Episode 38 dr anita johnston

Ailey Jolie (00:00)

Before we dive into your work, I would love to hear from you. What led you specifically to the field that you have spent 35 years really supporting women with, is the field of recovery from an eating disorder or disordered eating?

Anita Johnston (00:16)

Well, first of all, there was no field when I got started. So this was way back in the early 1980s. And I was supervising a psychology intern who was doing her doctoral dissertation on eating disorders in Hawaii. And we would meet regularly with another woman who was a social worker who had recovered herself.

Ailey Jolie (00:19)

Good.

Anita Johnston (00:39)

from an eating disorder, but she had to just figure it all out on her own. the more we got together and talked about what we were seeing in the community, we said, oh my gosh, there's such a big problem here. There should be a center for this. And after we said it for about the fifth time, we went, okay, I guess we're it. And so it was one of those things you created and they come. And women and girls of all ages, all ethnicities, all different body sizes and types,

but all struggling with food, eating, their body, excuse me, and their body image in some way. so now remember, not much was known back then. Not a lot of research had been done. People knew what anorexia was because Karen Carpenter, the singer, had died from it. Bulimia had just been entered in the DSM, which is the diagnostic manual.

binge eating disorder wasn't even considered a thing. And so I basically had to listen as carefully as I could to the stories of these women that were coming. In those days, no guys showed up. to see, okay, what is it? What's the common denominator that connects all these very diverse individuals? Why is it, first of all, why was it female? Second of all,

Why was it these particular girls and women? And third, why was the struggle around food, eating and body image? And so that's what I was looking for in the beginning. I'm from Guam originally and an indigenous culture where a lot was taught through storytelling. So I was a storyteller by nature and as a psychologist, I was a trained story listener. And so that's how it began for me, I just listened.

to see if I could find that common thread.

Ailey Jolie (02:22)

What do you feel like has really changed in the field that didn't even exist when you started that you've noticed that has been shifts that you would perceive as quite monumental or quite important to how we understand or how we treat eating disorders or disordered eating today?

Anita Johnston (02:39)

First of all, there's treatment. There's treatment at multiple different levels. There's dieticians that really understand the nature of eating disorders. You have IOPs, intensive outpatient programs, all over the place, which actually I created the very first one in Hawaii because I was trying to find a way that people could continue.

going to school or going to work or being with their families and get intensive treatment. So when we started that and I traveled around the US talking about it, that's when they started to pop up like mushrooms, which is really a good thing. So there's treatment, residential treatment. Back in those days when I first started, it was basically about refeeding. Just let's just get someone to eat and then we discharge. And of course it was a revolving door because

you know, the real issues were never addressed. So that has all changed substantially, I like to say.

Ailey Jolie (03:34)

You've said before that disordered eating is a metaphor for something deeper, and I would love to hear you kind of explore what you mean by that and how that kind of influences how you have pioneered and also changed how eating disorders are treated and understood clinically.

Anita Johnston (03:51)

Well, that goes way back when I was a young graduate student. And I walked into this class, it was my first class. And there was this little man in front of the room talking in an accent that was hard for me to understand because I just come from Guam. But I knew he was speaking English. So I said, okay, just listen carefully. Well, that man turned out to be Victor Franco. And I didn't know who he was. I didn't know how famous he was.

And for those of your listeners who don't, he wrote one of the most groundbreaking books in this century called Man's Search for Meaning, which was written as a result of his experiences in the Nazi prison camp during World War II, where he lost his entire family, his siblings, his parents, his wife. And what he wrote about, what he came to understand is that you can be stripped of everything, everything that

has ever been dear to you, but there's one thing that can never ever, ever be taken away. And that is the meaning you give to your experience. And in that meaning lies your freedom. So this influenced me from the get go. And when I started trying to understand eating disorders, that was the foremost question on my mind is, well, what does this mean? What does this mean?

And so that's how I began looking deeper, looking beyond the symptomology.

Ailey Jolie (05:11)

Is this where some of your work that has been with myth and storytelling kind of came to be?

Anita Johnston (05:18)

In part, yes. I started, my daughters at the time were quite young and they were going to Waldorf School, which I think in Europe is called Steiner Schools. And in those schools, everything is taught through storytelling. So they would come home from school and they say, guess what? We learned about Prince division and Prince multiplication. And I thought, if I'd learned my times tables that way, I probably know them by now.

And so I started to realize how you can teach some very complex concepts through storytelling. And so I started using it with my clients and helping them understand not just what the struggle was about for them, but also what the recovery journey would look like. And because it's totally individualistic, I could tell them a traditional fairy tale or folk tale, and they would be able to extract

the meaning that fit for them from that story.

Ailey Jolie (06:13)

Could you explain how this came to influence what has been such a profound book in the realm of eating disorder recovery, which is eating in the light of the moon?

Anita Johnston (06:23)

Well, my clients kept asking me for where they could read more about the concepts I was talking about. And I realized it hasn't been written. Now, I did not consider myself a writer. In fact, in my family, it was a joke. If you got a letter from Anita, frame it. Because she's not going to get another one. So I started with just like a little booklet. I thought, well, I can write a little booklet.

But then it just started to grow and grow and grow. So it took me 10 years to write that book.

Ailey Jolie (06:53)

Why do you think it's continued to resonate with so many generations of women?

Anita Johnston (06:57)

Because I'm working with archetypal energies which exists across all cultures and all time. And so it's not just, these are the times we live in. Yes, these are the times we live in. But these old stories, some of which have been passed down generation after generation orally for 6,000 years. Like, right? Why would that be that these stories are sticking around when

Certainly times have changed over thousands of years. And then I started to see it's because embedded in them is some very deep, profound wisdom about what it means to be a human on this planet. And there were times when people were persecuted for those ways of knowing. They were burned at the stake. They were murdered. And so the women, it was the women, women very cleverly

embedded these concepts into the stories. So if you can learn to read the stories with your inner eyes or listen to them with your inner ears, you can start to see the messages that are being given. And so again, they're messages for all time.

Ailey Jolie (08:08)

What are some common archetypes that you perceive in the experience of living with an eating disorder or disordered eating?

Anita Johnston (08:15)

Well, the big ones are what I refer to as the masculine and feminine principle. And this is tricky because it sounds like I'm talking about genders, but I am so not. These are principles that if I lived in an Asian culture, they would be called yin and yang. Other people might refer to them in solar and lunar. I use the terms masculine and feminine because one, that's pretty much how they're referred to in indigenous cultures, which is my base.

But also in my Jungian training, these principles, which are really clusters of attributes that we have inside our own psyche, as well as existing in the world around us, but they show up in our dreams and our fairy tales in the form of males and females. And so those are, huge archetypes and they are polarized.

And so the task is, and typically because of the culture we live in, they're out of balance. So we live in a world that has way oversized, over, excuse me, overemphasized the masculine principle, which is the part of ourselves that is logical, linear goal achievement oriented, that is outwardly focused, that loves to make lists and check things off and all of that, which is really good. We need that. However,

it has under emphasized the value of the feminine principle, which is emotional, intuitive, instinctual and relational. That's concerned about how are things connected? What are the patterns here? And so as a result, we, all of us, we internalize this imbalance. And what I discovered is that part of the recovery journey from disordered eating and negative body image,

has to do with reclaiming the feminine principle, reconnecting with the instincts of our bodies, of understanding the nature of our emotions, embracing the power of our intuition, and really valuing the relationships, not just with other people, but with the earth. And there is a reason, by the way, that we call

it Mother Earth or Mother Nature because at some deep level we understand the feminine principle resides there.

Ailey Jolie (10:34)

How do you weave that into how you support those living with an eating disorder or disordered eating from in a clinical way? Because what I'm really hearing is kind of you bringing in the concept of embodiment and kind of moving out of the stories of our society of how we should be in our body, what our body can do or what it has to be doing to be good or worthy or whatever and kind of bringing it into that interceptive awareness or embodiment. And I would

love to hear from you how you kind of bring that into how you support someone because so commonly that piece is missed or it's like a sprinkled add-on later and as you were speaking I noticed like there's a little thought inside my head one of the first books that I went to when I was struggling with an eating disorder in my early 20s was your book and it was the book that made me go

Okay, I think there is something here that I genuinely don't understand. Like the food stuff, like whatever, but like, what is this woman talking about? Like, and now hearing you say that it was actually really laced with this presence of embodiment is just makes my journey make sense. And so I would love to hear from you how you weave that in knowing now that I am a trained clinician, that's not how we're really taught. Like that piece of embodiment is oftentimes not in mainstream.

or in a lot of the experiences clients I have now supported, it wasn't really part of their prior treatment experience either.

Anita Johnston (11:55)

Okay. Wow. My mind is just going all over the place because there's 101 ways that I bring that into practical treatment. One of the ways is helping people connect. First of all, understand the nature of emotions because disordered eating is an attempt to either stuff or run from or get rid of your emotions.

Now, one of the things I discovered when I was listening to everyone's stories way back when is that people who struggle with disordered eating are very emotionally sensitive and highly intuitive. Notice these are components of the feminine principle. However, we live in a world that doesn't appreciate that. And in fact, says things like, you're too sensitive, you're overreacting, get over it, what's wrong with you? So I begin with this idea, there's nothing wrong with you.

It's just that you have this gift, but no one taught you how to use it. And so what's happening is you're trying to get rid of it, which you can't. Maybe you're born that way. wow. But if you can learn how to use it, but the way in which you try to get rid of it is revealed in the patterns of what you do with food. So for example, someone who struggles with anorexia, who's restricting their food,

That's not the only thing they're restricting in their life. They're restricting their emotions. They're restricting new experiences. They're restricting their sexuality. They're putting themselves on restriction if they make a mistake. So if you can go in and look for where else does that pattern show up and you address the pattern and understand, well, why would someone restrict? Well, because things feel like too much. So then you look to see, okay, where things are too much.

If someone is binging and purging or yo-yo dieting, what you're going to see is a tendency, a pattern to take on too much too quickly and got to get rid of it. So they might sign up for a gazillion classes and get overwhelmed and drop out of school. Or maybe they'll meet someone they fall madly in love and that as soon as there's a flop, it's over. Or they might start a bunch of projects and get so overwhelmed they can't finish any of them.

or meet someone and become best, best, best friends. As soon as there's a conflict, they ghost them. So you see this pattern and then you kind of work with that pattern. Someone who binge eats or eats compulsively, you're gonna find the theme of scarcity, right? It's not just there's not enough food, there's not enough time, there's not enough money, there's not enough attention, there's not enough appreciation, or they feel like they're not enough. So the way this is brought into

treatment is first of all, you still go a little deeper to find out what are the real issues that the eating behaviors or thoughts are trying to cope with. And then you develop the skills that a person needs to deal with them directly rather than through eating behaviors. So if we've got too much going on in our life, then we need to learn how to set boundaries.

If we don't have enough in our life, then we need to learn how to say yes to what we want and no to what we don't want and find out those areas in which that's happening. And then always link it. And I think this is sometimes what's missing is help people see how that is connected to what they're doing with food, because it's not obvious. It's usually unconscious. And the unconscious really is unconscious. It's out of our awareness.

So I'm not sure if that answers your question, but keep going. ⁓

Ailey Jolie (15:31)

It does

answer some of question. How do you do some of that linking of what's going on with food or the choices you're making with your body aesthetically mirror into your relationships or the choices you make professionally? Because especially with the narrative of understanding trauma lives in the body, a lot of people are kind of like, okay, so there are things like moving me in these ways, but because I have consciousness around how beauty standards or society is influencing me.

then it must not be a part of this thing. This is something else. And I kind of view those things as a part of the linking you're talking about of like, how do we actually link that all of this stuff out there is influencing us, even if we're conscious of some of it, there's all this other unconscious influence. And I would love to hear from you how you work with that piece.

Anita Johnston (16:20)

Yeah, well, you bring it into consciousness, right? Because when something is unconscious, that's like being in the trunk or the boot of a car and you're going down a hill and you're getting thrown around and it's really scary and you don't know what's going on. When you're conscious, it's like being behind the wheel of that car. Same road, same twisty turn, but you have some agency, right? You can decide how tight to make the turns, when to put the brakes on, when to accelerate. You have some say.

So we really want to bring what has been unconscious into consciousness. there's a, I'll share an approach that I use because it's not just finding the connections, but also disconnecting. So we begin with what I consider our superpower, which is our imagination. lot of people think, well, I don't have a very good imagination. And I like to say, what do you think worry is? Right?

We're here to bad use of a really good imagination, right? We can come up with all kinds of stuff. So you begin with your imagination and you imagine that you have two tanks and we're gonna call them tank A, tank B. Tank A is the tank you fill when you need physical nourishment. You fill it with food. Tank B is the tank you need.

what you feel when you have emotional, you need emotional or spiritual nourishment, right? You fill it with things like attention, affection, appreciation, meditation, prayer, and so on. These non-physical things. But we don't know this, right? We don't know this. We think there's just one tank. So before we know it, either tank A is full and overflowing, but we're still hungry, or we don't even wanna put anything in tank A because it seems like the bottomless pit.

So the first step is you have to tease the two tanks apart so that you can understand the difference between the two because no amount of food is ever gonna fail tank B. So how do you tease them apart? Well, this takes us to body awareness or interception, right? So interoceptive awareness is when you recognize the sensations in your body and you respond appropriately. So for example, when you say,

My head is pounding. My heart is racing. My stomach is growling. That's interoceptive awareness, right? So the first step is to find your hunger and satiety cues because that's your body telling you when you are hungry and when you are full. But again, most of us have been taught to disregard them, right? To be a member of the clean plate club or to eat because it's time to eat or because somebody who loves you fix the food. I mean, there's 101 reasons we've been taught to disregard.

whether it's to eat when we're not hungry or to not eat when we are. It's like, oh, well, I'm going to the beach today. So I'm not, wanna look okay, so I'm not gonna eat even though I'm hungry, right? So we've been taught these things. so learning, sometimes we have to rediscover those sensations and they are sensations in the body. I often will ask someone, well, what's the physical sensation that tells you you are hungry and where in your body do you feel it?

And they say, I lightheaded and dizzy and my stomach really growls. that's not hunger. That's famished. And what's going to happen if you wait to eat until you're famished? You're going to try to eat everything you can get your hands on. All of us do because that's the way the body is designed. So the sensation of hunger is a whisper, not a shout. So, but, but often people don't even know what it is. So I recommend, well, if all you know is lightheaded and dizzy, go get the food.

and just take two bites and then ask yourself, am I still hungry? If the answer is yes, how do I know I'm hungry? And you look for a physical, because this is tank A, that you look for a physical sensation in your body. It's either a contraction or an expansion, a heaviness, a lightness, a roughness, a smoothness, a hollowness, a density, a warmth, a coolness. We're all different, but it's in our body and learning how to connect with that.

So, and so you keep asking two bites at a time to the answers, no. And then you go, how do I know I'm not hungry? And you look for a sensation that tells you that. Okay. So that's the first thing you want to be able to tease the two apart. Now this isn't exactly a linear process. You can do both, but this is something it can take weeks and weeks to find this, right? I've had clients that come in with the, at this, look at this. And I go, what's that? And they go, well, it's a candy bar. And

I half of it, felt my fullness sensation and I wrapped it up and put it back in my purse to eat again when I was hungry. They're so excited, right? So finding the hunger and fullness sensations are important part of this process. It's a skill. Now let's imagine that you got it. You totally know when you're You totally know when you're full. You're reaching for that pizza. You know to check in for a sensation. There's nothing.

Not a hunger signal in sight. You still want to that pizza? Well guess what? You have now tumbled down Alice in Wonderland's rabbit hole and you've landed smack dab in tank B. And in tank B, pizza's not pizza. Food isn't food. What is it? It's a concrete physical symbol.

of another kind of hunger that you are experiencing and may not even know about. It may be unconscious. So the question to ask yourself then is, what's the feeling I'm trying not to feel? Because we don't eat for emotional reasons. We eat because we don't want to feel those emotions, right? So then you kind of do a scan of your day and you go, okay, where could there possibly be a feeling that I don't want to feel?

Maybe I'm annoyed at the person who cut me off on the freeway still. Maybe I'm worried about something my boss said. Maybe I'm annoyed with a comment that my sister made. I where could there possibly be a feeling I don't want to feel? But I have to tell you, most of the time when you ask that, you go, mm, I don't know. I feel fine, right? Because it's unconscious. It's out of our awareness. But here's the cool thing. The food.

Food that you are struggling with will tell you it's talking to you, but it's talking in code. And in order to understand what it's saying, you have to crack the code to get to the meaning behind it. So I'm going to tell you how to do that right now if you want to know. And anyone that's listening, if you want, I have a free

Ailey Jolie (22:45)

Yeah, please do.

Anita Johnston (22:51)

PDF, can download that, that you can pick your food and walk yourself through it. Just go to lightofthemooncafe.com, I-T-B, in this body. So here's the code. Now, now this is important to understand two things. One, we're all as individual as our thumb prints. So, so there's a lot of variation here. I'm giving these categories.

just to get you started thinking metaphorically, because that's the language you've got to use to crack the code. And two, this only applies if you are physically hungry and not letting yourself eat, or you're not hungry and you want to eat, or you're continuing to eat past fullness, okay? Otherwise, food is just food. But now we're in tank B, the world of metaphor. So sweet foods. Sweet foods

have to do often with either feeling like there's not enough sweetness in your life or you're not sweet enough. Now think about the way we use the word sweet. We'll say, she's such a sweetheart or wow, that was a sweet thing to do or where's the sweet spot or whoa, that's sweet. Think we use that word for a lot of other things besides food. And that's why this is so powerful. So either

There's not enough sweetness in your life or you feel like yours not sweet enough. Crunchy salty foods usually have to do with unexpressed anger and frustration. I don't want to bite someone's head off, Excuse me. Spicy foods, to clear my throat again, can edit this out. Spicy foods.

Ailey Jolie (24:22)

Yeah, yeah.

Anita Johnston (24:26)

have to do often with excitement, stimulation and change. And remember, this is either a craving for or a fear of. Warm foods typically are associated with emotional warmth and chocolate. We know this from Valentine's Day, right? Romance, love, sensuality, sexuality. So to give you an idea of how this works, I had a client once and she struggled with bulimia. And I said to her, I said, okay,

if there were one food that you wished you could eat and there were zero consequences, no consequences whatsoever, what would that food be? And she said, that's easy. It would be vanilla ice cream with strawberries on top. And I said, okay, I want you to imagine I've never had vanilla ice cream with strawberries on top and you're gonna tell me what's so fantastic about it. And she said, it's sweet, it's smooth and it's refreshing. And when we took a look at her life, what was going on,

is that her boyfriend was accusing her of not being sweet enough. She'd hit a rough patch with her parents that she was desperately wanting to smooth out, and she was in a dead-end job in need of a refreshing change. One food had a lot of information in there. Sometimes it's in the language of the food itself. I had a client, she was an emergency room physician.

struggling with binge eating. And she came into my office once and she came rushing. She was so upset. And she said, I can't, I'm so disgusted with myself. I can't believe what I did. And I went, what did you do? She said, got off work. I came home. I fixed some chicken tenders for my husband and I for dinner. And before he even got home, I ate them all myself. I'm so disgusted. I can't believe it. I said, well, well, let's take a look at what happened here. Let's roll the clock back.

So let's see, you just got off of what was it, a 12 or 14 hour shift in the ER tending to all kinds of physical and emotional trauma, right? She goes, yeah. I said, so what do you think you were really hungry for? And she said, a hug. I said, yeah, you wanted some TLC, some tender loving care, and instead you ate the chicken tenders. Now this is how it works.

This is how it works inside our psyche. It seems odd, but that's sometimes the language of the food itself. And the cool thing about finding the meaning behind it is that it's enlightening, not just in terms of, I see this, but also in terms of levity. You lighten up a bit. Sometimes it's even funny.

Ailey Jolie (26:55)

question I have for you in hearing the direct relationship between the foods we do and do not choose is what do you feel like gets in the way society-wise that leads us to use food as such an intimate resource for our inner world and such an intimate kind of crutch in many ways for the pain or the distress or the emotional upheaval.

if there are things that you know exist in society besides the kind of feminine masculine that you named earlier, if there's some other things that you're like, this is what I have seen or what I believe leads women specifically to use food in this way.

Anita Johnston (27:36)

Yet. It's not just besides the masculine feminine principle. It's a part of that. And let me explain. So our culture is very literal. We just understand things that can be perceived by the five senses and anything that's not, we don't recognize as real. So that's what kind of gets us into trouble because we think it's, it's just about

food or it's just about the messages I'm giving. So within the masculine and feminine principle, we have other archetypes and one of them is the archetype of mother. Now I'm talking archetypally, not personally, but the arc. So not your biological mother, although that can be a part of this picture, but

The archetype of mother, and again, it's an archetype because you could cross all culture and all time and you find this concept, right? So we know it's archetypal. And it is comfort, soothing, nurture. That's the energetic signature of what I call mothering, because it's an energy, not a thing, not a person. You can get mothering energy once you start to understand what it looks like and feels like.

from your dog, from your best friend, from your coworker. But we don't know this, okay? So what happens is our bodies are wired to experience nurture and comfort and soothing from food. So food is the concrete physical symbol of mothering energy.

We're designed that way, right? Think of the experience of being an infant on this planet and you're in distress. What do you give them? The breast or the bottle? And you go, so there's a reason for that, that we turn to food for that or we reject the food if we're afraid it's not gonna do the trick. Okay, so it can work either way. But we're hardwired. The problem is, is when we think that's the

only place we can get the mothering energy we want either from food or from our biological mother. And if our biological mother or the person that raised us isn't capable or willing or even on the planet, then we think, okay, we're screwed. And so we turn to food and it's readily available. It's usually right there. But we don't pause long enough to see

in what way do we need to be comforted and nurtured and soothed? Again, going back to Mother Nature, so we can get it from nature. That's why we call it Mother Nature, is that we know at a deep level that we get soothed and comforted and literally fed as well as symbolically fed.

Ailey Jolie (30:21)

glad that you at the end kind of brought in Mother Nature because I really wanted to ask you about the relationship between struggling with food and body and how that ties into the disconnection each and every one of us has to some varying degree with the home and the body we all share, meaning the earth. And why I wanted to ask this question, sprinkling in my next question for you here, is to speak about is to

to begin to speak about how there is collective healing when we reclaim the relationship we have with our body and work through what food means and what it doesn't mean and how we receive nutrients and how that ties into the relationship we have with the earth. And I would love to hear your perspective on this piece of the collective healing and kind of that eco-feminist lens of food and body and receiving mothering from the earth because you've spent

35 years here and there's sprinklings of that in your book in such a soft and subtle beautiful way and I've had so many clients after I've given them your book that is the thing that's been taken out of them that they've taken out of the book and has really inspired them to think differently about not only their body but the body we all share meaning the earth our home

Anita Johnston (31:34)

Yeah, what I love is watching consciousness shift, right? Because we're becoming more and more aware as the feminine principle is being received now, okay? And so we are turning to the earth and appreciating that that is our mother. Everything we eat comes from that. Therefore our bodies come from that, right? So there is now this recognition of

just how terribly we've treated the earth. I mean, it's, and as a result, how terribly we treated our own bodies, because essentially there is that connection and we are one in the same. So I think this is such a big thing and a fabulous level of understanding that is now coming into consciousness. If you even think about this, when was the last time

You physically touched the earth.

Now, I grew up in the tropics and as a child, I always went barefoot. My poor mother, she tried her best. She would put slippers under our stockings every Christmas for us to put every through them in the closet. That was a long time ago. I have to consciously and deliberately connect with the energy of the earth. It doesn't just happen the way it did for me as a child.

Ailey Jolie (32:38)

Hehehe.

Anita Johnston (32:53)

I have to, I'm so glad it's warm here. I live in a place now there is winter, I am not in the tropics. So now that it's warm, I go outside and I put my feet on the grass. Now, what we're understanding now is there is an energetic communication. That experience of just putting your bare feet on the earth realigns your body. It shifts.

your frequency, there's an electrical charge that gets adjusted. Now think about that. How long we go without actually physically touching the earth. So in fact, there is a movement now called earth-ing and even a book about that, about how important that is physically.

Ailey Jolie (33:34)

This

Anita Johnston (33:38)

energetically and of course spiritually as we start to kind of expand our awareness, our consciousness to include that. When I run my groups, I have a residential eating sort of program called Aipono on Maui and I run a group every week. And I also have an IOP in San Luis Obispo in California. And I begin every single group.

with guided imagery of moving your awareness around your body and also imagining earth energy coming up into your body through the soles of your feet. I think it's important that we really now consciously and deliberately connect with this because we get fed in that way.

Ailey Jolie (34:24)

Where do you bring that conversation into the treatment of an eating disorder or disordered eating? Is it something you try and weave in right at the start or is there a place where you've maybe there is some introspective awareness that they can kind of separate those two little tanks? Is there a specific place where you're like, this is where it begins?

Anita Johnston (34:45)

I do it right away. So for example, in the groups that I run, not just at iPono or the Central Coast Treatment Center, but also my online program, Light of the Moon Cafe, we have live calls. And often I'll say, okay, let's ground. And it affects a lot of things because it's also a way of cultivating

introspective awareness, this body sensing, which is the antidote to negative body image. So negative body image is when you're outside looking in, usually using all your critical faculties, along with the critical faculties of the culture. So now there's been so much research that demonstrates that the greater your body sense, the greater your introspective awareness, the ability to experience your body from the inside out.

the lower your depression, the lower your anxiety, that it affects your level of happiness, your capacity to focus on and achieve goals. It does so many different things that we want that fuel healing. And so I'll do a meditation where I'll have someone move their awareness around inside their bodies.

and then get down to the feet and bring that energy up from the earth. And so I don't think you have to wait for a particular time. You can just do it at any time.

Ailey Jolie (36:08)

I love that you bring it in right at the start because it's something I often bring in right at the start because I view it as so essential to building that interoceptive awareness and actually changing some of those relationships and consciousness changing. But I wanted to ask you that question because I know that's not how I was like trained to bring that piece in. That was kind of like once we get here, then we'll bring in this piece. And so I was like curious to hear from you.

And I would love to just also speak to you a little bit about how body hatred, and you kind of named that self-critical body judgment, is often socially sanctioned as an expression of deeper pain. And I would love to hear from you a little bit about some of the deeper truths that you have seen or you have heard bodies express that is actually the truth behind the body hatred.

Anita Johnston (36:57)

Yeah, well, unfortunately, a lot of people bond over criticizing their bodies. I mean, it's like, oh my God, it's like, look at my thighs. No, your thighs are okay. Look at my, I mean, it's like, it's an ongoing thing, right? We kind of bond over that. And so again, becoming more conscious of really the messages you're giving to yourself and others around your body is an important part of this process. I think,

that for women often, I mean, now it starts earlier because there's so much cultural press around our physical appearance and how we're supposed to look. But one of the most profound experiences that women have is when their body changes from the body of a girl to the body of a woman, right? And we have Menar, which announces that. We get our menstrual cycle. Now,

We no longer live in a culture that celebrates that, that is in awe of that. mean, think of that. I mean, the capacity to, should you choose to sustain and carry life itself, who can do that? Right? It's, it's an awesome thing. And we're not given any ritual to contain.

the energy that starts to move through our bodies when that happens. And so that energy becomes disordered and we're very vulnerable to criticism. my God, look at my belly. It's like as the body starts morphing. So I think it kind of, it may not begin with that, but boy, does it get anchored in. In trauma work, we talk about what happened and shouldn't have happened, right?

But with the menstrual cycle, it's really what should have happened and didn't happen. The recognition of the awesomeness of our bodies and how magnificent they really are. So in the absence of that, there's a vacuum where the criticism can come in. Criticism from family members, from the media that we then internalize and then we just keep on going with it. And then...

Everybody is bonding over that. So I think, you know, there's shame around the body that often begins with that.

Ailey Jolie (39:13)

What do you wish more women knew about her relationship to her body or hunger and longing?

Anita Johnston (39:20)

Well, first of all, what I wish everyone knew is there's nothing wrong with you. Okay, that we begin with that. That we are amazing. The struggle with disordered eating has meaning. And when you get to that meaning, it will free you. Of course,

Inside alone is not enough. It's not like, okay, I got it. Now, now what? Everything should be fine. No, there are skills that a person needs to learn that will help you unlearn how you were taught to be. We are conditioned, not just our minds, but our brains get conditioned by the culture. And it does take a little bit of effort to undo that, but it's absolutely totally possible.

I have worked with people that have, in their 60s, late 60s, that have had an eating disorder their entire life and they've recovered. I've worked with people that have had the most severe eating disorder you can possibly imagine and they've recovered. So I know it's totally, completely possible.

Ailey Jolie (40:21)

My last question for you today is what has this work taught you about your own embodiment?

Anita Johnston (40:27)

It's taught me over and over and over the wisdom of my body. I'm continually astounded by how my body guides me, what my body teaches me. If I listen and if I can't quite understand it to seek out someone that can help me interpret what my body is trying to tell me. For example, when I went into menopause, I was flooding a lot. And flooding is when you

bleed a lot. Because I then discovered, it's because if you have fibroids on the lining of your uterus, when you go into menopause and hormones are shifting, you're going to have a lot of flooding. I didn't know that I learned it. But then my naturopath told me from looking at my blood work, Anita, you you need to eat red meat three times a week for three weeks.

because your levels are quite low. And I went, I didn't even know if I liked red meat. I hadn't eaten it in 20 years because my husband was allergic to it. And so we just never had it. And so I thought, okay. So I went out that night and she said, you can take a pill. And I went, I'll take the food. Okay. So I went out and I ate a steak and I couldn't believe what I felt in my body. I felt like almost like every cell in my body went ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

And when I woke up the next morning, I went, my gosh, this is what it's like to wake up not tired. So I would listen to my body and after I could tell, I need to eat red meat. And this didn't last forever, but it was once I understood how to read those very subtle sensations and respond to them, I mean, who would have thought, right?

Ailey Jolie (42:09)

I love that you brought it into that example of like what your body physically needs because it kind of loops our whole conversation together that not only does the body speak around our emotional needs and our psychological needs, our spiritual needs, but also our physical needs. And that sometimes it is important for the mind to just step back and be like, this is what my body is craving or calling for or asking for.

Anita Johnston (42:26)

Mmm.

and I'm to quit.

Ailey Jolie (42:35)

and therefore I'm just gonna follow it.

Anita Johnston (42:37)

That's why food rules can be so tricky. You want to follow the body's guidance. So, you know, see how you feel after you eat a particular food. Now there are some people whose bodies do not want meat at all. That's how their bodies are. There's other people that have to have it in order to feel grounded. There's no right or wrong here. Your body knows.

Ailey Jolie (42:58)

Thank you so much for your time today, of course, but also all the work that you have done to be the person you are for so many and to have created the work that you've created. I know as I named your book was foundational in my own recovery and is one that I kind of went back to many, many times. And it is a book that never lasts on my shelves because I always give it to a client and then I never get it back. Not one of them has returned.

Just keep buying them, which is totally fine. But the feedback is always how moving your words are and how the story of the log, know, holding on to something until you're ready to let go is commonly one that ends up coming into my practice. So I deeply want to thank you also on behalf of all the clients that I've heard that have been touched by your work. We will have all of the information about the book.

Anita Johnston (43:25)

you

Ailey Jolie (43:49)

the Eating in the Light of the Moon Cafe, the treatment centers you run. Is there anything else that you have upcoming in the next few months that you would like the listener to know?

Anita Johnston (43:59)

Well, I will be going to Tennessee, the University of Tennessee that I'll be speaking at. I'll be going to Madrid to create a new course. But I do have my new Crescent Moon course. It's an interactive course that's available at thelightofthemooncafe.com. And in this course,

We have stories and metaphors and we have a forum where people put their responses or questions I respond to every single one of them every day and then twice a month we have life a bunch of live calls where people get on and I am I tell stories or answer questions and it's really a lot of fun So if anyone's looking to go deeper go to light of the moon cafe Commits the new crescent moon course and it's always available. I also have self-study courses

So if you want to take a course, you won't get my feedback, but you can take it any time. Those are available there also. There's one thing though that I want to say, because I want to say it to you, Allie, that not only do I believe that people can totally completely recover from an eating disorder, but I believe that people who get on the recovery path are the people the world has been waiting for.

comes with this super sensitivity and this keen intuition is a great deal of compassion and empathy. And this is what the world needs now more than anything. And here you are, you're an actual demonstration of that, how you're taking that and you're paying it forward. So there are, you've created this so that others can benefit and then it's like ripples in a pond, it's gonna keep going out. So I wanna thank you.

for doing what you're doing to help everyone.

Ailey Jolie (45:39)

It was a delight to have you.

Anita Johnston (45:43)

Thank