How Food Choices Can Remind Your Body How To Feel Safe

I'm bacckkkk!!! I missed you all and it has been a full month and a half here. Ethan, Tato, and I drove east which took about a week, I just finished my midterm papers for my PhD and the doors to the Somatic Eating® Program are open. 

As a reminder, the Somatic Eating® Program is a three month class where we meet live once a week. Classes are filled with educational content on somatics, nervous system, trauma, nutrition, exploring somatic practices, journaling, discussion, and time for Q & A. 

There are three Somatic Eating® Community Meals where you get to practice what you're learning while interacting with food in a coregulating space where we talk about what is coming up for you in the process of eating. 

You will learn the Safety-Satiety Sequence in Somatic Eating® and how to create a safe, secure, and satiated relationship with food and your body where you can understand what your food impulses are trying to tell you and how to respond in food and non-food ways. We start on Thursday, October 30th. Classes are all recorded so if you can't attend live, you will be able to watch the replay and ask questions in a group space in between classes. 

To learn more and sign up today, go to somaticeating.com

And, if you have any additional questions, email me at support@stephaniemara.com. 

I was reflecting recently on how much I talk here about the reasons food behaviors like binge eating have nothing to do with the food itself, but the state you're eating the food in. As I've explored here many times, there are so many somatic, trauma, and nervous system layers to your food patterns. 

But part of food recovery has to include explorations around food itself.

Changing your food behaviors needs to include looking at how and when you eat. And I'm going to take the somatic perspective that this is important because when you have a history of trauma, you may not know what safety could feel like in your body. 

Your sympathetic nervous system turned on, and years later, it still hasn't turned back off. Now the bodily experience of fight or flight has become your new home. You know what that feels like, and you've become accustomed to it. So the tight shoulders, tense belly, ruminating thoughts, feeling like you can't slow down, a constant running list of what you have to do or what you need to look out for, is your everyday known existence. 

Now, there are a lot of somatic practices out there to guide your body into a state of safety to remember what this could feel like. And while I have offered these as well, today I want to explore how food itself can send your body cues of safety. When I talk about nervous system attunement work to facilitate living more in a parasympathetic nervous system response, so that you reach for food less for safety, this includes sending your body biological cues of safety through what and when you eat.

If you’ve never known what safety feels like, food can provide you ​with a role model.​ 

Food offers a direct way to experience the felt sense of safety. Chewing, swallowing, and digesting can activate parasympathetic nervous system pathways that remind the body what calm feels like. The nervous system ​can learn that receiving is possible without threat. Food becomes a physiological practice of remembering safety.

When approached through the senses rather than the mind and rather than through food rules or control, food offers a direct experience of the parasympathetic nervous system state. Each bite can be a reminder that you're here, you made it, you can receive this nourishment, and you are safe now. 

​Now I understand that ​food may be the place where there’s been a lack of safety, but it can also remind you how to return home to safety.​ 

Think of a day when you ate regularly, enjoyed your meals, and they felt stabilizing and grounding.

How do you feel​ as you reflect on this kind of day? You might notice deeper breath, your shoulders relaxing onto your back, energy moving downward in your body.

When you eat consistent, balanced meals​ of protein, fat, carbohydrates, and fiber, you stabilize your blood sugar levels, give your body the nutrients it needs to function well, and biologically support your body in feeling safe to be alive. ​The felt sense you get from stabilizing your body can remind you of what it is to experience a body that is calm, relaxed, and grounded. 

Just the act of chewing alone stimulates your vagus nerve, which are the main nerves of your parasympathetic nervous system. So while binge eating is an attempt at facilitating safety through activating a parasympathetic response, it is done in such a rushed, fast, and quick way that the safety you might even be receiving from eating isn't embodied. This is why I call eating a somatic practice. To slow down with your food and embody your experience of eating by paying attention to your sensations, emotions, and reactions can teach you how good you can feel in your body and what trust, receiving, and grounding could all feel like in your body. 

This is beyond mindful eating and this is not intuitive eating. This is noticing the sensations around your mouth as you bring a fork closer to it. This is observing the texture of the food in your mouth as you chew it. This is experiencing the rhythmic nature of chewing food. This is noting changes in your energy levels as you feed your body. This is receiving the grounding experience of eating. I could go on but you're probably getting the picture that to have food remind you of what safety could feel like is dropping out of your mind, it is stepping out of any stories you have around food or interacting with it or what is right or wrong to eat or any food rules and embodying your experience of food right now in this exact moment through all of your senses. 

And when food is experienced in this way, it can remind you how you deserve to feel in other areas of your life.

Your interactions with food can be the most readily available area to practice getting comfortable with the bodily experience of safety when it hasn’t been what you’ve known. This can start to translate to how you could feel in your career, relationships, physical movement, and body interactions. When you grow your capacity to feel safe with food, you can start to notice how you feel in other relationships. You might feel more connected to when your body relaxes or contracts around certain people. You might more easily notice when certain environments make you tense and what ones ground you in the here and now. You start to have an inner relodex of what supports and regulates you and what does not to then make more informed decisions to facilitate safety in all areas of your world. 

Now I want to make one note about this because I've seen this again and again over the years in my private practice. Depending on where you are in food recovery, your body may not be ready for this step yet. If you focus on what and when you’re eating too quickly, your body may sense danger through somatic memories of restriction and deprivation and increase your food coping mechanisms.

So how do you know if you're ready for this step of exploring food as a safety cue:

• First, eating consistently is becoming easier. You're no longer triggered by not skipping meals. 

• You're no longer cutting out whole food groups for no reason. So you're eating more consistently and have less food fear, where you can eat all macronutrients at most of your meals. 

• Imagining slowing down to embody your eating feels uncomfortable, but not triggering to the point that you want to go eat everything in your kitchen. The point of this somatic practice is not to activate you but to utilize your food experiences as a way to feel safe. 

• Safety is also something you're wanting and feel more ready to feel. If feeling safe feels like too much to be with then you'll want to practice this in tiny spurts like simply noticing how a cold glass of water feels when you're really thirsty or one small moment in a meal where you observe how your body reacts to a certain flavor or texture. 

You can practice this in tiny tiny moments when interacting with food or drink and build your capacity for doing this for a whole meal over time. You can start to experience in this practice that safety is something you feel and not something you find. 

I break this all down in the Somatic Eating® Program as well and provide you with bite sized explorations as the end of every class so I hope to see you in class soon. There are 12 more days to sign up so be sure to head over to somaticeating.com after you listen to this episode. 

Please know that getting comfortable with the felt sense of safety is possible for you and you will not be where you are with your body, nervous system, or food forever. So wonderful to connect with you all again. I've got some amazing interviews coming up so stay tuned and I hope you all have a satiating and safety producing rest of your day.