Your body is not a project, or a problem to be solved.

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.

Welcome to The Body Trust® Project: A School for Unlearning 

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...

  • Learned your body was a problem when you were a kid and have been trying to feel better about it ever since.
  • Have been hustling in response to the culture’s limited ideas about attractiveness and desirability.
  • Want to feel like you can put dieting, food restriction & restraint, and binge eating down.
  • Have been dieting, strategizing, scheming and hoping for longer than you wish was true.
  • Are trying to unlearn diet culture and body blame.
  • Feel out of alignment in regards to how you feel about your body versus the body acceptance you have for others in the world. 
  • Take on anti-diet programs because you might lose weight, even though deep down inside you know that is not what this is all about.

The Body Trust Project: A Nine-Month School for Unlearning is an invitation to continue your process in community and with ongoing support.

Meet Your Partners in Body Trust

Hilary Kinavey, MS, LPC

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 Sturtevant, MD, RD

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.

The Body Trust Project - A school for unlearning - Will be back in session February 22

SO WHAT COULD BE?

When you cross the bridge from diet culture to body trust, what’s on the other side?

  • A relationship with yourself that you can stand to be in for a lifetime
  • More joy, freedom, ease and satisfaction
  • Increased connection to your truth; your own knowing
  • Resilience to navigate bad body days
  • Foundational practices to return to again and again (that don’t require you to abandon yourself)
  • The experience of feeling more at home in your body
  • Time and energy for more meaningful passions

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 logo - a red heart with leaves and orange and yellow flowers

BODY TRUST IS...

  • Getting out of your head and back into your body.
  • Rejecting the diet mentality as a way to solve the "problem" of your body.
  • Turning towards your body, looking and listening with kindness and curiosity.
  • Listening to your body and discerning the wisdom that comes from within.
  • Allowing pleasure and satisfaction to inform and teach you as much as what you know to be "good" or "healthy".
  • Knowing that when you eat past full or don't eat enough, your body's hunger cues can help guide you.
  • Becoming acquainted with your body's subtle and not-so-subtle cues.
  • Acknowledging the amazing ways your body shows up for you every day.
  • Moving your body in ways that connect you to sensation, pleasure, and joy.
  • Rooting self care practices in weight-neutrality and allowing your body to sort out the weight.

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 are not too late.

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.

So what do you get?

  • One 90-minute webinar once a month hosted by Hilary & Dana. We will take a deep dive into one topic each month (keep scrolling for dates). These webinars will be recorded so you can listen anytime. Or over and over again.
  • You will be sent workbooks and curated lists of resources to peruse at your leisure to support your unlearning.
  • You will receive suggestions for practicing and embodying the material in real life.
  • We will send a couple of email love notes to remind you of the topic we are unraveling. And to remind you of your desire for truth, healing and reclamation. To invite you to reconnect to the project.
  • 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.

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.

Monthly Topics

Entering the Wilderness (February 22)

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.

Divestment as a Form of Self-Care (March 22)

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.

Reckoning with Your Identity as an Eater (April 26)

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.

Ending the Hustle (May 24)

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?

What Does Grief Have to Do With It? (June 28)

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.

Boundaries Don’t Have to Suck (July 26)

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!

Pleasure as a Measure of Freedom (August 23)

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.

Reclaiming Movement (September 27)

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.

Making Your Healing Bigger Than You (October 25)

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)!

GUEST SPEAKERS:

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

So...what do you think?

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:

Another Facebook group.

A big commitment you can’t sustain.

Group therapy.

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.

We would love for you to join us!

Pricing summary below.*

EQUITY

For those with marginalized identities and those in need
(limited to 25% of registrants)

$399

STANDARD

For those who have sufficient resources and can cover themselves

$699

STANDARD PLUS

For those who have enough resources to cover themselves and donate to increase access for marginalized folks and those in need

$799

*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.

Our 2021 school registration has closed. 
Sign up here to receive updates on future dates.

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.

Are you a helping professional?

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.*

Provider Calls Equity

For those with marginalized identities and those need (limited to 25% of registrants)

$105

Provider Calls Standard

For those who have sufficient resources and can cover themselves

$165

Provider Calls Standard Plus

For those who have enough resources to cover themselves and donate to increase access for marginalized folks and those in need

$180

*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:

  • Women and all people who have lived experience of misogyny.
  • People of marginalized genders, including women, non-binary folks and trans men.

A Note about Accessibility:
Closed captions available. Sign language interpreter available upon request.
Please email us with any requests and/or questions.