating Disorder Recovery

What If fear is your gateway to growth?

Today, I’m contemplating this potent quote by Pema Chödrön:

“Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.”

Recently, I’ve been moving through a portal of fear — not fear of something external, but the fear of fear itself. This has been about confronting and being present with the physical sensations of fear running through my body.

Being afraid of fear itself can feel like a frustrating loop. Fear feeds on itself, creating a cycle that’s hard to break. Maybe you’ve felt this, too?

It’s natural to resist discomfort. Turning toward the burning, buzzing sensations we label as “fear” can feel unnatural — like going against the grain.

If you’ve ever been taught to dismiss fear or lacked role models growing up who navigated fear mindfully, this reaction is incredibly common.

Fear Is Not Wrong

It is helpful to remember that:

• Feeling fear is not wrong.

• You are not broken for feeling fear — or even for fearing fear.

Fear is a vital emotion in this human experience 💕 It helps us:

• Decide what to move toward or avoid.

• Activate survival responses (fight, flight, freeze) when danger is present.

Fear is a necessary ingredient for our survival, one of the seven core categories of emotions we all experience, alongside anger, sadness, joy, excitement, disgust, and sexual excitement.

But what happens when we experience fear outside of serious, life-threatening danger?

The Fear That Holds Our Truth Back

Sometimes, fear shows up when we’re not in danger but in a moment of expansion. Expansion invites us closer to our truth, asking us to remove the armor and defenses that have kept us small. Stepping beyond our comfort zone can feel thrilling — and terrifying. For example, you might:

• Feel a desire to connect with someone but hesitate as fear tenses up your body, holding you back.

• Be curious to try new food at a community gathering but feel fear stop you.

• Want to speak up in a circle of friends but feel your throat tighten, constricting your voice.

In these moments, sensations like tightness, burning, paralyzing, or heaviness arise — a soupy somatic mix we label as “fear.” 😨 These feelings can be overwhelming and uncomfortable and leave us feeling out of control (especially if we didn't have appropriate role modelling).

When fear dominates in this way, we try to avoid it entirely, creating a loop where we fear fear itself.

Escaping Fear Through Disconnection

For those navigating eating disorders, disordered eating, or other mental health challenges, emotions like fear can feel too big, too much, too overwhelming.

Why? Many of us were taught to suppress or numb emotions. Perhaps you were labelled a “wimp” for expressing fear or praised for being “tough cookie.” These early experiences can lead to disconnection from authentic emotions, encouraging patterns of shame, shutting down and avoiding what arises within.

To cope with these feelings, we might turn to food or our bodies to escape — not just from fear, but from the pain of denying our inner truths by only showing "acceptable" emotions to the outside world.

Personally, I see eating disorders as expressions of unmetabolized fear responses.

The thing is, is that fear doesn’t disappear when avoided. It becomes trapped in the body, undigested, and can show up as:

• Anxiety

• Digestive issues

• Disrupted sleep

• Rigidity around food, and more

The way forward is learning to gently approach fear — to meet it with curiosity, courage, and compassion rather than avoiding, numbing out or battling.

I am sharing this theme because there is a lot of fear in the collective right now. The world is certainly at a precipice of radical disruption and change.

Almost everyone I’ve spoken to recently has expressed that they’re in some kind of transition — whether it’s related to jobs, finances, homes, health, relationships, or identity 🌓

We are individually and collectively in the midst of change. And change often brings fear.

Embracing Fear as a Gateway to Transformation

Fear is not something to eliminate. It’s something to understand, hold, and soften into.

Liminal moments — those thresholds of change and uncertainty — often bring fear. The word “liminal” comes from the Latin limen, meaning “threshold” or “doorway.” It’s the space between where you’ve been and where you’re going.

How we approach these liminal spaces determines whether we repeat old patterns out of fear — or step into transformation with grace, and become more embodied and wiser through it 👁️

Fear holds a surprising gift: it invites us into transformation and deeper embodiment.

Three Ways to Work with Fear

Rather than tightening and hardening around fear, we can be softened by its presence. By stepping through the gateway of fear, we find opportunities to feel, move, and connect with deeper truths. Here are three ways to work with the fear of fear:

1️⃣ Give Yourself Permission to Feel Fear

Fear is a natural response and can indicate that we are moving towards a more raw, naked, real version of ourselves. It’s not about removing fear but learning to walk with it.

Transitions and change feel scary because our biology craves predictability. Our brains have evolved to avoid and reduce uncertainty (it’s more energy efficient). And the change process is fundamentally uncertain.

Since we have a strong impulse to strive for stability, the unknown inherently feels uncomfortable. By understanding this about our biology, the tight hold of fear begins to loosen.

You are not weak for feeling fear — you are human 🧬 By welcoming it with curiosity, you open the door to transformation.

2️⃣ Work with the Body

Fear is a bodily experience, so moving the body helps you process and digest it.

Here are a few ways to work the sensations of fear:

• Shake your hands and limbs to release stuck energy.

• Rock or sway gently to a favourite, soothing song.

• Walk in nature (barefoot if possible) with a friend or pet to feel grounded.

- Notice how you feel before, during and after these activities. By paying attention to how the sensations feel in your body, they become more familiar and known (see Point 1️⃣!).

It’s important to move in ways that feel within your capacity, where you can stay present to your inner experience.

Don’t be surprised if you start moving very subtly and slowly; fear needs time to come out of its shell and dethaw.

Side but important note: if you are working with fear and trauma that have been trapped in your body since early developmental years, working with it might look very different to what is described above. Working with a trauma-informed practitioner might be needed in these instances.

It goes without saying that turning towards fear requires embodied safety. You might need build a felt sense of safety in your body first before diving into it by:

• Learning about nervous system regulation and how your own nervous system works.

• Placing your hands on your heart or belly and breathing consciously.

• Pressing your feet into the ground or wiggle your toes to anchor yourself in the present moment.

• Engaging your sense — Notice what you can see, hear, or feel around you in this here-now present moment.

• Placing a weighted blanket or pillow on your body or drinking a warm beverage.

These practices build a sense of safety, containment, and regulation, helping fear soften and move.

3️⃣ Reconnect with Your Why

Why do you want to shift your relationship with fear?

Do you desire deeper connection?

More love?

To live more authentically?

These goals can feel scary, but reconnecting with your intention gives you the courage to move forward, adding radiant fuel to your inner fire.

Fear is not your enemy — it’s a messenger, pulling you closer to the truth. Ask yourself:

What is my fear trying to tell me?

What is it protecting me from?

Reframing fear as an ally that's trying to protect you rather than an adversary can help it feel less overwhelming and scary.

A Personal Reflection

Having recently celebrated my 33rd birthday earlier this month, I have finally learnt to trust that fear will not swallow me. One of my core words for my birthday this year is Trust — trusting my inner experience and letting bigger energy, like fear and love, to move through me with acceptance and curiosity.

I look back to my tender 17-year-old self when I first started my journey to heal disordered eating, body mistrust and fear of feelings (especially love) and I feel so much compassion for my younger parts that have grown and transformed.

Learning about my nervous system, working somatically, and incorporating psychedelics into my life have certainly contributed to my capacity and resiliency to hold more of myself.

I still have lots to learn but now I trust that I won’t be swallowed by fear and feel empowered knowing that I have recalibrating resources in reach to support myself in wobbly moments 🌊

Here are some simple reminders that have helped me when fear surfaces:

• Feel it in the body. Notice where fear arises in the body. See if you can also observe a place in your body that feels neutral. Shift your focus between these two places.

• Visualize it as a wave. Fear rises and falls, just like the tides. The energy will eventually subside. Breathe.

• Remind yourself you are safe. Feel your feet on the ground, take in your environment, and affirm: “Fear is a feeling. I am safe in this moment. I can feel it without being controlled by it.”

Fear is a natural response to life’s transitions and transformations. It’s not something to fix or eliminate but rather is a guide that invites us into deeper truths about ourselves.

When we learn to approach fear with curiosity and compassion — to feel it, hold it, and move with it — we open the door to resilience, growth, and evolution. We move closer to what we want and find ourselves more fulfilled. When we show up to ourselves in these ways, we inspire and give others permission to do the same.

Honouring Your Courage

Dear one, if you’ve made it this far, I want you to know: I see you, and I honour you 🙏

It takes immense courage to turn toward the challenging parts of yourself — those shadowy, uncomfortable places where fear resides. Yet, it’s in this meeting that healing, integration, and wholeness begin.

When we meet fear with compassion, it reveals its hidden gifts — courage, resilience, and authenticity.

Fear, while uncomfortable, offers us the surprising gift of transformation. It invites us to grow, to soften, and to discover truths about ourselves we might not otherwise touch. By seeing fear not as an obstacle but as a gateway, we walk the path of self-discovery with courage.

As you navigate this brave walk of transformation, remember that you don’t have to do it perfectly, and you don’t have to do it all at once. Keep going, gently, step by step.

And you don’t do it alone; remember that you are held by a force that is so powerfully benevolent beyond measure, beyond comprehension. This wider, deeper holding is what will carry you through the fear and to the other side of whatever portal of change you are navigating.

You are not alone. You are worthy of healing. You are capable.

If you need a reminder in moments of doubt, let this article be your guidepost — a small flame to light the way when fear clouds your vision.

May you carry this truth with you:

“The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage.” — Thucydides

With love and unwavering belief in your path,

Francesca Rose

Embodied Integration: Eating Disorder Recovery Through Psychedelics and Somatic Healing

Walking the path of integration is the path of embodying integrity. The words "integration" and "integrity" both stem from origins that mean "whole" or "complete." When we sit with plant medicine, we often see ourselves more clearly. With softened edges and widened perception, we notice the places that have fragmented, been hidden, or gone unseen. What was once out of sight becomes visible.

Integration invites those hidden parts back into everyday life. This is the work of recovery, of wholeness — the practice of embodying greater integrity. Often, we associate integrity with being moral or upright. But in its essence, integrity is about welcoming all parts of ourselves. Nothing shoved under the carpet. Nothing denied. Walking the talk. The deep work of letting it all belong.

And this is not easy work. This is courageous work. To truly integrate, we must face pain, shame, judgement, grief, and confusion. This is why support is essential — because witnessing ourselves in wholeness can feel heavy. As Tara Brach asks, "What am I unwilling to feel?" The courageous answer to this question aligns us directly with the heart of integrity.

The Heart of Psychedelic Healing: Courage and Recovery

The word "courage" traces back to the Greek word meaning "of the heart." Courage is not about fearlessness. It is about taking our dignified seat inside the heart. It is about letting ourselves feel—all of it—from a place of inner steadiness and soulful care.

Do you have the courage to embody what is authentically yours? The kind of courage that stretches you from the known into the unknown? The courage that bridges you to the quiet truth that lives in the body?

It’s the courage to listen to the body as your compass, ushering you back to the temple of the heart. And from this place, there is nothing to fear.

Somatic Recovery: What It Means to Embody Your Healing

Personally, in navigating the hooks and tendrils of food and body recovery, I keep returning to this question: Do you have the courage to do what is yours to do?

And more deeply: Do you have the courage to embody what is yours to embody?

Recovery is a return to our own unique truth and fullness. It is the slow, daily process of aligning body, heart, and mind so that what we wish to create, share, and live becomes more possible.

Embodiment is when consciousness lands in physical form. To feel embodied is to feel at home, grounded, awake. This can arise through the simplest of moments of connection — breathing deeply, watching the sun dip below the horizon, petting your dog, or dancing.

What moments in your life bring you back home?

Recovery as a Homecoming: A Plant Medicine and Somatic Approach

Recovery is a homecoming.

It’s the repeated practice of returning to the self, noticing when we leave, and gently finding our way back again.

Sometimes the home feels unfamiliar or even unsafe, especially when pain or trauma lives there. In those moments, we might just linger at the doorstep, or watch from across the street. But over time, we build capacity. We begin to enter. And eventually, we find ourselves living more fully in our own skin.

It is a process that requires patience, practice, and compassion.

And yes, it takes courage.

Liminal Moments: Integrating Somatic Awareness After Meals

There’s a moment, just after a meal ends, where many people feel lost and disconnected. Maybe the urge to keep eating arises. Maybe there's a rush to the next task. Or perhaps the phone appears, offering distraction.

But what if, in that moment, you paused?

What if you let yourself feel your feet, notice your breath, and soften the tension in your body? What if you reminded yourself that this liminal space — the space between — isn’t something to fix or avoid, but something to feel and bring your embodied presence into?

Recovery is learning to dwell in these liminal spaces. To build nervous system capacity to stay with the unknown.

Post-meal is one such moment. It's when the nervous system shifts into "rest and digest" — a phase that invites yielding, slowing down, and letting go. When we practice awareness here, we digest more than just food. We metabolize emotion, sensation, and life experience. This is incredibly nourishing for the psyche to experience.

Nourishment as Flow: From Disordered Eating to Soulful Living

"To nourish" comes from the Latin "nutrire"—to feed, support, preserve. Digging deeper, its roots lie in the act of suckling, or letting flow.

Nourishment = flow.

When we are nourished, we can move through life with more ease. We feel present, grounded, open. We connect with what brings us alive — be it creativity, nature, community, or rest.

An eating disorder is not random. It’s the body’s way of speaking on behalf of the soul. It's a coded message about what the soul longs for in order to thrive and experience deeper nourishment.

So instead of silencing the eating disorder’s voice, we can invite it to the table. We can ask: What do you need? What are you trying to say? In doing so, we welcome the soul home to the body. We courageously reconnect to wholeness.

Soul-Embodiment and Plant Medicine Integration

To nourish the soul, the body must be resourced. Dancing, singing, art-making, love, Nature, food, community — these are the raw materials for aliveness. These are how we tend the temple of the body so that the soul may reside fully within.

Recovery, then, is not just a return to eating. It is a return to being.

It is the courage to embody what is authentically yours.

As Winston Churchill once said, “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”

So listen. Deeply. Courageously.

You are not alone on this path.

You are becoming.

And it’s beautiful to witness.

Let us celebrate!

Microdosing: A Bridge Back to Your Body’s Wisdom

Healing is never a straight line. I’ve been reflecting on my own recovery journey recently, and how many twists and turns I took before eventually finding a sense of safety, trust, and connection with my body.

While I deeply believe that each of us is inherently whole, being human means we are all given a unique curriculum of lessons to learn and wounds to tend to at this mysterious School of Life, we call Planet Earth. Sometimes, it can feel like we’re repeating the same lessons over and over, cycling through familiar themes and wondering, “Will things ever change?!”

Last year, in particular, was one of those years for me. Experiences I thought were long resolved from my adolescence resurfaced, bringing old wounds back into view. It was challenging to re-meet these parts of myself, but this time, I approached them with a tenderness and compassion I couldn’t offer myself all those years ago.

Healing doesn’t follow a clear roadmap or timeline. Instead, it mirrors the rhythms of nature: spiraling, slow, and steady — with moments of death, rebirth, and unexpected beauty. Each season of healing brings us closer to self-trust, self-compassion, and wholeness.

Eating disorders, in particular, can feel overwhelming and complex. They often carry a reputation as one of the most challenging mental health issues to navigate. And yet, within their complexity lies something surprising: a hidden language of unmet needs. Beneath the surface, eating disorders carry the body’s deep attempts to communicate feelings, desires, and longings that cannot be expressed directly through words.

Food and body behaviours — often labeled as “disordered” — are ways the body says, I am craving love, connection, belonging, and attunement. When we can turn towards the eating disorder and listen to these poignant, underlying messages, rather than disregarding, shaming, or vilifying them, healing becomes less about control and more about cultivating a safe, nurturing environment where these needs can finally be heard and satisfied.

This is where psychedelics, and specifically, microdosing, can help.

Softening the Edges: Microdosing as a Tool for Recovery

Microdosing acts as a bridge — a gentle connection between where you are now and the body wisdom that’s always been within you.

Your body’s wisdom is its ability to guide you back to balance — whether that’s honouring hunger, feeling emotions fully, or finding safety within your own skin. Microdosing helps clear the noise so you can hear this wisdom more clearly.

Don’t expect microdosing to cure or fix an eating disorder. Instead, it offers something subtle yet profound: a gentle, expansive lens through which to view your body, your thoughts, and your patterns with fresh eyes. It creates space for curiosity, softens judgement, and opens the door to rewriting the stories that keep us stuck.

When paired with intention and attention, psychedelics help us shift from doing to being. They invite us to sit with ourselves, including our discomforts and contradictions, and in that space, healing becomes possible as the eating disorder naturally releases its grip.

Your Transformation Is in Your Blueprint

Eating disorders often pull us into cycles of perfectionism, control, and harsh self-discipline. These patterns are fueled by intense emotions — grief, anger, joy, or love — that feel too overwhelming to hold. In response, we self-criticize or numb, creating temporary relief but leaving deeper wounds untouched.

As challenging as it can seem to face an eating disorder, recovery doesn’t have to be as complicated as it seems.

Transformation doesn’t come from fixing what’s broken but from remembering the blueprint for healing already within you. It's not something to force or achieve either. It’s about creating the nourishing conditions where growth can unfold naturally — through showing up to ourselves and life with love, connection, and self-compassion.

Microdosing acts as a catalyst for this process by softening self-criticism, quieting judgement, and opening space for curiosity. It encourages an inner environment of patience and care, allowing your innate wisdom to emerge and guide you toward healing.

Three Ways Microdosing Supports Recovery

Like water reshapes stone, microdosing creates space to soften the edges of eating disorder behaviours, enhances new ways of thinking, and disrupts ingrained patterns around food and body image. Through tiny doses, microdosing can lead us towards big shifts in feeling more connected to our body and inner guidance system. Here’s how it opens pathways for transformation and supports recovery:

1. Refined Body Awareness​
   Microdosing enhances your connection to your body, helping you tune into sensations and physical cues with greater clarity, discernment, and refinement. It invites you to interpret your body’s signals as allies, not enemies, creating a foundation for trust and self-compassion.

2. Expanding Possibility​
   Psychedelics foster cognitive flexibility, allowing you to curiously and lightly challenge limiting beliefs and habitual patterns around food and body image. They spark possibility and neuroplasticity, helping you envision and embody a life beyond the confines of an eating disorder.

3. Cultivating Self-Compassion​
   ​Microdosing can help you meet the inner critic, inviting you to sit with it rather than silencing, controlling or belittling it. Through this, you are guided to meet challenging emotions — grief, shame, or fear — with kindness and non-judgement instead of avoidance. This process builds resilience and strengthens your capacity to befriend yourself; this is at the heart of recovery.

The Spiral of Growth

Healing often feels like revisiting and circling back to the same challenges again and again. But each time, you approach them from a new perspective, with greater awareness and strength. Last year, as I circled back to old wounds, I learned that returning to "old lessons" is not a failure but an invitation to relearn them with fresh insight and compassion.

Psychedelics illuminate these spirals, reminding us that repetition isn’t failure — it’s a deepening into the wisdom held within our bodies and hearts.

Nature beautifully illustrates this truth. Growth isn’t linear; it spirals, ebbs, and flows. The roots of a tree grow downward before it reaches upward. The ocean pulls back before it rushes forward. Microdosing invites us to move at the pace of nature — slow, steady, and intentional — and, in doing so, we learn to embrace our humanity as a reflection of the Earth’s wisdom.

Let’s remember that moving at the cadence of nature requires deep self-trust in a culture that is disconnected from the cycles of the Earth. Cultivating this rhythm of healing requires courage, patience, and an open heart. In a world that prioritizes control and perfection, linearity and quick fixes, this kind of self-trust is revolutionary — a return to the natural, cyclical pace of life.

Sustainable, authentic healing isn’t something you achieve; it’s something you cultivate, like a garden, giving space for what is wanting to break through and grow from within the soil of your heart — love, worthiness, expression, and wisdom.

Walking the Bridge Back to Yourself

Psychedelics plant the seeds of change, but the real work — the nurturing, tending, and growing — is up to us to walk the path. Microdosing opens the door, but the bridge back to your body’s wisdom is strengthened by how you nurture it through compassion, embodiment, and safe, intentional practices.

As my own healing continues to unfold, I’ve learned that the process is never about fixing ourselves. It’s about creating the conditions where growth, transformation, and reconnection can naturally take root.

We can cultivate these conditions by weaving practices like somatic therapy, creative expression, time in nature, co-regulation, self-reflection, playful and mindful movement, rest, and love... so much love.

As we walk this bridge of transformation, we build the capacity to meet ourselves and life more fully. We reclaim our radiant, authentic sense of self as a conscious, embodied being.

It is in this fullness that we discover our inner voice, wisdom, needs, desires, and heart’s deepest longings. Here, we meet ourselves — our truths, our wholeness, and the infinite possibilities within us. This is recovery.

Join the Free 7-Day Microdosing Course

If you’re curious about how microdosing can support your recovery, I invite you to explore my FREE 7-day microdosing course. Designed specifically for individuals navigating eating disorder recovery, this course provides practical guidance, compassionate tools, and gentle encouragement to help you prepare for a safe and intentional microdosing journey.

Together, we’ll cover:​

• Setting clear intentions for your healing journey

• Exploring the benefits of microdosing for body awareness and emotional resilience and how to stay safe along the way

• Cultivating a mindset (“set”) and environment (“setting”) that support growth

• Gentle reflection practices to integrate your experiences

This course is not a magic solution — it’s an invitation to explore your own inner wisdom and create the conditions for meaningful, embodied transformation.

Click below to enroll and take the step toward reconnecting with yourself, your body, and your innate capacity to heal.

Do You Need a Hero’s Dose? Exploring Psychedelics for Eating Disorder Recovery

When it comes to psychedelics and healing, the dose often garners significant attention. However, transformative healing isn’t always about taking a hero’s dose. For those navigating eating disorder recovery, smaller doses offer unique benefits that support safety, agency, and self-trust — essential components of sustainable healing.

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The Case for Lower Doses

A “hero’s dose” (5 grams) refers to a high dose of psychedelics that often induces profound and immersive experiences. While these journeys can be powerful, they’re not the only path to meaningful transformation. For many, especially those healing from eating disorders, smaller doses can provide a safer and more empowering space to explore emotions and patterns.

Why Smaller Doses May Be Beneficial:

• Increased Agency: You maintain the ability to set boundaries, decide what to explore, and pause if needed.

• Practice Self-Regulation: Lower doses allow you to build emotional self-efficacy by navigating feelings at your own pace.

• Strengthen Self-Trust: By staying within your window of tolerance and in your body (and not getting blasted off), you learn to trust your body and its signals.

Higher doses can sometimes be a bit more challenging to assert one's agency as sometimes the medicine comes on strongly. If there is inner work to do around practicing self-regulation, developing emotional self-efficacy, and stating boundaries, then it might be supportive to play with lower doses for some time.

You can roam around “the neighbourhood” of the emotion and sit at its edge where you feel comfortable without needing to go all in. You can just take a peek into the emotion. There is a lot of wisdom that resides in these places. You don't need to process all of the emotions in their fullness all at once. Slow and steady is where sustainable, integrated healing occurs.

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Balancing Safety and Depth

While the dose matters, it’s the setting and set that hold greater significance in determining the quality of a psychedelic journey.

Key Questions to Consider:

1. Mindset: Are you feeling anchored and clear in your intentions?

2. Emotions: Are you navigating resistance, uncertainty, lots of grief or high anxiety currently? How safe do you feel in your body?

3. Setting: Is the environment safe, comfortable, and conducive to healing?

4. Support: Are you journeying solo, with a trusted facilitator, or in a group setting where you feel held and supported? Do you have people around you to support you after the journey, like friends, family or a therapist?

5. Preparation: Have you taken the time to reflect on your goals, intentions, and readiness for the journey?

6. Trust Yourself: When you feel into a dose, what number does your body tell you is the right amount?

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The Role of Safety in Healing

For those with eating disorders, a sense of safety is critical. Psychedelics can uncover vulnerable parts of ourselves, and if the environment or dose feels overwhelming, the protective mechanisms in our psyche may block deeper healing.

Ways to Enhance Safety:

• Work with a trained facilitator who understands trauma and eating disorders.

• Start with a dose that feels right for your body, even if it’s a micro or mini-dose.

• Create a soothing and secure physical environment.

• Use embodiment practices to ground yourself when big emotions arise. It is very helpful to cultivate tools before the journey so it becomes like muscle memory — you know what to reach for when moments of challenge come up.

Sustainable Healing: Quality Over Quantity

Healing isn’t about forcing change or overwhelming the nervous system. Sustainable transformation happens slowly and incrementally, where all parts of you feel safe and aligned in the process.

Why Less Can Be More:

• Lower doses allow for integration — the digestion of emotions, memories, and insights at a manageable pace.

• Smaller doses often provide access to subtle but profound layers of healing that may go unnoticed in higher-dose journeys.

• These journeys support presence and embodiment, creating lasting and meaningful change over time.

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Embracing Flexibility and Curiosity

Whilst the dose plays a role, the amount of medicine you consume has less significance when you consider your own mindset, the safety of the space, the relationship with the facilitator, and the preparation you put in before the journey has even begun.

Taking a high dose doesn’t have to be the end goal. I’ve had some very deep experiences on “lower” doses that I could not have accessed on higher doses.

Quality over quantity.

Sustainable change is when we can stay present and embodied in the experience, rather than overriding our current capacity. This is the beauty of working with micro, mini or lower doses. Healing happens when we are present and embodied through it all, with all parts on board for the journey.

Psychedelic healing is a personal and evolving process. Whether you’re exploring microdosing or considering a facilitated journey, staying open and curious about what your body needs in the moment is key.

Remember, there’s no “one-size-fits-all” dose or experience. Listen to your intuition, honor your limits, and focus on what feels safe and supportive for you.

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Want To Connect Further?

Navigating eating disorder recovery with psychedelics requires intention, preparation, and care. If you’re ready to explore this path, I offer 1:1 coaching that focus on eating disorder recovery, psychedelic preparation, and integration as well as group microdosing programs.

Discover the healing potential of small, intentional steps — because sometimes, less truly is more. If you feel curious, you are welcome to reach out to schedule a free 20-min call with me to discuss options and ways of working together.

Access my FREE 7-day microdsoing course for eating disorder recovery. Learn about how small doses can make a tiny impact for your healing and recovery.

Photo by Mehdi MeSSrro on Unsplash

Healing Loneliness and Self-Blame in Eating Disorder Recovery with Psychedelics

Loneliness is often deeply intertwined with eating disorders — but it isn’t just a symptom. For many, the feeling of isolation was present long before disordered eating behaviors emerged. Let’s explore the role of loneliness, self-blame, and how psychedelic-assisted healing can support the recovery journey.

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Loneliness: More Than a Symptom

One of the most common themes shared by people navigating eating disorder recovery is loneliness. This isn’t a fleeting emotion but often a long-standing feeling rooted in childhood experiences. For some, it’s a feeling that has been around for as long as they can remember.

Common Beliefs Linked to Loneliness:

• “No one really understands me.”

• “I don’t belong here.”

• “The world doesn’t see or accept me.”

These beliefs often stem from early experiences of feeling misunderstood, left out, not feeling like they fit in, or unable to connect with others. Even within loving families, systemic oppression and societal pressures (like diet culture) can amplify this sense of isolation. Many people with eating disorders are also very energetically sensitive, which makes it even more challenging to fit into a loud, fast, overstimulating world.

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The Eating Disorder as a Protector

For many, eating disorder behaviors provide a sense of comfort and reliability in times of disconnection.

However, these behaviors often deepen feelings of isolation:

• Social avoidance due to fear around food-centered events.

• Rigid food or body rituals that limit engagement with others.

It is helpful to see that the eating disorder is the body's way of communicating about how connected or disconnected it feels in the world in ways that words cannot be expressed.

When we see the eating disorder as the body communicating with the rest of the world about its state of regulation, sense of safety and needs for attachment and connection, we begin to see a clearer path towards a more compassionate healing that is inclusive, focuses on developing a somatic sense of belonging, dignity and enoughness, and that prioritizes establishing safe, sincere connections.

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Self-Blame: A Misunderstood Protector

Self-blame is another common experience for those with eating disorders.

As you journey through processing feelings of loneliness, it is possible you might come across a part of yourself that holds an enormous amount of self-blame. For people navigating eating disorders, there are often pervasive internal voices that spin heavy narrative of self-blame and self-criticism.

When there are feelings of loneliness, blaming oneself as “the problem” becomes a way to deal with the pain of feeling alone. While these internal narratives of criticism can feel heavy, they often arise as adaptive responses to pain.

These blaming and critical parts often arose during a time of incredible, intolerable pain. For example, if a young child didn't have their needs met or were ignored in some way (why this happens in the first place is usually rooted in deeper systemic issues), they may believe they are unlovable and are completely alone in the world.

This is intolerable to bear, and as such, a protector part that is highly critical may creep in.

It is more manageable to blame oneself for not being loveable and this protective part can try to do something about it by trying to be perfect, rather than sitting in the pain of not being loved and feeling alone. It is easier to swallow self-blame than trauma.

How Self-Blame Develops:

1. Early Pain: Experiences of developmental trauma, neglect or unmet needs can create feelings of being unlovable.

2. Protective Beliefs: Self-blame becomes a coping mechanism to avoid the unbearable pain of feeling unloved or alone.

3. Perfectionism: A critical inner voice pushes for unattainable perfection as a way to regain connection and safety.

Though self-blame initially protects us, it can entrench disordered behaviors and perpetuate a cycle of disconnection.

How Psychedelics Can Help

Psychedelic-assisted healing offers a powerful tool to address the root causes of loneliness and self-blame. By softening rigid beliefs and connecting with deeper emotions, psychedelics help facilitate profound healing.

Psychedelics have the ability to soften the critical, blaming voices that we hold towards ourselves, offering a new perspective. In that softening we can connect to what's underneath the inner harshness — which is usually the raw, tender part within us that holds that burden of hard-to-swallow-pain of feeling alone.

Slowly, we make contact. Gradually, we connect with that pain and acknowledge it. Eventually, it moves and digests. As the old pain gets digested (which takes time and has several layers), the protector parts no longer have to work so hard at blaming and criticizing, and perhaps they take on a new role, such as offering guidance on establishing healthy boundaries.

And the part of us that once held the pain of feeling all alone is acknowledged, witnessed and held — and begins to feel connected, loved and seen.

What Happens During Psychedelic Healing:

• Protector Parts Rest: The critical, blaming voices step aside.

• Connection to Pain: You gently reconnect with the tender parts of yourself carrying old wounds.

• Emotional Integration: Suppressed pain is acknowledged, processed, and released.

• Reintegration: Fragmented parts are reunited, creating a sense of wholeness.

This process often mirrors inner child work or reparenting, where we meet our younger selves with compassion, care, and acknowledgment.

We begin to reconnect with ourselves with acceptance and compassion and feel an increased capacity to reach out to life and feel supported by it too. Things feel less lonely. What a beautiful journey.

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The Path Toward Connection

As self-blame eases and loneliness is addressed, space opens within the body-mind for authentic connection:

• A stronger relationship with yourself, rooted in acceptance and compassion.

• Greater openness to forming meaningful relationships.

• A renewed sense of belonging to the world around you.

Recovery becomes less about "fixing" and more about reconnecting — with yourself, others, and the world.

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You’re Not Alone

I offer 1:1 coaching and group programs created to support eating disorder recovery through somatic practices and psychedelic integration. Together, we can explore a path that leads to greater connection, self-compassion, and inner resiliency.

Whether you’re just starting or looking for deeper support, I’m here to walk alongside you with care, hope, and understanding. You are welcome to reach out to me to schedule a free 20-minute call to discuss ways of working together.

Photo by Matt Sclarandis on Unsplash

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.

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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.

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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:

1. Emotion Processing: Emotions (or “energy in motion”) are digested and released, leaving space for inner clarity and alignment.

2. Mind-Body Synergy: As the body processes stored tension, the mind gains access to deeper insight, values, and perspectives.

3. Grounded Preparation and Integration: Embodiment practices help expand the body-mind's capacity for resilience, strengthening the results of psychedelic journeys.

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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.

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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?

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

Photo by kazuend 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

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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

1. 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?

2. Connect with Nature: Ground yourself in nature. Yielding to the Earth’s rhythms reminds us of our inherent place in the world.

3. 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.

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.

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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.

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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.

To read more about microdosing for eating disorder recovery and what to expect should you choose microdose, head here.

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

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.

If you are seeking support for your microdosing journey, contact me here to organize a free 30-minute discovery call.

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

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. 

Photo by Raychan on Unsplash

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.

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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

Four Reasons To Work With A Psychedelic Guide For People In Eating Disorder Recovery

There’s something to be said for having a guide, trip sitter or therapist to hold a space safe as one navigates different realms of consciousness and embodiment. For folks navigating disordered eating or eating disorders, having someone directly support the psychedelic journey can form part of the healing process.

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The presence of a supporter role is added resource that can allow for a deepening of healing that might not have been possible if they weren’t there.

Of course, there are many ways to navigate a psychedelic journey, and I’m all for each one of us in finding our way in these spaces in ways that work for us and meet us where we’re at. Some people enjoy group settings for psychedelic journeys, some prefer 1:1, whilst others like to journey alone. However, it is certainly safer to have someone nearby, either in the room or in the same house as you, should you need help, guidance or TLC when those challenging moments arise in the psychedelic journey.

If you are new to exploring altered states under psychedelics, it is usually advised to have either have a guide, therapist, trip sitter/friend/loved one to be a sturdy anchor as you navigate the waves that psychedelics aim to teach us how to surf. Stay safe and within your capacity, do your research, and go slowly and enjoy the process of being supported, witnessed and celebrated through that.

Here are four ways in which a guide can support your psychedelic journey within the context of recovering from an eating disorder:

1. Practicing Vulnerability

For people with eating disorders there is often a fear of being close or vulnerable with another person.

The heart is guarded and the nervous system is in a state of Protection with the support of the plant medicine, the brain's fear response lowers and the patterns of defense soften, allowing for increased connection.

When this is consciously tracked and worked with, this can leave a somatic imprint that can shift the ways in which one relates and connects with oneself others and the world.

2. Establishing Co-Regulation

Co-regulation is when someone “borrows” the nervous system of another for people with eating disorders, there has often been a history of developmental trauma, which means that one received co-regulation that was likely missattuned. This may have looked like having one’s emotional experience unacknowledged, one’s biological impulses ignored, or growing up in an environment that didn’t feel safe enough for that young person to emit and emote their authentic expression.

Working with a trauma informed guide in a psychedelic or plant medicine journey can be a powerful embodied experience of receiving attuned co-regulation that is validating, understanding and accepting of one's experience. When one receives attuned co-regulation, there is an increased sense of embodiment and capacity to listen to trust one’s internal cues. This then has the profound impact on one's ability to self-regulate.

3. Coming Out Of Functional Freeze

Most people navigating eating disorders are in a state of functional freeze, meaning that their nervous system is storing unmetabolized flight and fight energy underneath a layer of shutdown, numbness and freeze.

In the plant medicine journey, it is possible that the freeze melts and the highest sympathetic energies bubble up. Meeting these energies on wanting to fight or flee can be scary. And so having a guide to safely support the titration of meeting these feelings can be highly supportive, allowing those energies to be processed, digested and released out of the body.

4. Asking For Help

It's very common for people with eating disorders to want to do things alone, not ask for help, override, or will try to figure things out without any support, white knuckling through life. In a psychedelic journey, basic things like going to the bathroom or getting a warm blanket can be more challenging.

The pattern might be to not want to be a burden or take up too much space but one can use this more cognitive flexible experience to rewire that pathway where by intentionally practicing to ask the guide for help can be part of the healing process.

Let me know in the comments: How has having a supporter role in medicine spaces helped you deepen into your healing? What did they mirror back or reveal to you that you might not have seen without their presence?

Photo by Rosie Sun on Unsplash