Remembering the Body’s Wisdom
Remembering our body’s inherent wisdom is a practice that will help us heal from the destructiveness of the diet industry, diet culture, and the tenets of white supremacy and patriarchal standards of beauty.
Ancient cultures knew how to listen to and revere the messages of one’s body. They used the earth’s food (pure, natural, whole food) including plants and herbs as nourishment, medicine, and sustenance to support a life of well being, vitality, and wholeness.
In doing so, they created a life of deep reverence for the interdependence of the earth and its rhythms, the cosmic wisdom, our physical bodies and lived experience, and our sense of connection to all living things.
We have gotten away from practices that honor the processes of growing food, preparing food, and sharing food as healing, life-sustaining, and meaning-making rituals.
We have punished our bodies by creating false and impossible standards of beauty, created and upheld by patriarchal and supremacy models.
To heal as individuals and as a collective, we need to:
Remember our body’s wisdom.
Remember how to connect to food as a healing, energizing, nourishing elixir.
Remember how to experience meals as rituals for gathering community, creating meaning and intimacy, and connecting deeply to our earth-home, our cultural roots and ancestral wisdom.
The importance of this topic led me to seek out a connection with my friend and colleague, ColleenYoung, LMFT of Liberating Jasper in Tacoma Wa.
Last week, Colleen and I got together and had a wonderful conversation about remembering the body’s wisdom, and healing from body distress and the spiritual disconnection of our times.
Liberating Jasper is a community support agency that specializes in providing therapeutic and educational services to address eating disorders, chronic dieting, and body distress from a personal, relational, trauma-informed, systemic and socio-cultural lens.
I invite you to listen to my conversation with Colleen. Her passion and knowledge about helping others heal from the ravages of diet culture is inspiring.
I have known Colleen for about 10 years, and have always had great respect for her and her work. After our conversation together, I felt an encouragement seep into my bones that I have not felt for months. It was an encouragement that comes in just knowing that there are amazing therapists and healers in the world, like Colleen, who are working diligently to end the abusiveness of white supremacy and patriarchy; to help others heal on a personal level and who, in turn, are contributing greatly to healing the collective wounds of our world.
If you like what you hear, and are interested in learning more about remembering the body’s wisdom, about creating a life of deep connection to love and life-sustaining erotic energy, to equality for all, to following the wisdom of the cosmos and of the earth, to remembering your own ancestral roots and reclaiming your place of Wild Belonging on this earth, I invite you to check out my online course, Wild Belonging: how to honor the intimate connection between sexuality, compassion and the cosmos.
As always, peace in the journey,
Jane
Jane Ryan
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