Change Your Internal Script for Body Peace with Nina Manolson

Today's guest is Nina Manolson. Nina is a body peace coach. She helps people end the war with food and body, and finally feel truly at home in their body as it is. She's known for her deeply feminist anti-diet body-peace approach. She brings her 30 years experience as a therapist, nationally board certified health and wellness coach, body trust guide, and psychology of eating teacher to helping women create a respectful and trusting relationship with their food and their body. Nina's body-peace work is all in service of helping people get off the diet rollercoaster and into a compassionate and powerful way of eating and living, which creates a positive long lasting change in and with their bodies. Her courses, coaching and poetry positively change the conversation that women are having with their body.

In today's conversation we'll get a taste of what Nina's work does to change womens' relationships with their bodies. She will share a poem with us about the inner thoughts that keep us disempowered and share some ways to start working on changing that relationship with yourself. 

Get your free Practicing Body-Peace Journal on Nina's website: https://ninamanolson.com/

Transcript

Magic Barclay: 0:59

Welcome back to a Magical Life. I'm your host, magic Barkley, and today Nina Mandelson joins us. Nina is a body peace coach. She helps people end the war with food and body, and finally feel truly at home in their body as it is. She's known for her deeply feminist anti-D diet. Body piece approach. She brings her 30 years experience as a therapist nationally, board certified health and wellness coach, body trust guide, and psychology of eating teacher to helping women create a respectful and trusting relationship. With their food and their body. Nina's body piece work is all in service of helping people get off the diet rollercoaster and into a compassionate and powerful way of. Eating and living, which creates a positive long lasting change in and with their bodies. Her courses, coaching and poetry positively change the conversation that women are having with their body. She also writes body poems as a way to encourage shift in the way we talk to and about our body. Welcome, Nina.

Nina Mamolson: 2:17

Oh, thank you. Magic. It's really a delight to be with you.

Magic Barclay: 2:21

It's so great to have you here and just off air, we were just chatting. I, I'm so excited about what you can bring the listeners today.

Nina Mamolson: 2:32

Hmm. I am completely passionate actually, about changing the conversation that we as women have with our bodies because we've been so conditioned into having very negative, very hurtful, very destructive conversations with our body, at our body. and it's painful.

Magic Barclay: 2:55

It is, and it doesn't need to be that way. I'm going to get straight into our questions, Nina, because I can't wait for your answers. So here is the first standard magical life question. What can your expertise do to accelerate health, not just physical, but also emotional and spiritual health?

Nina Mamolson: 3:17

Hmm. I love that question. So the work that I do is about changing the relationship a woman has with their body. And when a woman feels at home at ease, in respect, in support of her body, where she feels like she is an ally to her body and her body is doing its best to be an ally to her, everything changes. Right. When I'm teaching workshops and I say, you know, when you're feeling like all that, you're feeling really good. You're feeling like confident in your own skin. How is life, right? What does life look like? What does life feel like? And women say, it feels good. I'm confident, I'm vocal. I'm more visible. I get my passion out in the world. I'm more me. And then when I say, well, and what happens when you don't feel good in your body? When you're feeling like, oh, you know I'm bigger than I wanna be. My clothes are not fitting the way I want. I wish I hadn't eaten that. When you're in that critical mode, then how do you. Show up in life, how does it impact your day? And women say, I speak less, I shine less. I'm less visible and vocal, and I contribute less into my world. when we reclaim the relationship with our body, we're reclaiming ourselves and we're giving ourselves the support and the inner belief and allyship to really give the world our true selves. And the world needs us desperately.

Magic Barclay: 4:58

It certainly does. Women are life givers, women. I mean, nothing would happen without us. Let's face it. And we are our harshest critics, and yet we kind of get to midlife and it's like we don't see our own value. We don't see all the things that we've, you know, brought for the last 40 plus years. So I think that's really a great message. Now that kind of leads us to the next question. We talk about wealth, and we're not just talking to financial wealth here because many of us midlife, that's kind of maybe a completely new ballgame, but we're also talking emotional and personal wealth. So what would be your top three tips to creating any type of wealth?

Nina Mamolson: 5:43

I love that idea of wealth in terms of the richness that is in life, sort of what I think of is the juiciness. So I do think of wealth so much through how we're able to fully experience life and. Deeply sink into the pleasure of it. When we have access to that sensuality, to that just like, Ooh, this is life impacting me in a way that I can appreciate it and be with it. Like whether you're sitting on a beach and Oh, I see the sunset and I feel the breeze. That is wealth. The experience of being in a body, feeling embodied in a way that goes. Oh, we're flooded in a good way. We're showered in a fabulous way with the richness and the sort of luxuriousness that life has to offer, and that to me feels like being super wealthy, super abundant, super rich. When we're able to be in life with our whole being, with our whole body, with our whole spirit, with our whole energy.

Magic Barclay: 7:02

And so how do women become that energy, that spirit? How do we refocus in times of change?

Nina Mamolson: 7:11

Hmm. So the way that I see works so well for women when we're in times of challenge, when we get sort of taken off of our foundation because of life events, because of personal, you know, marriage, divorce. Children growing up, all the different life stages when we're sort of shaken, the place that helps us get back to that place of juiciness is our bodies. Can I be in my body? Can I feel my body? Can I listen to my body? Right. Really coming back to what I consider our most powerful teacher in life, which is our body, right? One of the workshops that I lead is called the Body Listening Lab, and it really dives into this place of how do we listen to our body because we have a superpower and it's called interceptive awareness. Interceptive awareness is the ability to know what's happening inside, right? When we need to go pee, that's interceptive awareness. Oh, I have a sensation. That sensation is telling me something. And that's a pretty obvious one, but we know much subtler ways that our body speaks. Right. When we're somewhere and we feel like, oh, I really feel connected to somebody, or, Ooh, I'm I'm gonna keep my space from that person. That's again, our body's wisdom telling us, this is what works for me and this is what doesn't. And when we can really be in that place of body listening, we're also much more set up to make choices. Around and nourishment that truly support us. So for me, when I look at what is it that really grounds us, that makes us come back to feeling like our feet are firmly on the ground is, let's feel our feet. Let's feel our legs. Let's feel our torso. Let's feel our arms, our head, our chest, our breathing, our lungs right, feeling our body. Brings us back into the moment, and from there we can really check in with ourselves what would nourish me right now.

Magic Barclay: 9:38

Beautiful. Now we talk about weight loss here as well, and many people, especially women, really do battle with their weight. The first part of the question is, If you ever battled with your weight, what was the trigger to conquering it? And the second part is what can you offer the listeners on this journey, particularly around stress, around their body?

Nina Mamolson: 10:03

Yeah, so unfortunately we have a pandemic around feeling bad about their bodies and that their bodies are not okay. We are, it's like a virus that we all caught from a 72 billion diet industry saying you need to be smaller than you are. Your body is not okay. And it's so important for us to that message actually comes from outside of us because very quickly we internalize that message and really believe that our body is not okay. So I grew up absolutely believing that from I was on a diet when I was nine years old. And to be in that place of trying to manage, trying to control, trying to get into a smaller body is exhausting. And the for me this relationship wasn't working. This relationship of management, this relationship of trying to make my body do something. Right. That doesn't work in any relationship that we're in. There's no relationship that does well when somebody feels like they're being bossed around all the time. And that's what so many women are doing with themselves. Oh, you should do this, you should do that. You shouldn't have eaten this. How about this diet? What about that diet? Oh, now I couldn't stay on that diet. Now I've failed. Right? That's the diet cycle. That's the diet roller coaster that most women are on most of their life. So one of the big shifts for me and for many of my clients is to stop getting on that diet rollercoaster. Because all diet roller coaster does is goes up, oh, I'm doing so great on this diet and down, oh, I can't keep it up. I failed. And we go up again. What's the next diet? Oh, I feel great on this diet. Oh, I can't keep it up. I just want to eat ice cream. I failed and down I go. Right? The key is get off of that rollercoaster completely and find another path. Right. I am a huge advocate for the body peace path because that is literally what I help women do is create peace. In their body, and that is completely different than being in, let me tighten around how I should be. Let me get more willpower. Let me try to get more control. Body peace is about listening to our body like we just talked about. It's about respecting our body. It's about honoring the messages of our body. It's also about honoring the history of our body. And grief of the endless diets. Right. So if it's okay with you. I would love, love to share a poem that I've written, and it really addresses this experience that so many women go through around trying. Everything to manage their body. So magic can I share a poem with you?

Magic Barclay: 13:27

Please do. But just before you do, just listening to your talk, then brought up something in me and for years, you know, trying to. Control my weight. I realized the kind of person that I am is if you tell me to do A, I'm going to do B. So even when I told myself I have to do this diet, I have to eat this way, I have to portion sizes and you know, all that thing, I would go outta my way to break that because I hate being told what to do.

Nina Mamolson: 14:00

And you're not alone, right? What you're speaking to is so important. It's this idea of autonomy, right? It's a human need have a sense of autonomy. And so what we do when we set up diets is we're trying to break that autonomy. Autonomy is I, I am the decider of my own fate. I get to make the choices. And then we say, no, no, no. This new book written by some guy that worked for him for. I don't know, maybe six months or a year. No, I'm gonna go with his plan and our strong sense of self goes. Um, I don't think so. That's not happening. I'm not doing that. And our need for autonomy surfaces as well as this wonderful part of us that we all have, which is the inner rebel that goes. Don't tell me what to do. Right? Like, just like you said, if I say do A, I'm gonna, mm-hmm. I'm doing B. That's the inner rebel. And we love her. She's strong, she's fierce, we need to honor her by not putting her in a box and saying, you need to live within these four walls.

Magic Barclay: 15:10

Totally. And my inner rebel cannot wait for this poem, so lay it on us.

Nina Mamolson: 15:17

Oh, and so one thing just to know about poems and me is that I started writing body poems because I wanna change the conversation that we have around bodies, and I. Say out loud, I hear so many women thinking, but then it's layered with shame and they don't say it out loud. I just wanna say these things so we can get them out in the open and start to heal them. So this poem is called, I've Tried Everything I asked her, so what have you done already? What have you to feel good in your skin to end the battle with your body, to stop the tug of war with food, to stop obsessing over your weight? She said everything, every diet you can imagine, weight, watchers, paleo, keto, raw food, Scarsdale, grapefruit, juice, cleanses, whole 30 shakes and starving until it turned into a binge. I could go on, she said. And of course there's the exercise I've done marathons, boot camps, kickboxing, CrossFit, and so much more. I've tried it all and I keep coming back to the struggle. I start to give up, try to convince myself I don't care, but then I think the next thing will work. Because want it so much to feel good, to feel like I'm taking care of myself, to feel at ease in my clothing, to be there for my kids and their kids. I want to stop the body war. And then she said, but maybe this is just the way it is. Maybe being in a woman's body is just a struggle. She cried. I cried. The war is exhausting. The obsession is draining. The next day, I'll start again. Mantra is soul sucking and each diet has left some sediment of failure until she truly believes there's something wrong with her. There's not, she was duped into thinking her body was a project into pushing her body into all kinds of shapes. Instead of honoring the shape of her, we were all duped to believe that there's one way to be in a body. There is no project management app, no diet book that will take away the reality of being in real relationship with your body. Instead, there's reconnecting, relearning, respecting, responding to your current body. There's compassion, connection, kindness, and caring. If you've tried everything, I invite you to stop trying and instead explore. Explore, nourishing, nurturing. And knowing her, your body, she's worth knowing. She has a depth of wisdom beyond everything you've ever tried.

Magic Barclay: 18:19

Wow. That was, it was like you were writing what I was thinking. It was amazing. Mm. My goodness. Thank you.

Nina Mamolson: 18:29

Thank you. Thank you for inviting me into the space that I would wanna read it and could read it. I appreciate that.

Magic Barclay: 18:36

listeners, I hope you got as much from that as I did. That was just incredible. Now Nina, we love freebies here. And apart from the poem that you've just shared with us, what can you offer the listeners? Because maybe they just need a little start on getting back to who they are.

Nina Mamolson: 18:55

Yeah, so I really understand that sort of, I need a little beginning support. So I created a practicing body journal, and it has a few of my poems in there, but really importantly, it has 20 questions. So it's a little bit of a workbook, a little bit of a 20 questions game, a little bit of a journal. But what it does is invite you to explore what's happening in this relationship with my body. How would I describe the relationship that I have with my body? How did this relationship develop? So it invites you into an inquiry that will help you step on the body peace path because it will invite you into a conversation with your body that you may not have had before, but that we all need to have.

Magic Barclay: 19:52

Fantastic. Now people can find you@www.ninamandelson.com. That's N I N A M A N O L S O n.com. And what else can people find on that website?

Nina Mamolson: 20:13

So you'll find. Many resources as I would say, poems, but also videos that really dive into different aspects of the challenges that we have with our relationship with food and body. So I'm always going into different topics around, you know, binge eating or secret eating or food scarcity, or control versus willpower, or how we need to repair our relationships. So there's lots of resources in there, including the. Journal, and there's a lot of different programs and groups. There's information about that. So if you're ready to take the next step, there's a work with me page and there's ways to explore this work that's very, very profound in a group of women. Because when we're with other women who are really working through these issues, our shame melts away. We realize we're not alone. So many women think they're the only one feeling bad about the secret eating they're doing. They're the only ones who feel bad about the fact that they nibbled their way through the whole day and they just can't sit themselves down for a real meal. You're not and there's a way to heal that.

Magic Barclay: 21:35

Terrific. Now I am going to wrap up this episode, but I would love you to come back for our next. I know that we've only just scratched the surface, so thank you for sharing with us in this episode. My

Nina Mamolson: 21:50

total

Magic Barclay: 21:50

pleasure. Listeners, this was your episode 180 8. Thank you for your time. Join us again in the next to hear more from the wonderful Nina, but for now, go forth and create your magical life.