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richelle_ludwig

I help women who feel unworthy change their relationship with food & body.
Somatic Coaching
Parts Work
Weight Neutral
Trauma Informed
HSP
⬇️🌌ECLIPSE

Surrender is a beautiful concept. Letting go of wh

Surrender is a beautiful concept. Letting go of what isn't serving. Trusting in something greater to support and guide you. Releasing attachments for how you think it should go. It's a spiritual concept that doesn't mean giving up, but recognizes that there's a greater force at play and we often have little control in how things will unfold. It's a practice like many concepts are.

The thing is, if you're stuck in a hyperaroused state and you don't also do something to support your physiology in shifting, surrender is going to be challenging to settle into. You might find yourself constantly looping around issues, trying to control things in your environment and consistently feeling anxious. This doesn't mean you're failing at surrender. It just means your inner experience doesn't feel safe enough to surrender yet.

To cultivate enough inner safety to even approach the concept of surrender, we can support our system in first downregulating from its state of hyperarousal. For some we might need support through co-regulation initially. We may also be able to self-regulate through grounding, deep diaphragmatic breathing with a focus on lengthening the exhale, walking in nature, lightly shaking or stomping out excess energy, using the 5 senses, etc.

If we get stuck in a hyperaroused state often, we may want to work on building up our internal and external resources so we can begin to expand our capacity. This supports us in being able to remain present with the bigness of our internal experience. Resources are anything that helps your autonomic nervous system return to a regulated state.

If we haven't consciously developed strategies to resource us, we will then often unconsciously turn to behaviours like binge eating or excessive exercise in an attempt to regulate our inner state. These behaviours temporarily work and there's no shame in developing them as maladaptive strategies. They just don't support connection with self, which resources do.

To surrender, we need to be connected to self, and through our connection to self we can also become connected to something greater no matter your spiritual beliefs.

"A woman's issues of soul cannot be treated by ca

"A woman's issues of soul cannot be treated by carving her into a more acceptable form as defined by an unconscious culture, nor can she be bent into a more intellectually acceptable shape by those who claim to be the soul bearers of consciousness. No, that is already what has caused millions of women who began as strong and natural powers to become outsiders in their own cultures. Instead the goal must be the retrieval and succour of women's beauteous and natural psychic forms."

The Wild Woman.

" When women reassert their relationship with the wildish nature, they are gifted with a permanent and internal watcher, a knower, a visionary, an oracle, an inspiratrice, an intuitive, a maker, a creator, an inventor, and a listener who guide, suggest, and urge vibrant life in the inner and outer worlds. When women are close to this nature, the fact of that relationship glows through them. This wild teacher, wild mother, wild mentor supports their inner and outer lives, no matter what.

So the word wild here is not used in its modern pejorative sense, meaning out of control, but in its original sense, which means to live a natural life, one in which the criatura, creature, has innate integrity and healthy boundaries. These words, wild and woman, cause women to remember who they are and what they are about. They create a metaphor to describe the force which funds all females. They personify a force that women cannot live without.

The Wild Woman archetype can be expressed in other terms which are equally apt. You can call this powerful psychological nature the instinctive nature, but Wild Woman is the force which lies behind that. You can call it the natural psyche, but the archetype of the Wild Woman stands behind that as well. You can call it the innate, the basic nature of women. You can call it the indigenous, the intrinsic nature of women. In poetry it might be called the "Other," or the "seven oceans of the universe," or "the far woods," or "The Friend." In various psychologies and from various perspectives it would be called the id, the Self, the medial nature. In biology it would be called the typical or fundamental nature.

Continued below 👇🏼

This reinforces the power dynamic that's in place

This reinforces the power dynamic that's in place between practitioner and client, which isn't healthy or helpful. This is huge friends. I've been in both types of containers and I bet you can guess what's been more healing. As someone who learned to blend into the environment and fawn to feel safe, this just continued when I entered dogmatic, and might I add privileged, spiritual communities, with no understanding of attachment theory, the autonomic nervous system, oppression and all the complexities and nuances of working with the psyche and soma.

Healing doesn't occur if we're just transferring the same operating system onto something different. Empowerment doesn't occur through self-abandonment just to fit the narrative of whoever you're engaging with, or whatever you're learning. Empowerment happens through the reclaiming of all parts of yourself and redefining what they mean to you. It happens through the discernment of, and safety to express, your yes and no.

Vulnerable people who haven't developed a strong inner anchor can find themselves seeking others to guide them. It's important as practitioners that we take this responsibility seriously. I see so many coaches enamoured with the empty promises of internet fame and million dollar businesses (I wonder what needs these are meeting? 🤔), that much of the industry forgets what this is all about in the first place. This is because much of what's being taught is rooted in patriarchal spirituality that's been appropriated by white men, and now women. Yes, women can uphold the patriarchy too.

Those vulnerable people then place their trust in people who've invested more in a fancy website and photoshoots than their actual craft and education. This is what's often being taught in how to "get" clients, rather than mastery. Isn't that wild?! Manipulation tactics are being taught, instead of ethics, integrity and do no harm. I'll admit I struggle being part of the coaching industry. I go back and forth between considering getting an MA in Psychology or continuing "nontraditional" routes of education as I've been doing. 👇🏼

When I was deep into the hole of binge eating and

When I was deep into the hole of binge eating and struggling with my body image, someone told me I wasn't so shallow to care so much about how my body looked. They were probably trying to be helpful, but it came across as shaming me for my relationship to food and my body. I wish I'd known it wasn't me. That I wasn't broken and that there's a reason I felt the way I did and that there was a reason for my behaviours. That they were symptoms.

I wrote this letter to my younger self, and to anyone who needs to hear it. Swipe ⬆️

Link in bio @richelle_ludwig for more information on ECLIPSE and to apply.

What do I mean by urgency? And urgency for what? U

What do I mean by urgency? And urgency for what? Urgency is often experienced as something in you that needs to move fast. It can feel different for different people. There may be a tightening in the chest, a ragged fluttering in the stomach or a closing in the throat. The key is that it needs to MOVE fast.

This can be experienced through:
⭐The urgency to sign up for a course/program.
⭐The urgency to move to a different location.
⭐The urgency to reassure someone you set a boundary with.
⭐The urgency to lose weight.
⭐The urgency to buy something.
⭐The urgency to get out of an environment.
⭐The urgency to step on the scale.
⭐The urgency to go work out.

The thing is, unless you're in a life or death situation, there's no need for urgency with these decisions. Unless basic needs are not being met, this urgency is telling you something. This urgency is happening internally, and we often project it onto things outside of us, because we think those actions or decisions will help us feel better. As usual, this isn't conscious. It serves to actually soothe us.

The urgency behind behaviours or decisions can be used as a cue to turn towards the self and explore what you really need. You may find a younger part is present that isn't feeling worthy. You may find something current in your life, needs some attention, when you may have thought you were handling it fine.

Our intuition isn't urgent. Our wounds when activated, can be. Especially if we revert to hyperarousal. To find your truth requires working with your physiology first so that you can access presence with your inner environment; emotions and sensations. From this state we can find more clarity behind the urgency. This is a pattern that's been coming up for my clients lately, as well as myself.

P.S. There are still a couple of spots available for ECLIPSE. My 6 month group program for women who want to change their relationship with food and their body. Link in bio @richelle_ludwig for more information and to apply.

It's easy to like, or even love, our body when it

It's easy to like, or even love, our body when it fits the dominant cultures norms. Thin, white, fit, flexible, etc. I've experienced many times in my life, improved body image based on how effective my behaviours of controlling/restricting food intake and over exercising were. During those times I thought I'd made it because I felt better "in" my body. I put quotations around the word in, because I wasn't actually in my body. I was disembodied, for good reason.

Swipe for more. ⬆️⬆️⬆️

For more information on ECLIPSE and to apply see link in bio @richelle_ludwig.

I have spent a large majority of my life not feeli

I have spent a large majority of my life not feeling safe enough for authentic connection to occur. At different times I've been a loner. I felt shy and avoided connection. I'd turn down invites to attend group outings or events. The times that I was a part of a social group, I could feel something in me, that blocked the real me. I've felt shame about this in the past. I believed there was something wrong with me in the past.

Cultivating internal safety has been my biggest work. It's also been the most rewarding, as it's allowed for more intimacy with self and others. All I knew myself as before, was my coping strategies, the parts of me that tried to keep me safe and my wounds. And, at the same time I didn't know these parts intimately, let alone know the authentic self beneath these. I didn't know what an open heart felt like. I didn't know what it was like to truly be seen and appreciated for my authentic self.

None of my challenges with connection to self or other, were conscious or intentional. Those parts of me took over based on my deeper physiology. Heck, those parts can still take over at times. There's a both/and when it comes to inner safety being cultivated internally, and it being impacted by our environment. I found in the beginning, it's been important to remove myself from environments that didn't feel safe, to allow for deeper healing.

We can't actually heal when we're in an environment where we're constantly triggered or activated out of window of tolerance. We don't heal in environments that wound us. Removing ourselves actually helps us develop more resiliency. From here we have more space to cultivate internal safety. And from here, we can deepen into connection with self and other.

My intention with my group program ECLIPSE is to create enough safety, and space for repair if rupture occurs, to deepen into connection with self, and other. If you're a woman who has a challenging relationship with food and your body, and also feel disconnected from self and other, I'd love to have you join us. We start October 8th. Link in bio @richelle_ludwig for more information and to apply.

We learn to view our body and experience our body

We learn to view our body and experience our body by how the outside world perceives it. This deeply impacts our body image. This deeply impacts our connection to our body. For many of us, we also learn to make our big feelings, that we don't know how to deal with and likely didn't get support dealing with, about our body. We project our uncomfortable inner experience onto how our body looks compared to the societal ideal.

As we learn to experience our body as its perceived outside in, this adds to the bigness of our inner experience. It adds to the discomfort because the Patriarchy teaches us we'll be accepted, loved, worthy, when we're unrealistically thin, pretty, young and so on. It teaches us that we'll never measure up and so many of us get stuck chasing our worth in diets and relentless exercise regimens.

And in the process we create further and further disconnection with the body. It becomes a negative feedback loop. We feel "bad" so we try to manipulate our body to feel better, but these behaviours continue to disconnect us further, so how can we ever FEEL better? To begin to shift our body image requires experiencing our body from the inside out.

A turning towards, instead of away. We all start in a different place, impacted by so many factors. As we continue to practice turning towards and sensing within, we can start to understand what experiences bring us "good" sensations. Sensations that soothe and calm. Sensations that feel settled and open. Sensations that resource us. That help us expand our capacity and connect us to our unbreakable core.

We can't sustainably change our body image through changing our image. If that truly worked, this conversation would likely be over by now. Instead we need to change how we see our body, by experiencing it first. We can notice that just as the outer world can impact how we feel internally, how we feel internally can also impact how we see ourselves and our body.

This is something I'm supporting with in my group program ECLIPSE. We start Thursday October 8th. Link in bio @richelle_ludwig for more information and to apply. 🌌💜

You're not broken, you're hurting.

Sometimes I can't believe how far I've come. How m

Sometimes I can't believe how far I've come. How much has changed. What is actually possible. Sometimes I forget how bad things used to feel. I'm grateful for the healing and connection.

Swipe for more. ⬆️

Link in bio @richelle_ludwig for more information on ECLIPSE and to apply. We start October 8th!

This conversation came up in my group program, ECL

This conversation came up in my group program, ECLIPSE today. Sometimes on our healing journey we end up transferring the behaviour to something else. I've done this myself with many different things, including the healing journey itself.

We can approach a behaviour we think is healthy like meditation, yoga, personal development courses, etc. with the same energy that was behind the original behaviour, like binge eating for example. We can almost fool ourselves into believing that we've dealt with the issue because the original behaviour that created so many issues is no longer happening.

Beneath the surface though, our fears and wounds still steer the ship. It's more obvious when we transfer the behaviour to another behaviour that isn't healthy and causes more issues. But when we do this with a behaviour that has some benefits, we can almost end up missing what's happening.

Especially if the behaviour makes us feel good in some way, we can end up using it to avoid the root of the original behaviour that doesn't feel good. It's a sneaky little way that parts of us can continue to avoid. And hey, there's no shame in that, because often it's a way we've learned to feel a sense of certainty or safety.

If you're ready to begin working with what is beneath your behaviours with food and exercise the next round of ECLIPSE starts October 8th. Link in bio for more information and to apply.

Creative writing on loneliness. Something I've kno

Creative writing on loneliness. Something I've known well. Something that I address in my group program ECLIPSE. Swipe for more ⬆️

Click on link in bio @richelle_ludwig for more information on my 6 month group program ECLIPSE. 💜🌌

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Recent Posts

The Souls Song
To The Wounded Sensitive Ones
Returning To The Chrysalis
The Felt Sense Of Safety
Why I No Longer Believe That We Have To Love Ourselves First

This badge represents my pledge to the ethical move in service of a new marketing standard based on transparency, trust, and honesty. Please connect with me if you see me not honouring my pledge.

Land Acknowledgement

I gratefully live and work in Edmonton as a settler (reclaiming my Metis roots), which is located on Treaty 6, the traditional territory and meeting grounds of Metis and First Nations people including Cree, Assiniboine, Salteaux, Niitsitapi (Blackfoot), Nakota Sioux and Chipewyan.

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