What Does Embodiment Mean? How Can It Support Eating Disorder Recovery
Recovery from an eating disorder isn’t just about changing thoughts or behaviors. At its heart, recovery is an embodied process. You have to eat, feel, and relate to others through your body. And that requires practical skills: sensing what you need, coping with emotions, and connecting with others in ways that feel safe.
But for many people with eating disorders, the body can feel like an uncomfortable and distressing place to live. That’s where embodiment practices come in. Yoga, breathwork, and other somatic approaches give people the tools to notice, relate to, and care for their bodies in everyday life.
What Does Embodiment Mean?
“Embodiment” simply means how we live through, sense, and experience our bodies in the world. It’s about more than body image. It’s the felt sense of inhabiting a body. How you notice hunger and fullness, how you process emotions, how you move and relate to others.
Eating disorders disrupt this connection. For some, that might look like:
Not noticing hunger or fullness cues.
Feeling numb or disconnected from the body.
Relying on behaviors to manage feelings that feel overwhelming or unnameable.
Experiencing the body as something that must be controlled or fixed to feel acceptable.
This is what researchers call disrupted embodiment. The opposite, positive embodiment, is when you feel grounded, at home in your body, and able to respond to its needs with care.
Positive embodiment might look like:
Feeling connected and comfortable in your body, as it is.
Sensing hunger, fatigue, and stress—and responding to them.
Experiencing your body as your own, not something that needs fixing for others.
Appreciating your body for what it allows you to do, not just how it looks.
Theories of Embodiment in Eating Disorder Research
Two leading researchers have developed contemporary theories of embodiment that can help us understand how it applies in the context of eating disorders: Dr. Catherine Cook-Cottone and Dr. Niva Piran.
The Embodied Self: Attunement and Embodied Self-Regulation
The theory of embodied self-regulation, developed by Dr. Catherine Cook-Cottone, is particularly relevant to eating disorders. It explains how disruptions in the connection between body, mind, and environment can lead to dysregulation and disordered eating. She describes the self as made up of two interconnected systems: the internal system, which includes the body, emotions, and thoughts, and the external system, which includes relationships, community, and culture. To flourish, we need to stay attuned to both our inner signals and the external world.
When this attunement breaks down, individuals may lose touch with their internal experience. Hunger and satiety cues may be ignored or overridden, emotional states may go unrecognized, and external pressures, such as the urge to lose weight to align with cultural ideals of thinness, may take priority over inner needs.
Cook-Cottone argues that embodied self-regulation is critical to recovery. Practices such as mindfulness, yoga, and self-care can help individuals reconnect with their bodies, regulate emotions, and rebuild trust in internal cues. Activities that foster meaning and purpose are also important, and can help a person move beyond recovery to flourishing. From this perspective, treatment of eating disorders involves more than addressing symptoms; it is about helping individuals develop skills to stay connected with their inner experience as they navigate their external environment.
The Developmental Theory of Embodiment
The Developmental Theory of Embodiment, developed by Dr Niva Piran, offers another important lens for understanding eating disorders through the frame of embodiment. Piran’s theory grew out of decades of qualitative research with girls and women, including multi-year studies that followed participants from childhood through adolescence into adulthood, tracing how social, cultural, and relational experiences across development shape the way people live in and relate to their bodies.
Piran identifies three key domains of influence: the physical domain, which involves bodily safety, nourishment, and freedom of movement; the mental domain, which includes cultural messages and internalized ideals about bodies; and the social domain, which encompasses relationships, belonging, and power. Positive experiences in these domains can support a strong and trusting relationship with the body, while adverse experiences can undermine it.
When these experiences are negative, individuals may become disconnected from their embodied experience. Cultural pressures can lead people to objectify and feel ashamed of their bodies, violence and conflict can leave people feeling unsafe in their bodies, and experiences of marginalization can erode a sense of agency and belonging. These factors make it harder to listen to bodily cues and can increase vulnerability to disordered eating.
Piran’s model highlights the importance of addressing both individual and social factors in recovery. Building a safe relationship with the body, challenging harmful cultural messages, and fostering supportive connections are all central to restoring embodiment. From this perspective, treatment of eating disorders is not only about reducing symptoms but also creating the social conditions that foster a positive, empowered experience of living in one’s body.
Why Embodiment Matters for Recovery
Psychological therapies for eating disorders focus on thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, and these play an essential role in treatment. At the same time, eating disorders also affect how people experience and relate to their bodies, which may not be fully addressed through psychological work alone. For many, the illness involves deeper disruptions in embodiment as well as difficulties with thinking and behavior.
Embodied practices may help psychological therapies work more effectively. They provide opportunities to practice:
Noticing sensations, like a tight chest or a rumbling stomach.
Naming feelings, for example, “My heart is beating really fast. I’m feeling a bit anxious right now.”
Responding with care, for example, taking several deep breaths or moving into a pose that helps them feel safe and grounded.
Each small act of noticing and responding helps rebuild attunement with the body. Embodied practices like yoga can help those with eating disorders safely connect with their bodies, shift their state of mind, and care for themselves. Over time, many of us find that these practices transform the relationship we have with ourselves.
Practicing Positive Embodiment
In Eat Breathe Thrive courses, embodiment is not an abstract idea; it’s a practice. Participants might:
Connect with the body before a meal through a guided meditation.
Use yoga to notice areas of tension and respond to them with care.
Practice breathing exercises to work with their emotions, rather than turning away from them.
These moments of practice add up. They remind us that the body is not just something to be managed, but a place to live, feel, and connect. And while the path is not always easy, positive embodiment offers a way to move through recovery with presence and possibility.
Written by: Isabella Masso