…and for anyone who is ready to set yourself free.
An amazingly powerful homecoming even if you haven’t struggled with food and body image, yet are sensitive and empathic towards others who struggle.
When: November 1-10
Where: The Yoga Barn, Ubud, Bali
* 75 hours towards your 300-Hour Advanced Yoga Certification (Yoga Alliance)*
Schedule: (subject to change)
• 7-9:30am
• 11am-1pm
• 3-5:30pm
Price: (includes all course material and a welcome dinner)
Early Bird: $1599 – ends June 21st, 2020
Regular: $1999
* If you attend both “The Field – The Power of Presence” and “The Power of Pleasure – Yoga for Eating Disorders” the price for both trainings: $2800
Scholarship: one scholarship is available for this course. You may download the application here.
Why Yoga For Eating Disorders?
One of the greatest neuroses most of us carry is that something’s not right with us, that we aren’t enough, that we need to make changes and constantly work to improve. The kind of effort required in healing isn’t to keep trying to be something you’re not, rather it’s learning how to settle back into yourself and discover the gold you already are. The distortion that we carry is that we are broken, when in fact we’ve been whole all along. Because liberation isn’t trying to change oneself; accepting yourself exactly where you are standing is the first step to overcoming our greatest obstacle: self-doubt, thus opening the door that allows us will return to our true self.
With that said, it is important to ask ourselves several questions: What do we consider to be healthy? How do we know if we ourselves are or someone else, like a friend of family member, is healthy? How do we deal with set backs and the regression of falling into our old patterns that negatively affect our health? How do we release the others in our lives from constantly being under suspicion of still being sick or doing tricks to pass as recovered and indeed healthy?
“Before I considered myself recovered, I never came across someone else who struggled with food and who had a hard time functioning and being in their body the way I did. I was always looking for that role model. After putting myself on my first diet at the age of 9 – and then 31+ years later – after so much yoga, shamanic work, craniosacral therapy, spiritual psychology, and somatic experiences – now I can say I’m my own role model, because I’ve healed this.
Now I understand the gift of my disorder and what my body, my soul was calling out for all along. I’ve been there. Having walked through both the dark and the light paths, I know where there’s ease and a way. I know how to name what’s happening and how to hold space for you to embark on your journey towards recovery. With the map and the torch; I can lead the way out.” ~ Cat Kabira
This program comes from my heart to those who:
- Has ever struggled with food, with body image, with identity, with being seen.
- Still feel like they carry a dirty little secret or have remnants of their struggle.
- Has had a hard time being here in their body or in life in general.
- Has had a hard time grounding or relating to others.
- Struggle with dominating fears that keep us stuck in our own little prison, unsure of how to get out.
- Are serious dedicated practitioners and teachers.
- Are teachers who may not struggle with an eating disorder, but whose students do.
- Are friends / family of those with eating disorders.
- Encounter others in pain and aren’t sure what to make of it or how to safely hold space for them.
In this Yoga For Eating Disorders Training you will learn how to heal the anorectic, bulimic and overeating patterns by:
- Outlining the patterns of what anorexia, bulimia and overeating are really about.
- Gaining a deeper understanding of it energetically, emotionally, and mentally, where it can show up collectively and ancestrally.
- Getting real about our relationship with food and body and finding out what’s true for ourselves and healthiest for us.
Through both Dynamic and Subtle Movement, meditation practices, as well as multi-dimensional work with our chakras and energy field, on this 10 days Yoga For Eating Disorders journey will we embark on together will enable us to:
- Become our own witness.
- Understand our own energy field and strengthen it.
- Meet the ghosts of the trauma that we may still carry.
- Healthily feel and process our emotional body in a way without going into overwhelm.
- Handle life: gain inner-stability; learn how to ride our waves; how to meet ourselves when new tension, change, pain, trauma arises. Instead of destroying or minimizing ourselves, we will gain the skills and courage necessary to meet ourselves and meet life.
- Understand our relationship to food, how we may restrict our own life force and power.
- Discover how our emotions influence our digestion.
- Understand our relationship to pleasure and how we sense it in our own body.
- Receive pleasure in our own life and clarify why pleasure is so essential.
- Discover ways we leave our body, how to bring awareness to it, and ultimately how to come back home to ourselves.
- Discover other ways we escape or leave and what it means to stay.
- Recognize the power of anger and destruction and how to respect our Kali nature.
- Bring our badass wild self back to life.
- Strengthen the connection between our personal power and our voice, in order to speak directly with empowered confidence.
- Harness the power of nurturing.
Asana, Movement, Meditation and Energy Practices:
Daily movement practices in both dynamic and subtle forms, some in the more typical movement patterns, while much will be outside of conventional asana, are designed to make new connections and pathways in our body and field, expand our inner horizon and connect us more deeply to our inner truth.
Meditation practices will bring us in and firmly ground. Here we will gain an understanding of what it means to be truly grounded.
These and other practices will work directly on our chakras, especially the 1st-5th, in order to strengthen our field, bring love to our wounds and create a healthy flow through our system physically, mentally, and emotionally.
You will Grow as a Teacher by Learning:
- How to hold space (in general) for someone in a supportive, safe, and neutral way
- How to healthily hold space (specifically) for those struggling with eating disorders, so they can find their way through it.
- What are boundaries and how to honor them both internally and externally – getting real about what you can take on and what’s not yours.
- Various practices that are supportive for your students
This training includes fundamentals in working with the energy body and is strongly recommended if you have interest in taking “The Field” – Power of Presence training.
Why pleasure? Why is it so healing?
As someone who was struggling with anorexia, bulimia, and overeating, I didn’t know what pleasure was, even denied myself pleasure in food, in life, in fun, and in relationships. Scared of pleasure, I only knew the pleasure that somehow had negative consequences. It was like I wasn’t allowed to have pleasure.
The game-changer I discovered is that pleasure (or we could call it delight), is what makes me ground, pleasure is what makes me want to be here; that what gives me pleasure is uniquely my own – and I get to keep discovering what that is for me and you get to discover yours for you.
Now I build my life around pleasure. And I’m not talking epic Instagram moments; I’m talking the small things that catch me: the simple things like good smells or how much I love what I do. There is so much pleasure in simply being.
We can spend all this time “working on ourselves” and what if there was nothing to work on? What if we just need to come home to our self? In these 10 days you will get to discover what pleasure actually means for you. That it’s even there when things fall apart. That it’s a power that holds you and carries you and it’s the magic you build your life on. It’s what you say yes to, from the light of your soul.
The Inspiration for this Yoga for Eating Disorders Training:
I started meditation and yoga when I was 18 as a way to heal from my anorexia and bulimia and for the first couple of years I found some true breakthroughs. Having tried so many other practices from shamanic work, craniosacral therapy, spiritual psychology, somatic experiencing, to name a few, I found practices that worked and practices that didn’t work. However I found myself, despite all my practices, still regressing in both behaviors and never finding a way through, I started to understand my behavior behind the scenes and what my anorexia, bulimia, and overeating was really about.
In fact I found that the more trainings I’d take, sometimes my eating disorder would get even stronger. I felt desperate and fearful that I would be dominated by my relationship with food and body image, that it was my dirty little secret that affected my relationship with others and myself. Not to mention what it was doing to my health – not that at the time this mattered to me.
It never felt safe to be with myself.
I feared that I was somehow a fraud as a teacher, questioning: how was I actually in my power?
I am not a psychologist. I’m someone who’s trained extensively in yoga and the healing arts. Someone once called me a shaman – and their definition is “someone who’s been dismembered and put their selves back together.”
Yes! That’s me.
As someone who has recovered from eating disorders, I know firsthand:
- the fear that dominates;
- the struggle that seems to never end;
- navigating the desire to heal along with the fear of: who am I if I am healed?
- the fear of control;
- the fear of my own power and intimacy with others;
- how overwhelming it can even get to be intimate with one self;
- what it’s like to finally trust.
I created this Yoga For Eating Disorders Training because I know what we first choose to use as freedom can end up being just another prison. I found that my spiritual practices went from something that seemed to open up a new world yet those possibilities also turned into a restrictive way I had to be. We are so skilful, in how our past or current history as gymnasts, dancers, overachievers and perfectionists can still keep us rigid. That old pain and trauma, especially sexual trauma, can echo in our system; we want to get it out yet we don’t know how. While sometimes there seems to be a greater force that controls us, it’s time to find the force within us that can set us free.
So if you’re ready for your freedom, if you’re ready for your power and if you’re ready to live life – join this Yoga for Eating Disorders Training: 10 days. 7 hours/day; a commitment that will open up the world to you in a more expansive way and you get to come home to yourself again.
Note: for anyone deeply in the throes of an eating disorder we recommend that you also work one-on-one with a therapist to create deeper stability for yourself before joining us.
* If you attend both “The Field – The Power of Presence” and “The Power of Pleasure – Yoga for Eating Disorders” the price for both trainings: $2800
About the Venue: The Yoga Barn
