Free Spirit Academy Podcast Rande Moss

You won't get very far in this episode without realizing the click-baitiness of the title.  The truth is, there was a time I wanted to keep all of my body shame and use it for fuel to "fix" my body and chaotic relationship to food. It never worked, and in this episode I'll talk about what did.

Links:

Work with Me 

Reimagining The Body course  (use the coupon code REIMAGINE2023 at checkout for 50% off in the month of November)

If you've spent any time in the somatic healing world, you're likely familiar with the concept of the body saying "no". I'll also often say that the body has a language that it speaks - sensation. emotion. pleasure and pain. Reactions and responses that say "no" and reactions and responses that say "yes". 
And it takes a lot of time and practice to understand that language.

In today's episode I'll speak about feeling for the body's "yes" and the body's "no", and how it applies in several situations. 

Links:


Work with Rande


Free Spirit Academy on Instagram

What I wish I would have known when I was struggling and reading books about "mindful eating":

- Slowing down isn't a tool to make you eat less. It's a tool to notice what's happening.

- No amount of mindful eating is going to make eating less than you actually need serve you.

- Mindful eating doesn't have to be precious. You can eat in front of your favorite show. You don't have to be deeply meditative about it...it's really just in the case of compulsive or binge eating that removing distractions can be a useful tool.

- If you're absolutely desperate to change your body, attempts at mindful eating are probably still just going to be attempts at control.

- Mindful eating isn't just about the "mind". It's an embodied experience. It's not about an idea of how much you SHOULD eat, it's about getting to know your actual body.

- "Embodying a binge" really does mean "embodying a binge". What does a binge urge feel like in your body? What changes as you start to eat? What does the food actually taste like? What's it like to have this food take up space in your body? If shame comes up, what does THAT feel like? What's it like to breathe into it rather than let it spin stories in your head? What happens in your body if you don't immediately distract yourself after a binge? If you don't plan to starve yourself the next day? Can you get to know those feelings?

Binge eating taught me so much. Rather, EMBODYING the experience that I'd been fighting with for 15+ years taught me so much.

As it became safe to embody the entire experience of a binge, it started loosening it's hold.

It also became safe to change things from the inside of that experience.

I learned I could stop shaming myself and "starting over" when the binge was over.

I learned I was actually capable of stopping somewhere in the middle rather than being all-or-nothing.

Eventually I learned that a binge urge (the survival energy driving me to eat) wouldn't kill me if I didn't follow through. Or if I did so in a less checked-out way.

Basically I learned that I was lovable and safe, even in a pattern that felt like the worst thing about me. ⁣
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And creating that kind of safety opened up room for other hidden parts of me to come to the surface. Embodying the binge was just the beginning.⁣
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P.S. I have a couple of spots for private clients and all clients get lifetime access to Free Spirit Academy courses (including Binge Freedom) DM me with questions, book a 15-minute call, or fill out the application through the link below ❤️

Work with Me

Healing doesn't happen in a hurry. The hurry to be healed, integrated, enlightened, free, arrived...it's not as neat and tidy as a lot of self-help books or before-and-after photos might suggest. 


It's more like, the harder we try to fix things, the harder our nervous systems work to keep us where things are familiar. Whereas, if we can slow down with ourselves, right  in the behavior or with the part of us we hate or struggle with most, we can get to know it. There are often so many unknown steps in a healing process that we couldn't possibly plan them all out, let alone by a certain date. And often, the version of us that exists right here is the one most needing our acceptance and attention.

In this episode, I talk about the desperation and hurry I felt to "fix" my binge and emotional eating. I'll also share about the parts of myself I'd have missed meeting if the "hurry" had worked.

Links:


Work with Rande


Free Spirit Academy on Instagram

THE TOP 10 MISTAKES I’VE MADE ON MY HEALING JOURNEY:
Honestly, I cringe a bit using the words "healing" OR "journey" because the internet is so oversaturated with wellness or spiritual teachers. I'm not interested in making "healing" my whole personality, but simultaneously I have always had this deep interest in why things hurt. What any kind of pain, emotional, mental, or physical, is saying. and coming from a background of religious and family trauma, being queer and undiagnosed neurodivergent, and all of the ways those pains spiraled out - into years of an eating disorder, self-harm, depression, anxiety, dissociation, and chronic health symptoms...I became fixated at some point on what it would take to feel free. 



So whether I like the term or not, I found myself on a "healing journey" that I would say began when I got fired from my door to door missionary job and started removing myself from my church and toxic family patterns. I was in the thick of struggling with food and my body and had sooooo much accumulated trauma that it was just my "normal"...but taking those steps felt incredible. In fact, something I wish I could have told myself at various points is that there's no "heaven". There's no one point where all the things on all the levels are healed and you live happily ever after. Simultaneously, you don't have to WAIT until all the things on all the levels are healed to feel better. 



Life, my body, my general state of being being better than they ever have been. As I thought back, I got to thinking about all the missteps and misunderstandings up until this point and I want to share them with you.

Links:


Work with Rande


Free Spirit Academy on Instagram

This podcast is for you if you're feeling unsettled and unsafe right now.


It's for you if being alone, or home all the time, or having your world turned inside-out makes you want to crawl out of your skin.

It's for you if you're like a client of mine who told me this morning that she doesn't want to be stuck in her house with all that food.

This episode is the first class from my 30-Day program Coming Home to Your Body. In the month of August you can use the coupon code COMINGHOME50 to get 50% off the course. 


We'll be talking about:

...why you can be "perfect" with your  healthy lifestyle and still feel unwell.

...how to build resilience in challenging times.

...the struggle to be 'present', 'mindful', or 'in the flow' no matter how much you meditate or use spiritual and self-care practices.

...the desire to take care of your health while struggling with self-sabotage, compulsive behaviors, and repeating cycles and patterns like overeating but you don't know why.

...when you've talked about your issues and traumas in therapy and feel like you've processed your childhood, but still struggle with anxiety, depression, a constant feeling of frustration or other painful emotions that don't seem to match the present circumstances. 

...you've tried to 'just relax' or maybe you KNOW some of the nervous system lingo and you take deep breaths to 'deactivate your parasympathetic nervous system'...and you still just feel like a mess.

...and how to ACTUALLY learn to FEEL, rather than thinking about our feelings, reacting to our feelings, or numbing our feelings.

I hope this episode feels useful and supportive right now ❤️


Links:


Coming Home to Your Body (code COMINGHOME50 for 50% off)


Work with Rande


Free Spirit Academy on Instagram