Reclaim You- Exploring Joyful Movement in Eating Disorder Recovery
Season 1: Episode 15- Exploring Joyful Movement in Eating Disorder Recovery with Laura
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Ever felt the wrath of guilt-laden, regimented exercise routines?
Passionate about shattering the norms of punishing fitness regimes, Laura Gordon guides us on a liberating exploration of movement that celebrates pleasure and diversity.
We discuss the toxic narratives surrounding fitness, encouraging you to embrace the freedom of movement on your own terms and to reclaim joy from the clutches of societal expectations.
The conversation doesn't stop there!
We challenge the established misconceptions about appearance and strength, emphasizing the significance of self-compassion and support.
This episode culminates with a unique embodiment exercise specially crafted by Laura, which will help you reconnect with your body and carry forward your joyful journey of movement.
Tune in and open yourself up to the exhilaration of moving your body with joy, not judgment!
Check out Laura's blog posts here:
Part 1: https://www.sarahherstichlcsw.com/blog/one-womans-journey-through-weight-loss-surgery
Part 2: https://www.sarahherstichlcsw.com/blog/eating-disorders-and-weight-loss-surgeries
Part 3: https://www.sarahherstichlcsw.com/blog/part-3-bariatric-surgery-pennsylvania
Thanks for listening to Reclaim You with Reclaim Therapy!
To learn more about Reclaim Therapy and how to work with a therapist on the team, head to www.reclaimtherapy.org.
Be sure to comment, like and subscribe here, or on YouTube and come follow along on Instagram!
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[00:01] Sarah: Hi there. Welcome to Reclaim You, a podcast published by the Reclaim Therapy team. Join us as we share stories, tools, and insights on how to reclaim you in the wake of trauma, disordered eating, and body shame. Grab your coffee, tea, or your favorite snack and get cozy because we're about to dive in. Welcome back to another episode of Reclaim You. We're back with Laura today after her last episode, talking all about bariatric surgery and the risks and the aftermath and the ins and outs and nuances. We're back talking about movement. It feels like a great kind of launching point to talk about movement for all folks and for folks who have experienced bariatric surgery as well. So just kind of like looping that in as well. Excited to talk about this?
[00:50] Laura: Yeah. Good thing. Joyful Movement, we call it, right?
[00:55] Sarah: Yes. Joyful movement. Joyful Movement. Laura just published the third part of her blog series, and in the third part, it talked a lot about movement and a disordered relationship with movement on the heels of surgery and kind of working through that and coming to a place of joyful movement. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on what Joyful Movement is, how it can be really complicated and nuanced. I think movement can be one of the hardest parts of recovery.
[01:26] Laura: I agree. I often feel like in my own lived experience, but also in my work with clients, it's often the last leg of recovery. Right. Because it's so caught up in so many things. Yeah. So joyful movement. What is joyful movement? Well, anything that you do to move your body that isn't about punishing yourself, it's not in any way grounded in, I'm doing this so I can look different, lose weight. It's not grounded in those sort of negative beliefs about self that somehow I have to shrink myself, somehow I have to tone myself, so I have to change my body in order to be worthy. That is the disordered movement that we struggle with as individuals, as a society, that people, certainly who have had challenges with eating disorders, disordered eating struggle with as well. And I would say it's also gentle movement. Joyful Movement is so it is hard to get into it because many of us, when we're in recovery, are coming out of a relationship with movement that has been pretty punitive and has been pretty regimented, and every day, day in and day out, hours in the gym for some people, sometimes twice a day. It doesn't help that there's doctors as well who pontificate. Oh, yeah. Well, you just have to put out more than you take in. And if that means you go to the gym twice a day, you go to the gym twice a day. I think this process of coming into Joyful Movement is really a process of discovery. It's an opportunity to really look at what is it that I like to do in terms of moving my body when I used to run, did I really like running, or was I just running because I knew that was the quickest way to lose weight and to tone my body or whatever was my reasoning. So it can be exciting that way, like trying new things, dipping our toes in, but always with a sense of I don't want to say non committal, like we're committed to exploration. But once you find something, a reminder that has come to me constantly, especially from my dietitian, is just because you go to one dance class doesn't mean now you have to sign up for all of them.
[03:51] Sarah: Yeah.
[03:52] Laura: Right. And therein some of the challenge lies. So what is joyful movement? Well, joyful movement is something you get to discover as part of your recovery, which is really exciting and scary.
[04:05] Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. Dropping out of that rigidity is so difficult. So difficult. And just the look at movement from a lens of curiosity and what's going to feel good, a lot of us haven't ever experienced that when it comes to moving our body, especially just with their narrative. I think that we learn as children in gym class of you have to move, you have to be healthy, you have to do these things. Running the mile or whatever it is. In gym class, it comes fraught with so much pressure, and if you're not good or you're not fit, there starts this pathologizing of bodies. So, so much is wound up in it from such a young age for so many people. Yeah.
[04:53] Laura: That stupid Presidential Fitness test, which I think they still use.
[04:57] Sarah: Someone told me, someone tell us, do they still use it? I don't even know. Yeah.
[05:02] Laura: Oh, my gosh. I hated that. Yeah. It was this assumption that everyone has to fit the same box of fitness, everyone has to fit the same box of ability. And that's just not how we work as humans. We're so diverse, we're so multifaceted in our giftedness. And just because someone can't do 70,000 push ups in a minute, or whatever the stupid test is, or I remember the bent arm hang and the pull up. I hated those.
[05:32] Sarah: I hated those in front of everyone. In front of everyone. Yeah.
[05:36] Laura: And I have no my muscle mass is primarily in my lower body. Right. I have muscles in my legs. My arms have always been a weak spot. It's just how I was made. Right. And I shouldn't even say weak. My muscles just aren't as strong as my legs. Right.
[05:51] Sarah: Yeah.
[05:52] Laura: But I was made to feel like there was something wrong with me because I couldn't do those things. And no one was then saying, oh, well, here's what you do to like, if you want to learn how to do this, here's what you can do to learn. It was just, like, assumed we should naturally know how to do that. And I was like, my father was a semi professional sports person. Like, he played semi pro baseball, he played football, basketball. It's not like I come from a line of people genetically or even environmentally, where I wasn't exposed to stuff. But school just really had these ways of going about teaching us that really caused me and I think others to feel like, well, I'm not athletic, I can never do this stuff, and there's something wrong with me because of that.
[06:39] Sarah: Right? Yeah. And then growing up to figure out ways to move that feel good, we aren't taught that because we're taught ways to move, to burn calories or to, I don't know, whatever. So it just disconnects us from what joy actually is.
[06:59] Laura: Yeah, there is no joy. I mean, what I say to my clients sometimes is I want you to just play like you were five years old again. What is that like? And I get a lot of resistance to that, and I myself have been resistant to that in my own journey. But we as adults, we don't play enough. Our version of play is disordered. Exercise is consumption of alcohol, use of substances is is doing things to add to our list of accomplishments versus doing things for the joy of doing it. And I invite people to get out of that mindset. It is perfectly acceptable, and I celebrate and give people permission. Do something that you just love to do. And to heck with the fact if it is in line with what you have to get done that day, or if it is something that is blessed by others as appropriate for your age or your body size or whatever, to heck with that. Now, saying that we have to consider where our safe places and spaces that we do that, right. Absolutely. But yeah, that idea of play and joy and lightness and just letting yourself experience movement versus letting the movement dictate your worth, your value, what you're going to do with your time, what have you. And I think something in about play, like something I was thinking about when it comes to the childhood sort of school related introductions, when you're doing these things in front of everyone, when you're being quote unquote graded on it right.
[08:49] Sarah: Tested. Yeah.
[08:51] Laura: Is that even if someone might have the ability to do these things or want to do these things or could work toward being able to do pull ups if they wanted to do that, the amount of pressure to perform in front of others. And then the shame that comes in the wake of that it's like, even if I knew how or was capable of doing whatever the thing was, the exercise was that shame was so heavy with me that I would get frozen. Like, I remember playing kickball. Now, at home, we played Wiffleball all the time. We played whiffleball the time, we played kickball all the time. I mean, I grew up in a neighborhood of boys. I had two brothers and all boys, so I would always be out playing with them, playing baseball, kickball, things like that. And I was fine. I did well, right? I hit home runs. I could run the bases. Was I the best? No, but that wasn't what it was about. I was having fun.
[09:47] Sarah: You were having fun.
[09:47] Laura: But I remember being in gym class, and when it came my turn to be up at bat, I was so nervous that I had that freeze response, and then I would just miss the ball and miss the ball. And then that caused me to feel more and more shame, more and more like I was just unworthy. And then, like, the bullying that comes with that or the ways that people respond to that. Being picked last, all of those things. Yes. And who were the kids who were picked last? Right. They were the kids who were either in the larger bodies or the ones who were super weak and small.
[10:22] Sarah: Right.
[10:22] Laura: That's who got picked last. So, I mean, from a young age, we have already been conditioned.
[10:27] Sarah: Yeah. That idea of play feels so important. I forget even it was I don't know how many years ago. Maybe like six or seven years ago. My husband and I were trying to figure out what to do on Friday nights, and we got a basketball and we found a basketball hoop and we just started playing basketball. And we did it every Friday night for months and months, and people started joining. And it was just so much fun. What a wonderful way to move your body and be in community and do things that we really enjoyed it. I played basketball in high school and my husband didn't. But he thinks that he's good at basketball. He actually is. But it was just so much fun and something that we looked forward to that didn't have to be this rigid. We have to go to the gym and do this thing and all of the routines that we can get stuck in. It was it was joyful. It was joyful. That's so important.
[11:20] Laura: And we don't have to be good at something to enjoy it.
[11:23] Sarah: Right? Right.
[11:24] Laura: That was a struggle. Growing up with a father like my father, who literally my father was the guy who he was on the senior varsity team for basketball, and he would be there before the junior varsity practice, and he'd be shooting foul shots, shooting foul shots, doing his drills. He was up at some ungodly hour every morning at the local community center doing it. I mean, he was just like, push, push, push, push, push. And it was all about being the best. Right. And so to grow up with that was tough. Right?
[11:52] Sarah: Yeah.
[11:52] Laura: I mean, dad didn't do things halfway. If it was raining out when dad was running, he would run circles in our basement to get in his daily run. In a way, we could do a whole nother episode on loss of ability and how that impacts us because my father, over time, he's going to be 70 is not able, because of various injuries and stuff, to do what he used to do. But yeah, to realize that I don't have to be good to play, I don't have to be good to enjoy this. I can just come into it and have fun and goofy and all that stuff. It's okay to be the kid in left field, twirling around with the glove on your head, right?
[12:36] Sarah: Like picking flowers and whatever. Yeah.
[12:40] Laura: It's okay for movement to be creative. I mean, I think about all of the people that I've known who are dancers or gymnasts, rhythmic gymnastics, things like that, where there's a creative aspect to the expression of self through movement, and that in of itself is movement that I think even more so can connect the emotions with the body and things like that. It can be a really wonderful creative outlet for people. But so often when we look at dance, for instance, especially if I think about ballet, ballet is so restrictive. Right. You have to do this, this and this. And people often lose the fun in that thing that they used to enjoy doing, or the thing that as a kid, it was great to dance around and twirl. But once I get into classes, now, all of a sudden, if I'm not the best, if I'm not good enough, there's a consequence.
[13:38] Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. And the mirrors and the culture of dance can be, generally speaking, so toxic for so many people.
[13:51] Laura: It is. It really is. Dance was the place. It's the first place. I remember my earliest memory of recognizing that my body was different than others and that was not a good thing was in dance class changing with all the other girls, and I mean, six or seven years of age at the most.
[14:12] Sarah: Wow.
[14:12] Laura: Right? And just like, why do I have a belly and they all don't? And why do I have to wear the bigger size? Why am I so much taller than them? Well, my mother was six foot tall. I was going to be taller. My dad comes from big stock, too, so it's tough. The things that we hope to instill, a sense of love for our children, for ourselves, often become the very things that lead us down these roads of disordered eating, of challenging relationships with selves. I mean, how many of my clients have had to quit athletics dance because it was more detrimental for them to stay in than it was for them to leave? And there's a grief.
[15:00] Sarah: Yeah, there's so much grief. There's so much grief. Something that you said earlier that kind of struck me and made me start thinking about other ways of moving that people don't even consider as movement is getting into your body and stretching right. Just getting into your body and seeing what's there as you just move naturally. Right. These are entry points into understanding what's there and how to take care of what's there and what your body is actually craving. Because sometimes our mind lots of times I think our minds are running with the shoulds, you should be walking, you should be doing this, you should be doing that. And maybe your body just needs rest. So this process of dropping in and just being with what is and stretching and seeing how that feels and seeing where the tension is, that can be enough.
[15:46] Laura: Absolutely. Yeah. It can be really healing to give yourself permission to rest. Right. To listen to our bodies. We don't do that. I mean, we talk about this with regard to our relationship with food as well. There is this disconnect from body when our bodies are not a safe place for us to live, for whatever the reason is. And when we start to reconnect with our body. Gentleness is the name of the game, right? Just being gentle. Okay, let's just notice what's coming up, right. And helping folks to sort of step into their bodies and listen in a way that feels safe in session or through different exercises, but doesn't force them to stay there if it grows uncomfortable. Right. We have to work up to a sense of tolerance when we've been out of our bodies for so long or when our bodies feel that unsafe. Yeah, I think that the body is so full of wisdom. And my relationship with my body started to heal. Speaking of play, when I got involved with this movement that's called Interplay and it's basically this movement that's out there. They have a website online where they have in person and virtual sessions. But I remember my Interplay instructor, she talked about it being sneaky deep, where you're just playing, you're just hopping around, you're sort of like letting your inhibitions go in a safe environment with others and just letting yourself express to the music whatever's playing. And then over time, it becomes also about listening to other stories and expressing to them what you've heard and them doing the same back. So that movement has so much more impact. Movement can be such a wonderful way that we communicate with each other. Body language we talk about is always that other thing that we need to be looking for in therapy and other things. But Interplay, it was just like, oh, I'm just here, I'm playing with people who I feel safe with, and this is so much fun, and I can be goofy and funny. And when I was doing that, I was in my late 30s, right? And I was with women who were in their seventy s and eighty s doing that, and women who were younger than I was. But as the more that I played and the more that I sat in those safe spaces, the more that I was like, you know, what my body is worth listening to is worth giving what it needs to it, whether it's rest or food and nourishment or movement. So that's been an important part of my journey for sure. But I think that the way back to movement or the way to movement. If movement has not been a part of your experience, it's not an easy road. And I always encourage people to be kind to themselves, give themselves a lot of grace, a lot of space, and to also get the support that they need around it as they start to explore this, whether in session, I sometimes will stand up with clients. Let's just do some movement together, right? My clients all the time, oh, I should be walking. Oh, I should be doing this. Okay, let's stop shooting all over ourselves.
[19:10] Sarah: Shooting all over ourselves all the time.
[19:13] Laura: Yeah, like, okay, so you're watching TV, and as you're watching TV, you're feeling more and more shameful that you're not getting up and going and doing because there's a stuck point there. And often the stuck point is all that shame and all that stuff that's caught up in movement and oh my gosh, if I walk today, then that means I'm going to have to walk tomorrow. And what if I don't? Then I'm a failure.
[19:33] Sarah: Right?
[19:34] Laura: So, okay, what would it be on a commercial to just get up and walk around or just put your arms over your head and stretch them? Just gentle, start small. And if on the commercial you take a moment to sort of listen to your body and your body just needs to rest, that's okay too. People fight me on that. They're like, well, then I'll never get started. And they need the rigidity.
[19:59] Sarah: Yeah, I need the judgment, I need the rigidity, I need the shoulds, I need the rules. Because without the rules, I'm just free falling. This is a totally different paradigm to step into.
[20:11] Laura: It is, and it's really uncomfortable and it's so counter to what we've been taught that it is hard to continue to practice this without adequate support. But in my own experience as a therapist and as an individual, it has been the path toward a much more healthy, grounded, joyful relationship with myself, with my body, with food, with movement. So we don't need to punish ourselves.
[20:44] Sarah: Yeah. What was it like for you in your journey to realize that your relationship with movement was disordered and shift away from that or to move through that? What was that like for you?
[21:02] Laura: It's funny because when I really woke up to it, I kind of knew in the back of my head, I'm like, this is probably not what I should be doing. Like going to the gym at all hours, running to the point of injuring myself and then starving myself and things like that. Whatever I was engaged in at that time, which was a whole wide range of things over time. But the moment that stands out to me when you said that is when my dietitian it was the moment where I was like, you know, I think maybe I'm going to drop into a dance class because I miss dancing, but I feel a certain way about that. But I know someone who teaches dance who is at a place where it's much more representative of the full scope of diversity in bodies and much more accepting and safe for folks. So I thought maybe that's the place to start. And I was like, yeah. I was like, So maybe I'll try it and then they have these packages and I could sign up for the package and it's not that expensive, and my dietitian is like, halt, stop, hang on. Just because you go to one dance class doesn't mean now you have to sign up to go there all the time. And I was like, but this is how it works. We find the thing that we like and then we just do it. We just keep doing it. We just keep doing it. Yeah. Well, how does that work? Yeah, I just keep doing it. I just keep doing it until I hate it.
[22:22] Sarah: Right.
[22:23] Laura: Or I hate myself in some way, shape or form or some aspect of myself because I'm not keeping up with this schedule. And so it's the surefire way to steal the joy from something is to make it a requirement.
[22:36] Sarah: Right? Yeah, you're so right. Yeah. Love that. Of like, wait a minute, wait a minute. There's a black and white, all or nothing stuff that is so easy. It's so easy to fall into and keeping that in check even when you are engaging in movement that feels joyful and gentle. Where are these impulses to do more or to engage in things in a certain way? Where is that impulse coming from? Is it coming from a place of connection and actual desire to push a little harder? Or is this coming from old patterns, old parts of myself that are getting a little like fidgety and itchy and want to be heard a little bit?
[23:20] Laura: Yeah, it does require a lot of that deeper listening, which I think is the greater challenge of the journey. We just don't jump back in and everything's good. I mean, when I had that conversation with my dietitian, I think I was like two and a half years into the latest journey of recovery. And so by that time, it might have even been longer than that, but I had a lot of knowledge, I had made a lot of wonderful progress with food and body image and things like that, but I went right back to the habit. I went right back to the belief that, oh, wait, I have to do this all the time now. Yeah. I want to say this. I think it's important to say this. For those for whom your body is not safe because you have chronic pain, some sort of illness that our bodies show up for us in these amazing ways each and every day. And what would it be for us to practice gratitude for how our bodies have showed up for us on a given day, wherever we're at, however it is? My mother was ill. She struggled for years with a progressive, debilitating illness. She was in bed the last six years of her life, primarily, and could not. I mean, that's such a loss of ability and such a grief and there's so much that goes along with that. But one of the things she was able to do is sort of connect with her spirituality and this idea of being an embodied soul and having gratitude for the body and what it had given her in life, like three children and the various other things. And in a way, it did help, right? It doesn't take away the pain of loss. It doesn't take away the pain of the illness or the condition. But I think those of us for whom that's not an issue, we often don't have that sort of dichotomy, or we don't have that way to be like, oh, wow, what would it be if I didn't have the stability until it's taken from us? So what we see and what we do is the process of recovery will say, no, you can't do this anymore for your health. And people freak out and it's really difficult, and there's grief, and we work with that. But for me, for instance, I had a knee injury recently and I was, like, freaking out because I was like, my gosh, it took me forever to walk up a flight of stairs because of injury. And I was like, I don't even know how I did this. I just rolled my ankle when I was walking my dog and it laid me up. And I was in physical therapy for like two and a half months, and it really became this sort of trigger for me. And I had to work extensively, my therapist and dietitian to not get into old ways and habits because I was having to do physical therapy. But through it, I came to this greater appreciation to see how my body was able to go from a knee that I could barely walk on to one. Now, that is stronger than it ever was. But I did so in an environment where my physical therapist was completely amazing. It was an environment of no type of weight, stigmatization, no type of physical therapy is often a lot of folks who are older and they're in bodies that are already compromised. And so it was just a much more safe place to start that recovery than going to a gym by myself. Eventually I went to the gym, but I will tell you, I started to go back to the gym several times in this journey of recovery, and I had to stop because I would go in and I would feel myself getting sucked right back into that mentality. And some people I know just don't go back to the gym because it has so much of that people place of things.
[27:11] Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. There's so many triggers to just pull you right back. Yeah.
[27:16] Laura: And the scale that's in the locker room. Right.
[27:19] Sarah: Absolutely.
[27:20] Laura: Yeah. It's a struggle. It's a challenge. So what I say to folks is as we go back into it, in my journey, it was the gentleness, gentleness, gentleness rehabbing my knee. I kind of developed more of a sense of what I could do, and I was like, Whoa, I have ability. I'm strong. Look at me and really appreciate my body and what it could do for me. And it sort of switched on a part of me that I knew was there and that I was working on but hadn't fully developed. And it was this idea of, I can move my body because it feels really good.
[27:59] Sarah: Yeah.
[28:01] Laura: I can focus on joyful movement. That helps me to strengthen my body, that helps me to have more stamina. And I can do all of that without any focus on weight. And I can set my own. You're not in competition with anyone. You don't need to be in competition with anyone. It's not necessary. I want to be strong. For me, I might engage in something different than my husband who's been working out for years, or other people who are like elite athletes. Their development of strength is going to be quite different from mine. But that's okay. I don't need to be that, right. I don't want to be that.
[28:43] Sarah: Right.
[28:44] Laura: Yeah. If we talk about nuance that's, like, as we go along, this is gosh four or five years down the road, when I'm just coming to this place.
[28:56] Sarah: I was just thinking, like, this is the actual journey of healing, right? The journey of recovery. Of it's not like, oh, I'm in recovery. I can go do this thing and send the distress of it and whatever. It's this entry in and kind of pulling back out and checking in and feeling it. How is this feeling in me? What is it activating in me? And having the support to really differentiate and understand what you're needing.
[29:23] Laura: Yeah. And listening to your body is the first step in all that. Really starting to tune in and doing so in a way that feels safe with an environment of safety. So that's something as a therapist, I might work with people on. That's something I know some dietitians also work with people on, but that there are ways there are safe places and spaces that we can discover. And in this world of social media, like with Instagram and TikTok, there are some really amazing people out there who are just putting their content out there for free. Like, yeah, you can do yoga regardless. Of the size of your body readily available. You can do it in the comfort of your own home without anyone else there. If that's how you need to start, that's how often many of us need to start. Right?
[30:13] Sarah: Absolutely.
[30:13] Laura: No judgment. No judgment.
[30:15] Sarah: No comparison.
[30:17] Laura: Yeah. And I'm not obliged now to do a 30 day yoga thing, and I have to show up every day or else I lose my money's worth. Right. Just try it. Try different things. Think about it as like, I'm just going to sample, try things on. If something doesn't go right, but you want to go back to it, fine. If you don't go back to it, okay. Maybe in a few years you do. Maybe you never do. Focus on the joy of it while you're doing it. Focus to really experience yourself doing the exercise versus being in your head about, oh, my gosh, I have to do 30 more minutes. I have to burn this many more calories. Oh, my gosh, I have to get back to work. I don't have time to do my full workouts day. That's the stuff that is often in our hands.
[30:57] Sarah: Absolutely.
[31:02] Laura: I say to folks, listen, you wake up every morning, start to just tune into your body, feel it stretch out your body after sleeping all night, and just, like, let yourself really start to wake up to your body and let your body engage in places that feel inspirational. A lot of folks I work with love nature and being out in nature. I could hike all the day long. I love being in nature. I love taking my dog out, and my husband and I often will take him to various places and experience them, and I could do that forever. And I'm not looking at the clock. I don't wear an Apple Watch anymore. Like, I got rid of that because that was just.
[31:45] Sarah: Too much.
[31:46] Laura: Too much for some people. They figure out a way to work with it. I have not that's healthy, but yeah. So we often have these underlying narratives, like, I can't do that. I'm not an athletic person. I'm not strong. And I'm like, my goodness, let's look at all of the people out there in all of the various bodies. Even if you look at Olympic competition right now, they're like high end athletes. But people who are doing some of those exercises are not what we would call a typical toned, athletic, elite athlete body. Right. They're in all various sizes of body.
[32:24] Sarah: The cultural narrative. Yeah, absolutely.
[32:27] Laura: You can be strong and still carry weight. You can have an amazing stamina and not be a size whatever and just as much. And this comes back to the medical model that we're in. Someone who's super thin and might look and appear to be really healthy. Sometimes they're not. Sometimes you climb the mountain with them. You're outpacing them left and right. Or you do the blood work and your blood work is much healthier than theirs. So again, coming back to that idea that looks themselves or how our bodies are formed themselves is not the beyond end all of what we can do with them and how we can celebrate our bodies.
[33:07] Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And movement can be just a celebration, a celebration of being in it.
[33:13] Laura: Just throw on some good music. I had someone invite me to this and it was awesome. She's like, Here, just throw on some good music that you love and just dance around your living room. No one's that quote, like, dance like nobody's watching, right?
[33:29] Sarah: Yep.
[33:30] Laura: There's something to be said about. Yeah.
[33:35] Sarah: So Laura has developed an offering that we're going to be launching towards the end of next week. Do you want to talk about it a little?
[33:43] Laura: Sure. It's an embodiment exercise that comes out of my own experience. It's something that I've sort of amended to align with struggles in the body, with eating disorders, with disconnection from the body. But the process really is it's something that I hope most people can engage in. And you can do it sitting or standing, even if you have to do it lying down, do it as you're able and with what's comfortable. So it's just meant to be sort of an introduction into some different positions and connecting, like sitting in a particular position with then listening to what are the emotions, what's coming up in me around this position. Start that connection of body, mind, emotions, all of that stuff really made to be gentle for folks. I start out slow, I teach you all the things, and then eventually we put it all together and I say to folks in the video, listen, if you can do this all at once and you want to do it, great. But if it's too confusing, don't. It's okay. You can just do one of the movements and that's enough. But, yeah, we kind of grounding ourselves, being open to things. Where am I stuck in things? Where do I need to surrender? Right? Where do I need to receive more? So my hope is that it will be helpful for folks. So I encourage you to try it out and I hope to add other exercises. This is movement, right? It's not meant to be something where you're going to burn a million calories doing it. It's meant to be something where you can begin to appreciate that your body has all these wonderful abilities and all this amazing wisdom within. And so let's have gratitude for that and start to listen to that.
[35:46] Sarah: Love it. I'm so excited. So excited for it to go live. I will put it in the show notes so that everyone can check it out. And of course we'll post it on social media. It'll be up on the website, so keep an eye out. And if you have questions, feel free to shoot us an email. We're happy to answer any questions that you have, but, yeah, that will be live next week. Probably around ish the same time as this episode, so keep an eye out.
[36:10] Laura: Go play.
[36:11] Sarah: Go play. I love it. I love it. Thank you, Laura.
[36:16] Laura: Thank you.
[36:17] Sarah: All right, everybody. We will be back next week with another episode with Emily, so until then, take good care of yourself. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode of Reclaim You. Be sure to, like, comment and subscribe and check us out on YouTube at reclaim you. If you're looking to start therapy for trauma disordered, eating, or body image concerns, head over to our website@www.reclaimtherapy.org to learn more about us and our work. We'll be back next week with another episode. Until then, take good care of yourself. Our.
Reclaim therapy provides trauma therapy and eating disorder therapy in Pennsylvania. Our therapists treat anorexia, bulimia, orthorexia, binge eating disorder and compulsive exercise in person and via online therapy in Pennsylvania.
We also provide therapy for childhood trauma in Pennsylvania and PTSD treatment in Pennsylvania and Horsham, PA.
If you’re looking for support in recovery from trauma or disordered eating, we’re so glad you found us.