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Healing Poor Body Image For Good With Body Therapist and Health Coach Nina Manolson

July 23, 2024 • Ahna Fulmer • Season 3

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ABOUT THIS EPISODE:

Imagine being introduced to dieting at nine years old. This was the reality for Nina Manolson, our guest on this enlightening episode of the Imperfectly Empowered Podcast. Nina, a board-certified health coach and psychology of eating coach, shares her poignant journey through societal pressures and toxic relationships with food. Together, we shine a light on how early influences can shape our body image and self-worth, and we challenge the unrealistic beauty standards perpetuated by the media. We take a deep dive into finding peace with food and our bodies!




JUMP RIGHT TO IT:


0:00 Empowering Women to Nourish Relationships

13:03 Becoming at Peace With Yourself

27:14 Nourishing the Body and Mind

33:52 Compassionate Relationship With Your Body



CONNECT WITH NINA:


Instagram/Facebook: ninamanolson

Sign Up for the Body Peace Masterclass NOW https://ninamanolson.com/free-body-peace-masterclass/ 

Revitalize your faith and fitness with a morning routine that does not sacrifice your sleep and does start each day with God's Word and a workout. Join the community today at www.earlymorninghabit.com 


Contact The Show!

Website: http://www.ahnafulmer.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@imperfectlyempoweredpodcast
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ahnafulmer/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ahnadfulmer

Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Imperfectly Empowered podcast. Nina Manolson is a board-certified health coach and psychology of eating coach. She is a provider for women over 40 who have tried other diets and approaches to end the war with their body and food to create body peace. Welcome, mind-body eating coach, Nina Manolson. Nina looks amazing. There's so much color for those of you listening and not watching. She's got a pink like boomstick cover and her actual like arm my arm is pink. Anyway, looks fantastic. I'm black.

Speaker 2:

I'm like all black over here.

Speaker 1:

I'm recovering from laryngitis and I'm in sweats. I'm going with a no makeup makeup. Look, here we are, there we go.

Speaker 2:

Here we are, and it's lovely to be with you.

Speaker 1:

It's so lovely to have you here. I really enjoy what you do. I always say that I get excited when I see people in the health and fitness space that have really niched down to a very specific struggle and it's powerful because then you really become an expert in the one thing and you know in your case that one thing is relevant to many, especially women, with this concept of food piece, body piece, this idea of being able to break free from this strange toxic cycle that and yet our world doesn't think it's strange at all.

Speaker 1:

Right, and we profit off of it. Right, right, right. Like, let's be honest, people, women, if you didn't have this realization yet, companies are profiting off of your insecurity. I won't even, I could do a whole series on that, but absolutely they are profiting on our insecurity and feeling like somehow we're not enough.

Speaker 2:

So I would love.

Speaker 1:

before we dive into that, I would love to hear a little bit about how you got to where you are, which is so specific with helping women overcome that toxic relationship with food and their body. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

So you know, I completely want to launch right into everything you're saying.

Speaker 1:

I know, I know, you said toxic relationship with their body.

Speaker 2:

That is it. We are having a relationship with our body. It is the longest relationship of our whole life. We're born into this body. We will die in this body. This is a primary relationship that informs almost every single other relationship we have in our life, and so my relationship with my body, which is how I got to this work, was terrible. I would look in the mirror every day and be like, oh, that's wrong, that's wrong, that's wrong. And now how am I going to fix it? What's the newest, latest, greatest diet that's rolling? That has me fixing my perceived problem, which is my body. But that's actually not the issue. The issue isn't that our body needs fixing. It's that our relationship with our body and with our food needs some support to heal the toxic patterns that we've created. Right?

Speaker 2:

So many women I talked to literally are afraid of food. Oh, no, can't eat that. Yeah, yeah, oh. That's not a good thing. It's food. It's here to nourish us, literally. I just why I was like a minute late. I was just getting off with a client who said oh my gosh, I'm so grateful for your playful relationship with food because I grew up with an aggressive relationship do you think that is?

Speaker 1:

when you look back to your own, you know the nurtured environment that we grew up in, forms so much of our. You know relationships and perceptions of ourself and others. But when you look back at your own experience, what do you think contributed to your toxic relationship with yourself? And food, Okay, Like what would you say in your life?

Speaker 2:

Right. So the things that impacted my relationship with my body are things that I know for a fact because I've worked with women for 30 years in their relationship with their body impacts many, and the first thing was when I was nine, being brought to Weight Watchers. Was when I was nine, being brought to Weight Watchers. Oh my, wow. You know as my mom, with best intentions, weight Watchers had just started. This is the newest thing to make us healthy. Let's do this together Like a mom and kid bonding thing.

Speaker 2:

Well, right away I learned some foods were good foods and some foods were bad foods and I internalized if I ate the bad foods I was bad and if I ate the good foods I was good. Right. So right away, at nine years old, that already set it off right. Then you put me into middle school, high school, where there's a standard of what beauty is. School, where there's a standard of what beauty is, there's a cultural, idealized standard, which was echoed in 17 magazine which I gobbled up right when I was 14, 15, 16, I was like this is what you're supposed to look like. Well, I didn't look like that. I was not tall or blonde or thin. Now the reality in my life is. I will never be tall or blonde or thin. That's not who I am genetically. And yet that was the unrealistic ideal that was held in front of me my entire life and they profited you guys.

Speaker 1:

It's a whole marketing scheme and this is not to be like one of those doomsday conspiracy theorists, but this is reality. The industry profits on us and we keep feeding it. We are sabotaging ourselves, so I'm going to throw that out there.

Speaker 2:

So what you're saying is so important, anna? Because what you're saying is we are encouraged to feel badly about ourselves because then the commercial beauty industry, the anti-aging industry, the diet industry can swoop in and say I got the fix for you, just buy this thing and you will be all better. The diet industry is a 72 billion with a B, $72 billion industry that is aimed at us feeling like we're not good enough in our body and if we buy this book, supplement, new diet, new program, we will, ta-da, suddenly all things will be better. It's the promise, right. Suddenly all things will be better. It's the promise right. If you change your body, then you will have the beauty, the social currency, the better job and you will win at life no-transcript.

Speaker 1:

But that's changed. Now it's the high rise jeans, and so there are things that change. But the concept of what you're saying, I think, is something we underestimate as women. How much money is profited via social marketing, and now, with social media, it's worse than ever to an image of a best life scenario, and it is often focused on our appearance.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, and so it's really important for us to look at what am I buying into? What am I buying? And what am I buying into Right? What am I believing in this moment? That my body is not good enough.

Speaker 2:

So for me in my life, I bought into it. Right, I am not thin enough. There wasn't much I could do about my height, but okay so, but I could try, try, try to be really, really thin, and so I bought into a gazillion diets over the centuries of you know, like every single decade, coming out with 5, 10, 20, 30 new big diets and trying them all to the point where I literally was like, wow, I am bored with my own thoughts, because my thought was I shouldn't have eaten that. What diet am I going to start tomorrow? Oh my gosh, I was really bad today. Maybe I should start again tomorrow. No, no, I really blew it already for the week. Let me just eat whatever I want. I'll start again on Monday. That is what was taking up the space in my head. I have a lot more important things to do in life than think about what I ate, what I should eat, and then what's the next thing that I should do to fix my body. As women, we are way more powerful than that, and so that conversation in my head really brought me into doing this work. And initially my work was working with women as a body worker, as a massage therapist, and so every day I my hands were on women, hearing their body stories, hearing the trauma, hearing how they felt about their bodies, supporting them and feeling safe enough to relax a little bit. So much so that I had a wonderful supervisor who said I said I feel like I'm doing therapy with people, and she said, yeah, you are.

Speaker 2:

And so then I went back and got a master's in counseling psychology, became a therapist, and I was still struggling with food and body. So I was like you know what? I'm going to get this once and for all. I'm going to study nutrition and then I'm going to know how to do it right. Well, that wasn't it either. And so what?

Speaker 2:

I realized that it was a confluence of so many factors how we feel in our body, our ability to listen into our body, how we feel about what the messages were that we got about our body, how we feel about our mother, how we feel about other women right, the whole psychological and belief piece, as well as what works for my body, not what's the nutritional superfood of the moment, but what do I know about my own biology? And so, when I'm working in all of those arenas and diving into the psychology of eating and intuitive eating and body trust work, I've created this whole body of work that I call body peace, because it's not about like, and now I will love my body forever, because I'm about to be 60 and my body has changed over the years and all bodies change, and so it's not about like and now I have the perfect body and it's going to stay forever. It will change, guaranteed. If you are alive. Your body is changing by the moment, and women more than most understand that because it changes every month.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yeah. So to be in this relationship with our body is where it's at, and to learn how to have a relationship where we're listening, where we're respectful, where we're supportive to ourself, that's a whole new relationship. And it's often when I'm sitting, like on a plane, and someone goes. So Nina, what do you, what do you do, like on a plane, and someone goes. So, nina, what do you do? If I say I'm a body piece coach, that sort of goes right over their head. So I say I'm a therapist and I work with women and their relationship with their body, a little like couples counseling, except instead of someone in their partner, it's a woman and her own body, because that's where the healing work has to happen in the relationship.

Speaker 1:

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Speaker 2:

Fearful. I now wake up every day, hopeful, From pressure to freedom.

Speaker 1:

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Speaker 2:

Oh, baked goods. I'm a big baked goods person. I love. I grew up in Montreal.

Speaker 1:

I grew up in the land of croissants and oh, I could not have said that.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I could not have said that, yeah, I'm going to go to Montreal, I'm moving.

Speaker 1:

That was fantastic.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so that was like. And I there's one of my favorite things is pain au chocolat, which is the croissant with the chocolate in it, and growing up in Montreal they call it a chocolatine. And that was like I would on my way to school. I would pick up a chocolatine and sit on the subway and eat it. Oh, it was heaven, yeah good childhood memory, delicious.

Speaker 1:

I'm sure. It's much better than the one at Panera. That's the only one I can think of. That's the one that it is. It is the like somewhat hardened stick of chocolate that's been that's half melted in the croissant.

Speaker 2:

I feel sad.

Speaker 1:

I feel like I've been deprived of a real croissant experience. That's sad. Okay, well, we're going to Montreal. Would you rather coffee or tea?

Speaker 2:

I am a tea drinker.

Speaker 1:

I am an herbal tea drinker. What's your favorite?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I love classic mint tea. Yeah, I love classic mint tea. I especially love mint tea. Um, when I'm in countries where they just literally you ask for mint tea and they give you a cup of hot water with like practically like an entire mint plant just stuck in there and I'm like, oh funny, yeah, okay, mint tea, great, got it. Thanks, like super fresh.

Speaker 1:

It sounds amazing. Now, when you say mint like what type of mint? Is it like a blend?

Speaker 2:

spearmint no, you often spearmint, yeah, in a bag. If I get it in a bag I'll often get like a good mint blend like uh puka teas. Puka herbal teas has a nice like mint blend which I love. They have high quality um tea bags Um. But you know, if you're out and there's, you're in that kind of space where they're just going to take a mint plant and stick it, all the mint leaves, into your cup often it's spearmint.

Speaker 1:

Interesting, which is not happening a whole lot, at least not in my area. No, I would love to go somewhere where when my husband and I went to Hawaii, we just remember being like okay, like we're not in Kansas anymore, even though it's America. It was like a whole different culture, because we were like ordering papaya and the one morning they didn't have it and they were like it's not ripe yet, the tree isn't ripe yet in the back. And we were like okay, that is a that's farm to table fast.

Speaker 1:

I was going to say farm to table, yeah, tree to table, in this case, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Love that?

Speaker 1:

Um, okay, would you rather you have the opportunity to spend an evening doing one of the two? Would you rather decorate or do a craft?

Speaker 2:

decorate, decorate like that's a fast answer, I am. She was like decorate. I'm absolutely seen her eyes. She was like decorate.

Speaker 1:

I mean, look at her setup. Why did I even ask that? She's got like the cutest decorated setup ever.

Speaker 2:

I am not crafty and yet as a kid what I would do is like, in the when I couldn't sleep, I would move my whole room around. I would like move my bed and move my dresser and my mama come in the morning Like it's like a 10-year-old, 12-year-old, I like push everything and she'd come in and she'd be like ah, decorating last night and I was like mm-hmm, and I come by it naturally. So my mom is very much alive. She's 92 years old and we still joke that her home has pictures that are just sitting against the wall, not hung up. But it's because she's forever moving them around to just create the exact vibe that she wants at that particular time of year.

Speaker 1:

It's almost like a stress reliever or something. It's like a subconscious. You're probably like shifting things in your mind, as you're shifting pieces in your room Absolutely, absolutely. That's hilarious, I love that. Okay, last question Would you rather camp in the woods or go to a house on the beach?

Speaker 2:

I'm going to say house on the beach. I do like camping. I do like camping and it doesn't have to be glamping, although that's a very nice thing. But the reason why the house on the beach is I am a swimmer like a serious swimmer and so to be on a beach, for me, whether it's a pond or an ocean, but to be by water, just it's. That to me, is my most core nervous system, that's how I care for my nervous system.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, interesting.

Speaker 2:

Is water and swimming, and so I'll often just be like, okay, let's get in the pond.

Speaker 1:

Let's get in the ocean. I'll get in a pool too, but you know I'm in. I love that man. I wish I was was a swimmer. I remember training for a mini triathlon after college. I was very fit. I ran track in college and I got in the pool with my like cheap walmart goggles and I swear there was an 80 year old woman who probably didn't have an ounce of body fat on her. She just like zoomed past me like lap, because we just share lanes, and I'm like like it's a whole thing. It's a whole thing, I wish.

Speaker 2:

I was a swimmer but swimming, the difference between swimmers who just like keep going, like I'm a long-distance swimmer, and swimmers like that you're saying like it's really learning how to breathe in the water. That's the whole thing, because we can all get stronger at.

Speaker 2:

You know you can swim slowly and then you gain strength, and then it's really learning how to breathe regularly and being comfortable in the water. Um, it takes, you know, and I've gone through. I'll geek out on swimming for a second here, but I go through stages of sort of trying to learn something new. And my brother is also a big swimmer because we grew up near water and I said to him he was like let's go swimming in the ocean. And I was like you know what? I'm really not enjoying it anymore because I get hit by the waves and I'm swallowing water. It's just not fun. He was like you need to breathe. You're only turning your head to the right to breathe. You need to learn how to turn your your head to the left and breathe left so that if the waves are coming one way, you're breathing on the other side. And I was like I don't know how to alternate side breathe. And he was like learn. And so I literally went to a friend of mine. I mean words of wisdom, right there, right, just learn. And I was like okay, like classic brother advice, just freaking, learn it already, right. So I spent really a long time learning a skill and it taught me a lot about learning any skill, because I didn't expect myself to know how to do this, and this actually applies to how we listen to our body, how we are in relationship, to think like, okay, and now I'm going to be great at it. Because literally for the first four months of trying to learn this new skill, every time I would turn, I was very good at breathing to my right. Every time I picked up my left arm to breathe to my left, I had to say to myself breathe now, breathe now, breathe now. And literally it took years two years for me to be where I am now, which I can breathe easily either side. When we're asking for our body to be in a different relationship with us, we need to be patient, a little bit like learning a new language, right?

Speaker 2:

Often I talk to my clients about like so what does your body say? What is, how does your body feel when you eat? That when and they'll like, I'll have clients will be like I don't know what happened. It was late at night and then I started eating and I couldn't stop eating and I felt like I had this big binge like let's go back. What was happening in your body? I don't know Right. So part of the work is let's learn how our bodies are speaking. One of the courses I do different courses and one of them is a body listening lab. Right, how do we actually develop that ability, right? How do we actually develop that ability? And just like for me in swimming, it takes a while to learn that language and get that to be an automatic movement, an automatic. I don't have to tell myself breathe every single time.

Speaker 1:

Now, it's a great reminder though it is, and I just want to pause for a second for women listening, because I think this is something that is worth repeating, If you missed everything that she just said. Um, to give a correlation, my nine-year-old is playing baseball for the first time ever. We're a football family and he wanted to play baseball, so we were like, okay, here we go. And he told me the other day he just had his very first game ever and he said Mom, I feel like I'm so focused on thinking about what to do that I'm not doing it.

Speaker 2:

And I was like well, there's my crazy intelligent nine-year-old son.

Speaker 1:

But it was so poignant because what you're saying you know. And then my husband, who was a football coach for 10 years. I repeated this to my husband and you know he said, caleb, like, just so you know, this is precisely the trajectory to success, because you're normal, you have to think about the thing that you're going to do, and so you keep telling yourself hit the ball, run first base.

Speaker 1:

hit the ball run to first base and before you know it, you're not even thinking about first base anymore. Now you're like second base, hit the ball, second base. And so what you're saying is exactly right. And I think where we get lost sometimes with any new habit, but especially when it's so tied into our sense of self-worth and how we feel about ourselves, like what you are doing is remembering that, like you don't start baseball by hitting the ball and instantly thinking home run the first thing is first base.

Speaker 1:

So like we have to be able to break it down, which is what you do so well, when you look at your website and all the courses you offer is like this is basic. You have to start thinking about what you feel and believe about your body when you're binge eating.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and so anyway, it was a beautiful.

Speaker 1:

I love that transition.

Speaker 2:

No, I love, I love, love, love that example. But the other thing that's powerful about the example is your son didn't say okay, don't you know drop the bat. Don't you know look down when I run? No, hit the ball. Run to first base, right? Those are additive phrases. I didn't say don't you know turn my head too much when I breathe. I said breathe now, right.

Speaker 2:

So when we give ourselves messages around food or body don't eat that, you know. Don't eat that. Don't criticize, don't, don't, don't that doesn't actually support a supportive relationship with our body. It doesn't support respect, it doesn't support an amplifying, growing, blossoming relationship. It creates more restriction and tightness. We want to feel spacious, we want to feel light, we want to feel expansive in life, because that lets us be energized and do the things that we are here to do.

Speaker 2:

So if we're in this place of don't do that, don't do this, right, often people are like well, they come to me and they're like I feel like I'm eating too much sugar. I feel like I'm eating, maybe I should stop gluten, stop this, stop that, Stop that. I'm like let's talk about what you want to add. Let's just drop all the no's and let's move towards what you want to add. What does your body need? I spend way more time than you could ever imagine telling, reminding women that we actually require food, that we're at. I've spent way more time than you could ever imagine telling, reminding women that we actually require food, that we're humans. Humans require food. Yes, that's right.

Speaker 2:

Like I'm like I didn't even imagine this would ever be part of my work.

Speaker 1:

I thought it would be like but women back on this, cut back on that and then they're like oh, it's better if I eat less.

Speaker 2:

Well then we've just deregulated our blood sugar, our nervous system, our metabolism, our metabolism, our ability to listen to our body. So you know, if you take nothing else from our conversation on a, you know that our listeners is to really like what do I need to add? How do I want to nourish myself? How do I want to nourish the relationship with my body?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and then I think there has to be a sense of like.

Speaker 1:

What you just said is then there's, instead of the sense of cutting, I would say it's creating boundaries it's this idea of like.

Speaker 1:

You know so I was a fitness nutrition coach for several years and one of the things that I frequently talked about with clients is fully believe that the reality is we actually need to fuel our body with more of the right food.

Speaker 1:

It's not just more food, it's more of the right food at the right time for the right reasons. But then the danger is that, at the right time for the right reasons, but then the danger is that what we're not doing is then creating the boundaries for ourself recognizing and this comes with the body work that you're talking about the awareness of what is sucking me into, not just in life and what I'm feeling but sometimes we have to create those boundaries initially to help support the right choices. So it's like, yes, you need to eat more of the right thing, let's add that. But then for now, until you have created a new baseline, you need to stop buying Oreos by the bulk from Costco. Create some space for yourself to indulge without giving yourself, you know, the drug of choice and the access to it. Like how do you create, how do you encourage your clients to create boundaries with physical awareness of how they're feeling and how then they're responding yeah or don't you. It gets tricky.

Speaker 2:

It gets tricky from around. I hear what you're saying about boundaries. What I find for women is if they say don't buy the Oreos, then it becomes. The Oreos become bigger than they are.

Speaker 2:

Yes, just like they start to be very like, a valuable, like, oh and fear, if we give ourselves that full permission to eat. Okay, I can have Oreos Then do I want the Oreo? Is the Oreo tasty? Am I even awake at the plate while I'm eating the Oreo? Like, let's actually have a relationship with Oreos. Do I maybe not even like Oreos as much as I like I don't know oatmeal, raisin cookies or I don't know cream puffs like what do I actually want instead of it?

Speaker 2:

And maybe Oreos was this childhood food that when I came home from school and nobody was there, there were Oreos left for me. And so now it's like, what is there's more to unpack? And when you talk about boundaries, I think that's very powerful. Okay, because I talk to women all day who are like eating at their computer because they're working so hard. Let's create a boundary for you to actually eat and stop and enjoy and honor yourself. Right? Because sometimes the Oreos great. I have Costco size bag of Oreos because I'm not even stopping to cook myself anything and you know what? This will just keep me rolling all day long. So let's unpack what the Oreos are. What's your relationship with the Oreos? Because as soon as we say no, we always have this wonderful inner rebel that goes yeah, I'm doing it anyway, don't tell me no. The whole world has told me no about what I can't eat, so no way are you telling me. No, I'm going to do it anyway and I'm going to double down on it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and so we want to honor those different types. Yeah, the psychology of no, it is the psychology of eating.

Speaker 2:

It's the psychology of no, but it's also really the psychology of eating and the psychology of food and we have to get into that, especially if we have a lot of complex and sort of struggle in that place.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, what would you say is the first step to you know I'm thinking of. I'm thinking of the woman who has been um overweight for most of her adult life and we classify that around here as body fat percentage because we all know the scale is a terrible reflection of your overall health. But this idea of um, physiologically speaking, is at disease risk because she is carrying too high of a body fat percentage and that has been most of her life's experience and she has maybe never lived at a healthy body fat percentage. So she has to, like what you're saying, probably lived with most of her life with a sense of guilt, shame, bad eating cycles, et cetera, tried many, many diets. What is her first practical step to starting to end this toxic cycle and creating this body piece?

Speaker 2:

So there's a couple of things. One is the way that she's sort of just even naming her body, right If she's saying well, I'm overweight.

Speaker 2:

I would just say I'm in a larger body. People come in all sorts of bodies small bodies, tall bodies, big bodies, all kinds of bodies. So if we can take away the labels and be like, okay, this is my body, it's a large body, because we all know people who are in large bodies, who are very, have great metrics in terms of health metrics, and we all know people in small bodies who have terrible metrics in terms of blood pressure and you know blood sugar levels and all those metrics that actually matter, whereas the number, as you said, the number on the scale, doesn't matter that much, right? What matters is what are the metrics that are important to you? So first, let's drop all the name calling of our bodies and let's actually get into relationship with your body.

Speaker 2:

So, ana, I'm wondering if I can invite you into a little experiment with me, because this is often one of the things that I, that I teach and invite people into, and it's a very beginning step, which is to close your eyes, put your hand on your heart and say the words hello body, hello body, and then notice what happens when you just stop with physical contact with yourself and say hey, hi, hi, and then try one more thing what do you call your son Like? Do you call him sweetie hon? What do you call?

Speaker 1:

him.

Speaker 2:

Buddy, buddy. Okay, so try this with your eyes closed, hand in your heart, and be like hey, buddy, how are you feeling?

Speaker 1:

today. Hey, buddy, how are you feeling today?

Speaker 2:

Okay, and what do you notice? What do you notice comes up when you just stop and make space for checking in with your body in a kind and compassionate way.

Speaker 1:

Um, I well, I'm smiling because I'm thinking of my son, smiling because I'm thinking of my son. So I would say there's a sense of joy and a sense of peace. I think would be appropriate.

Speaker 2:

There's a sense of home. I would say that speaks a lot right to your relationship, that you have developed the sense of like this is home. A lot of women start saying hello and their body's like oh, you're talking to me. And then we have to go from there and some people are like your body is like, oh, my gosh, you're talking to me, yay. And then when we talk to our body with that endearment hey, honey, hey love, hey buddy it's like, oh, we're on the same team, we are allies, we are not at a war, we are not in an aggressive relationship, we are not at odds, we're together on this. That's where we want to start, because it's the beginning of any relationship. Right, I jumped on to talk to you. Hi, we say hello, we make contact. Our lives as women we are taught to not make contact, to ignore, to run over all the sensations. I'm not tired, I got coffee. I'm not tired, I got chocolate. I'm not unhappy. I got more chocolate. I'm not I don't have wrinkles.

Speaker 1:

I have Botox.

Speaker 2:

Right, I'm not. I'm not anything. I got something. You know, I'm not hungry. I got a energy bar, yeah yeah. So we want to engage, we want to have that hello, and then we want to create a conversation such that we're really responding to this one wise teacher that we get, which is our body.

Speaker 1:

What would you say is the most common when women they start working with you and they are pausing. I think that's one of the greatest secrets to what I'm seeing that you're doing with women, especially in this hustle culture and the busyness that rules so much of our lives. I think the space that I'm seeing that you say in your experience is the most common shift that clients make in that journey. So meaning, as you start to work with them and they become more and more in tune with their body. Obviously peace, you know, based on the program description, is the end goal. But I'm curious, in your experience working with women for so many years, what is the shift, practically as well as internally, so externally and internally that you see women making?

Speaker 1:

after they do this work. So, internally and then practically with food. After they do this work, so internally and then practically with food, how are they actually carrying out this newfound relationship?

Speaker 2:

So what happens when women start to be in this conversation with their body? What develops is a compassionate relationship versus the bullying relationship that most of us have. There was a client I talked to once we were starting to get into this work and she said, oh my gosh, I realize I've been in an abusive relationship with my body my whole life. And she said I wouldn't tolerate this from anyone else. The things I call myself, things I call myself, the situations that I put myself in, what I expect of myself. She said it's abusive and toxic. And she said, wow, I feel like I missed this day at school about how to actually be kind and caring and supportive of myself. And I was like, no, you didn't miss the day of school, it never was taught. We were not taught that. We were taught the antithesis. We were taught to be aggressive.

Speaker 2:

So one of the first things that happened is women start to have a kind and caring, supportive, nourishing, responsive relationship with their body and then, from that place, self-care gets activated in a way that doesn't feel like oh, I really should go to the gym, I really should eat this. It comes from a place of. This is somebody I care about. Of course I'm going to treat them well. Of course I'm going to stop and go for a swim, or go for a walk because it's beautiful outside, or stop for lunch because I deserve to stop and eat. Self-care goes out of the should category. It comes off of the oh to-do list. It comes into yes, hello, human being on this planet.

Speaker 1:

And as a human being on this planet, I am going to support myself, love the correlation that you just made between the idea of when there's a critical mindset, there's not a compassionate one, and when you change that then to compassion, it's an abundance mentality is what I'm hearing. It's like an instead of this sense of when there's self-criticism, it's like there's a lack and then it's almost a response that anything to fill that is like heavy and burdensome, as opposed to when there's self-compassion, then it's an abundance and it sends it's a sense of like yes, I'm going to do this, I get to do this.

Speaker 2:

Right and you can absolutely see it through that lens of abundance. Kristen Neff, who's a self-compassion researcher who's done a lot of the this powerful work in the last 15 years. She talks about the correlation between self-compassion and self-care because it doesn't come from. I am broken and so I need to be fixed. It comes from a place of I'm a human, and humans deserve to eat, they deserve to rest, they deserve sleep, they deserve daylight, Like. These are things that humans need. If we were a plant, we would you know. If we had a plant, we would put them in the sun and give them water. Same for us, because we look at the plant and we go oh lovely plant, Aren't you awesome?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we want you to shine and grow.

Speaker 1:

I love the concept and I love the focus, especially for our listeners, those of you watching as well, I think when you know, you know right, like what you're saying, there's instantly like the woman who's like yup, right. It's like as soon as you start talking, that woman who resonates with what you're saying instantly knows you're speaking to her because what you do is so specific, which is what I love. So for those of you listening and watching, if this resonates with you, you've done all the diets, you have done the deprivation thing, you've tried to stop buying the Costco Oreos, right, and it's still not working. You're still binge eating. I'll highly encourage you to check out Nina's website. See what she does. She's got amazing free resources as well to help you get kickstarted. Nina, tell us a little bit about your website, what people can um, how people can work with you, and anything else you want them to know.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, um, and I want to. I want to come back to the flower metaphor, because one thing I didn't tell you on write body piece poems, and there's one specific poem that's like right on point. So let me come back to that in a second. The free resources that I would recommend people just starting on this path are one is the practicing body piece journal. It's free 20 questions on there that I would ask you if you were sitting with me in a session. And there's some body piece poems. You'll get a flavor of that in a second. And the other is the body piece masterclass, and in that I really dive deep, deep into the different kinds of relationships that we have with our body, because in our world as women right now, like, the critical relationship is the one that most of us know, but there are other ones that we have and other ones that we're capable of having. So that class really gets in to what's possible if we don't want to stick in that relationship. And both of those resources are free. And I work with women individually in groups. I have classes with women individually in groups. I have classes um, body listening lab, compassionate, eating, body piece and aging Um, a lot of body piece starter kit is also a great way to get on this path.

Speaker 2:

So, anna, can I um jump into this poem? Yeah, I would love that. Okay, so, because we were talking about flowers and like if you had a flower, you would put it in your, in your window, and you would be like yay, flowers. So this poem is called I talk to my flowers better than I talk to my body. Hello, beautiful, well, aren't you blossoming today? Look at your radiant colors and you smell luscious.

Speaker 2:

Every time I walk by my flowers, I smile, appreciating their beauty, the uniqueness of every bud, the sensuality of the velveteen petals on that violet rose, the pop of power from that Gerbera daisy, the lushness of the lavender hydrangea and, oh my pink peony. Each one exquisite, each one different, each one worthy of attention. I admire them with such ease. I notice their body as much. I notice their beauty as much as I ignore my own, as much as I ignore my own. Look at those unique folds a belly lined with the patterns of history, a bumpy swirl luxuriating from waist to hip to leg. How sensuous, how juicy. And the wave of arms blowing in the wind. They keep waving. Part of nature I am. I walk by the mirror and there at last, hello beautiful. Well, aren't you blossoming today?

Speaker 1:

I love that NinaMennolsoncom Find body peace and the toxic relationship with food. Nina, it was such an honor to have you here and I just pray. God's blessing over your heart, your home, your clients. It was an honor. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2:

What a delight to be with you.

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Ahna Fulmer

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