Reconnecting with your body: what embodiment means in eating disorder recovery
If you're navigating an eating disorder, there's a good chance your body doesn't feel like a particularly safe or comfortable place to be. It might feel like something to manage, control, escape, or fix rather than somewhere you actually live. This is one of the quieter, less-discussed parts of recovery: not just changing behaviours around food, but slowly rebuilding a relationship with the body itself. In psychology, this is often called embodiment. A concept that's become increasingly central to how eating disorder treatment is understood
It's not about "loving your body"
To begin, I want to be clear about what embodiment is not, because I think this is where a lot of confusion creeps in. It isn't the same as body positivity, and it isn't about forcing yourself to feel good about how your body looks. For many people in recovery, that kind of instruction can feel not only unrealistic but quietly invalidating, as if the goal is to skip straight to admiration without acknowledging how difficult even neutrality can be.
Embodiment is something more gradual and more grounded than that. It's about learning to notice what's actually happening inside you - hunger, fullness, tension, ease, tiredness - and responding to those signals with curiosity rather than criticism. It's about slowly shifting your relationship with your body from one of conflict or disconnection toward something steadier: not necessarily love, but safety, and eventually, trust.
Where this idea comes from
Much of my own thinking here draws on the work of Professor Catherine Cook-Cottone, a psychologist and researcher whose model of embodied self-regulation has contributed to contemporary eating disorder treatment. Her framework describes wellbeing as depending on attunement - to your thoughts, your emotions, your body sensations - while staying connected to the people, community, and culture around you.
From this perspective, eating disorder symptoms can be understood, at least in part, as a disruption in that attunement. When the body has come to feel unsafe, overwhelming, or untrustworthy, it becomes much harder to recognise your own needs, regulate difficult emotions, or experience your body as something that supports you rather than threatens you. Restriction, bingeing, purging, or rigid rules can all function, in different ways, as attempts to manage a body that no longer feels like a safe place to be.
It's also worth noting that this disconnection doesn't always begin with the individual. Drawing on the work of Dr Niva Piran, whose research followed girls' and women's body experiences across development, we know that a person's relationship with their body is also shaped by broader social and cultural experiences over time, including safety, freedom of movement, and the messages absorbed about how bodies should look or behave. If your body has never felt fully your own, that's not a personal failing. It's often the product of years of experience, not a flaw in how you relate to yourself.
What this looks like in practice
Rebuilding embodiment isn't a single conversation or a single technique. It tends to be gradual, layered work. In sessions, this might involve:
Slowing down enough to notice physical sensations without immediately judging or acting on them
Practices that support nervous system regulation - grounding, centring, breathwork, gentle mindful movement
Building tolerance for uncomfortable sensations, rather than needing to eliminate them
Understanding your body's signals (hunger, fullness, fatigue, emotion) as information, not evidence of failure
This is part of why I completed additional training in trauma-informed and embodiment-focused approaches, including yoga-based and somatic techniques, alongside traditional talk-based therapy. For many people, especially those where trauma is also part of the picture, working with the body directly, not just talking about the body, is what makes the difference.
Why this can still feel difficult
None of this is neutral work, and it rarely happens quickly. For a long time, your eating disorder may have been managing exactly the sensations and feelings that embodiment work asks you to slow down and notice: hunger, fullness, fatigue, grief, fear, disgust. Tuning back in can bring those feelings closer, not further away, at least at first. That's not a sign that something has gone wrong or that this approach isn't right for you. It's often part of why disconnection developed in the first place, and part of why rebuilding trust in your body takes real time, care, and support, rather than insight alone.
A different question to ask
If there's one shift I'd want anyone reading this to take away, it's this: instead of asking "how do I stop my body being a problem?", the more useful question is often "how do I begin relating to my body as a place of awareness, care, and recovery?". That's a slow question, not a quick one. But it's one worth asking, even before you feel ready to answer it.
To learn more about embodiment and eating disorders, I recommend Dr Catherine Cook-Cottone’s book, Embodiment and the Treatment of Eating Disorders: The Body as a Resource in Recovery (2020).
If you'd like to explore what this looks like in your own recovery, you're welcome to get in touch — you can read more about my approach to eating disorder and trauma therapy here.