Getting Back Into a Body You Have Been at War With

This episode contains discussion of body image, body dysmorphia, eating disorders, sexual assault, and addiction. Please take care of yourself as you listen. If you are currently struggling with an eating disorder, please reach out to the National Alliance for Eating Disorders at 1-866-662-1235.

Sarai gets completely honest in this one. About being sexually assaulted and what that did to her relationship with her body. About using an eating disorder and addiction to numb out and disconnect. About going to treatment and lying in restorative yoga and feeling the weight of her back on a bolster for the first time and thinking what the actual fuck. This is what it feels like to be in my body.

She also gets into what happened last year. Getting sick for a month with no answers. Losing her father in November. And fighting every day to not go back down the spiral she knows so well.

This episode also goes deep on the science. What the default mode network actually is and what brain imaging research shows about how it functions differently in people with eating disorders. What interoceptive awareness is and why it gets disrupted. And why understanding the neuroscience of this is not about fixing it. It is about stopping the self-blame long enough to get the right help.

The somatic tools in this episode are not a treatment for an eating disorder. They are what Sarai reaches for when the pulling starts. Small moments of contact with a body you have been running from. Nothing more and nothing less than that.