Podcast Transcript

Episode 74: “We Carry Our Bodies with Us Wherever We Go”: A Reflection on Decades of Work with Dance/Movement Therapist and Embodied Clinician Susan Kleinman, MA, BC-DMT, NCC, CEDS-C

[Bouncy theme music plays.]

Sam: Hey, I’m Sam.

Ashley: Hi, I’m Ashley, and you’re listening to All Bodies. All Foods. presented by The Renfrew Center for Eating Disorders. We want to create a space for all bodies to come together authentically and purposefully to discuss various areas that impact us on a cultural and relational level.

Sam: We believe that all bodies and all foods are welcome. We would love for you to join us on this journey. Let’s learn together.

Ashley: Welcome to this very special episode of All Bodies, All Foods, where we sit down with dance movement therapist and embodied clinician, Susan Kleinman.  Susan’s goal is to assist her clients in using their nonverbal forms of speech to communicate whatever piece of their story needs to be brought into the room in an effort for the healing process to begin. This experiential form of therapy yields a level of attunement with her patients that feels intrinsically driven by the primal desire of connection.  Having this level of attunement with one another allows Susan’s clients to experience safety in the purest sense.  And when safety and connection show up, healing is not far behind.  A few other areas in today’s episode that are worth noting include Susan’s definition of body image and her work with movement phrases, or a collection of quick small gestures that are put together by the patients and Susan’s movement groups,  which assist the group in connecting back to their innate sense of self while in the presence of others, again, yielding the ultimate sense of safety and connection.  There are moments in this episode where Susan expresses her work through movement.  Since this is a podcast, you will not be able to see these gestures, but stay with us as we provide explanations and context to bring them to life.  Susan Kleinman is a Creative Arts Therapies Supervisor and Dance Movement Therapist for the Renfrew Center of Florida. Ms. Kleinman is a trustee of the Marian Chace Foundation, past president of the American Dance Therapy Association and past chair of the National Coalition for Creative Arts Therapies.  She has published extensively, presented widely, and is the recipient of the American Dance Therapy Association’s 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2014 Spirit of IADEP Award, and the Sierra Tucson’s 2012 Gratitude of Giving honoree. Her work is featured in the documentary entitled, Expressing Disorder: Journey to Recovery. We’re excited for you all to be here with us today. Thanks so much.

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to this episode of All Bodies, All Foods.  Ashley and Sam are here, and we have our guest, Susan Kleinman, here with us today. Susan, thank you so much for being here.

Susan: Thank you for having me.

Ashley: Yeah.  OK, so we’re very excited to share your invaluable voice with our listeners today. You’ve stated before that when you began your work, there were no textbooks, no professional organizations, and that you learned how to see the individual needing support from the bottom up and the inside out. I was curious if you could paint us a picture of how you came to work as a dance movement therapist and even how this brought you into the field of eating disorders. 

Susan: Absolutely, I would love to.  I was a dance major at the University of Oklahoma.  I went to a dance camp in the summer. There was a wonderful place in Colorado where oh dance professors from all over the country came and taught and music professors came and played the piano and what have you.  And one day I was there and I heard someone, I think it was a man, out of the corner of my ear say, dance therapy.  And he must have been talking to someone and I overheard him, but I said, “well, that’s what I’m going to be.  Now I know what I’m going to be.”  So I went back to school. My advisor had heard of dance therapy. There was one book written on it by someone I found out later was the aunt of uh Judy Rabinor, a well-known lady.  And we talked in a Renfrew conference one time and I discovered that and felt even more of a connection with Judy then. So I began a search with my mother’s help. So I found out how to get in touch with this lady in Washington, DC. Her name was Marian Chace, that’s C-H-A-C-E, not S, and she became known as the mother of dance therapy.  She often, if you wrote her, she often let you come and work with her. So she invited me to work with her and I went for four months. My mother drove me to DC from Johnville, Missouri, where I’m from. And I began to model what she did. I knew nothing cognitively. I had a sense of rights and wrongs and that kind of thing.  But that’s where I first began to work under her mentorship. It was very scary and very exciting.  And I left there and then had to find a job and there were pretty much no jobs in dance therapy, but I did find one in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And I began work for, I worked there for six years at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, which was a wonderful place to learn. But then got itchy to move on and nothing new was happening there. Came to Florida on a vacation and said, it’s so pretty here. I think I’ll live here. And to finally got a job, had a difficult time getting a job because I was told things like I was too well qualified and different and people to entertain their patients. And finally, I had an article in the Miami Herald about me that I advocated for.  I had an interview with Larry King one night. I had a friend who had a friend who, so I interviewed with him, something like midnight. I had to stay awake to make that interview.  And oh I was also told by a new hospital opening that if I came and did a group for their patients and staff, that they would vote on me, and if they liked me, then I could come and work there. So my bottom line is they liked me. I didn’t know who was it, but I went and worked there. I also did a lot of work still by that time the American Dance Therapy Association had formed and I was beginning a very active life in ADTA and I took a student from Antioch College in  New Hampshire and when she had finished her internship with me, she came to a place to work called The Renfrew Center in Coconut Creek.  And it was too far for her to drive. So she asked me if I wanted the job. I said, sure.  And here I am.

Ashley: And here you are.

Susan: Thirty-some odd years later.

Ashley: Oh, that’s incredible. 

Sam: Oh my gosh. There’s lots of amazing parts of that story, Susan.  I don’t know where to start because I have so many questions.  One of the questions that comes up for me, I mean, you worked under, who is considered the mother of dance movement therapy. What was it like to spend that time with her for four months?

Susan: She was very kind to me.  She liked me. I was quiet and I was respectful.  And I seem to get and to mimic what she did. She scared the daylights out of me, though.

Sam: Really? What was scary?

Susan:  Well, she was scary. It’s the expectation she had. I didn’t have any problem, I didn’t think working with the patients, but I really didn’t know what to do. So I just mirrored whatever she did. I think as I reflect on it, I think I was always good at attuning, and I think that that’s what drew me to dance therapy. I mean, as a dance major, I wasn’t going to dance professionally and I wasn’t going to be a teacher. There had to be something different. And when I heard those words, dance therapy, it just clipped in me. I loved what I did. I loved working with her and I got her a liverwurst sandwich every day from the canteen. And this is what she wanted me to do. And I went along with her to groups. And then she was getting older by that time. She wouldn’t sometimes want me to lead. Sometimes she would leave the group. There were others that came in and out to some people and still very close to today, some dance therapists. And a lot of them are gone. Of course, it’s been such a long time.  But I just ate it up.I just loved the work and I loved the work with her and I believed in her,  and she wrote me a very nice recommendation when I had an interview at Pitt  and I remained.  I mean nobody got too close to her. She wasn’t that type of person, but I felt very much a part of things.  With her direction, felt like she, mean, the patients loved her. They came from all over the grounds to see her. So it was an amazing lesson on authenticity also, which is something that is so important. So I think she gave me what I needed non-verbally in order to continue on. And I think that has always been part of my profile to not know exactly what I was getting into, but  I’ll put my feet on the ground and take a step forward.

Sam: Speaking of nonverbal, there’s a quote that I was hoping to read today because I would love for you to say more about it. Your quote is, “since human beings communicate through their bodies long before they learn to talk, the language of the body is essentially our native language. As we develop, we add words to our communication. However, body language remains our most basic means of recognizing our needs and expressing ourselves.” Yes, that’s a great sound bite also. Well, it’s true, isn’t it? We’re not born speaking English or Spanish or any other language other than nonverbal. Other than through our breathing, through our even gesturing that’s unconscious since oh even look, I look at being born as probably our first exposure coming into this world on our own with some assistance, but people poking at us and all kinds of things. And I think that was our first exposure. But in our mother’s womb, we were beginning to move as we prepared to connect in the real world. So there’s a story for you about birth and pre-birth and connection with a force that we become so connected to only by sensing.  Only through senses. 

Ashley: Can I share an interesting or like a neat story about that? So my daughter is three and when I was pregnant with her, I could tell when I would sleep at night, her preferred position for me and then I could tell specifically how she would lay in my stomach and how she would move.  And it is very fascinating when she needs now a moment of connection with me, the way that we curl up together is very similar to the way that she would sleep in my stomach. And that, we don’t, I mean, she doesn’t use words. She doesn’t ask for that. That is just, that is a sensation that she feels in the way her body moves and the way I would say that she knows she is safe.

Susan: That’s right. I think it’s just a fascinating story. And I’ve heard many stories when I work on body image with the patients here. We talk about that time. I want to call it pre-birth, you know, before they’re, when they’re kind of preparing and beginning  to move, and when you and some mother-to-be felt and saw the kicks coming from inside of you, and the patients tell me amazing stories  that have been told to them or oh they have some kind of memory of from that early time. There was a patient who was born with the umbylical cord around her neck.  It was her sister she was referring to who was born that way.  And her sister couldn’t tolerate wearing a turtleneck or a tight garment  around her neck today. And she said, do you think that that is what her memory tells her from before she was born. And yes.  And there are so many interesting stories they tell. I know scientists can explain the whys of all of this, but it’s very moving that your daughter knows how to be with you and you know how to be with her and nobody has to teach you.

Ashley: Yeah. Or say a word.

Susan: Or say a word because words are translated, and the same time, we don’t have words anyway. So when I work with people, I’ve worked with people from age three to 99 probably with different degrees of pathology, and they always have something to say one of the most important things I think Marion Chase taught me was communication is always present.  So when I think things going on with the people that I work with now, I know that there are ways to reach them and vice versa. If I reach in too far, they pull back.  But if I kind of play it by ear and try to attune to them and develop a relationship with them,  then oh things begin to happen, and as Adrienne Ressler always, we joked about the question, do you know what the most important thing is about the first session? And of course the person says, ah no.  And we say, it’s coming back for the second session. So feeling safe enough depends a lot on the clinician’s demeanor and ability to connect with  the people that we’re working with. So that’s at the basis of my work, I think.  Do you want me to share a little bit about that?

Ashley: Yes, yes, absolutely. 

Susan: As I began working at Renfrew, I must have just begun to really connect myself even more  because I’ve been working for maybe 15 years before that with other populations, but it was different.  And I started writing. I would do a session and I’d go home and I’d write a vignette about it.  And I don’t know how many vignettes I had, but all these exciting things would happen that I thought  were interesting.  And oh I thought that maybe someday I’d be able to use them.  And of course, it’s been true. I have used many of them in published works.  So what I wanted to do also was to be able to describe what I did. Because there had been no textbooks when I started out.  And  for many years, there had been no research,  but there had been research about nonverbal communication. And these days one can find a fair amount of good research about dance movement therapy, connection, nonverbal communication, that kind of thing.  But one thing that happened was I would get lost doing a session in a large group, say, or that or, I think, “oh, golly, I can’t remember why we were doing what we’re doing now.”  And what I wanted to do was to be able to know what was okay, that I wasn’t really lost. And I come back to it. So for my master’s thesis, I created a formula that I call the cognitive markers. Tese are cognitive markers that explain what has happened from the body markers, from the body communication.  And I call those exploration. We explore.  We make discoveries. We acknowledge what we discovered as important, even if we don’t know why. And then we try to make connections between what we discovered and something familiar in our life, and then we try to integrate. And that doesn’t happen necessarily in that order. And it doesn’t happen all the time.  Where I start with people is not where I end with people, or it could be,  I might start in the middle of something with somebody describing something, but then we might, that is a discovery, but then we might explore that from  there.  And then connect with it on a body level,  so that we can  bring it to a conscious level and understand. Someone might lean their body in, and then might lean back, and that might be a movement pattern that we explore and see what it feels like, see what we discover. Well, maybe a lot of times I’m interested quickly, but I can’t sustain it. I can’t stay with whatever I’m interested in or commit to it or something happens that would and that causes me to feel scared. I’m scared to lean in, to commit. And I know I’m supposed to do that, but something shuts down in me and I can’t do it.  And I pull away. So the patient would describe these things and they’d give me specific examples. Like one time,  so-and-so said, I’ll make it up, this happened to me when I was trying to decide if I wanted to go away to college or stay home.  And I really wanted to go away, but every time I put my foot down, I was OK. But then I put my other foot down and I leaned back fast and had to catch my breath, and  I just felt scared and uncomfortable. And so that might be a connection to one time when that happened.  And we’ll look at maybe a second time when that happened.  And in terms of going back in time, what’s that called in the UT?

Ashley: The antecedents? 

Susan: Yes.  Looking for the antecedents. That we find the pattern by one of the techniques that’s used in the UT.  And then we can look at where that leaves them, how it impacts on them, all that kind of thing.  then the next part we have to do with, well, let’s find some new skills you can deal with. And that’s often something they’ve learned in the UT to reassess, reevaluate, to do some technique that they’ve learned to do the three component model,  which we’ve actually been doing, just therapy style, so that it all works out and they can take that information with them and use it to explore a pattern- this pattern that keeps reoccurring in their lives.  And on a body level is different  when they know on a cognitive level because feeling it is different than thinking it, thinking safer.  But then the other part, and I’m simplifying everything, of course, is three of the concepts that I deal with as an embodied clinician, an embodied therapist.  And one of those is called kinesthetic awareness. So kinesthetic awareness, beginning to feel in our own bodies and make use of that as part of the work we do therapeutically, and this requires some juggling and some practice. Like if you played piano or draw, anything, run or anything, you had to practice over and over. Becoming aware in our bodies, making it safe enough to feel, express, and understand. Then the second part has to do with rhythmic synchrony, which is really attunement, beginning to attune, to send rhythm with, to move beside.  And in the work, I know you both have seen me do at conferences, you’ve seen me do that, work beside the patient. In one of the chapters I wrote on dance therapy, what’s called Trauma-Informed Approaches to Eating Disorders, edited by, it’s over here, Andrew Siebert. I did a chapter actually collaborating with a patient about it as well, and it was most interesting. So I actually moved, I moved with her. She created a movement phrase, which is something I like to do.  And we practiced it over and over and took it apart and saw what parts of it felt like.  The first part had to do with removing a pillow from across her chest, putting it aside, and she became exposed then. 

Susan: Susan, did you say a movement phrase?

Susan: I did.

Sam: What does that mean?

Susan: Well, to me, it means like if you were to write a phrase, a short phrase, like that could be like a sentence. Like I left my house and forgot to lock the door.  That could be like a sentence. But in movement, ah and I do this often both with groups and individuals, I’d like to have them start with their own movement or gesture.  We’re not going to do anybody else’s choreography. We’re working.  And so in our own choreography, maybe somebody else, especially someone new might say something like, I don’t know what to do.

Sam: At this point, Susan shrugs her shoulders dramatically, showing us how movement and body language show up often unconsciously.

Susan: And they’re like, but you just did something. Do you mind if we use that?  We use whatever we see, whatever they’re doing.  And you know the legs shaking, the finger inadubile, which is so frequent that comes up too. So that might be part of a movement phrase we create. With a group, it’s longer, depending on how long, how many people are in the group.  But I have them in a group often create a movement phrase using their own movements, trying to accept what they give me, trying to get them to change an exercise movement into an expressive movement. Like, you know, the most we do in yoga a lot of times is a stretch over the shoulder.

Sam: Susan moves her body in a way to show us a variation of a yoga pose. With her hands on her hips, she twists her torso to the right, looking over her shoulder.

Susan: So why might you do that movement in everyday life?  And what they told me in a group last week was, I’m looking to see if there’s a bear behind me. And I love that because a bear is dangerous. And of course they decode it. And it means the eating disorder is over my shoulder. 

Ashley: Danger is there.

Susan: Is there. I can’t attend to being here unless I look there.  So we begin to decode the movements they provide by using their verbal metaphors. And then I have them reorder it to put it, I mean, it’s like working through an issue. So they order it in movement. And in doing that, they come up with a story a lot of time that has to do with why they are the way they are and why it’s difficult. So instead of taking away the anxiety or the fear or trying to make it happy,  use whatever they give me to make it safe enough for them to express it and begin to breathe into it.  Sometimes when they do something like a movement like when they’re like.

Sam: Susan raises her hands into the frame, holding them in two very loose fists, and she starts punching the air ever so gently in circular motions. 

Susan: As if saying we’re fighting, but there’s no energy, there’s no punch on it.  I want to help them begin to have affect both in movement and in voice. And we know with this population and the number of people who have oh trauma histories, loud noises, sharp movements, swinging into their space, all issues one has to be careful of to make it big enough for them to begin to work on. So in a group, they create a movement phrase that way. With individuals, I do something similar. I might make part of a phrase., so like I said, with the leaning hand, I’m leaning back.  Or  I might, if they’re too frightened, have one of them, I  might start a movement and then let them do the second one. And we’ll go back and forth, just a few movements to get us going, because it really doesn’t matter.  Because as we work together, their natural way of moving will reveal itself and all I have to do is attune to it. Sometimes asking questions about, “is that familiar to you?” Like think of the cognitive markers.  You know, I know for me, sometimes if I move forward too fast, then I get scared. What about you? So I try to find a way for mutuality to occur and humanness so that we can check in with each other, see what’s going on. There’s one patient I wrote about in another chapter. This particular patient would not work with me for the first couple of times she came in, maybe the third or fourth time she requested me during the admission process, and I began to work with her. And even this time, she was scared to move. So I asked her if I could move for her.  She directed me. And in that process, it was so interesting because she had me walking along the edges of the wall. And we created a goal. We put an object there.  And then at a certain point, she had enough. She said, OK, I think I’ve had enough.  I came back to her, and she’d oh been sitting cross-legged. When I came back to her, her legs were spread out. She was using more space.  I thought that was amazing. So I think these kinds of things, they’re so significant.  And some of them are small, but they’re all fresh and they’re all fascinating.  So I want to show you Yoda.

Sam: Susan holds up a stuffed doll. It’s Yoda from Star Wars. It has these big sparkly eyes that give it almost a childlike innocence. 

Susan: Who is a gift from a former patient, from an alum, who I saw several times when she came in.  And so she would call me Yoda.  And  she told me, you all know Yoda from Star Wars. Sometimes I get Yoda’s uh name mixed up. But Yoda from Star Wars was very sensitive and intuitive.  So  that,  I let patients bring anything they want to a group and bring stuffed animals to a group often. And I have them introduce their friend.  And that gives them someone to speak for and to talk about. One patient told me the name of her  was very small animal was Pepto-Bismol.  And  it’s just very endearing to have them bring their pets, and then I have them put them down somewhere. Sometimes they all sit together and watch, and then sometimes I call on them again at the end of a group. But they don’t interfere anyway. They just kind of enrich. This came up because I was talking about attunement.

Ashley: Yes. I’m thinking about the concept even of like attuning to their own bodies and like living and existing in their own bodies. And we know working with eating disorder, eating disorders that body image comes up quite a bit. um So I have a question for you.  I was looking at some of your work, and you and Adrienne Ressler, who you mentioned earlier, you wrote a chapter entitled, Bringing the Body Back into Body Image, Body-Centered Perspectives on Eating Disorders. And that was published in Embodiment and Eating Disorders, Theory, Research, and Treatment. And so in this particular chapter, you discuss the deeper side of eating disorders, which allows you to bring up the four components that make up an individual’s body image, and why their eating disorder is likely deeper than just like physical appearance, you know, which I  think is a fallacy that we, if we don’t know about eating disorders, we might think. I also want to acknowledge here that this information that you all worked on and published is adopted, has been adopted by the Renfrew Center as some of the foundational material of body image work that we use today.  So the components that you all labeled, I would like to read those. And then I would love for you to share more about them, if that’s OK.  OK, so the first body image component that makes up an individual’s body image is one, the picture we have in our mind’s eye of how we see ourselves. The second one, the picture we have in our mind’s eye of how others see us.

Susan: How we believe others see us.

Ashley:  The picture we have in our mind’s eye of how we believe others see us.  Number three, the experience of living in our bodies.  And then number four,  what type of actions and behaviors do we engage in because of our particular perceptions of our body? Okay. Yeah, I’d love for you to share more with us about this too.

Susan: There are many definitions of body image.  The one I use is really the one Adrienne Ressler coined. I like her version, the picture we have in our mind’s eye of how we see ourselves or look to ourselves, how we believe others see us and what it feels like to live in our bodies.  And then as a result of that, I add the fourth, which  then what happens, what actions do you take  as a result of your perceptions? How do you see yourself? How do you believe others see you?  And the experience of living in your body.  I do a weekly group with higher level patients where we explore this and they seem to like it a lot. I find it so fascinating. In short, they all get it. They all understand that how they see themselves has to do with the actions they take and all that kind of stuff. All the whole thing has to do with them. Then what they turn to are emotionally driven behaviors. They understand this. They know it exactly right. And so I then often come back to the experience, the part of the definition I believe is most avoided by the patients and least dealt with by clinicians, and that is the experience of living in the body. So then I often do, if it’s a big group, I do something that we can work into with pairs, pair sharing, something nonverbal, an interaction, maybe one of them moves forward, the other moves back.  Whatever emerges from whatever has been observed in the group and something that will work. And then I let them work by themselves on it.  And then I let them reprocess it together.  And looking at how they see themselves, how they think others see them, what it feels like to live in their bodies. And using also the cognitive markers as the frame of exploring, seeing what we discovered, acknowledging the truth, looking for the pattern, and trying to pull it together. And then I encourage them to write about it, to share about it, to draw about it, to move about it.

Ashley: I am curious. So you mentioned the experience of living in the body is the place where you feel like both clients and clinicians avoid going the most. Why do you think this is the case? What do you think is coming up for both the client and the clinician here?

Susan: Well, I bet you all know. You know, it just seems to me on what I know from having worked with students in many different mental health disciplines, as well as new dance therapists, it’s really hard to attune and it’s really hard to have your own awareness and use it kinesthetically and  then put two and two together and stay whole. I think it requires a lot of practice. People often have difficulty being authentic or knowing how to pull away from and not just let everything out, the cat out of the bag, you know, and also returning a second time to work with or a third time and a fourth time to work with them. What one of the most special things I think, well, both you and Sam observed me working in large groups at the IAEDP conferences, so just knowing that I didn’t know what was going to happen when we worked together with the one you saw, Ashley, I asked for a volunteer and the volunteer was Sandra Cumbert. And Sandra came up and  she said, I’m afraid to move forward.  She didn’t say those words, but I’m afraid to go there or something.  And so I moved with her. We moved together in connection with each other.  And I attuned to her rhythm, her pace, and anything she said or didn’t say. I cannot remember exactly what happened or  how it happened,  but eventually a whole big group of people came together and we were all together in one person  rocking each other and then waving toward the camera that I think Melanie Smith was holding.  She took pictures for us of that situation. I still have that. Those pictures only.  And then the one last year Sam was at and that was like a miracle Sam. That was in this huge room. I didn’t know how I could work with those people. But I had some people standing by to help with the mics and with the PowerPoints and all that stuff. But then we did the experiential in the middle and that was so much fun. And people came up, volunteered to come up. And I remember what we did. I used a big piece of elastic and a big piece of elastic, like could be six feet long, and somebody walk on from one end to the other, which metaphor, which was no problem.  But I had them then walk back, I think with their eyes closed. That was a big problem, because they couldn’t see where they were going. It brings up all kinds of issues when you do something like that. I don’t know where I’m going. It’s scary. I might hurt somebody. I might fall down. I might be embarrassed. Anyway, so they got to experience that kind of thing.  And then another thing we did with it was then we opened up the elastic and we had different people explore what it was like to just take a step in. So the elastic was represented a container.

Sam: Here, Susan makes a circle with her hands, giving us a visual of a container, a physical space someone can choose to enter or exit.

Susan: Moving into the container has to do with moving into the body and has to do with working from the inside out. Whatever comes up, comes up. Whatever came up, came up. And so we just worked on that, we processed it verbally, we processed it non-verbally. Then afterwards we did a group with about 30 or 40 people in another room, and we processed more verbally. So I think going back to the awareness on a body level, trusting oneself to be a therapist is a very scary thing. I remember when I was trying to drive a car and I was afraid to drive the car, I thought I might hurt somebody.  Not on purpose, but maybe I bumped into somebody or something. I had to wait a couple years before I drove the car, and I got my license. Now it’s no problem, but then it was an issue for it.  So when we experience, life comes alive, and it happens in ways we wouldn’t think were valuable to us as clinicians. But whatever dawns on us is a possible insight. And that’s why the patients look for Yoda.

Sam: Susan holds up her Yoda doll again. She’s smiling and cuddling up to it. 

Susan: Yoda’s in all of us to connect with, because then they know it’s safe enough to be with us. 

Ashley: Well, and I think when we can display that we can even turn inwards and like step into our own space, that gives them confidence that they can both come into space with us, but then also step in their own space as well.

Susan: Absolutely, I think all of that is important and I think it’s what we practice all the time. That’s why I love to order and don’t know what I’m getting into or what’s going to emerge until it emerges. And sometimes I’ll think, “oh, I’m so tired today.  I can’t think straight or anything.” But then it’s right there for us.  I do think there is an art to therapy.  And I think when we commit to it in that way, we see more.

Sam: Susan, when we’re talking about this work and eating disorders specifically, you had said before, I’ve heard you say, about the concept of burying our feelings, and for those with eating disorders, the burial ground becomes the body. And that is really such a powerful quote, image.  I was hoping you could just say a little bit more about that because I know there’s people listening who may be struggling with food and struggling with their body and they may not realize that maybe they are burying their emotions in their bodies.

Susan: I think most of the people I see and patients know that they are burying their feelings in their body, although they just want to get away because it’s just not safe enough. Although there may be some that are so distanced from their bodies that they think, well, what? I don’t have any hope of anything changing or it’s just not safe enough. I always start from trying to make it safe enough to begin to feel a little. You don’t have feel everything but to begin to feel a little. I have two river rocks. You know what I’m going to say, Ashley? They are magnetic river rocks. When I hand one to a patient, I’ve done this before, and keep the other one, then as you move closer, you feel this magnetic force. And I’ve had patients don’t feel anything, they try not to go, whoa.  They cannot believe what they’re able to feel in their body.  When we make it safe enough over time, we can help them magnetize the connection with their feelings and with their thoughts.  And Rome was not built in a day, that as long as they are not connected, inwardly, interoceptively.  Nothing. It’s like eating ice cream when you have a bad cold. You can’t taste anything. So making it safe enough to begin to feel a little is where I always began and began and began with the people I work with.  If they can’t taste, if they can’t feel, they can’t feel joy or sadness or loss or anything. So finding ways to shape interactions that make it safe enough is what I look for.  We had a couple of stuffed animals somebody had given to  Adrianne actually,  and then she gave them to me and I brought them in and  gave them to the patients. big teddy bears  and we opened Ren and Frew and we gave them red beds.  They could not leave the day room and they could not go to the dining room. They had to stay there.  And I loved working with Ren and Frew and the patients. They loved it too. We got T-shirts from Target or someplace and painted them and we  brought them to life.  I think animals, I think pets, and toys can help somebody come alive in a way that may have seemed like it has nothing to do with eating disorders, but may have everything to do with eating disorders because it has to do with taking in, digesting, and expressing.  And if it’s too scary to do that, we need those stories to  help them. Because it’s like they’re rewind going over and over the same stories.  And then there’s moving out into newer spaces.  All of that, I think, is important.

Ashley: Susan, I’m just sitting here thinking, I’m so taken by your presence right now.  And I just feel like a client being across from you in this space, that attunement that you’re speaking of, it’s palpable right now. Like you can feel it and it’s beautiful. um And I love that that’s something that is so important and something that you focus on so much because you know where healing is and that connection is craved and desired really. Susan, we are running out of time. But I do want to share one more quote from you because I think it is just one of the loveliest things I’ve ever heard.  You say, “movement defines us from the moment we are born till the day we die, from the first kick in our mother’s womb until our dying breath, we participate in the dance of life and experience the power of movement.”  And I just think that’s incredible.  Movement feels so much to me like breathing. It’s integral to our experience. It’s a part of who we are.  And you understand the intricacies of acknowledging the movement and existing and embodiment that we can have and how healing that can be. And so I love that you’re in this work, that you’re doing this, you’re working with Renfrew and Frew at Renfrew and all of your other people that you’re working with.  As we close today, I was curious if there would be one takeaway, anything that you would like to share as kind of a wrap up in our conversation today.

Susan: There are two quotes. One, I don’t know if I said it or somebody else. And that is “we take our body with us wherever we go.”  Our body comes along for the ride, and sometimes we drag it. Sometimes we push it. Sometimes we beat it up. But we bring our body with us wherever we go. And there’s another one that Marianne Chase said, “somewhere in any emotional experience, the body enters.” Thank you for letting me do this.

Ashley: Susan, it was such an honor to have you on here.

Ashley: Thank you for listening with us today on All Bodies. All Foods. presented by the Renfrew Center for Eating Disorders.

Sam: We’re looking forward to you joining us next time as we continue these conversations.

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