Month 1: Entering the Wilderness
Many of us move around the world like floating heads, pretty disconnected from the body. The process of reclaiming Body Trust can feel like entering the wilderness. We are leaning into our vulnerability to brave unchartered territory and honor how we lost trust in our bodies in the first place. We will explore theories of embodiment and how we begin to reclaim our body stories.

 

Month 2: Divestment as a Form of Care (Guest Speaker: Desiree Adaway)
What if the type of care we are advocating for isn’t a form of self-care but rather a form of DIVESTMENT? Divesting from diet culture, fatphobia, and healthism. Divesting from shame and perfectionism. Divesting from white supremacy. Divesting from beauty. We want to geek out on this concept we learned from our beloved friend and mentor Desiree Adaway.

 

Month 3: Reckoning with Your Eating
Claiming your identity as an eater can be fraught with fear, shame or confusion. We believe Body Trust is a birthright, and somewhere along the way this trust is disrupted. When this happens we often begin to navigate the world of food and eating with a dieting mind. Before we can reclaim Body Trust, there is a reckoning. We reckon with the lies we’ve been told, how we’ve been harmed. We reckon with hunger and fullness...with desire and pleasure. Until we come to terms with our identity as an eater, it’s hard to experiment and take risks with our eating.

Zoom Meetup | Body Trust Provider Affinity Breakout Groups

 

Month 4: Ending the Hustle
Diet culture teaches people to approach the body and food with rigidity and perfectionism. The way society talks about nutrition and health, you’d think one meal or day of eating has the power to heal or kill you. Starting with unrealistic expectations and then being hard on yourself when you can’t pull it off is how the weight loss and cosmetic fitness industries make money off of your shame. We want to help you end the hustle. Because if we’re really honest with ourselves, are we, as a society, hustling for “health” or are we hustling for worthiness?

 

Month 5: Boundaries Don’t Have to Suck (Guest Speaker: McKensie Mack)

The ways we learn to cope with food and leave our bodies has been about learning to survive because our boundaries, our bodies, and our own knowing has not often been respected. We need to find a way to inhabit our own being that can be protected in new ways. Reconnecting with your needs and boundaries is a Core Element of a Body Trust Practice. We will work to celebrate our yes’s and honor our no’s. In her book Pleasure Activism, adrienne maree brown writes, “Your strong and solid no makes way for your deep, authentic yes...by practicing saying no, you will cultivate a yes that is rooted in having agency, having power, and having respect for your boundaries.” Let’s say yes to all of this!

School Homecoming Dance

 

Month 6: What Does Grief Have to Do With It? 

The path to reclaiming our bodies and increasing resilience to shame and stigma is one permeated by grief and letting go. We grieve the illusion of control, the thin ideal, and the time wasted on a failed paradigm that’s brought us so much pain. We allow for grief over and over again, knowing that without it, we may only move forward on shaky ground.

 

Month 7: Pleasure as a Measure of Freedom (Guest Speaker: Dawn Serra)

What makes you feel good? What turns you on? How often do you  r e a l l y  like what you eat? Access to pleasure is often tethered to the question “how much is too much?” It’s common for people’s complicated relationship with food to come from a disrupted relationship with desire. Rediscovering, embodying, and allowing for pleasure is an act of resistance in a culture that has made indulgence a “dirty word”. Pleasure takes up space and says I’m here. Let’s explore how pleasure, in the absence of shame and guilt, heals.

Zoom Meetup | Body Trust Provider Affinity Breakout Groups

 

Month 8: Reclaiming Movement (Guest Speaker: Angela Braxton-Johnson)

Many of us grow up experiencing the joy of active play, sport, dance and other ways of moving our bodies, only to have these activities co-opted by diet culture later in life. We begin to view our bodies as machines that must be tightly controlled, believing in the calories in vs. out equation we’ve all been sold, and seeing physical activity as a way to compensate for our food intake. Movement can foster attunement by providing opportunities to get below the neck and experience the body from the inside out.

 

Month 9: Making Your Healing Bigger Than You

This movement needs all of you, not just the part of you that wants freedom for everyone else. As Sonya Renee Taylor recently reminded us, our liberation is bound together. When we include ourselves in the process towards body liberation, we contribute to the movement. When we ground our healing in our story we increase our agency and our voice. Once we’ve developed deeper roots in our Body Trust Practice, it becomes easier to speak up and advocate for a body compassionate and weight-inclusive world. And when we speak for a cause, our commitment to the cause strengthens. We’ll talk about ways to continue with this work, and to lend your voice to radical liberation for all.

 

If you can't make a live date, no worries, webinars will be recorded and sent out within 48 hours to watch on your own time.