Hello Friend and Colleague!
For those of you who have heard or read any of my work, you may have heard that I speak a lot about somatic work as integral in my work as a non-diet, attuned eating, HAES informed dietitian and coach.
As is very normal in the early years of work as a non-diet dietitian or facilitator, you spend your time teaching, counseling and talking about letting go of diets, challenging food rules and experimenting with eating from hunger and fullness. Learning how to ask questions, listen and be with people’s strong emotions in relation to food, weight and living in a fat-phobic world.
I spent the first 3-4 years (I’ve been at this since 2006) in 3-4 hours a week of supervision and study as well as helping people re-feed from undernourishment, stabilize eating patterns, learn intuitive eating and decoding fat feelings and binging occurrences. We teach movement for thriving, strength and vitality, moving away from exercise as a body manipulation device and acceptance that there will be seasons of life where we move more or less and that is OKAY.
Being skilled at navigating strong emotion, handling trauma or therapy related information appropriately and repairing mis-attunements in a way that our clients have never had is also VITAL to helping our clients learn to have healthy relationships and you can learn how to do this with sensitivity and confidence.
Our jobs as non diet, HAES, weight inclusive dietitians and coaches is to help educate our clients about the programming that all of us have been brought up in and help everyone who is open to consider that they have CHOICE and do not have to believe that their only option for love and a content life is to become a slave to the scale and people’s opinions.
If you are interested in building a practice that serves in this way, increases your work / life balance and increases your income and you are ready to accelerate these skills now, you are in the right place. Skip HERE to learn how we can work together.
AND get your Free When My Client is Scared about
Weight Role Playing Counseling Guide!
However, there is MORE…
As empathic, compassionate, sensitive as I could be, I learned after about 4 years that some people needed more all of the above we just discussed. Even if we have been in their shoes and they believed in their minds that a non-diet way of living was for them, being in their bodies for more than a few weeks or months at a time was as much as they could tolerate and back to restricting or binging they would go. Of course, frustrating for them and as a dedicated practitioners, we worry about them keeping hope and if we can help them.
Always gravitating towards the symbolic, story-telling style of nutrition therapy, even making analogies work for the science-minded and engineers, a deeper dive was necessary.
Combining embodiment practices, positive re-parenting with attunement, food and self-care and understanding neuroscience I learned to stop helping people to stop thinking there was something to fix and learned to build safety.
Since 2011, I have been intentionally picking up pieces from the worlds of somatic experiencing, somatic psychotherapy and coaching, attachment and polyvagal theory, sensory processing issues, child development, shame reduction models, parts work and helping people feel safer at the level of the more primitive brain, where the decision of what is safe or not resides to give our clients what they so desperately need — feeling safe.
Head knowledge and desire is not enough.
Our clients are often trapped in a battle of either leaning towards perceived safety (behaviors) or connection (life, something bigger, relationships with food, body and people that are healthy).
My mission with all of this is to bring RD’s and non diet coaches the understanding of what is happening in our client’s nervous system and attachment systems so they can find attunement to body needs with less fear and shame and HOW to intervene at the core of the overwhelm, looping or shutdown around food with compassion, safety and helping them lift the shame trap.
Some of the formal training that has bolstered my confidence includes:
- Paula Scatoloni, www.emobodiedrecovery.com (ongoing supervision spring 2018)
- Jennifer Forrest, www.sensitivesfindingthetruechrist.com (ongoing consultation winter 2018 regarding intersection of chronic shame, highly sensitive people, body image issues and recovering from religious/spiritual/new age trauma)
- Caryn Scotto, https://www.re-embodylife.com/about/ ( shame resolution work; 3 month training summer 2017 and supervision ongoing)
- Irene Lyon, www.irenelyon.com (nervous system health, 3 month training 2017)
- Sweigh Spilkin, www.thresholdshealing.com (consultation Oct 2016-Nov 2017)
- Raphael Cushnir www.cushnir.com ( 3 month individual mentorship and certification, 2015)
- Manuela Mischa-Reeds and Rob Fisher , somatic psychotherapists, http://hakomiinstitute.com/about/the-hakomi-method (3-month training, 2016)
Studying the work of Peter Levine, Stephen Porges, Bessel van der Kolk, Diane Poole Heller, occupational therapists and others has also helped me understand the power of how we understand that our clients’ physiology needs help to be re-wired.
I have fallen in love…
With how it is possible to help people who want to be free but struggle to not be able to stay consistent, who have much fear of change or letting go of familiar patterns with food, movement, over-working and all the behaviors we see go along with disordered eating and chronic dieting/emotional eating.
I am interested in helping people leave behind food and weight worries and behaviors physically, mentally/emotionally and spiritually and use food as the doorway in to do so. I believe the sensitive nature of our clients requires nutrition and attuned eating professionals to let go of the idea of “resistance” and see the function of the behaviors.
WE know that disordered eating and chronic dieting is a symptom of disembodiment, so what is it then we are being not fully in from? The answer is life has been overwhelming at a time when there were little positive resource for people struggling and food, body image and worth become coupled with survival strategies. Life hasn’t made sense and being in the body hasn’t been safe, bottom line.
If you feel as passionate as I do about helping our clients un-couple physical and emotional safety from food and worth and teaching embodiment practices to help our clients stay attuned with their bodies needs for food and all their hungers (and using these tools for ourselves; we are going to need these nervous system regulating tools just as our clients do), then I am happy to be a resource for you from the dietitian and coach perspective.
This work is not just about teaching how we can more effectively guide our clients to attuned eating. This work is intimate in the way that we can be a stand for giving our clients a healthy nervous system to learn from to be their own body experts, building autonomy with self-care.
If you are ready to shorten the learning curve and accelerate your skill level, click on the getting started and what to expect with somatic, non diet and decoding skills training.
I am so glad you are here and as excited and honored to serve as I am. Please, take the time to email (tracybrownrd@gmail.com) and say hello and don’t forget to get a taste of unpacking client’s fears about weight with this Free “When My Client is Scared about Weight Role Playing Counseling Guide”
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