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.
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