Having a body that is like a musical instrument, open enough to be able to resonate, literally resonate with what is coming both from the inside and from the outside, so that one is able to surrender to powers greater than oneself. -Marion Woodman
M-Bodied: Mindful Movement as Mothering Medicine® is a trauma-sensitive approach informed by nervous system science, attachment theory and specific early relational movement patterns to help nourish a robust quality of embodiment and life enhancement. The M-Bodied approach is grounded in the principles and practices of Chi for Two®, a relational embodiment and trauma healing method, and is appropriate for individuals, parents/caregivers, romantic partners, families, as well as corporate, recreational and athletic organizations.
M-Bodied® Therapy blends body awareness with attachment-based relational practices as a container for exploration, a womb for self-discovery, nourishment and growth. Sometimes we talk, sometimes we explore myths and stories, sometimes we explore developmental shapes or movement patterns, and sometimes we do all three. You set the pace.
What is M-Bodied: Mindful Movement as Mothering Medicine®?
M-Bodied: Mindful Movement as Mothering Medicine is a therapeutic approach that offers body-based psychotherapy and counseling for deep nourishment. This includes:
those who want a more sustainable relationship with food, eating, drinking and other substances, exercise and body-image
parenting and family support from womb-to-walking-and-beyond journeys
those who feel overwhelmed or stuck with anxious or depressive patterns, moods, reactions and who crave a quality of living that is more fulfilling, steady and hopeful
romantic partners who want help with productively moving through mismatch, finding a new way to communicate, and reclaim their spark.
M-Bodied® offers a relational approach using both somatic and cognitive co-regulation techniques:
nervous-system informed psychoeducation
a trauma-informed, invitational approach to strengthening body awareness
attachment-based co-regulation practices as symbolic redos for repatterning nervous system functioning.
Using this three-pronged approach, M-Bodied slowly invites coming home to the body-mind to offer reconnection in a sustainable way.
M-Bodied® as a Mothering Metaphor
M-Bodied is offered through psychotherapy in the state of Georgia or embodiment coaching worldwide, and is influenced by developmental movement and relational patterns as a way to help connect the dots and symbolically redo body-mind areas of focus that need re-patterning for healthy functioning. Ultimately, the integrative, therapeutic “holding environments”, or Circles of Support, serve as mothering metaphors for symbolic redos, a pathway to birth one’s nurturing inner parent, one’s ability to self-handle, to self-regulate.
*When “Mother” is referenced in this practice, we are inviting the “mothering quality of oxytocin,” which plays a major role in signaling safety within our Social Engagement system functioning as related to nervous system science. Therefore, those who identify as female, male, or non-binary may offer and embody that “Mother” quality.
M-Bodied® as Relational, Process-Based Mindful Movement
While some M-Bodied work often looks like shapes commonly recognized as yoga postures, it draws from shapes, patterns and movement we all once embodied, needed and crave for healthy brain development, security, connection, love and survival. Performative “pretzel poses”, while sometimes fun and playful, are not the goal or even used.
The key in using this mindful movement is to apply practices in a relational, process-based way dependent upon the developmental stage needing extra support. In combination with nervous system psychoeducation, having a conscious awareness of how and why shapes, patterns and movement might be used in a newly supported way can help the development of a self-supported individual from the inside-out.
The M-Bodied approach helps to increase inner and outer body awareness and helps clients make unique meaning of their nonverbal messaging like common gestures, stances, postures, breath patterns, tension, openings, numbness, etc. These messages often inform about boundaries, hungers, needs, fears and communication. M-Bodied encourages the client to become curious about the stories their body holds within relationship to self and others.
The M-Bodied approach draws from a multigenerational trauma healing method called Chi for Two®—the Energetic Dance of Healthy Relationship. To learn more about the psychological, somatic, meditative, attachment-based and trauma-sensitive foundations of M-Bodied, check out the synthesis of Chi for Two.
How M-Bodied® Relational Practices Help Body-Mind Integration
In addition to appreciating the value of “using our words,” like in talk therapy, M-Bodied uses somatic techniques through the lens of developmental movement and relational patterns that offer parallels of psychological and social development, particularly preverbal development. As a co-developer of the trauma healing method, Chi for Two®, M-Bodied’s creator Caroline draws upon nervous system science and polyvagal theory to explore relational ways of using the body as a resource for body-mind integration.
This approach helps to explore satisfying and nurturing shapes, postures and movement someone might find beneficial not only for physical support and empowerment but also as a path toward body-mind integration and nervous system re-patterning.
The conscious re-patterning of one’s infant developmental dances from womb-to-walking helps to strengthen one’s own attunement, self awareness and expanded capacity toward an Embodied Cognition. By merging somatic and cognitive techniques from a trauma-sensitive and attachment-based approach, we practice mothering ourselves through mindful movement.
The Birthing of M-Bodied
For 20+ years, Caroline Gebhardt, LPC, RYT, RSME/T, creator of M-Bodied, helped people mindfully reconnect with their body in a trauma-sensitive way—from group exercise classes, to private in-home training, to parent-baby movement, to yoga groups for eating disorders and addictions at treatment centers, and to individual psychotherapy.
Throughout Caroline’s personal healing journey in appreciating her body’s wisdom, as well as time as a movement educator full-time while becoming a mother herself, she began becoming more interested in how various movement practices have the potential for nourishment from the inside-out. She knew that movement practices have the potential to feed rather than drain, to embody rather than disembody, and she wanted to show others how.
As a creative writer, the alliteration of Mindful Movement as Mothering Medicine dawned on her as a way to offer satisfying movement practices that energize and heal and began offering various movement workshops with this name. During an independent study while in graduate school, and while helping to co-develop the somatic healing method Chi for Two®, she identified the intersection of therapeutic elements that all support Mindful Movement as Mothering Medicine (attachment theory, developmental movement, trauma healing modalities).
Under guidance of various teachers, mentors and supervisors, Caroline created M-Bodied as a therapeutic way to use Mindful Movement as Mothering Medicine—a reparative somatic approach to reconnect with one’s core self—in an effort for a more embodied and present journey through life, healthier relational dances with others, and a deeper sense of early relational nourishment from the inside-out.