Breakthrough Food Recovery Stuckness With Psychedelics and Movement
Welcome to the Satiated Podcast, where we explore physical and emotional hunger, satiation and healing your relationship with your food and body. I'm your host. Stephanie Mara Fox, your Somatic Nutritional Counselor.
My current perspective on eating disorders is that labeling food behaviors as a disorder has kept the field of food recovery distracted, continuing to focus on that food is the problem. Patterns of binge eating, restriction, yo yo dieting, food noise, and body image struggles need to be re-labeled as nervous system dysregulation or a trauma response. Food was never actually the problem, but it was the strategy to support the nervous system, to cultivate safety, and to produce specific neurotransmitters. The modalities you might explore for food recovery expand when food behaviors are viewed from a trauma lens. You can start to focus on what any food coping behavior is trying to support you with, rather than it being the thing that needs to change. The safer you feel in your body, the less you can experience food or body image impulses that are trying to facilitate safety. I chat about this and the field of psychedelic assisted therapies that are supporting many individuals in healing a trauma response in their body that no other modality has been able to break through with Francesca Annenberg today.
Francesca is an Eating Disorder Recovery, Somatic Practitioner, and Psychedelic Integration Guide. Her work is shaped by her own recovery from an eating disorder, and theoretical and experiential studies of embodiment-based and psychedelic healing approaches. She supports people healing their relationship with food and body image through a grounded, body-first approach that draws on somatic principles grounded in trauma-informed care, nervous system understanding, and sacred plant medicine. We chat about how psychedelic assisted therapies can be utilized in food recovery, how movement, sensory awareness, and reconnecting with the body can transform food and body image issues, building safety and trust in the body, and the connection between food, relationships, and self worth. I truly believe somatic psychology has been the missing piece for many people struggling for decades with their food and body image.
This is why I'm passionate about teaching my three month live Somatic Eating® Program to be able to reach more people with this work. If you haven't checked out all the details yet, you can learn more at somaticeating.com. The doors are open to join now and we start on May 21st and spend three months together learning to build safety within yourself and with food, cultivating secure attachment with food and others, and fostering physical and emotional satiation. I would love to connect with you more in the program! Now, welcome Francesca! I am really excited to connect with you again. We did an IG live together a while ago, and so it's just wonderful to reconnect with you and have you here now on the podcast, and we share a very similar perspective and lens of food recovery, and so I'd love for you to share a little bit about you and how you got into the work that you're doing today.
Francesca Annenberg 03:55
Well, it's really good to be here again and to share space and wisdom. Really appreciate the perspective that you hold and also been cultivating over the years. Yeah, I got to this work through just being a human and struggling with an eating disorder in my teens and 20s and receiving quite traditional treatment, initially that very much supported me. I was grateful to have a relatively okay inpatient treatment. It was definitely not without its complications and challenges, but I walked out of that space feeling inspired to get better, and thereafter was a long, slow, trudging walk of recovery where it felt like not a lot was happening, and just having to put one foot in front of the other and hitting many brick walls, resistance. And then eventually coming across psychedelics, and that shifted things for me, because I was able to feel self love for the first time in years, and opened me up to new ways of relating to the world and to my body and yeah, eventually realized that this was something that I wanted to do, and I started kind of patch working and weaving a very non traditional study approach, working with the Embodied Recovery Institute for a number of years now, and doing quite a bit of deep dives into psychedelic integration and preparation and various education around the nervous system, and now, actually, I've just gone back into formal, traditional academic studies to work towards licensure here in South Africa and move towards a Masters eventually. Feels great to be bridging the two worlds together now, and this will be another long road, as you know, with your academic pursuits and things, but it feels very much an important piece.
Stephanie Mara 06:17
Oh, that's so exciting, and I really appreciate you describing it as a long trudging road like I know that sounds a little maybe like heavy in the body, but I feel such a resonance with that, because it is such a long path to take, and I know sometimes even in in my own recovery journey, that it can feel like nothing is happening. It can feel like there's this stuckness, or why aren't things moving forward, and then there's this personal judgment about what am I doing something wrong. And so I just appreciate the naming of that, especially for those that are listening here, that when you're in it, that's all. I don't want to say it's like normal, but we can bring a lot of like compassion into the journey that it is really long. There is no quick fix when you're trying to recover your interactions with food. And I find that it's one of the hardest journeys to kind of go on, because the thing that is perceived as threatening or dangerous is something that you also have to interact with every day to continue to be here. And so it's not such an easy path to take.
Francesca Annenberg 07:36
It's like every day is an initiation every meal is this, like mini like death and rebirth, of choosing something different, facing fear multiple times a day. Yeah, it's a hell of a journey. And I think for for those who are on it, and I think there's a direct correlation between like, how deep this journey is. It sends us so deeply into like, the most forgotten, hardest to reach, places of ourselves. That's where I feel an eating disorder can take us, because on the other side is equal amounts of growth and transformation and wisdom. It's like I don't regret this journey as trudging and as hard as it has been, because it set me on a journey of of self discovery and deepening into wisdom and into my heart and connecting to a much wider world, beyond, beyond just me, and so I'm grateful for that. And yes, it took time to get to that place of gratitude and to be able to see from that perspective. But I know, yeah, when you're in it, it doesn't always feel that way. Just feels flipping tough, boring as well sometimes.
Stephanie Mara 09:01
Yeah, yeah. 1,000% I resonate with so many of those pieces, and even just the aspect of, like, some days you're going to feel like nothing is happening, and also that some days you're going to be surprised at how much gets revealed. Like, I cannot tell you how many times I hear from people that are surprised at where this path goes to that it's like wait I thought I was just trying to stop binge eating, and now I'm talking about what my childhood is like and how my needs weren't met by my parents, and like trying to heal that, or to, you know, rediscover who I am, that food and body image took up so much space and time in my life that it's like, who am I? What do I like? How do I want to spend my time? So I really agree with what you're bringing here of how much actually this recovery path opens up. And I don't think that that's talked about enough that so often, so much of the focus is on that this is a food recovery path. It is you healing your relationship with food. But I find, and I hear you saying this as well, it's so much bigger in my experience. It was like kind of a re-coming home to myself, but also a rediscovery of myself that I never got to because food behaviors and body image behaviors were taking up so much space. I'm curious about your experience, but also how specifically I know that the schools that I've gone to, psychedelic assisted trainings have gotten more popular, where they actually exist now, before it was very much on the fringe, and people were like piecing things together, and now there's, like, formal education in it, and so I'm curious how that also was maybe like a missing piece for you.
Francesca Annenberg 10:57
Yeah, I agree that it's so much more than just food problems that need to be resolved. Because, yeah, I mean, food is what sustains us. It is nourishment, and it is a way in which we can engage in the world. And if for whatever reason, we learnt or came into this world fearing to engage, or the world felt overwhelming, or maybe there was a feeling of, I just don't belong here, like I don't even exist, and there's no place for me. Then why would I want to eat and keep living on this planet that is also crazy right now? That makes sense, where one would want to try and leave the body and kind of hover a little bit off the ground, or be more in that like ethereal, dissociated state food brings us right back down to earth. It's like gravity, gravitas and like we have to face the reality of whatever the reality is that we're facing and we're healing our relationship with nourishment, be that food, be that connection, because food and relationships are intertwined of formative attachments are through food. And so how we learn to relate with food is so correlated to how we relate and our relationship patterns over time. So there's such a for me, a deep, deep connection between, like, what's happening with my food, what's happening with my relationships, and how are they actually reflecting each other and in some cases perpetuating, or in some cases helping. So yeah, it is so much more than than the food. Like, really discovering, like, this sense of I belong here, and I can take in this food and my and I can stand on this earth knowing that I'm here to contribute something. Like, there's such a big piece in recovery around worth and belonging and purpose, and yeah, who am I? Beyond this small these small patterns, these rigid patterns, these repetitive patterns that don't create a lot of space for creativity and spontaneity and for the magic. And that's what psychedelics really helped me uncover and rediscover, is the magic of this life in the small moments, in the not so small moments, and also helped me in the initial phases of like, oh, I can also feel the bigness of these emotions, and I will not die, and I will not get swallowed by these emotions. Like, I actually built my capacity to be able to feel more with psychedelics. And initially, my first few years with psychedelics was not with training. It was just, you know, group ceremonies and kind of figuring out, well, I didn't even know what integration was. I had very limited education or given much information around prep and integration. And so I do think that what is being done in the psychedelic assisted therapy space and in the research, there is so much more talk about prep and integration and how these one off experiences, yes, we can kind of see from a on a wider perspective. We can kind of get to the top of the mountain, so to speak, and really see our lives from a different vantage point. But then, after the ceremony, we got to find our way to walk back up that mountain again. And how do we sustain ourselves in walking up that mountain? Well, one of them is food, because healing requires energy, requires focus, requires motivation, and food can help that otherwise, the mountain can look really tall, and then, of course, all the other forms of nourishment that can help with rewiring some of those patterns. So the psychedelic piece was a big one for me, because I hadn't yet come across a way in which to experience my reality and my thoughts. And my relationship with my body, not just from like a cognitive frame that I was given by a therapist, but rather, there were these experiences where I embodied and felt myself accepting myself. It was this deeply embodied self knowing. So there was both, like, that cognitive reframe of like shifting from I hate my body to I accept my body, but deeper than that, I like, really felt what it meant to accept my body, and that is a part of the ongoing integration, as if I can remember that felt state, and keep you turning back to that, and keep remembering that that state is real and within me, because I felt that we can keep trudging along. It's like, the journey isn't so trudgy. It's like, okay, there's a little bit of like, hope for the path.
Stephanie Mara 15:57
You just listed so many amazing layers in that just first in seeing the wisdom in food behaviors, whether that is trying to get us back into our body or actually continuing to keep us at a distance from our body, and we can utilize food either over nutritioning the body or under nourishing the body in all sorts of different ways towards those means. So I loved that you named that that it's like, yeah, there's reasons why we're doing what we're doing with food. And it isn't actually the problem. It's, I always think of it as it's trying to mimic some somatic felt sense in your body that you don't yet know how to do on your own, but food is such an ally and a resource to replicate that felt sense that you're looking for. And obviously I've explored a lot here around there are somatic and nervous system lenses that we can explore other ways we can get to that felt sense, but I hear also for yourself, psychedelics was also something that reminded you, and I've actually heard this from other people too. It reminded them what safety could be like in their body when they haven't felt that in so long, like they just can't connect back with what a sense of safety or play or creativity could feel like, it feels too distant, and I hear like it reminded you of that, that then when you were out of the experience, it was something that you could remember, oh, that's what that could feel like okay what's going to help me now feel that way, because I can remember what that could feel like in my body.
Francesca Annenberg 17:41
Yeah, it becomes like an anchor. It becomes something to hold on to, because I've felt it, I've touched it, I've breathed into it, and it is not part of me, and like a tool in the toolbox. Also, of course, yeah, it can also be challenging after psychedelic experiences, where there has been an opening, there has been some layers have been shared, and then we step back into perhaps the familiar environment that holds the memories, that holds kind of maybe old relationship dynamics that are still ongoing or it's just like that the space is reflecting back this old identity. It can be also tough coming back. Yeah, that's also what I'm I'm working with other people, is like, how can we start to be in the world whilst holding this, this new experience, and starting to find a way to kind of blend them, not to get rid of the old, because the old has also helped you to get to where you are now, expanding on the foundation that currently is where you are at, with the support of this new perspective from whatever you gain from from psychedelics and integration is hard work. It's, in a way, it can be easier to just be in a psychedelic journey, but then, yeah, how to tend daily in small ways to that, to that insight, so it weaves into the fabric of everyday life when some of these patterns and behaviors are deeply entrenched, like one journey will not, it's not a magic pill. Neuroplasticity takes time and focus and intention and positive intention.
Stephanie Mara 19:25
Yeah, I'm curious what you saw start to shift in your relationship with your food and your body as that integration was happening.
Francesca Annenberg 19:34
So there's been a few things that have come from the years of working with psychedelics. The one has been that capacity to feel more because when I was really struggling with my eating disorder, there was like no capacity to feel very numb, like flat emotion, and also not really able to feel what was going on. And so psychedelics have helped me open up to the truth of what it is that I'm feeling, but also help me hold some of the more challenging feelings that include also feelings like love and joy and worthiness. So it's not just also like the grief and the anger, it's like, wow, can I also hold love for myself and for others, still working on that one. I would say also a big piece of the integration has also been cultivating clarity. It's an interesting one, because you go into a journey with an intention. Ideally, the intention are like the oars of the boat. Sometimes you can place the oars in the boat, and you can just let yourself, you know, go down the river and let the currents take you, but sometimes you need a little bit of the oars to help yourself and direct down the river. And there have been times where I haven't come with that clarity, and I have seen then the journey go a little bit sideways because of it, and from my journey with an eating disorder, clarity has not been my strong suit, like a lot of confusion, like people pleasing, because there hasn't been a clear sense of who I am and what it is that I'm feeling, kind of confusing my voice with other voices and not really having a strong inner core and inner center easily thrown off course. And so that has been an ongoing practice that psychedelics have helped me with, and that has have been part of the integration of how to cultivate clarity. Like, what do I like? What do I want to eat right now? Am I hungry? Am I full? What do I prefer? And how that then also translates into every other decision, because when I know where I am, then I can, like, direct myself a little bit more clearly.
Stephanie Mara 21:52
Yeah, I hear there was something in that, and I actually don't know the research on this. I would need to do more reading around. I'm curious now, if there's something about psychedelics that kind of enhances interoceptive awareness, because what you're talking about is really learning the felt sense of your body and being able to connect with it. And I do know that there is research on like, the stronger our interoception is, the easier decision making becomes, because we can hear our body's feedback, of like, our heart rate going up or down, or our breath getting fuller or shallower, just like tension, tightness or ease, relaxation. You know, when we are able to pick up on these things, we can then go into like, oh, do I want to have this or this for lunch? Becomes a much easier decision making process, because we can, like, hear our body's feedback. So I hear there was something about, like, with the psychedelics, when there was a clear intention, which I really totally get that there are so many layers to why we do what we do with food that that does sound like it would be a little bit hard to sometimes go in with, like, a super crystal clear intention, like, it might be a little bit like, hazy or vague because, like, there is a lot of reasons why a food behavior is happening, but I hear that also it, it kind of gave you a new lens or perspective to explore something that was playing out in an eating disorder that kind of connected you back to yourself, whereas usually the eating disorder behaviors are often disconnecting us with ourselves.
Francesca Annenberg 23:31
Yeah, there is research on psychedelics and interoceptive awareness, yeah, and a lot of people report feeling a lot more embodied and a lot more connected to their feelings and able to track and process and digest those feelings, because there is like a flattening of, like, of the neural architecture, in a sense, like those neural nets they it's like fascia in the body just goes like just like spreads and all the kind of repetitive, habitual thoughts around food and what to eat, or however it shows up for anyone, the many those rules show up for those obsessive thoughts, they just quiet down and in that wow, there's so much space to hear something else to hear my body. There's also a lot more sensory information that is traveling up into the brain, because the amygdala is also a lot more quieter. So there's just a lot more ability to hear and feel. So it's there's more bottom up information coming up, and then that top down, cognitive narrative is quieting, and so then, yeah, there's just a more embodied experience that one can have, like the storyline is dropped. The narrative is dropped. It's like we're in a new landscape to see ourselves differently and to feel ourselves differently, because the thoughts are so often predicting. And how this experience is going to be and how its going to feel. And then those predictions soften, and we can experience our body anew. So it's really quite interesting and without and then when those predictions soften, it's often not as scary. Hopefully, if the space is well held, there's been good preparation. You've got your tools, you know, it's like, I can actually move through this grief, and I can feel it and come out the other side.
Stephanie Mara 25:30
Yeah, it was interesting to watch you describe it. And I'm like, it's on my to do list to get these videos up on YouTube, because I know individuals actually want to, like, see these interviews, but you kind of were describing with your hands, like, what this process is like. It was just such a somatic experience to, like, witness of this, like smoothing out that you were, you know, showing with your hands, of, you know what I hear and what you're describing is that, like, the things that feel so loud now kind of get to turn down in volume, and the things that you're trying to connect with that feel so unavailable, like, I know when sometimes somatic work is introduced to someone, it's like, well, what do you mean like, feel my body? What does that even mean? How do I even do that, especially if there's been a history with food or body image struggles, that a lot of the times, it may have been decades worth of your life that you kept yourself at a distance from your body, and for a wise reason, especially if there was past trauma. So I do hear that within your experience, like it did kind of give you an in to like, oh, this is how I can connect with my body, like you even said earlier, like to feel more, and I love that you pointed out like it's not just to feel more of the sadness or the despair or the anger or the rage, is also to be able to grow capacity for joy and love and contentment and even boredom. And we need space for all of it to say, like, ooh, I feel safe to inhabit myself, regardless of what is showing up so that I don't feel or even not I, but like your body doesn't perceive what is happening in your body as dangerous anymore, that it then sends you to go reach for food or to go try to change your body's appearance, like I hear for you and maybe those that you've worked with, it changes the perspective that it's like, it's safe to feel this, so I don't need to do this behavior anymore, not to feel it.
Francesca Annenberg 27:47
Yeah, and also how the food or the food behaviors, or the behaviors with whatever the body disordered eating, it's also the body's way of communicating something that cannot be expressed through words. So yes, on the one hand, the behaviors are attempting to keep us away from those scary feelings, and they're also communicating something about like the states of the body, and part of my own recovery was recognizing that I am safe, and in that recognition of safety, those behaviors kind of naturally fell away because or quieted down, or they weren't driving the bus. They took a few they sat in the back of the bus. The behavior is often mirroring, or reflecting the state of the nervous system, which I find an interesting reframe, that it's not just these, like maladaptive coping strategies. It's like your body actually speaking, and it's speaking in a way, in the only way that it can, in the way that is accessible, letting you know that things are maybe a little bit off balance, or you need to add a little bit more of this, or something in your life needs to be, yeah, let go of so that that rebalancing can happen around food and then everything else, getting curious about what is the body attempting to say through the eating disorder behaviors, rather than immediately just like, abort behaviors, like, you know, get them away. Like they're not allowed. They're bad. It's like, well, they're here, so yeah, let's get to know them.
Stephanie Mara 29:29
Yeah. I so appreciate you bringing that in. And I know, you know, I totally 1,000% agree with that. And I kind of see it where we've demonized food noise these days, rather than okay, I like to call it food talk, and it's like something inside of you is talking to you, and we keep trying not to listen. Of course, it's going to get louder, and I hear you even naming that in like the food behaviors are trying to tell you something. What if we actually tried to learn how to listen to it in a non verbal way? And sometimes I find it's really interesting, even for anyone listening, if you want to play with okay, if I could give this food impulse a voice like, what would it say? And I find that it's usually simple. It's only one or two words. It's like, help, it's stop, it's it is guttural. It is more of a felt sense of boundary, no, that when we give it a voice, it's like, oh, this is trying to do something for me here, and I have found that it really shifts the perspective of the food behaviors, like I've seen a lot of people start to feel a lot of compassion towards their food behaviors. I don't know if you've maybe seen the same thing as you've worked with those that you've worked with that when you start to talk about, like, well, what is this trying to do for you? Or what is this trying to say? Or, like, how have you seen things change for people?
Francesca Annenberg 31:09
Yeah, resonate. It is such a perspective shift, and it's changing the relationship to oneself that can make such a big difference, because, yeah, shaming someone doesn't really do very well in shifting behaviors. My teacher Rachel the founder of Embodied Recovery, she says you can't scare someone out of being afraid, and it's like you just can't if someone's afraid and you try to scare them with like, whatever fear tactics that many people have also experienced in inpatient facilities, for example, and I certainly had many scary moments of having fear put on me, like you are doing this, therefore this is going to happen. It's like, doesn't really help. My body is in fear. These behaviors are happening because I'm afraid. Let's understand what the fear is about, and how do we hold fear when someone is afraid? There's softness, there is compassion, there's a slowing down, there's a holding, there's like a yielding to make space for that fear doesn't do well with nagging, clawing, however we perceiving that's pathologizing.
Stephanie Mara 32:26
Yeah, I really agree with that. You know, I worked at an outpatient clinic for a while, and one of the things that I learned to do there, that I certainly don't do anymore, is scared tactics sometimes where it's just like, this is where this is going to go, or this is what you're doing to your body. And sometimes I notice that impulse show up, because I think, as somatic practitioners, sometimes I know that when I'm in a session, I can feel the fear in the room like it's palpable for me, of like there is so much fear here around let's say like eating consistently or even decreasing binge eating behaviors. There's just so much fear because the body doesn't know what's on the other side. And this has been a strategy to support and protect someone for so long that I'm glad that you're bringing it in that we can't utilize fear as a strategy when someone already is in fear. So I appreciate you naming that, because I feel like a lot of people have gotten that. I certainly have worked with a lot of people who have been in and out of inpatient or outpatient and have gotten the same thing. And even what I've also seen is like not learning how to listen to the body, like I know in what I saw at the outpatient clinic was like we had these weekly meals that we would do all together to try to, like, normalize eating, and normalize eating in community and eating with other people, because that can also feel scary, but everyone had to put everything on their plate. So it wasn't like, oh, what do I want? What do I need? Like you were describing, like, does sound like something my body would feel drawn to right now, they had to basically bypass their body and say, well, I have to put everything on my plate, and I have to eat everything to quote, unquote, prove my recovery. And this is why I am so passionate about bringing in a somatic lens and I know you are too to this conversation, because a lot of this is about relearning how do I listen to my body?
Francesca Annenberg 34:49
So powerful. Yeah, that performative or proving way of recovery is just repeating the same disassociation that the eating disorder is doing so recovery needs to be not disassociative, but it needs to be embodied and present and yeah, that requires a turning towards oneself and yeah, in that instance, with the outpatient meals, it might be a bit of a slower process to eat together, because now you got to figure out, like, what it is that that you want, and that in and of itself, like just being able to develop that sense of self, to have a preference, to have a like and dislike, is a journey in and of itself, and requires curiosity, and certainly requires a slowing down, because it's in the spaciousness that that clarity can emerge. I like working with clients because there are many ways that we can explore it, beyond just food, from, you know, other sensory inputs and, yeah, being in that curious state of what it is that you like, what feels good, textures or sounds or movements, or even like what you're looking at, and starting to like, build up that confidence of like, oh, I am person, and there is something that differentiates me from this other person, because I like this, and they don't like that, and it starts to also build boundaries, like a sense of self, that differentiation, which is really important because many people who are not nourishing themselves in a balanced way, under nourishment or too much nourishment.
Stephanie Mara 36:41
Yeah, I'm curious, because what you're naming is something beyond psychedelics and how anyone can really start to safely land in their body, through their senses. And sometimes I find the whole question of like but who am I now is such a large question that can feel like a lot of pressure to answer, that sometimes I actually love what you're bringing here is just saying, well, what do I like to touch, or what do I like to smell? What do I like to look at? What do I like temperature wise, you know, around my body that can bring in an awareness of, like, the simplicity of, ooh, I like smooth textures, like rubbing a smooth rock. That is something that is you learning something about yourself, rather than trying to like, be like, oh, I have a greater sense of my personality and my identity and who I am in the world. That's kind of an ongoing unfolding process that changes from day to day. So I actually really appreciate you simplifying it a little bit of sometimes just coming into the senses of the body and being like, ooh, what provides me a sense of ease in my system and going off of that.
Francesca Annenberg 37:59
Yeah, it's like building a little map of who you are and providing that sense of I exist. I exist because I have preferences. Building that sense of self through cultivating clarity of differentiation. And then, of course, at the same time with, sometimes with eating disorders, there can be too much differentiation, like too much piecing things apart. Maybe that's not the right way of saying it, but like getting into the real smallness of like, okay, this is what I like, and then nothing else, and I can only do this, and nothing else. And then psychedelics can come and be like, okay, let's actually just flatten that and connect with something so much larger. Kind of go beyond the self and beyond the small identity of who I think I am, and then kind of with the integration, having had that experience of going beyond the self, coming back and building out a more coherent and authentic map of who I am and also who I want to be.
Stephanie Mara 39:08
Yeah, I'm curious beyond this psychedelic piece, what have you seen be an important part to explore with people that you feel like in someone's food and body image, recovery isn't being explored enough like sometimes I find the conversations that people have had with others, when they come to me, have been such a cognitive perspective, which like nothing wrong with that. Sometimes it can feel helpful to build that cognitive understanding. But I'm wondering if there are other explorations that you find yourself in.
Francesca Annenberg 39:45
So many cool things, so many cool things. Okay, the big piece that I am curious about and would love to explore more is movement, because when I went into an inpatient facility, and when I was struggling with my eating disorder, there was very little movement. And it was kind of like in a like punishment reward situation, like if you eat this amount, then you can move for X amount. And as someone who grew up moving like I was dancing from a very young age, horse riding, also from a very young age, I found that no one ever taught me in recovery a healthy relationship with movement. It was either just like movement is damaging and you need to be punished if you do it, also you cannot move your body, and no one ever taught me a joyful, intuitive, mindful relationship with movement, and so that's a big piece for me, and it was something that I organically discovered and really rebuilt my relationship with movement over many, many years. I also struggled with too much exercise. So I understand that the people that I was working with wanted me to pull back from the amount of movement that I was doing, and I wish that it was done in a way of like, okay, but here's another way that you can relate to movement. And movement is life. When things die, they stop moving, and how to support a nervous system that is in fear and is in freeze to de thaw, and that de thawing is a warming up process, and movement helps with warming up. Now, a big part of the movement that I love to do is still dancing, and I also dance with other people, and it's all improvised, and it's in touch and in contact, and it's called contact improvisation, and I haven't yet found a way to integrate it into the work that I do with clients, but I would love to in some way, because it brings in spontaneous, creative, unchoreographed movement. We're really in the space of deep, deep listening and releasing expectations. It's not performative. There's no set steps, and then you're also dancing with other people. So there's a relational piece there of yes, you're in your dance and you're taking care of your body, but you're also starting to create this third space, this third being between you and your dance partner. And then there's the element of touch. And I struggled for many years with touch, and the eating disorder was a way of like no one could really get close to me, rebuilding that relationship with touch. It's not sexual touch. It's like little kids playing that kind of dancing and breaking down some of those barriers of this touch is safe in this space, we are just moving together and being in that relational field, having a conversation. It's like dance, but it's more like embodied listening and conversing that do love to bring more movement and dance and exploring what is the body saying through gesture, through posture. That's a big piece for me. I understand that for some people like movement doesn't always have a place in certain stages of recovery, but how can we start building a relationship with body and with movement, not just when we get to the ideal BMI, but right now, right here in this moment to feel how your body is moving already, just by us sitting here, breathing and starting to just explore movement in these small ways. Yeah, I understand dance isn't for everyone. It's just been my language for so long. So it's very much part of Yeah, what I feel I I want to continue bringing and exploring. And then yeah, there's just the nature piece and dancing in nature, there we go.
Stephanie Mara 43:59
Yeah. And everything that you're listing is about connection, because when we are dancing, we are connecting with our bodies or another body. When we are being touched, we are connecting with our own bodies and another body. When we are connecting with nature, we are connecting with ourselves and an entity outside of ourselves. And I love that you're bringing in all of those pieces, because it is so important to rediscover how we want to connect with ourselves and things externally to us. And there was a section even in my PhD this last semester. So I'm actually really jazzed that you're bringing this up, all about nature and connecting with the universe. And so it's very present for me right now, of just like how healing that can be, but it can also be very informative, of when we don't want to connect with things outside of ourselves, where our nervous system states are at as well, that every single extra piece of input feels so overwhelming to a nervous system whose window of tolerance is very small. So I also just bringing in what we were talking about earlier as well. Like there's wisdom that, if you're like but I don't want to go outside, the wind feels too intense, the sun feels too strong, like there's a reason that your body is interpreting it that way as well. And so I appreciate you naming like, yeah, these things are all resources. And go with where you're at, because that's also information. And I like to bring in sometimes we're we're so focused on what we're not connecting with. It's like, oh, I should be connecting with nature more. I should be going outside more. And it's like, well, what does feel safe to connect with currently, even if that's like, it's safe to connect with my couch. Great. What is it about your couch that feels safe to connect with right now and starting there. And I also want to come around to the movement piece as well, that even in the experience of movement, like you were kind of like moving your upper body and your shoulders a little bit, and that it can be so small, like even if someone's sitting here listening to this, like even moving your arm or your hand, or even, like moving a finger up and down, it's like all movement to rediscover what is it like to be in movement in my body? So, yeah, it's like, these things can be great. And I also hear like, it's like, do it with someone like, do it with a practitioner like you that can, like, hold space for let's be in movement together and make it a safe experience.
Francesca Annenberg 46:42
And in some cases, yes, it's, it's movement, just like, kind of free form movement, expressive movement, but it's also movement is the language of relationships. Like, if I'm interested in you, I'm going to move towards you. If I'm don't want to engage with you. I'm going to move away. And so much of that movement towards and away and neutral like that's the nervous system speaking. That's how we also engage with food. Can I move towards the food that okay, if I have the clarity of what I want, but now, can I actually move towards that food that I really want, or someone is offering me something? Can I say no? Can I find that clarity and then move into that gesture and to move away? So it's like movement that where we both also, you know, feeling, our feels and expressing, but then we're also supporting, like the building blocks of movement, the push, the reach, the grasp, the pull, all of these movements are needed for effective eating, for resonant eating, and also movements for resonant nourishment of relationships, depending on our story, we might struggle to reach out, to literally extend our arm out and be like, hey, this is what I want, even if internally, you know what it is that you want, but wow, like, my elbow literally stays glued to my side and, like, my shoulders collapse and my hand can only, like, reach out, like a few centimeters in front of me. So then what happens when we're engaging with food, it's like, I really want this thing, but like, there's just so much energy held back, and I can't move towards what I what I want, and how that then impacts the whole action cycle of living an authentic life. So yeah, there's movement on many levels. And again, we don't have to wait for this certain BMI to be able to start re nourishing the building blocks of movement.
Stephanie Mara 48:47
Yeah, what I hear you so beautifully describing in that also is like noticing when your body feels like pulled towards something and when it wants to move away, like even just that is a movement. It may not be happening externally, like so often, movement is described as what my body is doing externally, but there's also movement always happening internally. And I agree with you that it's like, if we're not moving, we're not alive, like, technically, the whole idea of being still does that even exist, because even if we're sitting, quote, unquote still, there is so much that is moving internally, inside of us. So we are always really, actually in movement. And I hear you kind of offering like, to come closer to that, to notice, like, where your body wants to move to internally, a feeling like, do I want to reach out for this or do I actually want to keep close to myself? Because it can start to translate to food as well, of like, oh, I actually do really want to reach out for that and bring it into myself. Or actually, I'm noticing the impulse to reach out for that, but I'm sensing also a no, and can I stay close to myself, myself in that no, before I go out and reach and like, yeah, it's very nuanced when we start paying attention to the impulses and the movements happening and slowing it down like this is where kind of some of the more somatic work comes in when we're talking about food, to even not see food impulses or behaviors as the problem. But like, what is it if we embody the impulse that wants to happen in the body, and can we even express that in food and non food ways?
Francesca Annenberg 50:33
Yeah, it's so interesting and so exciting, because it's like getting rid of the pathologizing language of like you have a food problem, it's like, okay, let's actually look at how you're moving through the world, and where do things kind of get a little bit glitchy in relationship to food, and outside of that, where is it feeling really easeful? And that's often a good place to start. Like, where in the action cycle do things feel easeful? Because that's the place that we can begin from to then support the next movement, the next action that maybe feels like it can't fully express, or it's uncontained. We need to bring a little bit of structure to that movement. So sometimes it's overly contained, like over bounded, and then sometimes the movement is very underbounded and uncontained. And how to support these movements so that we can take in food, let the food change us. Let us be transformed by the food in this very intimate process, it's like a big deal to take something and bring it inside of you and trust the process that the body's gonna figure it out. And yeah, we do get transformed by the food, and that's scary to change.
Stephanie Mara 51:51
I feel like we could talk for a whole nother hour, which is usually the case when I get into conversation with you. So I want to respect your time here, and I always like to wrap up with, like a baby step that people can play with. And we've explored so much today that I'm curious of anywhere where our conversation went to if you were going to offer a baby step that someone can play with in their own life, of things that they can start to incorporate or try out. What would you offer?
Francesca Annenberg 52:24
Put your bare feet on the ground, let yourself feel that connection, like even imagining roots growing out of your feet into the earth. And ideally, if it can be like raw earth, grass, mountain paths, beach, patch of grass somewhere, and to feel that connection of you're not just standing on the earth, you're standing with the earth.
Stephanie Mara 52:50
Oh, that was a really powerful way to put that. It made me kind of feel like you're never actually truly alone, like if you can walk outside and plant your feet in the grass like there is life literally buzzing all around you that is also a part of you, and can be such a resource in times when things maybe feel really intense in the body. So I love that suggestion. Thank you so much for offering that.
Francesca Annenberg 53:18
Such a pleasure.
Stephanie Mara 53:21
Well, I'm curious how listeners can keep in touch with you and the work that you're doing.
Francesca Annenberg 53:27
My Instagram is Francescaeatsroses, and my website is Francescaeatsroses.com. Those are some good places to find me. I put out monthly newsletters so you can subscribe to my newsletter. I put up blog articles every like, twice a month of a free eating disorder recovery support group that happens every month, once a month. So you can sign up to that through my website too. And yeah, hopefully a few more programs coming soon, movement related and psychedelic related.
Stephanie Mara 54:03
I will put all of those links in the show notes, and just thank you so much again for being here and sharing your wisdom and being in this dialogue today.
Francesca Annenberg 54:11
Thank you, and thank you for creating the spaces for these conversations. Yeah, really feel how you're like a creating like a hive, beautiful beehive of really beautiful pieces of wisdom and voices to this, this field that is in like a big revamp I feel. Thank you for creating a space for some of these new perspectives and new old perspectives to reach more people. So thank you.
Stephanie Mara 54:38
Yeah, thanks. That's the hope is to create a community here, of let's, like, get into these conversations that we're not having that carry so much, maybe shame or judgment or secrecy, and let's bring them to the light and, like, actually talk about them so that there's maybe not as much shame. So I'm glad that you sense that. And. Feel that and happy to have you here, and hopefully we'll have you back again in the future. We can talk about all sorts of different things next time.
Francesca Annenberg 55:09
Perfect. Thank you.
Stephanie Mara 55:12
Yeah. Well, to everyone listening as always, if you have any insights or aha moments, email me at support at stephaniemara.com and I hope you all have a satiating and safety producing rest of your day. Bye!
Keep in touch with Francesca:
Website: http://www.francescaeatsroses.com/
IG + TikTok: @francescaeatsroses
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/francesca-rose-annenberg-46966631
Email: hello@francescaeatsroses.com