Center for Discovery’s Path to Peace Program is a virtual intensive outpatient program (IOP) for adults with binge eating behaviors. The program prioritizes the unveiling of diet cultures’ deceptiveness, respecting the wisdom of our patient’s coping strategies, and the program attempts to disrupt the ways that diet culture promotes mistrust in our patient’s bodies. Path to Peace invites patients to explore systemic body oppression and its impact on both embodiment and disembodiment, and how these systems may lead to the development of disordered eating.
What is Disembodiment?
One of the definitions of disembodiment can include the emotional or psychological disconnection from the physical body. This can look like disconnection from hunger and fullness cues, from physical and emotional needs, even from desire, appetite, and pleasure. This disconnection can come from a place of protection, a way to keep the body safe from systems of harm. This desire to protect the mind and the body from each other can often be quite effective. By disconnecting from needs, there is no risk of that need being disregarded. By disconnecting from desire, there is no risk of rejection.
Trauma, systemic creation of body hierarchies, harmful messages from media about health, pathologizing various food groups, inaccessible health care systems, and boundary violations are just some of various examples that ignite, maintain, and, sometimes, cement disembodied states. Disembodiment makes sense in a world that praises body disconnection for the exchange of productivity and compliance to persistent demands. There is great wisdom in these protective practices.
But even wise practices have their limitations. Disembodiment can create a “shoulders up” experience which may explain the felt sense of discomfort with natural body experiences like hunger, fullness, desire, pain, appetite, and exhaustion. The Path to Peace program offers unique support in understanding the function of this disconnection and offers individuals a community to explore their own definition of embodiment and body congruency, thus defining their own sense of healing and recovery from disordered eating.
This self-determination allows individuals to understand the helpful functions of disembodiment, validate their experiences, and offer a practice space to explore different types of embodiment. Path to Peace hopes that this education paired with a healing community may offer a helpful alternative to traditional eating disorder treatment programs.
Path to Peace attempts to help patients heal their relationship to food by helping patients increase their awareness of different body states and increase the felt sense of choice around connection and protection patterns. The program attempts to help patients identify and locate the problems in cultural expectations and not their individual bodies.
Path to Embodiment
Curious to learn more? Check out a few examples of what our program teaches about embodiment and invites patients to practice:
Practice Curiosity:
Why do some parts of ourselves become embarrassed or dysregulated with the current state of our bodies. Why do we deem some experiences as acceptable and some as signs of failure? What are the origins of these messages?
Our patients are invited to create a body image timeline to help capture body milestones and body-based memories to help them increase awareness of their unique experiences. This practice helps keep their unique story explicit and centered as they begin to better understand their context.
Practice Compassion & Self-Validation:
What if we saw our body was as an allied partner rooting for us, rather than an enemy to overcome or control or even neglect? What might help us appreciate and respect our bodies for all that they’ve done for us?
Our patients practice self-compassion meditations from various teachers in hopes this can become a daily practice. This compassion paired with the body image timeline may help patients practice self-validation.
Practice Self-Care:
How do we build in more self-care practices? Self-care is not just bath bombs and spa weekends. Self-care can look like setting appropriate boundaries with people in your life, practicing sleep hygiene, allowing your body to rest when it needs it, and seeking out a community who uplifts your bodily experiences and affirms your sense of self.
Our patients practice self-care by routinely identifying self-care body practices as a part of their check-out before program ends each night.
Practice Sensory Support:
What will nourish your unique sensory system? How might a nourished sensory system support you in taking courageous steps towards a change process?
Our patients are invited to play with their sensory preferences by bringing their preferred sensory toys to community dinners, groups, and sessions.
Practice Building Community and Play:
What gives you a sense of joy and freedom? Who in your life helps you feel seen and understood?
We teach our patients that healing happens inside of relationships and that ‘play’ is an important part in nourishing our nervous system. In addition to offering structured meal support, our supported community dinners emphasize the relational aspect of eating as a helpful ingredient for satisfaction and connection. Upon completion of program, patients are invited to attend Path to Peace’s free, weekly alumni group to maintain community and relationship building with folks who will celebrate their embodiment.
Curious to learn more CFD’s Virtual IOP for adults with binge eating behaviors? Check out Path to Peace’s website.
Jenna Rudnitskas (she/her), Path to Peace Operation’s Manager: Jenna is the Operations Manager with the Path to Peace program. Jenna started with Center for Discovery in 2021 as a group counselor. She is passionate about breaking down stigma and shame around eating disorders as well as working with clients to unpack and understand how weight bias impacts being in a relationship with their bodies. When she is not working with Path to Peace, Jenna is a graduate student working on a master’s in social work, avidly collects plants, and plays Dungeons and Dragons with friends.
LB/Lindsay Birchfield (they/them), National Director of Virtual Programming & Innovation: In partnership with their Path to Peace team, LB helped launch CFD’s Path to Peace’s Virtual IOP in 2022. Path to Peace was created to offer an alternative to traditional eating disorder care. The program’s values of accessibility, community building, and self-compassion set the stage for an evening IOP program that strives to help patients feel more congruent with their nervous systems and find their voices behind their choices. In addition to overseeing the Path to Peace Program, LB supports CFD’s efforts in creating weight inclusive eating disorder treatment by supporting the integration of CFD’s nutrition model, The CARE Model, CFD’s unique weight and gender inclusive Target Body Weight Protocols, and supports the overall ongoing training of CFD staff.