Let The Fullness of Life In: Embodied Eating Disorder Recovery and Psychedelics
Eating disorders are representations of how we are able to relate to the fullness of life.
*
*
*
For people who are navigating an eating disorder or disordered eating, there is often great sensitivity to fullness.
The world can feel full.
Emotions bubbling from the inside can feel filling.
Social interactions and human dynamics can feel like a lot.
Sensory information coming from outside can overly full.
Physical sensations from inside the body can feel like a lot.
The stomach filled with food can feel intolerably full.
As a way to manage this fullness, strategies in the form of maladaptive food and body behaviours, can develop as ways to numb this intensity, distract from the overwhelm, and relieve sensitive beings from the ferocity of the present moment.
People with eating disorders or disordered eating may find ways to restrict the body and food to try to manage how much of life comes at them.
For people with eating disorders, these coping strategies may offer temporary relief, but soon, the fullness of life comes pouring back in again.
And for those who are extra sensitive and thinly weaved, where energetic boundaries can be more permeable than most, eating disorders develop as protective armour to restrict what comes in because it feels safer than to be in the fullness of the world.
For some, we may have never received role modeling on how to be with the full spectrum of what it means to be human.
Maybe people around us may have been disconnected, numb, or frozen from their deeper, wider feelings and expressions. For others, parents and primary caregivers around them could have been explosive, violent, or uncontained as soon as things got too much or too full.
As such, because we didn’t receive adequate role modelling on how to be with the fullness of life, we have to find our own way. And this is where eating disorders come in as strategies to try to manage, regulate, balance, control, and protect sensitive folks who feel deeply in this big, wide world.
This means that the process of eating disorder recovery is slowly practicing and allowing more of life in, bit by bit, bite by bite - within the context of safe containers, with the support of trusted, co-regulating others.
Recovery means replacing armour and defensive walls with adaptable, flexible, and resilient energetic boundaries.
Recovery is learning new, sustainable ways to regulate the nervous system. Indeed, we can slowly build our nervous system capacity to let the fullness of life grow within and around us.
This is where the medicine of psychedelics and plant medicines can come in.
For me personally, psychedelics have taught me a great deal on how to regulate my nervous system, whilst being with the fullness of the present moment, connected and embodied. Plant medicine journeys have helped me grow my capacity and resiliency to hold more of life.
In a psychedelic journey, a tidal wave of grief, a boiling pot of anger, or a heartbreaking amount of love can arise. It can be a lot. It can feel incredibly full.
And if the nervous system hasn’t been prepared to hold this energy or if we haven’t learnt how to titrate or pendulate the experience, rather than processing the emotion, we can be sent into a shutdown, disassociation, or fragmentation. This can be overwhelming, damaging, or possibly retraumatizing.
The more focus we bring to the body and learn how it communicates to us about its needs, the better we can stay regulated and present to the psychedelic experience. Indeed, it is the body that carries us through the journey and onto the other side.
The body is the resource, and we have to resource (aka nourish) the body on many levels so that it can become a sustainable and trusted resource for us on the healing path. The body can ultimately become an ally for our recovery journey (and psychedelic journey - though aren’t they all the same? ;).
This is a body-first, bottom-up, embodied approach to eating disorder recovery woven with psychedelics.
Psychedelic preparation support that focuses on somatic healing principles and education before a journey ideally supports us in resourcing the body so that it can be the ultimate resource during the journey experience - and beyond.
Indeed, preparation for a psychedelic journey that focuses on supporting and nourishing the nervous system ensures that we can gain deeper insights from the journey itself.
When we have prepared the body and the nervous system leading up to the ceremony, we believe in our capacity to go confidently and safely into the fullness, and that there is agency on how deep we can go.
It is safe to be full.
It is safe to be show up fully.
It is safe to be with our full selves on Earth.
Let us be with the fullness of life.
Eating disorder recovery and healing from disordered eating means rewriting the narrative so that it feels safe to be in world, that life can be welcomed in, that it is beautiful to experience feelings deeply and widely, and that our fullness of expression is worthy, deserving, and can be trusted.
This process, when done gradually - with or without plant medicine - builds foundational evidence for our nervous system, for our cells, for our bodies, that we have the ability to be with and hold the fullness of life.
Over time, our world begins to open, and we feel an embodied presence and a fresh, inspired, and connected engagement with life, fully.
Recovery is a beautiful practice.
PS: If you require some preparation support for your journey, download my psychedelic preparation ebook for people in eating disorder recovery.
Photo by Martin Adams on Unsplash