We are on your team.
©2025 ED Recovery Coaching
Words of Wisdom
March 17, 2025
Hello lovely human!
Hope the title wasn’t too activating and that you clicked to open because you are following your curiosity. I know this can be a triggering topic and if any of this strikes you in a way that doesn’t feel helpful, I encourage you to take care of yourself even if it means skipping this one.
I am putting the finishing touches on this newsletter from Chicago right in the middle of my first module of Full Embodiment training on my path to becoming a Certified Somatic Sexuality Healing Practitioner. Through a combination of professional training, personal experiences, and ongoing work in the field of eating disorders I have found that embodied intimacy can be a powerful and even an essential tool for healing so I’ve decided to pursue professional training in this area and my mind is exploding with everything I am learning!
Sex and intimacy are natural. Most of the time we, humans are created by sex, we grow and journey through someone’s body (usually their vulva) on our way earthside, and hopefully we land in intimacy, skin to skin with an attuned caregiver. We, are theoretically wired for intimacy and it promotes our survival and capacity to thrive. As we grow into consenting teens and adults, sex may enter into the picture once again. Hopefully by that point we’ve had enough nonsexual, intimate experiences to carry a capacity for intimacy into safe, consensual sexual exploration.
In the US, our sex education system is inconsistent and lacking. Many of us come from households that don’t fill in the gaps, or worse, couple information around sex with a big dose of shame and scare tactics. This is combined with a culture that can tend to be somewhat disembodied. On top of all of this, as a society, we value the appearance of a body much more than the experience of being in a body. With the dawn of wellness culture, we may talk a good game about health but we don’t have systems in place to support folks in listening to their bodies and many even lack access to healthcare. So, for many people these things – Sex, Intimacy, Embodiment – can feel complicated, triggering, stress-inducing, invasive, and totally confusing. The very thought of any of it may bring up insecurities… and we haven’t even gotten into pleasure!
But it’s natural right?
As I’m writing, I notice I am throwing a lot of words around and even interchanging some of them. So, before I go further, let me take a moment to define what I mean when I use these words.
Sex
The dictionary fails us here and I could fill up a book writing about the failures of sex education in this country. For the purposes of this newsletter, I want to be clear that when I talk about sex I’m talking about sexual acts, involving consenting adults, that are intended to bring about sexual pleasure.
Intimacy
I think of intimacy as an experience of close connection in which a person can feel safe to be vulnerable. Intimacy is not inherently sexual! Hopefully that is already clear. While the word is often associated with sex, you do not have to have sex to experience the vulnerable joys of intimacy. Think of a really juicy, deep conversation with a close friend, a parent who is breast, chest or bottle feeding a baby held so closely, or you may have even had intimate moments with providers that were completely professional, in which you could sense that the provider had a sincere care for you – you were safe to be vulnerable because of their willingness to show up in their humanity.
Pleasure
I haven’t used this word much yet, but it is super important and often the most charged for folks with eating disorders or other body disruptions. Pleasure is basically an experience that feels good. And, I’ll add that, we know it feels good because we sense that it feels good in our bodies.
Which brings me to…
Embodiment
I’ll just go ahead and let you know that Merriam-Webster is not a lot of help here either. The best definition that I’ve found comes from Rachel Lewis, founder and director of the Embodied Recovery Institute where I’ve learned much of what I know about embodiment.
“Embodiment is the intersection of consciousness and physical body. Being both aware of and through the body.”
Embodiment is so fundamental to eating.
✨ Are we hungry?
✨Are we full?
✨Is the food tasty and satisfying?
✨Can we mobilize ourselves to get and prepare the food we want?
✨ Can we settle and invite the food inside of our bodies to be processed?
✨ Can we notice and feel into the food being pleasurable?
✨ Can we experience satisfaction?
Hmmm, a lot of this is… somewhat intimate huh?
Embodiment comes into play (well, comes into play with literally everything but really shows up) in sex and intimacy in some of the same ways it comes into play with food.
If you struggle to know what you want to eat, you might struggle to know how you want to be touched.
If you struggle with finding a way to reach for what you want or need to eat, you may struggle to ask for what you want or to state what you don’t want in relationships.
If you have a difficult time taking in food and having a pleasurable experience with eating, it might be hard to allow yourself to be relationally or sexually satisfied.
If you’re starting to feel like, “well great Christine! I’m already trying to climb out of this eating disorder and now you’re telling me I’ve got to work on this intimacy stuff??” The answer is:
Only if you want to.
Do you want to?
You might choose to notice that. How do you know you want to? What is your body signaling to you that lets you know that?
Or, maybe you notice that your answer is “No.”
Notice that. How do you know that. What are you getting from your body that let’s you know this information?
You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Asking these questions and sensing in a little bit can be an embodiment practice in and of itself.
A cool thing about all of this is that if you are coming into your eating disorder recovery through some increased embodiment, you may already be working on intimacy. AND if you’re coming into this from a different angle, maybe you struggle with food but you’ve found yourself in a safe enough space to explore intimacy and pleasure (which may be sexual or not), you may notice that you feel even the tiniest bit of increased sense of ease in the world, a little more capacity for flexibility, or even the experience of joy in your body – your increased capacity for embodied intimacy may be opening some windows in your eating disorder recovery.
This writing is really meant to create light in a place that, for many, feels dark or shadowed in some way. As my teacher, Ariel Giarretto, stated during this beautiful training weekend:
“Research shows that the more embodied we are, the more we can appreciate our bodies.”
The possible barriers to embodiment and body disruptions we may endure are vast. But there are also a lot of invitations in.
Here are a few to try… if you want to:
✨ A bit of intimacy with your eyes: The trees are starting to bloom in NC. While it’s easy to focus on the impact the pollen is having on my allergies. I try to just stop and notice the beauty of the blooms. Can my eyes take in the wonder of nature just a bit more? Can I notice my breath deepening and my body settling as I take a minute to really see this?
✨Self touch: Focus on areas that feel safe or neutral like your hand on your chest, hand on your hand, even noticing the shape of your ear through touch. If you notice that this is too much, try putting a blanket or even a pillow between your hand and the part of yourself you are touching. Notice where in your body you can sense that this is a safe and neutral place? Can you let that expand a bit?
✨Taste: Yes, I know this can be charged. You can try it with a safe food or however it feels best to you. Find a location where you feel comforted or cozy and see if you can just notice that something tastes good to you. Notice if it’s more the taste or the texture (sometimes I notice that I go for texture more than taste). What signals is your body offering you that lets you know that something is good to you?
I welcome any responses that you have to the exercises or responses you have to the newsletter! Your responses go straight to my inbox and I’ve been really enjoying hearing what y’all have to say! This topic is BIG. What do you want to hear more about?
Noticing some things you want to work on or delve into more??
Did you know that my coaching program is entirely integrated with embodiment practices? Has a week devoted to intimacy and includes a bonus session on the transformative power of sex?? Take a look: https://www.edrecoverycoaching.com/program/format/
Now enrolling: Recovery Rites Program
I currently accept clients exclusively through a virtual 10-week, embodiment-based, group coaching program inviting you to engage deeply with your innate right to healing from your eating disorder. I’ve designed this program around 9 powerful practices to help you set deep intention and presence around your life in recovery so that you can access the transformational energy of healing that, I assure you, you are already holding within you.
You’ve been working on this for a long time, you’ve come a long way, and you’ve learned a lot.
· You probably know about the function of your ED.
· You’ve learned a lot about specific skills you can use to eat your food.
· You’ve got strategies to avoid ED food behaviors.
· You can combat the often torturous body image days.
But good grief… Will this ever get easier?
· Maybe you’ve been in and out of eating disorder recovery for years, and you just can’t plant your feet in your recovered life.
· Perhaps you’ve been in treatment and you have all the skills to eat the meals, but you are muscling your way through, and it doesn’t feel sustainable.
· Maybe you haven’t yet pulled away from your eating disorder enough to create a life you want to recover for.
You’ve been told that recovery is worth it, and you want to believe it. You want to be able to settle in your body and in your life. You want to feel connected to others and the world. You want to feel alive!
I’ve been there too. I’ve stood on the precipice of what felt like the riskiest cliff of my journey, where stepping into my intuition felt like walking on a tightrope engulfed in the fog of my doubt and the unknown of the future. I’ve had to take those steps — those steps where you know you have to move away from the eating disorder but don’t know that there will be ground beneath your feet as you chart new territory. I know what helped me, and I know what has helped others. I am ready to join you and our April cohort to begin the next phase of your journey.
If you are interested in this program, I would love to speak with you. Please fill out our interest form here, and I will be in touch to schedule a call.
New to the Newsletter?
If you received this from a friend and want to get on the list for my free newsletter, please click here to sign up: https://www.edrecoverycoaching.com/newsletter-sign-up/
©2025 ED Recovery Coaching