Brainstorming floor movement
for clients with eating disorders and addictions
“Recovering is a process of coming to experience a sense of self. More precisely, it is a process of learning to sense one’s self, to attune to one’s subjective physical, psychic, and social self-experience….In recovery, they ‘came to their senses’ and learned to trust their sensed experience.”
Sensing The Self: Women’s Recovery from Bulimia
By Sheila M. Reindl
Page 5
“One may wonder what comes first - the chicken or the egg- as in the case of the large number of individuals with eating disorders (EDs) who also suffer from a history of trauma. Dance/movement therapist and psychologist Ann Krantz believes that ‘the symptoms of EDs serve to disconnect affect from the body, particularly as sexuality, trauma, and cultural influences contribute to conflicts in the woman’s [individuals’] developmental struggle toward self identity. Individuals with both conditions are known for ignoring the experience of living in their body. By ignoring their inner feelings and sensations (interoceptive experiences), they bury their emotions and the burial ground is the body itself. In all their forms, eating disorders offer a creative form of adaptive dissociation….
Our bodies house our feelings, sensations, and our native language, movement. From the first kick in our mother’s womb till our dying breath, we participate in a dance of life. Individuals suffering from both trauma and EDs have difficulty making their “house” a “home.” They often run away from “home” in an attempt to feel safer, centering their lives on using emotional driven behaviors as a way of attempting to alleviate the often horrific anxiety they might otherwise experience. Ressler explains, “As obsessed as clients with eating disorders are about their bodies, they aren't really ‘living in’ or ‘grounded in’ their bodies.”
Trauma Informed Approaches to Eating Disorders
Edited by Seuvert & Virdi
Page 115
Why floor movement may benefit clients with eating disorders + addiction
1) It can facilitate embodiment
“Embodiment is a way of being (non-dualistic conceptualization self) in which being is understood as residing in and manifesting from the body as one experiences the internal (i.e., physiological, emotional, cognitive), external (i.e., interpersonal, social, cultural), and existential dimensions of life.”
Embodiment and the Treatment of Eating Disorders: The Body as Resource in Recovery
By Catherine Cook-Cottone
Page 1
Versus dissociation
“A disruption of/and discontinuity in the normal integration of consciousness, memory, identity, emotion, perception, body representation, motor control, and behavior, which is normally well integrated in a healthy person” (p 21 Seuvert & Virdi)
2) Improved confidence
3) Enhanced connection especially with partner and group work (Body Keep The Score)
4) Practicing creativity
5) It is a form of self expression
6) Practicing vulnerability (Reindl p. 237)
7) It promotes attunement to oneself (Reindl p. 100)
8) Enhanced interoception
9) The potential to practice self compassion
10) The potential to practice kindness to oneself
11) Working on presence
12) Playing with and awareness of breath
13) It is a form of physical exercise
14) Being in different body positions is disarming
15) It is grounding, both figuratively and literally
16) New activities = neuroplasticity
17) It is playful
18) It is FUN!
Idea: “Think critically about what you have learned to sense and about what your socialization may prevent you from recognizing as significant. Consider what you have been socialized to think of as disgusting, beautiful, offensive, and pitiful and how these judgements relate to sensory perceptions of smells, sights, sounds, tastes, contexts, and so on.”
Embodiment in Qualitative Research
Laura L. Ellingson
Page 27
Trauma-informed environment
Disclaimers at the beginning
Spacing of participants
Lights
Noises (safe and relaxed)
Ensure doors do not open (privacy)
writhing (triggering)
Sensuality (triggering) (intake form and expectations- consent- what others may do)
Breathing (triggering)
Connecting to oneself (triggering)
Floor itself can be hard – advising in advance to wear long sleeved, perhaps cushiony clothes
DOSING - How to contain if difficult reactions arise? What does it look like? debriefing?
Trauma-informed language
Invitations
Prompts that facilitate certain topics/experiences
(e.g. not how can we make this movement look good/look flashy? But how can we make this feel good? Feel more easeful?)
Invitations:
As Marlo recommends: Offer corrections/technical suggestions as possibility-seeking questions. For example, rather than “Bend your knees” “don't forget to bend those knees”, try “Bring your attention to your knees. Is there a possibility of more movement in the joint? Can they bend as well as straighten? Let’s stay with the bent position for some time…”
I want to use more words that encourage students to be in their body versus from the view of an external observer.
“check in for the part of your body that is not in pain and sit in a moment of gratitude for that.”
“Notice what part of this movement feels delicious”
Focusing on sensations
Inquiry
Neutral observations
Purposeful pauses and silence on my behalf, to allow them their experience
Give them explicit permission to modify or rest
Prompts/Questions:
Be curious about…
What and how questions
What does that feel like?
How was that for you?
The invitation is….
A suggestion…
Play with….
You have the option of…
“A crucial term is ‘a sense of,’ as distinct from ‘concept of’ or ‘knowledge of’ or ‘awareness of’ a self or other. The emphasis is on the palpable experiential realities of substance, action, sensation, affect, and time. Sense of self is not a cognitive construct. It is an experiential integration.”
The interpersonal world of the infant: a view from psychoanalysis and developmental psychology
Daniel Stern
page 71