RADIANCE: Emotional Eating and Befriending Yourself with Marla Mervis-Hartmann

Join us in this illuminating episode of Radiance as we interview Marla Mervis Hartman, the creator of 'Love Your Body, Love Yourself.' 

Marla shares her personal journey of overcoming disordered eating and negative body image through the transformative power of Reiki and radical self-compassion. 

Learn how she helps women cultivate deep body appreciation, nourish their lifestyles, and build confidence. 

Discover practical Reiki techniques to address emotional eating, enhance self-love, and create lasting change in your relationship with food and body. 

Don't miss Marla's insights on body neutrality, gratitude, and creating a supportive community. Subscribe for more empowering conversations on women's health and well-being!

00:00 Realizing the Root of the Issue
01:17 Introduction to Marla Mervis Hartman
02:55 Marla's Journey with Reiki
05:52 The Power of Self-Compassion
08:18 Befriending Yourself
12:44 Reiki and Emotional Eating
19:22 Healing Body Image with Reiki
25:16 Embracing Body Neutrality and Sensuality
26:30 Understanding the 2D Perception of Ourselves
27:53 Cravings, Compulsions, and the Role of Reiki
29:20 Trusting Ourselves and Overcoming Fear
33:29 The Healing Power of Gratitude and Meditation
38:33 Connecting with Our Bodies Through Reiki
43:12 The Journey from Pain to Pleasure
46:57 Final Thoughts and Resources

Guest:
Marla Mervis-Hartmann: https://www.loveyourbodyloveyourself.com/

Hosts:
Bronwen Logan: https://ReikiwithBronwen.com
Carrie Varela: https://www.reikihealingsociety.com
Michaela Daystar: http://HeartscapesInsight.com

We now have our own email! reikiwomenpodcasts@gmail.com
Our own RWP FB Group discussion: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1564135767437136

Transcript

Speaker 12 0:03

it came to a point where I realized that my issues didn't have anything to do with food and my body. That it actually was, it was coming from a wound. It was coming from a place of how I dealt with my life. food is so intimate. It is so intimate and the only person that can enjoy the food that I'm going to put in my mouth is me. reiki it opens up our capacity to hold more love, to hold more pleasure, right? Because people say they want something, but they don't, they don't know actually how to hold it.

Speaker 14 1:17

Hello, friends. Welcome back to Radiance. Today, we have the wonderful joy of interviewing Marla Mervis Hartman. She is the creator of Love Your Body, Love Yourself, and she helps women access a deep and abiding love for their body. After experiencing years of dysfunction in relationship to food, exercise, and body confidence, Marla transformed her life through radical acts of self compassion and befriending herself. She has since used her experiences to help empower women as they choose appreciation for their bodies, honor themselves through nourishing lifestyle choices, and to cultivate confidence along the way. So thank you so much, Marla, for being here today.

Speaker 12 2:05

Thank you for having me. This is a potent group of people.

Speaker 14 2:10

Well, we're so excited to have you here. Um, and yeah, I'd love to just hear more about your story. I know you have a book coming up. Um, but I love the way that you weave Reiki into your work and, um, you know, at the heart of Reiki is about remembering our true self, you know, giving ourselves a whole system of practices to help find our true self. And this feels so connected to your work, um, so much so that you've recently written a book on the subject. So can you share with us how Reiki can be utilized to address underlying emotions and patterns associated with emotional eating? And to empower folks around their self love and self confidence.

Speaker 12 2:55

So I guess I'll start by sharing just a little bit of my story, um, about how I found Reiki. Because it, you know, I, let me put it this way, Reiki found me, right? I think Reiki does that. And so I was very much struggling with a lot of overeating, undereating, so much disordered eating, so much negative body image. And it came to a point, and you can read my book, Befriend Yourself, or watch my TEDx talk to get into it. But it came to a point where I realized that my issues didn't have anything to do with food and my body. That it actually was, it was coming from a wound. It was coming from a place of how I dealt with my life. Was by using food in some way, either restricting it or dieting or overeating. I didn't have the coping mechanisms that I needed. So, I dove into a lot of study on how I could heal my relationship with my body and my food. So, I'm at it, I'm at an eating disorder recovery group. And this woman is sitting there, she has one hand on her heart, one hand on her belly, and she's just like loving herself. And I was like What does she think she's doing? Just loving herself blatantly in public. Right? And of course I wanted what she had. But it was one of those moments where it's like, you're, you're, you're, you're just so activated. I was so activated. So afterwards I asked her, what were you doing? And she said, I was giving myself Reiki. And she led me to my first Reiki circle. And that was the center of living light, which I became a Reiki master in 25 years ago. Oh, I started with, that was probably just about 25 years ago that I went to my first Reiki circle. And so here I am at this, at this point in my life of a lot of darkness, and I went to a lot of recovery meetings. However, Reiki came in at that point and began to guide me, began to give me the light that I needed. So, as we know, Reiki is not just a hands on practice, it's a spiritual practice. And so, I got to feel and notice, oh, I was so out of alignment with love. I was so out of alignment with loving myself and how I was hurting myself with food. I would begin to notice. through the study of Reiki, how I was saying really, really mean things to myself. So I'd be in this state of love. And then all of a sudden it was, it was like the contrast because of the Reiki was so big that I was like, I was aware that All these things that I needed to change and shift. No, the thing for me was that I was always on a path of self growth. I grew up in the church. I was very like eager to find God. However, my journey came from I'm broken. There's something wrong with me. I need to fix myself. And through Reiki, what I found was I feel like I could cry just this experience of like so much love, like that I want to shift. I want to change because, because life loves me because I want to be a good person. Not because I have the whip out and I'm only allowed to love myself after I've fixed this thing, whatever that thing was at that moment. And so a lot of people kind of wonder, and it's great to talk with other Reiki, Reiki people and to be in this conversation about emotional eating and, um, disordered eating the whole thing in this Reiki context, because I think that you'll understand more, right? Because for some people that are just like, well, what is Reiki? I don't understand how that connects and just the amount of connection that I found to love through Reiki. so much. You get to change everything. Yeah. Well,

Speaker 6 7:15

Marla, that was really powerful. I, I can relate to it on so many levels, just, um, you know, from how I feel about food and even not just food for myself, but this idea of providing food to others as a way of creating a self for me. Making food the thing that's important rather than the actual relationships between people. You know what I mean? Oh, I do. That's just me and food is such an interesting subject. And I loved how you talked about the darkness that, you felt and that bringing light into that darkness is, such a beautiful way of, of describing how when we start working with the system of Reiki that we start to, accept ourselves a bit more, start to open the chinks a bit more and, yeah, it is really that acceptance of healing. That comes through that can be so powerful. I love it. Thank you. I did want to ask you a little bit about this concept and, it comes from all those things. You talk about befriending yourself. I mean, I get the word, but what does it mean? Right. Yes. Thank

Speaker 12 8:26

you. So when I wrote, when I was, when I was writing my book, which is be friend yourself. So it's in the being it's in, it's in the energy of friendship. So I, I was born into a family with two sisters and a mom and a dad, but my, my, my sisters and I are so close. I have so many amazing friends all around me, and yet I was not a good friend to myself. And I think when we think about this idea of self love, and it's that topic is kind of thrown around a lot, just love yourself, self love, I don't know, you know, and it's like this pretty meme and it's like, what does that actually mean? And how do we actually do that? And so the idea of befriending yourself or becoming your own best friend gives us this context of like, okay, well. I know how my best friend treats me and sometimes it's like, well, I, I like some of the things they do, right? I wish they did a little more of that or wow, they show up for me so beautifully. They prioritize me. They know me so well. They don't, you know, that tough love or they, they don't let me get away with things that aren't really actually true. And so when we think about that, how can we do that for ourselves? How can we slow down and become our own best friend? And for me, that's what makes this idea of self love more like of a tangible act. And so if we take that into relationship with our food and our body, we're not going to talk mean about ourselves. We're not going to look in the mirror and be talking smack, right? Best friends not going to allow that, right? We're going to show up with self care. And we're going to prioritize our health. And then when things aren't the way we think they're supposed to be perfect. What does the best friend do? They come up and they show compassion, right? So our food isn't perfect. We did it wrong. Oh, here we are again. Emotionally eating are just binged. I thought it was over that, uh, a friend really has so much compassion for us. So that's the idea is to, to actually have something tangible we can work with in these moments where. It can feel so overwhelming or stressful or even in the moment where it's like, Oh, what do I do here? Oh, what would my best friend do? How can I do that for myself?

Speaker 13 11:09

I love, um, kind of hearing, uh, whispers of the Reiki precepts coming through how you're describing this process of befriending yourself. And, you know, particularly, of course, compassion and self compassion and the way I love this idea of thinking about the question of how would my best friend. relate to me in this situation, right? Because sometimes it can be challenging and I I work with this with students, um, often, you know, the, the invitation to hold compassion for ourselves that the precept, the fifth precept begins with, and then expand that compassion to others. Sometimes that direction can be challenging, right? Sometimes people say it's much easier for me to be compassionate for other people than it is for me to be compassionate with myself. And so then we get to work with that, right? Like how does sharing compassion for someone else, like open up compassion for ourself? As opposed to going into a codependent place, for example, and so I'm, I'm loving this, the way that this metaphor kind of allows us to leverage that, right? If I'm having compassion for my best friend, you know, what would that look like? And then can I share that with myself? I love that and of course, you know, if we're talking about, uh, you know, having a disordered relationship with food, there's so many emotions and patterns of emotional response that are. Related to an underlining, uh, a disordered relationship with food of any kind, uh, at any scale and, you know, then, of course. Self love and having confidence in ourselves get completely undermined by being in this, this pattern of, of self soothing through the disordered eating. And so I'm really curious about ways that you in your own life and with people you work with have applied Reiki specifically with particular practices within Reiki. I'd love to hear more about how you relate to the precepts in that. To really begin to address these underlying patterns of emotional dysregulation that are related to disordered eating.

Speaker 12 13:06

So when people, thank you for the question, beautiful question. So when people come to me and they're emotionally eating, they want to fix, they want to fix the food. They want to stop the behavior and it doesn't work that way. Now, we can do some practical things and we can look at what is kind of the way the things that they're doing with food. We can get some insight on. However, what we, what needs to be done is we need to look at why the emotional eating is happening. Why the disordered eating happened? Why is a negative body image here? And one of the things That I'm that is my expertise and I think it is through the energy of Reiki is that I can feel and sense the wound. It's like I, I can name it. I can tap into it. I'm like, there it is. And it is from that place of naming it and being with it, that it, it, it takes it out of the concept of the food. And now we're on a whole other journey over here. We're looking at how, how this wounding is now somehow connected to the food or to these behaviors. Now, that's one way, right? So then if you look at that and each of you are, you know, working with people and in your own way and, and using Reiki to help them to heal these parts of themselves. So a lot of people will come to me for this issue and then they want to learn Reiki because they're like, Oh my gosh, it feels so good. Wow. I want to do this on myself. And so it's really about empowering them to realize that although they may have this wound, they're not in the victim. They're not a victim to these behaviors. They actually can be empowered and I feel like Reiki, the system of Reiki is so empowering. It allows us to see that we have a part in this and we can begin to shift the more that we're in this energy of Reiki. So through Reiki, I can hold a space for people that they can come, even if we're not doing Reiki, it is this energy of unconditional love. It's this energy of non judgmental space that allows people to feel safe. And I think that is what's so amazing about Reiki, is that even if we're not doing it, we're still, we are it. And people have that opportunity to get a transmission just from the presence of us holding that now to go into some more of the practical ways that Reiki is used within the emotional eating and disordered eating. It's really creating the practice of. So if we talk about that wound, it's like, okay, let's go in and let's just hold the let's let's let's Reiki back. Well, let's bring that Reiki. Let's let's bring love in. The what is actually wanted is love, right? That wounding that what what happens is, is the wound happens and then somehow food gets in there, right? And so we need to now allow food to have its rightful place and bring in this unconditional love that is actually what is so deeply wanted on such a poor level. And so that's an opportunity to really slow everything down. And to begin to allow the Reiki to work. Now we can also slow down, Reiki our food, Reiki ourselves. I like to use, you know, this idea of, some people I'll be like, well, we need to connect to yourself. We need to connect to your intuition. We want to be more intuitive about how we eat. People are like, I have no idea what that even means, what that even looks like. And what that can look like is literally calling in the energy of Reiki. And allowing us not have to figure it out from the place of the mind from the will but tapping in through the system of Reiki to allow us to receive information that says, you know, I'm really working for me and you even care. I don't even want it. I mean those like those moments and feel like miracles for people who are dealing with disordered eating right like those moments are like. Right, and so it is. It's allowing the Reiki to be that buffer and what I found for myself, because when I found Reiki, I mean, I was just like running around shaking with my head cut off, right? I was in New York City. I was just like, and so I would use food as a way to ground myself. So having Reiki gave me literally another way to cope with stress. And so, yeah, a whole plethora of things I could go on and on and on. I'll slow down there.

Speaker 13 18:21

Yeah, yeah, no, those are really, um, I love the parallels that you're drawing between knowing ourselves, being grounded, and being compassionate. Those being central elements of the system of Reiki and of healing from this.

Speaker 14 18:37

I just love how Reiki has that power to really like get to the root issue and then like bring it more to that surface level awareness and I love that that's kind of the capacity you've developed over working with people for a long period of time specifically around this issue and it's just like it feels so hard to have an eating. Disorder eating struggles with eating because it's like you can't just not eat, you know I mean, I see a lot of parallels between eating disorders and addictions But like with addiction recovery like you can literally avoid it, you know If you get to that place, you can just abstain and you know find sobriety but like with food It's like you have to eat right? So I'm curious if we could talk a little bit about How, like how healing your body image, like how, how when you, you know, there's like that interrelationship between food and body image, how have you seen that you can shift your relationship with your body image and how can you create more self acceptance and body positivity, uh, you know, through your work and obviously Reiki specifically.

Speaker 12 19:54

So that was, that was my thing. Right. Like, so I think the, the negative body image was what made me not made me what, what had me go into the food stuff. So for me, and, and let me just say, I was born into a body that was thin and strong and healthy and not someone that you would think, wow, she doesn't like her body. What? And so this idea of negative body image, we can look around us and we can begin to judge and think, Oh, that person must love their body. Oh, that person probably had doesn't like their body. And that's not the case. And that's one of the things I've learned through being in this journey is that we're all in a body. And we all can have struggles and we all can have opinions and judgments about our body, and we're all in this together. Right. And that can bring a big sense of compassion, because a lot of people who myself included who had so much negative body image, like there's this comparison. Like constantly comparing myself to others. Am I safe? What are they eating? Oh my gosh, my arms are bigger than that. Like, I don't even know. Like looking in the mirror and, and that constant critical voice, that constant, am I safe? Am I thin enough to be safe? Can I relax? And then when I would lose weight. Then it was, oh my gosh, how do I, how, how can I keep this? So there was never safety. There was never, there was never a weight that was safe. And so for me, healing my relationship with my body, getting to a point, and I talk about body confidence, but we really want to talk about body neutrality. That the body is just, it's just a vehicle. And I think that in this world where a thin privilege and, um, diet culture is so loud and, and, and how we're all speaking the language of diet culture and beginning to call ourselves out and realize that some of the things that we're saying are actually not serving the highest good. And I see mainly this deals with women. If this is, you know, this is for all gender is that the things that we're saying are perpetuating this, so some of it is really, it's about, it's about, it's unlearning. So when I first came to Reiki, and I realized that we did a whole thing in, in my Reiki one about learning how to use our language to be a positive force. And the words that we're using and the things that we're saying that are not actually in alignment. And I think it's the same thing with negative body image. And so I had to be really aware of the things that I was saying to myself. And this is the thing. When I talk about self talk, we can't go from, I hate myself, I'm disgusting. To that point that we want to, that we learned about and we have these moments with, with Reiki where it's like, Oh my gosh, my God, it doesn't matter. I love myself, right? But in the moments of life happening, there are these, these moments, and there are these voices inside that get so loud. And I have done so much to shut those voices up. Just shut. up, just leave me alone. Right? Those voices. And, and this is the thing with Reiki is it's like, no, this voice, this, this part of me that is loud right now, this part of me wants love. And that's what I've learned within, within this system of Reiki. So after I was in my recovery and quite far along, I still had a critical voice. So, I'm at a Reiki circle. I'm leading this Reiki circle and teaching about being non judgmental and loving yourself and doing all the things, right? And I look in the mirror and I'm like, ew. Oh, gosh, is that what I look like? I can't believe and then the voices start coming, right? And, and then, and now the shame comes in. Oh my gosh, I'm an imposter. I can't believe I'm, I'm talking to myself like this. I should know better and all these things. And then that's when I, it hit me. It's like, no, these are still the parts of me. That need the Reiki. They're here to be loved right now. They're here because these are, these, they're still here. I'm human. I'm in a body. And I, and these parts need love. And when I really let that go, and I allow the Reiki to love that, and allow myself to be imperfectly, perfectly imperfect, right? Um, it began to get myself into this space where my body didn't matter as much. Well, I would like to share one little piece around this. I learned that when I, when I got myself out of so much pain and was able to tap into the energy of pleasure, and I was a, my body became a vehicle for pleasure. I got to realize that it didn't matter what my body looked like, it mattered how I felt and how I allowed myself to be in my senses and to see and to feel and to experience. Because I think we're walking around and we think we're 2D, but we are sensual beings and Reiki allowed me to feel myself more and get in touch with life. And from that space, it's like, I can look at a sunset and enjoy it. It doesn't matter if I'm 10 pounds lighter or 10 pounds heavier. It's like the bliss of life.

Speaker 6 26:27

Yeah, it's really such interesting stuff, Marla. So, talking about this idea of body neutrality, it's such a great way of seeing it. And, when you said 2D, I thought that's so true. We just did a podcast about living with our bodies and, uh, I was saying about how when I'd see a photo of myself, and this is really interesting because that is the 2d world that you're talking about. So whenever we look into a mirror, we don't see this living, loving being we see, possibly we see a photograph, especially these days. Everything is taking images of things, right? Even right now, we are, I don't know, when we're moving, are we still 2D? I'm not sure, but you know, it is still that, that, that thing that we're just seeing this, snapshot, snapshot, snapshot, and it's always physical, and we don't see anything else. That's just such an interesting observation. And you seeing yourself in the mirror at the practice group, I think that I can relate to all of that when you're shopping and you see yourself in the windows, in the shops, once again, it's like little snapshots of yourself. Always seeing these snapshots of yourself and that making up your life and how you can possibly see yourself without seeing any depth beneath that. It's just a really interesting, thought. So how do we, work with this? I know you've given certain ideas here, if we look at the whole diet thing and how we are always looking at what our body looks like and making us work in different ways and have cravings and compulsions, how do we, with the system of Reiki, how do we actually start to shift that?

Speaker 12 28:15

Yeah. So if we're talking about cravings and compulsions, talk about that. Let's let's. Let's look at that a little bit deeper and kind of touch on what I said before because we're wanting to get to have a more intimate relationship. So food is so intimate. It is so intimate and the only person that can enjoy the food that I'm going to put in my mouth is me. And so it's I may be sitting across from you having dinner, but I'm the only one that has that experience. And so a lot of people will say, I'll say them, you know, well, I want you to live, tune into your body and tune into what your body wants. And the first thing that they'll say is, well, if I, if I listened to my body. My body's going to tell me to eat this sugar, this thing, eat too much, lie on the couch and do nothing. And so, to look at, I'll give you an example in my life. So, I used negative body image as a way to keep my diet going. I thought that if I accepted myself, that I was going to let everything go. I thought I was going to stop. Um, being so careful about my food, which I actually did do that, but stop the control I was gonna not exercise. And essentially my big fear, which is what the fear is for most people is I'm going to gain weight. I'm going to get fat is the term that used to be a bad term and now it's just another adjective. Um, I'm going to get fat, but what did that, what does that mean? That that meant for me and for a lot of people and for a lot of my clients, that means I'm not going to be long. I'm not gonna be loved. And so what we have to turn around and look at is what that inner belief is keeping us into controlling our environment. And so I had to learn, and it didn't happen. It didn't happen like this. It didn't happen. I had. I had a moment where the voice, which I call God came in and said, just let go, Marla. I was on my knees. I'm like, please, I just can't do this anymore. And God said, I gotcha. I got your food and I got your body. And I said, I can't turn that over to you. I don't, I don't trust that, that I'm not going to have my worst fear come in, which was I'm going to gain weight and I'm not going to be loved. So I know this is kind of a long story, but I'm getting to the point. And so. There is this process that sometimes takes some time where we have to learn how to trust ourselves. Okay, I trust myself for today that I can listen to my body. I trust that today I can tune in and I can allow myself to. Okay, I can eat this food and I can not, I can not over exercise over it. And then I'm trusting. And I'm allowing Reiki to hold this for me. And then the next day, I'm going into control because I just don't have any trust. And then time and time and time of trusting and controlling and testing and controlling, we get to come to this point where we understand that we can actually listen to our bodies and the cravings start to, to go away. And the compulsions go away. And so for people to say that they are going to, you know, I've seen a lot of coaches like, you know, you're binge eating and, and, you know, we eat this weekend, you know, it doesn't work that way. I used to call my, my business healing at the speed of love, because that's what it is. We're healing from a place of what love can hold for us. And so when we think about these cravings, We're, we're looking at what is the voice underneath the craving to come circle back to that. What is the actual authentic voice? Now we have a craving that says, I need that

Speaker 17 32:49

thing.

Speaker 12 32:50

But that's not actually the voice of the best friend. The voice voice of the best friend is saying, Do you really? Do you really? And that's how we begin to unwind these cravings. how to help us unwind these compulsions. So that. So if you have any more specific questions about that, cause I feel like I kind of shared it. Kind of an esoteric abstracted. Yeah.

Speaker 6 33:22

Well, I guess just, if I'm thinking about that. And, you're looking for that, the deeper meaning beneath, this voice. Yes. Which you so beautifully did just then, if I'm looking at the system of Reiki Michaela mentioned the precepts for me, always the precepts are sort of like the point of it all, aren't they? That's what we're trying to live in this state of wellbeing. You called it earlier, a state of pleasure, where everything is, is in harmony and we can respond beautifully in the moment to everything that exists. Yeah. And, respond authentically to that. To be in those Reiki precepts, what do we work with? I'm thinking like meditations, for example, might be beneficial because it gives us that space where, when you talk about the voices and, when we are in that space, we hear those voices and we become more aware of what's actually happening, because how can we have a best friend If we're not even aware of the best friend or that there could be a best friend,

Speaker 12 34:22

absolutely. It's so beautiful. And I, so we talked about before about separating the feelings from the food. And I think that that meditation actually gives us the space to do that in. So the, I would have this compulsion in me that would come, would be the, the action would be compulsively overeating or just compulsively eating. And what I did with that and what I recommend with my clients is don't wait for that to come up near your food. You create some time before you go to bed, you sit and you Allow that part of you to show up, and you be with that, and you love that, and you listen. What's here? What is this compulsion about? And, and lots of times it's, it's, it's, it's a lot of just anxiety. And something that needs to just be sat with, and rakied, and loved on, and it, it will, it will, um, unwind or disperse. And sometimes it has a story there that wants to be heard and wants to be listened to. So the idea of meditation, meeting these places, places is so important. And when we talk even more about the precepts, when we talk about this idea of gratitude that the, that the precepts give us, it's, it's the idea of not. Of allowing ourselves to be so in a allowing ourself to be in this high vibration of gratitude because I think when we're in a place where we're using food or in a space of negative body image, we can really bring our we just spiral. And so the energy of gratitude is, is something that we can experiment and play with because it's not just like a nice idea. It actually works really does. Especially with our bodies.

Speaker 6 36:31

Can you just give me an example of some ways of, uh, understanding that gratitude or no, not understanding, but expressing that gratitude. So what, what are some of the techniques that you might use with people of how to express gratitude?

Speaker 12 36:49

So for me, when I'm doing any sort of, um, workshop or anything around gratitude, which I'd love to do lots of times, it's like, okay, let's just tap into what we're grateful for. Right? Like what is who's that person? It's like, oh, oh, gosh, I love them. No matter what they do. They're, they're just amazing and grateful for things that have happened in our lives. And we just allowed our mind to pick these, these things. And now that it's here and the gratitude's here. Now we begin to build on that. And now we begin to, okay, let's meditate into that. Oh, let's allow that feeling of gratitude to, you know, even like turn it into color and allow it to fill your head and bring a smile to your face. And, you know, think about, I do a lot of body love Reiki circles, um, in an eating disorder recovery center, and we'll call in gratitude and we'll use our hands to bring in gratitude for the different parts of our body that, that we, that we love. And then we'll put it to the parts of our body where we're not very nice, but we want to show some gratitude. And what I see with those, with that group at, at this eating disorder recovery center is it's so beautiful because the combination of where the light is and where they, where they've cut themselves off and allowing that energy of gratitude to come in is so powerful. And it's reminding me of something. That I'd love to share with you. So what happens for people when it comes to negative body image? Is it and I, I did a whole thing on this and it was all about the belly and it was all about the system of Reiki and loving our belly. And as women, a lot of women, they do, they, they, they feel themselves to about here, but then they don't like their belly. So they cover their belly. They completely disconnect from their belly. They say mean things to their belly. And it's not in the flow of who they are. So you can say the belly, you could say, for me, it was my arms. Like, you can say whatever it, whatever part of your body it is. So if we're looking at energy, and we're looking at, it's like, okay, so the energy flows through, but love flows through, but it only flows to here. But then, and then it jumps over the belly, right? But it doesn't deserve it. And it's not, it's bad. It's not good enough. It's not right. And so what I will teach people and share is that I just want you to make contact and you slow down and put your hands on your belly and connect. Just bring some connection here. And then the next thing could be, let's bring a little love here. And often there is a lot of sadness or energy there, and then we'll talk to the belly. What is it saying? Maybe you have some, maybe you have some, some apologies to make to your belly. Maybe the belly has something to say to you. So it's on an energy, on an energy flow. When chakras and say it is bad and wrong. It's just not a good, it's just not a good idea, right? We're not allowing ourselves to love ourselves and to be the fullness of who we are.

Speaker 13 40:42

That's such a powerful example of applying something very simple. And you'd said earlier that some of these ideas can seem kind of. Surface level, fluffy, memed, you know, like things that can be easy to just like toss around and not really take seriously, but like they got to that point of being commonplace because they're both simple and incredibly effective. And then you also mentioned earlier, like, you know, being in this, oh, maybe that was too esoteric. Something you said, well, you love on this podcast to go into the esoteric and then like, but what does that have to do with our daily life? Like, let's bring that and I wanted to tease out a little bit of what you said, kind of in that context, I really appreciated you bringing up this fallacy that kind of diet culture gives us that we have to be really hard on ourselves and we have to maybe actively dislike parts of ourselves in order to motivate ourselves to do something about it, to make change as opposed to this idea that so much. That lasting change, sustainable change actually comes out of loving self regard and comes out of acceptance. This, this fallacy that acceptance, self-acceptance and self-love cannot exist in the same body and the same being as discipline and, you know, being, um, you know, careful and, and like moderate in how we engage in pleasure. And then similarly, you brought up pleasure. I love that you brought that in. This idea that if we indulge in pleasure, like the pleasure of eating, then we're, uh, we can't also be disciplined and moderate. And the system of Reiki coming out of, you know, Buddhist origins gives us this beautiful esoteric concept that when we really think about it, how does this apply to our lives? It becomes very powerful, which is the idea of non duality. The idea that we can love ourselves and accept ourselves exactly as we are right now. And out of that loving self regard, step into dramatic change in our life, and that that's a more lasting change than one that comes from beating ourselves up and being unkind to ourselves, because how much energy does it take to keep that up, right? To keep up that drill sergeant of like, you're no good, you're worthless, you got to keep working, you know, like that drill sergeant energy is takes so much. out of us, right? And so I love this idea of bringing in pleasure and bringing in kindness and, and self regard as the mechanism for making change in our life, instead of this idea that it's somehow going to keep us stuck. And again, if we look to the system of Reiki, we can look at grounding and working with the first diamond in the belly as, as such an important place of grounding our engagement with pleasure. But the trick is, as you were just speaking, we have to be able to put our attention there. We have to be able to come inside and be in the first diamond, in the hara, in the belly, in order to achieve that sense of grounding, that sense of well being and stability and nourishment that comes from being in that first diamond energy. And that can be so challenging when we're in this habitual pattern of Drill Sargenting our belly, you know, I work with that a lot, you know, when I'm trying to teach people to be in their first diamond and so I really appreciate you talking about the way we can be gentle with that and we can bring in gratitude and we can bring in the precepts and community and friendship around, you know, being able and willing to be uncomfortable by looking at those things. Right. And again, a dualistic perspective would say you're either comfortable and pleasurable or you're uncomfortable and in pain. And we certainly don't want this one. So we're not going to look at any of that instead, in order to be in pleasure and acceptance and love and joy, we have to also be willing to kind of get uncomfortable and, and being in that recognition of how we've cut ourselves off from certain parts of ourselves. Uh, is so uncomfortable. And so I just I appreciate you describing those systems. And yeah, I wonder if you could respond to that a little bit as we kind of yeah, well,

Speaker 12 44:47

I just want to say beautifully said I you just said it so eloquently and so poignant and I just love it. And one of the things that I've also found is that people. Are so much more comfortable in their discomfort and in their patterns. And I feel like Reiki opens us, opens us up. It opens up our capacity to hold more love, to hold more pleasure, right? Because people say they want something, but they don't, they don't know actually how to hold it. And so what I know is notice with my clients and I was just working with someone the other day. It's like, okay, the food that's starting it. I don't even know what I'm going to think about now because I'm not thinking about food. Or I don't know. Okay, so I'm feeling good. I don't know what this is like uncharted territory. They're like, I don't know what to do. Right. And it's so true. We often don't know. We don't know what to do with, with the pleasure. We don't know what to do when we start to feel good. And that is a whole process. And that's where I find the system of Reiki can be really helpful because that. Because oftentimes we can't jump from the pain to pleasure. We have to titrate that. We have to let the body know that it's safe to have pleasure. It's safe to be in the flow of life because some of these, some of these, these patterns, these places of discomfort, they have come because they're protective mechanisms. And when we don't need those protective mechanisms, we have to remind ourselves that we are safe. And not only are we safe, we're worthy to feel good. So that in itself can be a whole process. Of healing just that piece.

Speaker 13 46:53

Really appreciate that. Thank you.

Speaker 14 46:57

Well, Marla, it's been a joy to have you speak about your work and, you know, what I love about hearing you talk about food is just, it's so applicable to anybody. You know, obviously our podcast is more focused towards women, but this can happen to men as well. And you don't have to go to, you know, be admitted to an eating disorder clinic to really resonate with so many of these conversations. Like, I mean, um, I know when I had a previous conversation about your book, that's on my YouTube channel. Like, I, I have this really profound realization. I could potentially, if, if I chose to continue with this, these disordered mindsets, like I could literally think of my body as fat or, you know, not give my body. This love and gratitude that really is is the right relationship. I should be having with my body like I can live my whole life that way. So, um, you know, and it doesn't have to manifest in disordered eating. It can just be, you know, cultivating that relationship with your body. So. I just really want to thank you for how your work, you know, can do that and help us kind of get into this aspect of living and life that like, and really bring more light and love to it. Um, it's so important. And, um, I also just really want to acknowledge and appreciate you for like living this, you know, it's not like you're this therapist who's like, Studied body dysmorphia, you know, from books or whatever. It's something that you lived and, and, and went through. And I think that also speaks to like, you know, so much of us in the world of Reiki, I think we get, can get stuck in imposter syndrome feeling like, Oh, well, I haven't, you know, completely figured this whole thing out or this aspect of my life. And so that's going to block me from, you know, sharing what I love or, you know, bringing forward the practice of Reiki to the people in my life. But. I love how you live this, live this, and how many people you've been able to positively impact by sharing and being vulnerable with your story and your experiences, so.

Speaker 12 49:12

Thank you, Carrie. That's so nice of you. I appreciate that.

Speaker 14 49:17

Well, and thank you for being here. So tell everybody who's listening about your book, Befriending Yourself, and how they can get in touch with you and learn more, um, what you offer.

Speaker 12 49:29

Hey, yeah, so you can come to my website, love your body, love yourself. com. You're going to find out about Reiki there. Uh, you can find access to my book. Of course, it's on Amazon, befriend yourself. Um, and also I have a free course called breaking the cycle of emotional eating. And it's free, but like, I give a, like, I really go into it. So check that out. Um, and there's opportunities to connect with me within that. And of course you can ask any questions, Instagram, or email me where we got it, we, we need to hold each other up. Right. As Carrie was saying, like, it's easy to fall into that low grade, that low grade negativity about our body and food. And so we really want to create a container through the system of Reiki and through helping each other by building each other up and becoming each other's best friends within this. Paradigm

Speaker 4 50:28

love that absolutely love that.

Speaker 14 50:30

All right. Well, thank you all so very much You've been joining us for this series radiance interviews about women's health and well being Um, it's just been well, it's been an illumination. There's been so many little aspects of You know, living my life and little aspects of like patterns and stuff that I really I've learned so much for all of you who've joined us and share the conversations with us. So if you, uh, you know, had a great experience listening to these interviews, we would love to hear from you. Please feel free to share your reflections and the comments to us and please feel for. Feel free to share these episodes onto somebody who you feel could use them. And of course, please subscribe to our channel so that you can be in the know of future conversations that will help you, uh, live a more radiant life. We love you all so very much and have a gorgeous day. Bye. Bye. Mahalo.