Nervous System Regulation | Dr. Lara Zibarras

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Interoception is a trainable skill: when you learn to notice how you feel, your relationship with food quietly changes on its own.
The nervous system can't learn until it feels safe — and nine hours of gentle movement can shift that more than decades of trying harder.
A peer-reviewed clinical study found that just nine hours of Feldenkrais® Awareness Through Movement® lessons improved body acceptance and self-confidence, decreased feelings of helplessness, and supported emotional maturation. Nine hours.

Beverly Atkins

Guild Certified Feldenkrais® Practitioner - Founder, Pauseture

A few weeks before this conversation, someone commented on YouTube that a podcast I appeared on was too "woo." It motivated me.

I knew the Feldenkrais Method was developed by a scientist — Moshé Feldenkrais held a PhD in physics and was one of the first Westerners to earn a black belt in judo. This wasn't intuition-based movement. It was built on an understanding of how the nervous system actually learns. So I got curious: what there any research about Eating Disorders and The Feldenkrais Method®. I knew this N of 1 knew it had impact.

The day before I sat down with Lara, I found it: a peer-reviewed clinical study showing that just nine hours of Feldenkrais® Awareness Through Movement® lessons improved body acceptance and self-confidence, decreased feelings of helplessness, and supported emotional maturation. Published. Peer-reviewed. Not woo.

I hadn't planned to lead with research. But showing up in that conversation, knowing about this study, shifted my communication from "this is what worked for me and the people I worked with" to there is peer-reviewed research that shows this method works, and it changed how I showed up in coversation.What I hope came through is this: the body isn't the problem. It never was. Interoception — the ability to notice what's happening inside — is a trainable skill. And when it becomes a daily practice, the relationship with food often softens on its own. Not because you forced it. Because you finally started listening.One day I hope Pauseture is part of funding more research like this. That's the long game.