But unlearning the lies we have been taught about bodies? Yeah, that is a bit of a project. It takes persistence, ongoing support, and practice.
We believe Body Trust® is a radical reclamation of what was always meant to be yours.
We believe Body Trust is repair work.
We believe you can deeply reckon with the Body Project you inherited.
NINE MONTH ONLINE PROGRAM (offered once a year;)
Our 2021 program started in February and registration has closed.
Click here to sign up to receive updates on future dates.
Healing isn’t linear and it’s not a one-shot deal. It is a continual unravelling. And an unlearning of patterns that have been used to help you survive.
MAYBE YOU...
The Body Trust Project: A Nine-Month School for Unlearning is an invitation to continue your process in community and with ongoing support.
We'll say that again: You are already whole.
The Body Trust Project acknowledges that we have an ever-changing relationship with our bodies for a lifetime. With that in mind, the The Body Trust Project: A Nine-Month School for Unlearning includes:
It is possible to develop the resilience needed to live compassionately in a weight-biased world. Let's do this work together.
Hilary is a licensed professional counselor who advocates for a renewal of healing frameworks that externalize the problem focus from the bodies of people and are informed by a relational, systemic and social justice lens. You will most often find her loving up on her family and fan-girling over her pets and fellow fashionistas.
Dana is a registered dietitian whose work focuses on humanizing health care, advancing health equity, and advocating for body sovereignty and food justice. Dana is passionate about music and loves to dance like nobody's watching. She believes water is life and is happiest when close enough to hear the ocean or a waterfall.
Unlearning diet culture and oppressive ideas about your body is for you just as it is for everyone else.
There is not a different set of rules for you.
It may be true that your concern and management of your body, appearance, size, weight, shape, or fitness has been the center of your inner world for longer than you ever wanted or dreamt was possible. Most folks take it on before the age of 10.
Social constructs of health, size, beauty, race, gender, age and ability all have a stake in how free, connected and embodied you get to be. They have impacted how whole you feel and how much of you is known, seen, held and supported.
The coping and rituals that have arisen from the body project may have protected you or made living in a culture of domination more manageable. It has likely been the way you have tried to mitigate weight stigma.
SO WHAT COULD BE?
When you cross the bridge from diet culture to body trust, what’s on the other side?
Body Trust is a radically different way to occupy and care for your body. It is a pathway to reclaim your body and is completely counter to conventional “wisdom” about food, body image, weight, and health in our culture.
BODY TRUST IS...
I was surprised by how much of an impact this program had on me. It truly made me reevaluate my thinking and beliefs.
— anonymous
We have to unravel, unlearn, and allow ourselves to become different in order to have a different experience. In order to heal. And to set our sights on freedom.
You couldn’t have already done this. We are awakening to new paradigms together. And including ourselves in our desire for change in the world is not always our first instinct.
Self-loathing and shame don’t work as motivators. They don’t create lasting or meaningful change.
It is, in fact, our own unraveling and unlearning that changes us. It unburies us. It helps us believe in our own story again. Our stories are hardwired to the truth.
We know the world around you may not be awake to this body-inclusive, anti-diet paradigm. Your loved ones don’t get it and maybe aren’t willing to hold your story. They don’t understand your path and can’t support your way out.
Leaving diet culture behind isn’t always easy to explain, especially when you are still trying to figure it out for yourself and don’t quite have the language to talk about it. And yet, maybe it hasn’t felt right to go it alone either.
Our healing work helps us create the new world we desire for others. We collectively have a tremendous amount to revise, reclaim, heal, repair, speak and hear in order for all bodies to be free.
We see you. You want body liberation for everyone else. We just want you to include yourself, too.
Simple is sometimes exactly what we need to make something matter. Simple makes learning possible.
You will be held in a nine-month process with Hilary & Dana, who have been immersed in this work for the last 15+ years and know how to support you and how to cut through the B.S. We will teach you what we know about Body Trust.
Together we will geek out on evocative material, evolving ideas, and lessons for getting free.
Many of us move around the world like floating heads, pretty disconnected from the body. The process of reclaiming Body Trust can feel like entering the wilderness. We are leaning into our vulnerability to brave unchartered territory and honor how we lost trust in our bodies in the first place. We will explore theories of embodiment and how we begin to reclaim our body stories.
What if the type of care we are advocating for isn’t a form of self-care but rather a form of DIVESTMENT? Divesting from diet culture, fatphobia, and healthism. Divesting from shame and perfectionism. Divesting from white supremacy. Divesting from beauty. We want to geek out on this concept we learned from our beloved friend and mentor Desiree Adaway.
Claiming your identity as an eater can be fraught with fear, shame or confusion. We believe Body Trust is a birthright, and somewhere along the way this trust is disrupted. When this happens we often begin to navigate the world of food and eating with a dieting mind. Before we can reclaim Body Trust, there is a reckoning. We reckon with the lies we’ve been told, how we’ve been harmed. We reckon with hunger and fullness...with desire and pleasure. Until we come to terms with our identity as an eater, it’s hard to experiment and take risks with our eating.
Diet culture teaches people to approach the body and food with rigidity and perfectionism. The way society talks about nutrition and health, you’d think one meal or day of eating has the power to heal or kill you. Starting with unrealistic expectations and then being hard on yourself when you can’t pull it off is how the weight loss and cosmetic fitness industries make money off of your shame. We want to help you end the hustle. Because if we’re really honest with ourselves, are we, as a society, hustling for “health” or are we hustling for worthiness?
The path to reclaiming our bodies and increasing resilience to shame and stigma is one permeated by grief and letting go. We grieve the illusion of control, the thin ideal, and the time wasted on a failed paradigm that’s brought us so much pain. We allow for grief over and over again, knowing that without it, we may only move forward on shaky ground.
The ways we learn to cope with food and leave our bodies has been about learning to survive because our boundaries, our bodies, and our own knowing has not often been respected. We need to find a way to inhabit our own being that can be protected in new ways. Reconnecting with your needs and boundaries is a Core Element of a Body Trust Practice. We will work to celebrate our yes’s and honor our no’s. In her book Pleasure Activism, adrienne maree brown writes, “Your strong and solid no makes way for your deep, authentic yes...by practicing saying no, you will cultivate a yes that is rooted in having agency, having power, and having respect for your boundaries.” Let’s say yes to all of this!
What makes you feel good? What turns you on? How often do you r e a l l y like what you eat? Access to pleasure is often tethered to the question “how much is too much?” It’s common for people’s complicated relationship with food to come from a disrupted relationship with desire. Rediscovering, embodying, and allowing for pleasure is an act of resistance in a culture that has made indulgence a “dirty word”. Pleasure takes up space and says I’m here. Let’s explore how pleasure, in the absence of shame and guilt, heals.
Many of us grow up experiencing the joy of active play, sport, dance and other ways of moving our bodies, only to have these activities co-opted by diet culture later in life. We begin to view our bodies as machines that must be tightly controlled, believing in the calories in vs. out equation we’ve all been sold, and seeing physical activity as a way to compensate for our food intake. Movement can foster attunement by providing opportunities to get below the neck and experience the body from the inside out.
This movement needs all of you, not just the part of you that wants freedom for everyone else. As Sonya Renee Taylor recently reminded us, our liberation is bound together. When we include ourselves in the process towards body liberation, we contribute to the movement. When we ground our healing in our story we increase our agency and our voice. Once we’ve developed deeper roots in our Body Trust Practice, it becomes easier to speak up and advocate for a body compassionate and weight-inclusive world. And when we speak for a cause, our commitment to the cause strengthens. We’ll talk about ways to continue with this work, and to lend your voice to radical liberation for all.
If you can't make a live date, no worries, all webinars will be recorded.
PLUS A SCHOOL HOMECOMING DANCE (May 22)!
Desiree Adaway
Liberatory Praxis
March 22
McKensie Mack
Boundary Work™
July 26
Dawn Serra
The Power in Pleasure
August 23
Melissa Toler
Reclaiming Movement
September 27
This will be our work together.
As your un-teachers, we would love to support you with the tools to align your most loving, most equitable, most understanding and fiercest self in Body Trust®. We will be unlearning alongside you.
Let’s be clear. This program WILL NOT include:
This is a lecture-style offering. For those of you wanting extra support during your unlearning process, we have an amazing community of Body Trust Providers for you to choose from for 1:1 support.
Pricing summary below.*
For those with marginalized identities and those in need
(limited to 25% of registrants)
For those who have sufficient resources and can cover themselves
For those who have enough resources to cover themselves and donate to increase access for marginalized folks and those in need
*Payment plans available.
*No one will be turned away for lack of funds. If none of the above options work for you, let us know what is possible here.
Hilary and Dana have been doing this work for well over a decade. They are experts at demonstrating kindness and compassion while calling out social injustice and body oppression. The School for Unlearning is a reflection of their latest knowledge and experience to date. The materials and topics are thought provoking and applicable in real life. The School is a place to find unconditional support, deep discussions, and a community committed to inclusivity, honesty and healing.
— D.W.
We have a Provider Track ADD-ON Option* which includes three 90 minute Q&A calls (one call per quarter from 9:00 to 10:30 a.m. PDT on April 9, July 30 and November 12). Calls will be recorded and sent along with some of our favorite resources for providers. Price add-on summary below.*
For those with marginalized identities and those need (limited to 25% of registrants)
For those who have sufficient resources and can cover themselves
For those who have enough resources to cover themselves and donate to increase access for marginalized folks and those in need
*Registration for the School for Unlearning program is required to participate in the provider call add-on. If you are currently enrolled in our program and would like to add-on this provider track, please email us requesting the registration links.
This program is open to:
A Note about Accessibility:
Closed captions available. Sign language interpreter available upon request.
Please email us with any requests and/or questions.
© 2021 BE NOURISHED. • PRIVACY POLICY