A Process Oriented Relationship to Movement

A orange/ pink outline of a breakdancer holds their body up with one hand and grasps an extended leg. Surrounding the breakdancer are flowers, blue orange, white and pink. The background is turquoise and lighter blue lettering reads: movement is sacred. The radical dietitian logo (a pinkish/orange seed surrounding by three moons, light blue, sky blue, and turquoise)

In the past several years, I have worked hard on my building a sustainable, accessible, and joyful movement routine. Compulsive exercise was not a big part of my eating disorder, at the time I was taking dance fitness classes that I really enjoyed. The part that was toxic was how I would berate myself if I missed a planned class or skipped a week, the guilt and shame for not being able to “keep up” was a nuisance and painful. 

In my recovery, I did very little movement. It was partly intentional, and partly no option, because I was focusing on food, and my trauma stories that were coming up that my eating disorder kept me distracted from looking at. That, and my job and life responsibilities was already too much. I intentionally avoided it because I did not need any other prompts to get me wrapped up in “a plan” that would move me away from attunement and care.

In 2021 I made a new year’s focus to become a dancer again. I wanted to show myself that I can achieve things like that in my late 30s, and that I can reclaim activities that I loved that were tainted by anti-fatness as a young child and adolescent, the last time I considered myself a dancer. My back will never recover from a back injury in my mid 20s, and so I knew that I would need to be strategic about how I strengthened and trained. And I knew that I wanted to move from a place of love and compassion for myself, and not for reasons related to shrinking my body or falsely inflating my moral worth.    

I’m 42 now and still in this process. A lot of my process in the beginning mimicked a post that Jessica Torres made on her own process with this. Similar to allowing myself unconditional permission to eat, I allowed myself unconditional permission to stop exercising/ movement when I wanted to or needed to- with no attachment to an idea I had in my head about how long I would do something. Having a much better sense of my adhd, I knew that I needed variety to keep me engaged, and because of my injury I knew I needed stretching and strengthening. I started by driving to the pool, swimming for 5 or 7 minutes, and then driving home. I did that until I felt inspired, from my body, to swim longer. Jessica talked about her own process- where she started by stretching for 5 minutes each day in the morning and evening. She did that for a year. Her next step was to drive herself to the gym, and then drive home. When she was ready, she would go inside the gym, stay for 5 minutes, and then go home. She built up from there. It cannot be overstated that this process might look really low and slow, and that is what is needed especially if you have a history of an eating disorder- and if that included compulsive exercise- as well as the size of your body. Gyms and exercise in general may have been punishment, a place of bullying or shame, if your body is on the larger end of the weight spectrum. So potentially a lot of nervous system care and regulation and permission to go at the pace needed (which might feel different from the pace that your mind wants / expects).

In the past few weeks, I’ve been more tired than usual and have a higher appetite. I’m noticing these things as I’m noticing that I don’t feel a pull or drawn to movement (or sometimes I do, but then because of other things can’t act on it), and so I haven’t been. I feel some fear around how this will impact my mental health, because movement helps me to move potent energies that aren’t mine to carry through my body, and how it will impact my pain because more often than not when I’m moving regularly I’m in less pain. I also notice how a part of me still attaches to how my body changed when I started moving again more regularly, and that same part of me has feelings about how it could change again. It feels disappointing to feel and admit that these parts live inside of me, but because part of my recovery is not pretending anymore, I don’t want to pretend that I’m not human in these ways.

In my process I witness those thoughts and do not give them any power because I know it is against my values and harmful to me to let those younger, wounded parts of me have power. I tell trusted people that these parts  me are making themselves known, and am witnessed in the complexity of the experience without feeling broken or not enough. My self talk to those parts that still live within me, and maybe always will? Acknowledges that we live in a world that suffocates us with expectations on our bodies as objects, and projects to perfect in the name of morality. As I age, and anticipate a whole ride with “the change” my body will go through, and I do not want to abandon myself to these sick expectations. I want to stay with myself, to stay with my process. 

And, I feel proud of the last few years. I have gotten stronger, and that feels good. I have taken hip hop classes, ballet classes, engaged in strength training on my own for the first time. My yoga practice has deepened in ways it has been longing for for decades (thanks Tejal Yoga!). So, I do believe I have arrived: I’m dancing, so I’m a dancer. And a big part of my adult goals are to take supremely excellent care of my inner kiddo, who deeply wanted to dance but couldn’t fully express all that wanted to come through because the shame of her sweet little body not fitting a mold that was put on me in those young, tender ages. I’ll keep dancing, so that I can keep expressing the ways that she was not able to, and I’ll make it playful and at the pace of my life. 

One last thought I want to express. Movement is such a valuable way for us to connect with our bodies, to take care of our bodies, and to express through our bodies. It feels to me, like something truly sacred. One of the many toxic tendrils of diet culture and anti fatness is that it takes this sacred thing and weaponizes it against ourselves. It makes it about something else, not about us or our relationship to our bodies, care, and creative expression. And I hope that we always keep in mind on our journeys of healing, not all bodies are able to move in the ways that over-culturally we deem as the only acceptable exercise (and that matters when we think about the ways morality attaches to all of this). Not all people have access to safe places to move, and not all people with ADHD have the funds to access varieties of movement to keep it interesting and sustainable (I have a gym membership, an online yoga studio membership, and pay to go to individual classes- it’s a pricey monthly cost). These things matter and need to be considered when we have conversations about movement and healing. This is my experience. It will look different for everyone else, but I hope that there was something useful in it for you and your process.