Why Intuitive Eating ISN'T working for you.

The word Intuition has always rubbed me the wrong way. When you're someone who has experienced past wounds and traumas, intuition is not something that comes so easily. One of the definitions of intuition is a thing that one knows or considers likely from instinctive feeling rather than conscious reasoning.

To be aware of our feelings means we have to be in our bodies.

Yet, when you have experienced past situations that made your body unsafe to be in, it can feel intense to be in your body to know what you’re feeling. To be able to get through that past situation, you might have needed to disembody as that experience felt too intense to process. Thank goodness you had this wise strategy to not be in your body so you could navigate that moment with as much ease as possible.

What can often happen though is that if we didn't come back to our body after the situation was over and done and let it know everything is alright now, we continue to tell our body that it is unsafe. This can then affect being able to intuitively eat. When our body is in a constant fight or flight response, it is harder for the body to talk to us and it is more difficult to hear what our body wants, needs, and resonates with it. No judgment here! Your main goal for so long may have been to keep yourself feeling safe and if being in the body didn't feel that way, of course you would continue to disembody and disconnect.

In my years of working with individuals around their relationship with their food and body, Intuitive Eating just hasn't clicked for them. For anyone who has a broken relationship with your food, there has probably been something from your past that has yet to be processed and assimilated and digested in your system and the focus on what and when your eating and moving your body felt like a much safer focus than attending to how your body feels. To even be able to notice hunger and fullness cues can happen much easier when we support the body in feeling relaxed and safe. When we're eating disembodied it can be much harder to hear our bodily messages and if that food and eating experience is resonating with us.

You have to feel safe in your body first to know what your body needs physically and emotionally.

This is where Somatic Eating™ comes in to support you in first feeling safe in your body so that you can more easily hear the messages your body is trying to send you around what foods, environments, people, thoughts are going to be most satiating and safe producing in your unique system. When beginning to heal your relationship with food, the first step is not to mentally figure out what to eat. The first step can actually be to slow down and observe how your body responds to different foods. Each meal then gets to be an opportunity to create a space for your body to talk to you and for you to let it know that it is safe and you're listening.

Over time, as it starts to feel safer to be in your body for longer and longer periods of time, you may start to notice your bodily reactions towards different physical and emotional intake that will start to guide you in what resonates with your body and what does not. You will need to tell your body over, and over, and over again that you are here and that you are listening and that you’re not going anywhere. Your body needs to know you're not going to abandon it anymore. A baby step toward embodiment can be before and after your meals telling your body that it is safe. Like with any relationship, it will take time to build up that trust again with your body. You get to take all the time you need here and simply commit to the practice of showing up for your body the best you can.