In my Three Month Deep Dive, you’ll acquire the tools you need to address all four aspects of your addiction: emotional health, biological dependency, behavioural habits, and social system.
- Learn & practice healthy emotional coping techniques & nervous system regulation (emotions).
- Eliminate some of the worst offenders from your diet, choosing “harm-reduction” versions that still satisfy your tastebuds but aren’t as biologically addictive (habits & biology).
- Add in fresh whole foods which will crowd out junk food, and help your body gradually adjust to a new way of eating (habits & biology).
- Start to build your own support system, drawing from local community and online groups. You’ll learn how to get the most from these relationships by being authentic without sacrificing belonging (social).
Since pressure leads to rebellion, I’ll never push you to make changes that aren’t right for you. Instead, you’ll guide the pace and direction of the changes you want to make.
I’ll help you tune-in to your inner wisdom and decide what changes you’d like to make next. Then I’ll help you learn and practice the tools you need to support those changes.
We go slow to go fast.
When you slow down and nurture your system with patience and caring, you create space for your own inner wisdom to organically emerge. This allows your higher self to guide the healing process in a way that’s exactly right, just for you.
My approach is deliberately patient and gentle. I believe high intensity growth work is harder to integrate, leads to “healing burnout,” and ultimately takes longer to achieve the same results.
Healing retreats, plant medicine, and immersive workshops definitely have their place—they can jump start the healing process and bring forward huge breakthroughs.
And, having attended dozens of holistic retreats and a few plant medicine ceremonies, I’ve realized it was the slow and gentle
I use three modalities:
- Focusing: Build capacity to feel your feelings without being overwhelmed. Untangle your “inner parts” to explore what’s really going on when you eat.
- Polyvagal Rebalancing: Learn to regulate your nervous system using healthy tools instead of food.
- Relateful Coaching: Get clear on the changes you want to make, and unpack the unconscious beliefs that are getting in the way.
I teach from these evidence-based frameworks:
- Neurobiology of Craving: The dopamine system is a balance — when you push on your brain, it pushes back.
- Learning model of Addiction: Addiction is not a disease; it’s a learned behaviour, and you can learn new behaviours instead.
- Gut Microbiology: Your gut fauna hijacks your craving system, and how to reset and increase diversity with food
- Food Industry: Big Tobacco took over the processed food industry in the 80’s, and how it still uses their tactics to deliberately make food products as addictive as possible
These lenses inform my worldview:
- Polyvagal Theory
- Nervous System Co-regulation
- Attachment Theory
- Integral Theory / Spiral Dynamics
- Tantric Philosophy
- Spirituality
Other Resources
In my wildest vision, I dream about hosting detox retreats in tropical places to get people through the withdrawal phase while building lifelong relationships, and developing an online support group with people practicing these skills. I have faith these will come in time; meanwhile I refer you to these resources:
- While not addiction-related, Relatefulness is an incredible resource for bringing together presence and connection. This group of humans and the practices we offer have been instrumental to my own emotional recovery. I’m a regular online facilitator there and I would love to see you in my sessions!
- Fresh Start Detox on Vancouver Island and TrueNorth Health Center in California both offer residential plant-based detox programs supported by medical professionals.
- Imperfect as they are, Twelve Steps and SMART Recovery offer support groups where you can find people who get what you’re going through. I attend my local AA meeting even though I’m not an alcoholic, because everyone there is so supportive and welcoming. But they also bring cookies and cake, so it’s a double-edge sword.