Aila (01:10)
Hi everyone! Welcome inside the Practitioner's Path. I'm Aila and today I want to talk about a really common client situation that I encounter in my work with teenagers and young adults. And it's around the the the topic of eating disorders, body image, bulimia, anorexia. It's kind of in that pocket, but really it's like

Yeah, I I mean I'll I I think the title on this episode will be something like, Is it an eating disorder? Is it a thinking disorder? Is it neither? Is it both? And one of the things I just wanna share, 'cause I feel like my approach when I'm working with somebody that is going through some level of this kind of life experience where they're either purging or they're you know, withholding food from themselves or they're just

really obsessively tracking food.

The way that I work with him, it it's very it's like very h holistically I'll say, where I don't think it's like as simple as, hey, you're you don't have really healthy thinking about your body, so just try to like move on from those thoughts or have a different relationship with your thoughts. I think that is incredibly helpful in some circumstances when it lands.

But often it's like I find myself doing all sorts of strange things with people who are going through this, mainly because I went through this when I was younger and I was a really competitive athlete and just did you know, I played basketball in college and I was doing Olympic weightlifting and just very physically active and then I had you know, several knee injuries.

kinda back to back and I had four knee surgeries and I just couldn't f you know, be at the couldn't move at the same level I was moving at, but I kept eating at the same level. so I didn't I didn't know how to like adjust. I always thought I'd be continue being a high performing athlete and that just wasn't what was happening for me with my body.

So I had this experience of gaining a lot of weight and really kind of panicking about it and really losing my grounding in a huge way. This was when I was about eight seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, kind of in those years. And I did everything I did everything I purged. I you know, didn't eat for days at a time. I would do spiritual fasting. So I did some some of that under the

under that illusion of I'm doing this for my spiritual growth. No I was not. I was trying to lose weight. And I just had so many insights along the way around the human mind and what helps people change and I mean it was one of the the richest areas times of life for me to really study human psychology as I was already really into meditating and spiritual psychology

just kinda getting into all that stuff in a really deep way. So it was fascinating to have this r like really big internal suffering going on simultaneously and being an observer of it and really looking at it. and noticing what w what was what did help me come really overcome it and let it go and have it be a non thing eventually. Like what actually helped? And when I look at it it's like there were so many things that helped.

There were, there were so many things. There was meal planning, there was sticking to a meal plan even if my mind told me I shouldn't. that was powerful to really see like wow my thinking feels so compelling, even though I created a meal plan in a clear state of mind. Now that I'm in the moment of eating, my brain is saying, Don't do it, you're gonna get fat or don't do it, you're losing control.

And just appreciating that at s you know, at different points in time I would just give in and be like, Of course I'm not gonna eat. Yes, that sounds right. Let's not eat. And overall there were a few very poignant moments that really changed the game for me. And one of them in a in a very

just in an impactful way was when I I had this awareness that it was like

This is not about my body. Like, it is not about the shape of my body. And I just felt it in in my whole being. I felt it. It was like this is not about my body. This is about something else. And if I could keep my nose on that, if I could keep following that, because I could feel the truth in it. If I could just keep my of attention on that, keep the conversations kind of on that.

it really shifted things for me just in a in a much more natural way where I wasn't trying to meal plan and f and power through, but appreciating that what was really going on was below my conscious awareness and it took actually dropping into the physical sensations I was experiencing to be aware of it. So it took me knowing like, okay, I have thoughts that say I shouldn't eat, I have thoughts that say I'm fat, I have thoughts that say I'm ugly, I have thoughts that say I'll

Never be respected again 'cause I'm no longer a you know, a really great athlete. I have thoughts going on there.

And I don't need to touch them, I don't need to buy into them or fight with them or or disregard them. But what if I could really appreciate that that was just the noise covering up something going on slightly below the surface? And so that's where my attention goes when I'm working with somebody. That's like what's what's underneath that's happening? And I th I think I'm saying the obvious here, but I do feel like for

people that are working with clients that have practitioners that are working with clients that have anything that they label a disorder. I my first thought about that is that there is some wisdom in whatever the thing is, whether it is you know, purging or withholding or binging or there's some or cutting, like even self harming. There's something

going on beneath the surface where this behavior just really makes sense and it's logical. And I when I felt that for myself when, you know, twenty something years ago, I felt compassion for myself in a way I hadn't really. It was like, gosh, I'm not doing this to like suffer like make myself suffer. I'm actually doing this to try to help myself. But it's not really working.

So I wonder what's going on even deeper. And the way I feel like I went in with myself was like I would just give my the feeling that would come up around eating, I would feel it. You know, I'd go into the feeling, it's so obvious, but I would just touch it and get curious about it and hold space for it. And what would come out, you know, it was often very surprising to me. It was things like I remember it so clearly, it was things like

Like I want to belong.

I want I mean it there would be words at times, sometimes it'd just be sensations moving through, but I remember in in one particular moment that that feeling of like I just really want to belong. I want my life to have meaning. I want to know that I matter. And that hearing it and feeling the depth of it, it's like, okay, great. Now I know.

what I'm working with in terms of the misunderstandings or the lack of connection to a feeling of purpose, of meaning, of mattering. Like I know what I know what's really going on here. And for me it again, I think everybody's so different and what you know, what triggers this kind of behavior. But for me I know it was it w at that time, right around there, I joined this ministerial studies program at, you know, at a spiritual center in Culver City.

And I just I was like crystal clear. It's like, I just wanna feed my soul. I wanna awaken it, feed it, feel it, sense it. I joined a meditation group. I hadn't been meditating in groups at all, but I I joined one. and and it's like I just took I had this idea of like, let me just put my focus on how I really wanna be fed right now, which is in

Conscious connection with myself and uplifting, enriching, meaningful life experiences. I I volunteered a lot during that time. Like I had this clarity of like, wow, I c I know what this is really about for me. It is my thinking was distorted, but that was the symptom. That wasn't the, you know, the the the reason. That wasn't the the root cause. It's like that was a symptom of what was going on deeper.

Excuse me. So just dropping in a little deeper with myself, I got to see what was going on at the root. It's like I feel disconnected. I wanna be one with God, damn it. And like that's what I want. And I wanna feel that. And my thought was let me put as much attention on that and let my body be, essentially. Like let me let it let

let it be okay to take some awareness, some attention off of tracking calories and getting steps in and just let my body be. And that was super helpful for me.

I know that that's not always healthy and safe and productive for for the clients that I work with and clients who are struggling with this. So whenever I do have a client that has something like this going on, if they're young, even if they're older, but it's like especially when they're young, I talk to their parents immediately and am like, let's add in as much support as we can. Like there's support groups for

For this, there's eating disorder coaches, therapists, there's nutritionalists, pediatricians can get involved, like let's wrap around all the support we can and I know my role. I know my role here, and it's to to help my client drop in to their own wisdom to really sense and feel and tune into what's going on on the deepest levels possible.

To learn how to touch into the s the feelings connected so that there can be real time information and not just thoughts and habitual thinking running the show. To teach them how to be compassionate with themselves, which which is I think a natural unfoldment the more they get curious about themselves and see the health that's occurring even in the midst of the disorder. I did air quotes.

the disorder. but that's like that's what's on my mind when I'm working with somebody going through anything like this that and even if it's ticking or OCD type behavior, in my mind it's like this isn't this is an indicator of a of a system that's seeking health and balance. It's it it's the

the symptom. Even the thinking is the symptom. The sensations are the symptom. And in the sensations though, there's the the deeper levels of what's going on at the root cause. And more often than not, I feel like the clients that I'm working with that and have worked with that have had anything to do with the body, the most helpful path has been

really seeing that they're not it they're not disordered, you know, it's a good label, it's a good it's information, kinda tells people what's going on, but they are actually anything like that, anything like a dysfunctional way of of doing anything anything, drinking, smoking, anything is actually a system seeking to feel better.

It's a impulse toward wellness. Even though it's misguided, it's not it's not necessarily gonna get them where they wanna go. And so th the tha I mean, I guess I I'll just kinda leave it there, but it's like that's

The way that I go about that with a client, it looks like me telling my story at times and including the part where it's like this is not about my body. Sometimes that's an epiphany for for young people. It's like it's not. I really think if my body gets to a certain weight I'll feel better. That is just such a sham. It's such a lie. However

I do think there's something that can be great about having a body that's full of energy and vitality and health. There is that for sure. So I'm not it's it's not all that's the truth is people that are full of energy and health and well being, they're not necessarily swimming in bliss every day. But their body is is

working for them, let's just say. Their body has live energy moving through. and that's helpful in a lot of ways, being a human. But I love like kind of going in and questioning that stuff. Because I remember in my journals I was always putting my target weight. I wanna be this amount, I wanna be a I wanna hit hit this goal. This is the target. And then hitting the target and then I would change the goal.

I'd I I'd decrease it by five pounds and I'd decrease it by five pounds. And just at some point I was like, my gosh 'cause I would do the the affirmations, the now I'm so happy and grateful now that I am a hundred and twenty pounds. Then I would be a hundred and twenty pounds. Like I'm not happy or grateful. Okay, I'm must be a hundred and fifteen pounds. And just like I know that that is thinking that is just very off.

But if I look at the motivation under it, it's like I'm going for happy and grateful. So can I learn everything I can about what's going on that has it feel like those things are elusive?

I love gestalt work, I'll say that too. I love the the experience of tuning into a sensation and just seeing like I can if I could greet it like a stranger, like what is going on in there. And so often I feel like there's so much information that I get to hear myself say or hear a client say. You don't need to go study gestalt therapy, but it's really just a matter of tuning into a sensation and being present with it.

And bringing love and curiosity and letting it move, letting it reveal, letting it unfold. Sometimes memories pop up. Sometimes I ask people to give it a voice so that there's some connection happening that they can tune into. Sometimes not, but often giving a sensation a voice, it does just reveal more information about what's going on on the deeper levels.

Okay, I think I'll stop there. I could go on and on clearly about this. I love this topic. and really I think the work that Barb and I are doing right now, it's it the foundation of it is all like can we go deeper inside knowing that it's there's like this richness in who and what we are, this depth of of well being that is the foundation of who and what we are, and have faith in that.

that every feeling, every sensation, every thought is is moving through the tapestry. Like it's it's the temporary nature, but this well of being that we are, this health, this wholeness, this creative intelligence that is holding us up, supporting us, it is us, it's in us, it moves through us, that that's there.

And anything that's surfacing, it's like I almost see it this way, it's like anything, any destructive behaviors or any painful emotions or any thoughts that are scary, all of that is the illusion. It's not saying anything about who and what we really are.

how lovable we are, how perfectly made we are, how capable we are. And I feel like f the more aware of that I am for myself, the more things come out of my mouth that have that resonance toward my clients. And it's I think it's the it's the healing agent. It's the energy that makes an impact way more than anything I say. It's the energy behind

the words. And I I also love that, you know, Barb and I, we definitely have like a shared appreciation of the truth that coming from this grounding of our spiritual andor invisible andor innate nature, it changes how well we can coach. but we do it, you know, we do it in different ways. We have our different flavor of

course 'cause we have our different life experience and and just different things that make sense to us. But this is what it's been such a joy to work with practitioners this last year and we're gonna do more work in the fall in the academy we're starting where we're exploring how do we come from the ground, come from the truth of our being in our work with clients and guide them. Like guide them in an effective way.

Toward remembering who they really are, but also creating in the world in a way that matters to them. And it's just such rich terrain and I love it so much. Okay, I hope this was helpful. Email me if it wasn't and I'll try again. All right, lots of love.