Today I’m talking to Dr. Hillary McBride. Hillary is a psychologist, a researcher, and podcaster, with expertise that includes working with trauma and trauma therapies, and embodiment. She’s the author of two books - ‘Mothers, Daughters, and Body Image: Learning to Love Ourselves as We Are’, and ‘The Wisdom of Your Body: Finding Wholeness, Healing and Connection through Embodied Living’. She is on the teaching faculty at the University of British Columbia and hosts the podcast Other People’s Problems. Today, we’re speaking about embodiment, healing from trauma and loads of other really cool things!

Find out more about Hillary’s work here.

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Here’s the transcript in full:

Hillary: We could look at how convenient it is to assume that we are an image and then try to control that image when it causes us to forfeit the information that might say, no, I don't wanna participate in the system, or yes, I am hungry and I wanna eat that food even if it means that my body is not gonna appear the way that so and so expects it to. That the information on the inside is costly to stay connected to in a culture that is asking us to forfeit it, in order to belong in this kind of flattened, disembodied, two-dimensional version of, of being an image.

INTRO

Laura: Hey, and welcome back to Can I Have Another Snack podcast where I'm asking my guests who or what they are nourishing right now, and who or what is nourishing them. I'm Laura Thomas, an anti diet registered nutritionist, and author of the Can I Have Another Snack newsletter. Today I'm talking to Dr. Hillary McBride. Hillary is a psychologist, a researcher, and a podcaster with expertise that includes working with trauma and trauma therapies and embodiment. She's the author of two books: ‘Mothers, Daughters, and Body Image: Learning to Love Ourselves as We Are’, and that was published in 2017 and her latest book, ‘The Wisdom of Your Body: Finding Wholeness, Healing and Connection Through Embodied Living’ came out in Fall 2021.

Hillary is on the teaching faculty at the University of British Columbia, and she hosts the podcast, Other People's Problems. Today I'm talking to Hillary about embodiment, healing from trauma, and loads of other really cool things. So stay tuned.

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MAIN EPISODE

Laura: All right, Hillary, I'd love it if you could start by telling us who or what you are nourishing right now.

Hillary: Well, I am nourishing myself and my toddler, and I am so much more attuned to what that means because, I am breastfeeding and I am always ferociously hungry all the time, and there is something about nourishing and kind of the, the literal transmutation of all the food as it comes into my body, out of my body, into her body, that, uh, shows me how deeply connected those two are, both the nourishing and the being nourished.

Laura: Yeah, I haven't thought about it in that way that, I like that word that you use transmutation, um, and also breastfeeding a toddler I can relate to that. And yeah, just having to be really in tune with yourself, but also to a toddler and their needs.

Hillary: Yes,

Laura: It could be a lot.

Hillary: You know, it can be a lot. It's wonderful. And I feel so privileged to, through motherhood, see and experience that connection of how much my attunement and my self care to my body actually literally supports her to thrive and be well. And there's something about that, even just the way you pose the question that highlights for me, the, the interdependence between us as bodies that I think we sometimes forget when we're just mulling about our days, thinking of ourselves as individuals. There's actually this inherent connection between all of us as bodies, and I think parenthood really, really brings that right up close to your face.

Laura: Mm, yeah. I think a lot about interdependence in parenting. You know, from the perspective that that capitalism keeps us so sort of separate from one another. And prioritizes independence and, you know, trying to parent under late stage capitalism without family and community around is so fucking hard. So really, really hard that, yeah, like it just really for me has hammered home how interdependent we are.

Hillary: Uh-huh. Yeah. You said it. That's exactly it.

Laura: So Hillary, this is somewhat related, but your area of expertise is in embodiment, and embodiment is a term I've noticed recently, it's kind of buzzy. I'm seeing it show up everywhere, but I'm wondering if you could tell us how you understand and define embodiment.

Hillary: Yes, I would be so privileged. So there's a couple different ways of defining it, and I'll give you a couple different definitions and then I'll, I'll tell you what I think is salient about them, but I really like the Merleau-Ponty definition, which is that embodiment is the perceptual experience of engagement of the body in the world. Or another way of describing it is the lived experience of engaging in the world as a body.

Laura: Hm.

Hillary: What both of those definitions have in common is that there is both a felt sense, experiential kind of body, you know, as it's known and lived and encountered and understood and sensed by me and a sociopolitical, contextual, cultural piece.

It is, you know, how is all of that shaped by the landscape that I'm in, by the people that I'm in, by the stories of power and privilege that I encounter? So there's a dialectic between what felt sense is like in and through me, and then the world that I'm in. You know, it's really interesting to look at it through that lens as having both kind of this material, individual quality and a sociocultural and interpersonal quality, because I think it really breaks down the assumptions that we have, that our bodies are in a way, uniquely ours.

We can have autonomy and agency over our bodies, but, but we also are in a world that is constantly saying things to us about what bodies are good and how to be, and how to shape movement and how to feed ourselves and what is desirable in terms of our appearance. And those things really get, you know, lodged inside of us in such a way that sometimes we forget that those stories come from culture and they feel like they're our own thoughts or our own identities.

So I love thinking about embodiment as including these two pieces and in, in a way actually being the conversation between them.

Laura: I love that, that kind of reciprocal relationship between our bodies and the, the context of our bodies. And I love the quote that you use in your book. I think it's, is it Teresa Silo? Is that how you,

Hillary: ah-huh.

Laura: Is that how you pronounce her name? Where you quote her as saying, or them as saying the body is not a thing we have, but an experience we are. And I always think there's kind of an irony in talking about and trying to define embodiment because as soon as we kind of put words to it, we're sort of, I don't know, what's the word that I'm looking for?

Hillary: Like in an abstraction or we're losing something about the felt sense or the quality of it by trying to talk about it or think about

Laura: Yeah, yeah. No, that's exactly it. We're turning it into this like, academic thing when it's really, like you've said, it's a felt sense, it's an experience, so I just wanted to highlight the sort of, the irony in us talking about embodiment.

Hillary: Oh, I'm so glad that you said that because it reminds me of something else that I often say when I'm talking about embodiment, which is to say, you know, instead of me describing it, how about I tell you about, you know, that time 30 minutes ago or two hours ago, when you really knew that you needed a drink of water. And the quality of the sensation and your awareness of that sensation, and then your action to go meet that need to go get yourself a glass of water or not. And all of the stories around you that impacted why you knew what that sensation was like or didn't know and why you did something about it or not.

It's like the, you know, sometimes because we get stuck in the academic definitions and we lose the felt sense quality, we actually understand embodiment when we come back to the, the sensory memory, the procedural memory, the qualitative nature of being a body, because that as much, you know, some of us have harder times accessing that, it may actually be a little bit more accessible to us than all of the, you know, the floral or abstracted language that we use to talk about this thing, which is kind of our aliveness and it as it's felt and sensed.

Laura: And I love that word that you used, aliveness. And it makes me think of how I think and how I conceptualise embodiment in some of the work that I do around feeding and working with, with children and families is, you know, I think of embodiment a lot about a baby or a toddler who is just so, you know, they're all feeling, they're all in their body. There's no kind of like, they haven't quite internalised messages around shame and, you know, these social scripts that we pick up and, I think of animals as well as, you know, being really, embodied in a very positive way. Obviously, of course, we're all embodied, but you know, as you alluded to our experiences of embodiment can be, can lean more positively or more negatively depending on, again, some of the social scripts that we've been handed, the sociopolitical context that we find ourselves in, but I wondered if it would just, if it was helpful for some of the listeners to, to especially anyone who's parent or been around children or animals to, you know, connect with that idea that, you know, we're born embodied and, and, and we have this really strong sense of, of positive embodiment when, especially when we're little. And then, you know, Niva Piran's research tells us that as we get closer to, um, particularly for girls, as we get closer to puberty, and we start acting on the body instead of being in, you know, acting from the body, that, yeah, that's where the, those ruptures in our embodiment begin.

Hillary: Mm-hmm.

Laura: I wonder if you could speak to maybe some of the other ways our experiences of embodiment are shaped both at the individual level, but also from that broader sociopolitical context that we've touched on.

Hillary: Well, I think that the most obvious things that we could look at have to do with our isms around power, how power is distributed. So, which bodies are considered desirable, which bodies are forgotten socially, and again, that might seem kind of abstract until, until all of a sudden you're in a wheelchair and you realise that city planning didn't necessarily think about all the ways that people who use mobility aids need to get into buildings.

That there's something that's communicated there about which bodies and how bodies move through space that's not really considered by those who have the, the most social power. So we think about like ableism and racism and sizeism, sexism and you know, there's just so many isms that are proliferated in our culture that we don't really even think about, especially if we benefit from them in some way.

So there's that quality of it. Of course, there's the way that media and parents and peers are vessels for those messages about what is desirable. That's considered the tripartite model. But looking at these three different streams of influence that disseminate messages about ideal bodies, about good bodies, about what is valuable culturally.

And whenever I think about the tripartite model, the, you know what's interesting about it if you were to see it visually, is it places you right, the individual at the centre of these streams of information coming at you, there is these arrows of media. You know, parents or caregivers and peers, colleagues, right? Your friends, they're pointing at you, but you are also in one of those categories, likely, if not more, for another person. And so we are handed this information and then we are handing it to each other. Just based on the ways that we use greetings and how we comment on other people's appearance and what we say about their eating and um, their feeding of themselves and their movement, and the kinds of things that we, we praise and the kinds of things that we are silent about or criticise.

So there is this really interesting soup that we're in. But if we follow those arrows back from us to where they come from, we see structures around, you know, hierarchies of body that were created many millennia ago based on who was able to leave or control the body the best. Who is seen as actually having the ability to conquer or subdue the body in terms of its animal nature, it's sensory qualities, it's sensuality. In some ways it’s mystery. And all of it, it seems, stems back to that, could this one group of people conquer their body better than someone else, and then the assumption or the conferring of power based on that, right? That this is somehow superior.

Laura: Yeah, I think a lot about it in terms of, you know, the, the cultures of domination that we live in. But I think the way that you're expanding it, there is almost, you know, the, the genesis of all of this was domination over one group's own bodies before then that ripple effect goes out to dominate other bodies and animals and the natural world.

Hillary: Yes, and I would argue that that might even come from before, that the domination of the body of the earth, the sense that the earth is a body in its own way. That is in a way kind of our original mother as a species. And the earth's body needs to be objectified and conquered, which teaches us to objectify and conquer our own bodies, and then consequently punish the people who can't do that as being kind of unruly or somehow lacking status or privilege or power.

Laura: Wow. Okay. I wasn't expecting to go there, but we did. Hillary in, your second book, The Wisdom of Your Body, you talk about the ways that we learn to view our bodies as an image. You know, we use the term body image all the time, which when you think about it, is fundamentally objectifying, right?

Hillary: Mm-hmm.

Laura: I'm wondering if you can share, you know, how this happens. How do we come to view our bodies as objects separate from, from us and, what does this do to our experience of embodiment?

Hillary: It is something so funny to think about, hey, when we start actually looking at the language, like body image has been used as shorthand for how we relate to our bodies, but we are not just images. We are not just in relationship with our appearance and we have so much more dimensionality to us than than what is visible to us, visible about us on the outside and how we perceive and relate to that.

So my relationship to that term has evolved since, really because of my own journey through eating disorder recovery and feeling like I wanted to leave behind the two-dimensional way of relating to my body as an image and move inside into a kind of interiority of the body. And what's fascinating about the research about that is that it seems that that actually kind of inoculates us against eating disorders.

You might think that, you know, not working on eating disorders as an issue would be missing a major construct in a cornerstone of the work. But it seems that there is something about leaving ourselves and seeing ourselves just as an image that is, as a, a kind of pathology in a way, and that there is a, a wholeness that is lacking in our relationship and experience of ourselves unless we include.

All of the other qualities, the felt senses, the interoception, really what it's like to live and be us from the inside out. So when I think about body image, I often very closely think about objectification and self-objectification and the way that we learn to see ourselves from the outside.

Seeing ourselves through the gaze of the other, but also, I think you could argue, especially if you're familiar with Foucault's work, like looking at the body through the gaze of those who have the power and those who are most interested in subduing and controlling and disciplining the body. But we learn to take the position of those who have the most power, those who could hurt us, those who could approve of us or judge us. And we begin to see ourselves and police our through their eyes, and it is through assuming the position of this external gaze that we lose or leave behind some of that other more subtle, nuanced information that can only be felt and lived through us and consequently actually might serve to disrupt some of those systems of power.

We could look at how convenient it is to assume that we are an image and then try to control that image when it causes us to forfeit the information that might say, no, I don't wanna participate in the system, or yes, I am hungry and I wanna eat that food even if it means that my body is not gonna appear the way that so and so expects it to. That the information on the inside is costly to stay connected to in a culture that is asking us to forfeit it, in order to belong in this kind of flattened, disembodied, two-dimensional version of, of being an image.

So there is something that I think that's really important here about recognising, again, what you brought up earlier of power and social control, and the way that even receiving ourselves as simply an image is a byproduct of a social context in which we are rewarded for being less of a body because we are often then more compliant.

Laura: Yeah, there's a lot to think about there. I think have to like process that a little bit after we finish our call. I suppose what was coming up for me there is, you know, in the age of hyper information and social media and you know, when, when we're so bombarded with our own image, images of other people, that are often presented in these really like one-dimensional ways.

Hillary: Mm.

Laura: You know, it's so much easier to self objectify

Hillary: Yes.

Laura: Than it is to be positively embodied or embodied in any sense, really. I'm just curious, you know, how when you're swimming upstream like this, you know, what do you find to be helpful? Because I think, you know, cognitively we can all understand, wow, that's really messed up when you put it in those terms. But again, embodying something different is so much harder. So, you know, where can we even begin with that, do you think?

Hillary: Yeah. Well, my discipline will betray me when I say this because, or I should say I will betray my discipline in a way when I say this, but we, you know, we are constantly in development. The idea that development is only something that happens in these critical and sensitive periods of our life is actually just, it's not true scientifically. And I understand why we do it culturally to say, you know, here's where there is so much that is happening. We need to be protective of people who are vulnerable because their systems are, are changing so much and it's setting up so much of the rest of their lives. But we will be in development, we will be experiencing developmental transitions for the rest of our lives, including death.

Death is a developmental transition. When we look at Niva Piran's Developmental Theory of Embodiment, there is so much that we can borrow at different phases of the lifespan. And why I think that's hopeful is because it gives us a guide to the places that we can, we can. Intersect with interventions and support and resources and where we can direct our attention to support ourselves, to continue to reclaim some of the aspects of being a body that have been left behind.

So that includes looking at the social domain. What are the places where I can experience the freedom to be in my body and to be understood in the challenges of being a body in the social climate? And where do I experience having social power? Right? Who? Who are the people who understand my lived experience and can validate the lived reality of oppression and marginalisation or, you know, can affirm the goodness of my body, even if the larger social narrative and dominant culture is either silent or oppressive to what my experience of my body is like. So there's the social power aspect, there's the mental, mental freedom aspect. You know, negotiating with some of the, the constructs that we carry inside, being critical about the thinking that we have and the places that we learned that thinking, assessing social discourse.

Um, you know, the irony with this is, I had an eating disorder therapist for quite some time who said women with eating disorders are philosopher queens. And there are, you know, I am sure lots of places where that does not apply. But in my experience, and I think what she was trying to say to me was not that there was an absence of thought, but that I was really up in my mind.

And if we can be curious about what is going on up in our minds, and if we can harness the criticism that is often turned towards our bodies and actually redirect it to the place that it's due, which is these really harmful social constructs and experiences and distributions of power, then the mechanism of being thoughtful and thinking critically does not have to disappear. It can just get redirected to the place that it deserves to be redirected. We can learn to see the social landscape for the problems and the toxicity that it has and build something new instead of directing that energy towards our bodies, thinking our bodies were ever a problem.

And then lastly, of course, the physical freedom piece. If we create experiences where we encounter being in a body and can notice that that is pleasurable and is good and we can work on building attunement towards ourselves, I think that that inoculates us against the pervasive image culture. These are all different ways that we bring our attention back into creating experiences both in ourselves and between us and others that make it hospitable to be in our bodies. And help us remember what we knew right from the beginning in our earliest phases of development, which is that our body is full of communication. Our body is us. Our body can be trusted, our body is wise. Our body knows the way. Our body deserves to be safe and is actually ultimately, I think, interested in creating safety for all of us.

Laura: I love that. And again, so many threads that we could, we could pull on there, but I loved especially what you, what you were saying about, well, there were two, two pieces that, that really stood out for me. I think one of which was just this idea of where we are so quick to criticise and tear ourselves down. Yeah. How can we externalise that? How can we turn that towards these oppressive systems that exist outside of our bodies that are making us feel a particular way about our bodies? And then the second piece, you said so elegantly, but I kind of was coming back to this idea of community and finding safety in people who can, um, other people who share similar lived experiences to us, who can affirm our experiences, who can show solidarity with us, who can hold us and, and say, you know, there is nothing wrong with your body. There is nothing wrong with the way that you show up in the world. It's everything else outside of of us that's messed up. and yeah, just, just be in community with one, one another. Kind of almost going full circle back to what we talked about at the very beginning, sort of thinking about interdependence and, and how we all kind of fit together in the sort of wider human tapestry,

Hillary: Yes. Yes, exactly.

Laura: And I mentioned to you off mic, a lot of the people who listen to this podcast are parents or have children in their lives, and I know you're a parent yourself, and I wonder from your perspective, what do you think are the most important things that adults can do to support kids' sense of positive embodiment?

You know, we've talked a lot about at the sort of collective level, and there's a lot that needs to change there, but I'm wondering if you have any nuggets for parents, you know, any considerations or anything that they can do to help their kids maintain a sense of being in their bodies, a sense of their bodies as their homes as this place of safety.

Hillary: Well, there's a few things that come to mind, and I'm hoping that that means that even if all of them don't feel accessible, then hopefully one, one does for the parents out there. So I think a really important thing to do is to affirm how they are already listen. So when a kid says, “I'm hungry”, you can say, “Wow, you're really listening to your body. Thank you so much for telling me”. You know, that doesn't necessarily mean that we do whatever they want because we live in families and we have limitations, and we have schedules, and we have all sorts of things that we need to fit in and negotiate. But simply saying, “I'm so glad you're listening. Thank you for telling me”. I think what that does is it protects, protects the knowing even if we have to set a boundary and say, you know, “It's gonna be a little while until we can have a snack because we're actually driving, we don't have anything in the car right now. But you know you're hungry and you're doing such a good job. Listening to that and telling me”.

What we don't want to have happen is to signal in any way to children that they have to disqualify their bodily knowing to stay in connection with us because that's often what happens in terms of an attachment framework, right? Children are so sensitive to what their caregivers need in order for them to be considered pleasing and when children perceive their caregiver as being disappointed or scared or ashamed or something because of the information they're giving them, they're gonna learn very, very quickly not to give them that information. And it's not a far jump from, I'm not gonna give that information, to I'm suppressing that information, to I don't notice it at all.

So simply being able to say to your children, “You do know you're tired. I believe you, that you're hungry. I am so glad you're listening. Ooh. What does it feel like in your tummy when you're hungry? How do you know? What is it like? Is it like a growling?” You know? Right. Even just being in the experience of it with them to thicken their awareness of it is a great way to preserve that and let them know that them paying attention to their bodies will not cut them off from connection to you.

Laura: So the other day, so we send Avery, my almost three year old, with a packed lunch to his daycare setting. And the other day he came home and he said to us, “I ate one carrot”. And he was like, so proud of eating this carrot. And of course, I never praise based on, you know, what he has or hasn't eaten and I'm, you know, maintain this very food neutral approach. So I was really surprised by this and I did a little bit of interrogating it and, you know, I've actually had to go and speak to daycare because they are, you know, pressuring him to eat. Which really crosses so many boundaries for me in terms of not respecting his autonomy. Not respecting his voice, you know, he had said no and he was told, well, you just have to eat one carrot. And then obviously this was reinforced with praise before he came home and said, “I ate one carrot”, you know, I had to sit with why this really played on my mind. And it's, you know, for the reasons that you're describing that overriding someone's no, overriding their body autonomy can become a sort of slippery slope to them. You know, not, not being able to recognise their own needs and suppressing their needs and or performing, you know, for adult’s praise or adult’s validation, and that's so much bigger than respecting their hunger and fullness cues. That's just one tiny part of this work, I think. So yeah, that was just an example that came to mind.

Hillary: Thank you so much for sharing that because I think it, you know, where it takes me is into the complexity that parents often bring to the conversation of, you know, there are times I have to override their cues. Like they're saying, no, I don't wanna have my diaper changed and they've got a poopy diaper. You're like, this would actually be negligent if I didn't, like you actually can't make that call right now, but how important it is to say, you know, “I really hear your no, I really hear that you don't want me to change your diaper. I'm so glad you're telling me there's something about that that doesn't feel good for you. You can always, always tell me, and I'm always going to listen to you. And there are some situations where even if something is uncomfortable or hard for you, I have to help you do it because it is for your safety, because it cares for your body, and I want for you to know that even though I'm gonna be caring for your body in this way, I still believe that you don't want me to, and I'm hearing you, and I'm so glad you're telling me”.

Because I think what often happens is if we have to, we are in those situations where we do have to override the no that the parenting kind of reaction that we might naturally wanna have is, I'm gonna shut down your, no, then I'm gonna tell you, you shouldn't say no because it's actually kind of uncomfortable for me as a parent to say to you. Yes, you're allowed to disagree with me, but I'm still gonna do what I'm doing. Right? That's a complicated thing to feel and we can feel like it would just be easier for them to not say anything because it's too uncomfortable for us. So being able to say, you can keep telling me no. You can tell me just how much you don't like it. I believe you. I believe you. Tell me what it is as I'm changing your diaper. What is it about it that you really don't like? Like keeping them connected to themselves and keeping them connected to you while you're also prioritising their health and safety? I think it is possible to do it all.

Laura: Yeah, no, and thank you for adding that nuance of, you know, there are times where, especially around care tasks, where we can validate what they're expressing about how strongly they don't want to do something and how that feels really uncomfortable or really annoying or, you know, just not what they want to be doing in that moment.

And we have to hold a boundary because it's really important for hygiene or, you know, for their safety or, or whatever it is. And so there's definitely that, that piece of it. And you know, something that I've been thinking about with, with Avery, is, you know, in terms of his body boundaries and helping him assert that.

Well, there's two things actually. We're practicing saying things like, “I'm the boss of my body”, which I know is gonna backfire at some point when he, you know, when it comes to washing his hair or getting in the bath or something like that. But yeah, just reminding him that, you know, he is in charge of what crosses that body boundary.

And another thing that I've come across lately, I don't know if you've discovered this song yet, but it's called The Boundary Song.

Hillary: Ooh, I haven't, I'm gonna have to look it up.

Laura: Yeah, it's, um, it's called the Boundary Song. I'll link to it. I think it's Hopscotch is like the YouTube video, but it's basically the words, the lyrics are basically, please stop. I don't like that. I'm feeling uncomfortable. I need more space. And then it

Hillary: Uh, Yeah.

Laura: Not around me. Don't take it personally. It's just a boundary. That's a boundary. And my, not even three year old has like memorised this song and, you know, we're trying to practice like different context in which you might say something like that. And again, it could all go horribly wrong and backfire, but, you know, I think what I'm connecting this back to is just, you know, giving them the tools to express their voice to help solidify their body autonomy, to solidify their body boundaries.

And, that feels like a really salient piece around maintaining that positive experience of embodiment that connection to their bodies. Not letting their body boundaries be violated, you know, with the caveat that sometimes we have to do that in a caring way, for hygiene and whatever else.

So anyway, I went off on a bit of a monologue there. I'm not really sure what my point was, do you wanna bring it back, Hillary?

Hillary: I love the place that we're in, in the conversation, which is looking at both how we protect in a few different ways, right? Because there is a way of protecting that is ‘I'm gonna honour your boundary because you said no, I'm gonna stop’. And there's also a kind of protecting, which, you know, like you said, around care practices and just the nuance and complexity of that, and I think it's important that we're making a space where we can talk about how those fit intentionally with each other, what they bring up in us as adults. And also then subsequently what we weren't given as kids.

Because many of the times when these things are hard for us as parents, it's because they're new, because we're having to chart a new path and there is something kind of prophetic and transformational in being in the space that's uncomfortable and foreign. So I'm just appreciating, holding the complexity here.

I think the last thing that I'll wanna say around embodiment in children is around creating experiences for free play, for being silly, for jumping, for, you know, unrestricted movement, for experiencing sensation and wide ranges of sensation like the, the developmental literature says that the more we encounter in a sensory capacity, the more ways that we learn to have mastery and agency in our bodies, the more autonomy, the more fullness, the more goodness we encounter in our bodies.

So a wide range of activities, movement, spaces getting dirty, getting loud, being silly, playing, coordinated movements, right? Even being able to master a task because we practice something over and over and over again and get good at it, but not at the exclusion of free and unrestricted play, like just as many body experiences we can have.

I think that that, you know, that's something that serves us well in our lives and so maybe that's a good piece of advice for parents who are really committed to having their kids be in figure skating and they do a lot of figure skating and over and over and over and over again. Like yes, there might be a sense of, um, mastery. But what about the spaces where there is novel movement or what about the spaces where there is unrestricted kind of free unobserved movement? Or maybe for parents who are really good at letting their kids be wild and free and unrestricted, where are the spaces where kids are learning a task and can feel competence in and through their bodies.

And so just thinking about the spectrum and trying to create range, I think that that's, that's really important. It takes a little bit of thought on our part, but I think it goes a really long way.

Laura: Yeah. I really appreciate that addition. And yeah, I've been thinking about these kids that I see around, they're always with their dad. I think it's their dad, at least I hope it's their dad. And they must be about, I don't know, like 9 and maybe 11, somewhere around there. And I fondly referred to dad as aggressive sports dad,

Hillary: Oh, okay. Yes. I know the type. Okay.

Laura: He's like, I see them like at the pool. I see them at the tennis court. I see them at the park. And the dad is like super militantly, like focused on like teaching them skills around sports, like, he's clearly really, really passionate about sports, but you can just see the kids like kind of, uh,

Hillary: Mm-hmm.

Laura: At how restrained and controlled and, um, kind of like meticulous they're being asked to be. And obviously I'm kind of projecting here like, you know, or using conjecture to make assumptions here, but it does feel like they just wanna run around and climb a tree or like jump.

Hillary: Yes. Right, right.

Laura: But yeah, we all know an aggressive sports dad. But Hillary, I'm really conscious of your time and I just have a couple quick questions I wanna ask you to wrap up. So the first is, I would love it if you could share a practice with us that you personally like or that you found in your work as a therapist that helps people with that sense of embodiment, with that sense of my body as my home.

Hillary: Yeah, Yeah. Two really, really quickly. Uh, one, putting my hands on my body and talking to myself, greeting myself in the morning, in the evening, saying I'm so glad to be with you. I wanna care for you. Can you keep talking to me? Right. Whatever it is that we wanna say to build relationship with our bodily selves, like honouring my body as a subject, not just an object. And then the other one is dancing. I just love having music on and moving my body in a way that really helps me discharge excess energy or stress from the day. For anyone who's familiar with trauma work, we know that moving, shaking, activation in our major muscle groups, like that's actually a way to release energy that is lingering from stressful or demanding events.

So there's that side of it, but then there's also the freedom and the pleasure and the sense of enjoyment and you know, how it invites me into self-expression and connection and a sense of yeah, just enjoying being a body. So touching my own body and talking to myself and dancing.

Laura: Oh, I love both of those things, and they're definitely things that I try and, yeah, check in with as well. My last sort of serious interview question for you is who or what is nourishing you right now?

Hillary: Mm. You know, just this week I had some really, really important conversations with my partner and he really listened to me and really tended to me, and there was something about feeling unshakable support and emotional attunement that felt nourishing to me on such a soul level, that I have to think of the relational. Again, that's my new kind of my therapist disposition and my discipline there. But I feel so nourished by deep and rich, attuned connection. It helps me feel seen and known and loved and safe and, um, nourished.

Laura: I really love that. That's so special. I'm so glad that you have that.

Hillary: Thank you. Me too.

Laura: Okay, so just a fun question to wrap up. So, at the end of every episode, my guest and I share something that they're snacking on. So it can be a literal snack, it can be a podcast, a movie, a show, whatever you're into at the moment. Is there something fun you'd like to share with us?

Hillary: Ugh. You know what? I'm having a real cake moment in my life right now. I think. I don't know what it is. Yes, I know.

Laura: I thought For a second you were using cake as a euphemism, and I was a bit confused, but then I realised you meant actual cake. Okay.

Hillary: Cake. Actual cake. I just had so many years where I really missed out and so we've been making up excuses for reasons to get a cake. So, um, you know, we're just having a lot of cake around here and I love it so much.

I'm like having breakfast cake and after dinner cake and sometimes cake with lunch and just really, really enjoying all sorts of different kinds and qualities, and no grocery store cheap cake is beneath me, but I'm also, I like some of the fancy ones, so I'm just trying, trying cake.

Laura: Oh, I love it. Breakfast cake.

Hillary: Yes,

Laura: Genius. That's a stroke of genius. Uh, real quick, I'll share mine. So I think yeah, this is really connected to what we have been talking about today, which is that I've recently taken Avery to toddler dance class, like a toddler ballet class, and I am super conscious of how toxic dance spaces can be in general, but this is a very cute, very safe space where they can just move their bodies in whatever way they like. And you know, I've taken him to a few different sort of dance space classes and things like that, and he really hasn't connected to it. But this class in particular, he was just kind of in his element, twirling and jumping and leaping. And he, you know, he asked if he could put on like the tutu skirt and he was just having the best time. So, um, super special to see that.

Hillary: Yes, it sounds like it. Wow. Thank you for sharing that. That just brought me so much joy knowing about that and picturing him there.

Laura: it's very, very, sweet. Hillary, could you please share with everyone how they can find out more about you and your work and where they can find you?

Hillary: Yeah. You can find me online at hillarylmcbride.com,, on social media, Hillary Lianna McBride on Instagram or Hillary L McBride on Twitter, or maybe it's the other way around, I can never remember. Have a look at those names. Some combination of those names will get you somewhere to me and my work.

And, then I've got books, wherever books are sold and podcasts, you can always search my name in the search tool in wherever you listen to podcasts. And both the podcasts that I have produced and the ones I've been on will show up.

Laura: And we will link to all your social media and where to find your books and your podcast in the show notes so that, yeah, there won't be any confusion over where to find you.

Hillary: Thank you.

Laura: Hillary, it was so great to talk to you. I love your book, The Wisdom of Your Body. And I really recommend it to all my clients that I'm working with. So thank you so much for spending some time with us today.

Hillary: It was my pleasure. I loved every minute of our conversation.

OUTRO

Laura Thomas: Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Can I Have Another Snack? If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to rate and review in your podcast player and head over to laurathomas.substack.com for the full transcript of this conversation, plus links we discussed in the episode and how you can find out more about this week's guest. While you're over there, consider signing up for either a free or paid subscription Can I Have Another Snack? newsletter, where I'm exploring topics around bodies, identity and appetite, especially as it relates to parenting. Also, it's totally cool if you're not a parent, you're welcome too. We're building a really awesome community of cool, creative and smart people who are committed to ending the tyranny of body shame and intergenerational transmission of disordered eating. Can I Have Another Snack? is hosted by me, Laura Thomas, edited by Joeli Kelly, our funky artwork is by Caitlin Preyser. And the music is by Jason Barkhouse. And lastly Fiona Bray keeps me on track and makes sure this episode gets out every week. This episode wouldn't be possible without your support. So thank you for being here and valuing my work and I'll catch you next week.

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