M-Bodied: Mindful Movement as Mothering Medicine®
M-Bodied® Coaching blends body awareness with attachment-based relational practices as a container for exploration, a womb for self-discovery, nourishment and growth. Sometimes we talk, sometimes we explore myths and stories, sometimes we explore developmental shapes or movement patterns, and sometimes we do all three. You set the pace.
M-Bodied: Mindful Movement as Mothering Medicine is a trauma-sensitive approach informed by nervous system science, attachment theory and specific early relational Chi for Two® co-regulation practices in an effort to provide relational nourishment and healing. The M-Bodied approach is appropriate for individuals, parents/caregivers, couples, families as well as corporate, recreational and athletic organizations.
“Having a body that is like a musical instrument, open enough to be able to resonate, literally resonate with what is coming both from the inside and from the outside, so that one is able to surrender to powers greater than oneself.” -Marion Woodman
What is M-Bodied: Mindful Movement as Mothering Medicine®?
M-Bodied: Mindful Movement as Mothering Medicine offers somatic psychotherapy (Georgia, USA) and embodiment coaching (worldwide) for:
those who want a more sustainable relationship with food, eating, drinking and other substances, exercise and body-image
parenting and motherhood support from womb-to-walking-and-beyond journeys
those who feel overwhelmed or stuck with anxious or depressive patterns, moods, reactions and who crave a quality of living that is more fulfilling, steady and hopeful
families who want help with finding a new way to communicate and lovingly connect.
For all those listed above, M-Bodied® explores soothing and satisfying deeper hungers through a relational approach using both somatic and cognitive co-regulation techniques.
In order to connect the dots with deeper hungers, M-Bodied offers:
nervous-system informed psychoeducation
a trauma-informed approach to strengthening body awareness
attachment-based co-regulation practices.
Using this three-pronged approach, M-Bodied slowly invites coming home to the body-mind to offer reconnection in a sustainable way.
M-Bodied® as a Mothering Metaphor
M-Bodied is offered through psychotherapy and embodiment coaching, and is influenced by developmental movement and relational patterns as a way to help connect the dots and symbolically redo body-mind areas of focus that need re-patterning for healthy embodiment. Ultimately, these practices serve as a mothering metaphor, as a pathway to birth the nurturing inner parent or mother from within while in relationship with oneself and others.
*When “Mother” is referenced in this practice, we are inviting the “mothering quality of oxytocin,” which plays a major role in signaling safety within our Social Engagement system functioning as related to nervous system science. Therefore, those who identify as female, male, or non-binary may offer and embody that “Mother” quality.
M-Bodied® as Relational and Developmental Mindful Movement
While some M-Bodied work often looks like shapes commonly recognized as yoga postures, it draws from shapes, patterns and movement we all once embodied, needed and crave for healthy brain development, security, connection, love and survival. Performative “pretzel poses”, while sometimes fun and playful, are not the goal or even used.
The key in using this mindful movement is to apply practices in a relational and developmental way dependent upon each unique client. In combination with nervous system psychoeducation, having a conscious awareness of how and why shapes, patterns and movement might be used in a newly supported way can help the development of a self-supported individual from the inside-out.
The M-Bodied approach helps to increase inner and outer body awareness and helps clients make unique meaning of their expressions, behaviors and other messages like common gestures, stances, postures, breath patterns, tension, openings, numbness, etc. These messages often inform about boundaries, hungers, needs, fears and communication. M-Bodied encourages the client to become curious about the stories their body holds within relationship to self and others.
How M-Bodied® Relational Practices Help Body-Mind Integration
In addition to appreciating the value of “using our words,” like in talk therapy, M-Bodied uses somatic techniques through the lens of developmental movement and relational patterns that offer parallels of psychological and social development. Using the Chi for Two® multi-generational trauma healing method that draws upon nervous system science, particularly polyvagal theory, M-Bodied helps one to explore relational ways of using the body as a resource for body-mind integration. This approach helps to explore satisfying and nurturing shapes, postures and movement someone might find beneficial not only for physical support and empowerment but also as a path toward body-mind integration and nervous system re-patterning.
The conscious re-patterning of one’s infant developmental dances from womb-to-walking helps to strengthen one’s own attunement, self awareness and expanded capacity toward an Embodied Cognition. By merging somatic and cognitive techniques from a trauma-sensitive and attachment-based approach, we practice mothering ourselves through mindful movement.
The Birthing of M-Bodied: Mindful Movement as Mothering Medicine®
For 20+ years, Caroline Gebhardt, LPC, RYT, creator of M-Bodied, helped people mindfully reconnect with their body in a sustainable, trauma-sensitive way—from group exercise classes, to private in-home training, to parent-baby movement, to yoga groups for eating disorders and addictions, and to individual psychotherapy. During Caroline’s time as a movement educator full-time, she began case consultation, co-developing Chi for Two® and then training as a certified Chi for Two® coach and trainer under the direction of dance-movement therapist Dee Wagner, BC-DMT, LPC.
Chi for Two® - The Energetic Dance of Healthy Relationship is a polyvagal-informed, trauma-sensitive and attachment-based multi-generational trauma healing method that helps to manage trauma. Chi for Two is helpful for therapists/clients, parents/children, intimate partners and 12-Step enthusiasts. Chi for Two and other studies and life experiences (including Caroline & Nick’s own three children!), helped Caroline to create M-Bodied: Mindful Movement as Mothering Medicine—a therapeutically somatic approach to nourishment from the inside-out. M-Bodied Coaching is Nick and Caroline’s collaborative creation to take M-Bodied concepts into somatic coaching for various populations including individuals, parents/families, organizations, corporations, recreational and athletic settings.