Are you a helping professional looking for body-based ways to help support oppositional patterns and coping mechanisms? Are you polyvagal curious? The Polyvagal Bites CE workshops place an emphasis on the spectrum of disordered eating but also other concerning, challenging, oppositional patterns and coping mechanisms that can benefit from therapeutic support and relational repair. Throughout each workshop in various, experiential ways, we repeatedly dive deeply into polyvagal theory, trauma response and attachment. We look at how the intersection of the three can shed light on common experiences and reactions and how those oppositional response patterns can be better supported.

Whether you feel too frantic to eat sometimes or your pantry beckons you to snack five minutes after having lunch, or the nightly flow of wine or otherwise has you concerned, chronic emotional eating or struggling with substances like alcohol are common coping mechanisms during stressful times. Pandemic living requires most of us to stay home with more limitations, stressors and grief than we have ever experienced. M-Bodied: Mindful Movement as Mothering Medicine™ offers a virtual embodiment practice for soothing using mindful movement

Did you know that an embryo attaches to a yolk sac for nourishment before the placenta forms? And — How can we use this information in a body-based way to reclaim our intuitive movement and feed our deeper hungers?

Sometimes I hear clients say, “If I could just think differently, I wouldn’t feel so stuck with food/body/exercise!” I say, "What if it’s not all in your head? What if we invite you to shift from your Head-brain to sensing with your Belly-brain?"

Pandemic Parenting: Instead of viewing the matching as “good behavior” and the mismatching as “bad behavior," is there a way to appreciate both? The matching experiences might seem like the easy and desirable parts of parenting. But, when the battles begin (over food, screens or sibling spats), might parents learn to appreciate the child’s urges?

The pressures parents face due to COVID can feel overwhelming. The limitations kids of all ages face right now can make them seem like monsters at times! What gives? It can seem like a never-ending cycle. Parents want relief, kids want and need safety and predictability.