29th May - 10th July 2024

the somatic foundations

of food recovery

A 7 WEEK ONLINE PROGRAMME TEACHING YOU THE FOUNDATIONAL STEPS THAT YOUR BODY NEEDS TO FEEL SAFE, SO YOU CAN BUILD A MORE PEACEFUL RELATIONSHIP WITH FOOD.

Through my experience both personally and professionally, I’ve come to notice that people struggle with food for 3 main reasons …

1. It’s the go to mechanism to respond to stress, trauma and difficult emotions.

2. We believe that there is something wrong with us and hold a lot of shame about our bodies. This brings us into this looping cycle of restricting and dieting in order to change the shape and size of our bodies. What happens here, is that the bodies survival responses switch on as we experience perceived famine. The body is then propelled towards food and will usually eat whatever is in sight, and often eat it very quickly.

3. The high expectations to try and achieve a body, a diet and a lifestyle to try and resolve the feelings of being defective and not good enough, goes on to cause a lot of pressure (stress on the body) and the experience of shame (also another stress on the body). The stress experienced within the body, goes on to propel us towards foods when food is the mechanism to deal with stress.

Ultimately, whether the source is internal or external, when struggling with our relationship to food, the habits and patterns we find ourselves in are almost always as result of our relationship to the stress and trauma that’s happening inside of our body.

THAT’S WHY I’VE CREATED THIS 7 WEEK PROGRAMME, TO TEACH YOU THE FOUNDATIONAL STEPS THAT I HAVE LEARNT ARE ABSOLUTELY VITAL, IF YOU WANT TO TRANSFORM YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH FOOD.

I wish more people understood that every food choice WE make, is IN FACT offering support to the body in some way.

INCLUDING the foods we binge on and typically might SEE as bad, unhealthy and COMPLETELY UNSUPPORTIVE.

  • It might be supporting you through making you feel heavy and grounded when you are filled with anxiety

  • It might be supporting you by feeling like you’ve been hugged, by filling that endless void of grief and loneliness,

  • It might be supporting you by taking you out of your body, so you don’t become overwhelmed with sensation that you don’t have capacity to be with.

These are some of the many ways that we receive support from food. It becomes our very familiar, reliable and consistent place of support that we turn to when we, well … need support.

For most of us, it’s due to the lack of support around us, particularly in moments where we needed it the most, that lead us to automatically seek the support from food.

I often talk about it as the carer that we never had. And this is one of the reasons, why restricting and dieting do not work. It removes the one source of safety that we’ve always known.

When we want to truly transform our relationship with food, we need to identify and learn of the many other places that we can turn to so that we can feel safe, supported and resourced.

AND I’M GOING TO BE TEACHING YOU THE SOMATIC FOUNDATIONS SO THAT YOU CAN START BUILDING THAT SAFETY WITHIN YOU, SO THAT FOOD DOESN’T FEEL LIKE THE ONLY PLACE YOU CAN TURN TO.

“I have much more compassion towards myself and my relationship towards my body and food has completely changed.

— Samantha Heaney

Alex Bottomley Feb 22-276.jpg

The child who was left without support when that sadness felt too much to manage alone

becomes the adult who emotionally eats to disconnect from the pain.

Let's reach out our hands to that little one, so they can rest in the knowing that safety and support is here now.

most people spend a lifetime, trying to resolve their relationship with food through diets, meal plans, exercise routines. YET WE DON’T ACTUALLY ADDRESS THE VERY THING THAT’S DRIVING AND INFLUENCING OUR CURRENT RELATIONSHIP TO FOOd.

When we take away certain foods (like many diets tell us to), that have been our core source of safety for many years …

It’s like leaving a child outside in the dark, alone.
It’s terrifying.
The only source of safety that you’ve known, suddenly vanishes.
Actual terror can be felt in the body.

Survival takes over, without your conscious choice and automatically propels you to seek comfort from food. Whether you like it, want it or not, it knows that this is where it will 100% find safety through disasociating from the inner experience.

And when we stress the body out by asking it to take part in exercise plans that are way beyond the capacity that our body has to sustain it, the shame that we feel from “failing” leads us to seek comfort in food.

So how do we recover our relationship with food & our body?

The answer lies not in restriction or deprivation nor in piling up expectation and pressurising our body into change …

But in developing a relationship with your body where you can learn to respond to the uncomfortable experience of emotions, stress & trauma within you in many other ways than through food.

“Alex helped me to create a relationship with my body that I believed impossible but became my reality

On days when our relationship feels difficult I can give my body the tenderness she deserves. I didn’t think it was possible to love my body but now I know that it is. I love her and I know she has always loved me.

I feel like I am in a budding new relationship with my body, giddy with love and discovering so many things about her for the first time”

— Catherine Cicuttini

 
 

THIS IS A SPACE FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO …

 

Feel lost, confused and overwhelmed by the noise and ever conflicting advice about food.

You have rules and restrictions with food and/or find yourself binging, over eating and emotional eating and you’d love to learn how to have a more peaceful relationship with food and one where you feel like you have control.

You feel like you’ve tried every diet, affirmation, self-help book, meditation series under the sun and you’re ready to really get to the core of what’s happening.

You know that you turn to food to disconnect from uncomfortable emotions and you want to learn how to feel safer within the discomfort and learn other ways to support yourself that don’t depend on food.

You feel out of control - as though it all just happens on auto-pilot to you. Sometimes you even forget how you got there. You now want to start being able to be intentional and make conscious choices for yourself.

You feel like you know what you ‘should’ be doing, but you have a difficult time actually implementing and/or sticking to it.

 
 
 

WHAT YOU WILL BE LEARNING OVER THE 7 WEEKS …

WEEK 1: Societies Role : Dissolving The Blame & Shame

WEEK 2: Understanding Trauma and the Somatics of Survival & Safety.

WEEK 3: Your Eating Patterns & Your Nervous System

WEEK 4: WE PAUSE FOR INTEGRATION WEEK

This week we pause from taking in any more information & we allow the body to digest what’s been explored so far.

WEEK 5: How to Nourish Yourself Beyond Food: Resource & Regulation

WEEK 6:: Balancing Blood Sugars & Building Capacity : Finding Safety In The Foods You Fear

Week 7: Eating With Your Body VS Eating With Your Mind

SIGN UP FOR YOUR PLACE HERE:

WE START ON WEDNESDAY 29TH MAY 2024

PAY IN FULL:

£555

PAY IN 2:

£286

MY WORK WILL TEACH YOU …

HOW TO BEFRIEND YOUR BODY AND RELATE TO IT WITH COMPASSION INSTEAD OF CRITICISM.

HOW TO BE IN CONVERSATION WITH YOUR BODY AND WALK IT OUT OF SURVIVAL AND INTO SAFETY

AND THROUGH THIS NEW STATE OF BEING THAT EMERGES, YOUR EATING PATTERNS AND BEHAVIOURS WIILL BEGIN TO TRANSFORM TOO.

WHY CHOOSE TO WORK WITH ME?

I know how to feel with you.

I know how to be with you.

I know how to be human with you.

Binge eating & body shame is something that I know very well - both personally and professionally …

I struggled for many years with binge eating, I despised my body, I always felt like I had to prove myself and I had absolutely no idea what boundaries were. I thought I had to be responsible for everyone around me, I struggled to trust people and I really did not know how to express myself authentically which greatly impacted my relationships. Through all this, I thought that where was something truly wrong with me.

Until … I learnt & discovered that I was living with chronic nervous system dysregulation as a result of unprocessed trauma.

Through working somatically & letting my body lead, I now live with a deep sense of love & trust for my body, I no longer life with the crippling affect of shame, I eat freely & I truly feel as though I have been given another life.

And now, I support beautiful humans, like you to experience that too.

I hope that you follow the whispers of your body and that I get to learn, explore and connect with you some more.

Love to you,
Alex X

 FAQ’s

  • Wednesdays starting 29th May.

    1.30pm UK // 2.30pm CET // 8.30am EST

    Class dates:

    29th May

    5th June

    12th June

    19th June (Integration week: no live class)

    26th June

    3rd July

    10th July

    All sessions are recorded so you can access them at a time that suits you if you happen to miss a session.

  • All sessions will be held via zoom and the replays will also be available.

    You will also have access to an online portal with short home explorations & a community support group via Telegram so that you have the ongoing support outside of our live sessions.

  • All sessions will be recorded so that you are able to rewatch.

  • No it doesn’t but you can add 1:1 support if I have the availability. 3 sessions for £300 (usually £450)

  • Is this going to completely transform the life-long struggle with food and your body?

    Likely not. Its a 7 week short programme that is specifically designed to offer you the foundational steps to transforming your relationship with food.

    What we cover in this programme are lifetime practices to take away with you to continue engaging in and exploring.