The Ancient Body: A Gentle Return to What Was Never Lost
There are moments in recovery when your body might feel like a stranger.
Like it’s too much. Too unpredictable. Too hard to be with.
In those moments, it’s so natural to want to fix things — to control your food, your schedule, your symptoms. To research. To seek answers. To make the discomfort go away.
Sometimes that makes perfect sense. Especially if you’ve lived through trauma or medical gaslighting. Especially if your body has felt like a battleground, or like something you’ve had to manage rather than live inside.
And yet… there is another possibility.
A quieter one.
Not another plan or protocol, but a gentle path of return.
What if your body didn’t need fixing?
What if it was always holding wisdom — even in its messiness?
What if the work wasn’t to change your body, but to remember how to be with it?
The Body Beneath the Noise
In my work, I often meet people who feel exiled from their own body.
They know the language of hunger and fullness, but it feels distant.
They try to listen to their body, but sometimes all they hear is noise — anxiety, confusion, contradiction.
It’s easy to believe the body is broken. Or that it can’t be trusted.
But what I’ve come to notice is this: beneath the noise, there is a deeper rhythm.
A remembering.
A pulse that never left — only got quiet.
I’ve started to think of this as the ancient body.
The ancient body is not a concept from another world.
It’s not mystical or disconnected from science.
It’s simply a way of understanding the body before it was shaped by shame.
Before it was monitored, controlled, and measured.
Before it became a project.
It’s the body that knew how to eat when it was hungry.
How to cry when it was grieving.
How to soften in safety.
How to feel.
And the more we work gently, somatically — not through force, but through presence — the more I’ve come to believe that healing is not about teaching the body something new.
It’s about helping it remember what it’s always known.
Somatics as Remembering
Somatic work is often described as “bottom-up” healing —
the kind that begins in the body, not just the mind.
We breathe. We ground. We orient. We slow down.
We tend to the nervous system with gentleness.
But something deeper happens, too.
As we regulate, we don’t just calm down.
We start to remember.
We remember how it feels to take up space without apology.
To pause without guilt.
To let the breath be enough.
To feel — fully — and stay.
And when I sit with this process long enough, I begin to sense something ancient stirring.
Not just in my clients, but in me.
In all of us.
Because somewhere in our lineage — not that long ago —
our bodies were guided by rhythm.
We rose with the sun.
We cooked together.
We sang in circles.
We grieved communally.
We listened to the land.
We lived in relationship — with each other, and with the Earth.
This is not a fantasy. This is ancestral memory.
Biological wisdom.
The nervous system doesn’t need modern language to regulate.
It just needs rhythm.
Safety.
Belonging.
Something true to come home to.
A Different Kind of Safety
In a world that prizes logic, structure, and control, it’s no wonder we’ve come to fear what we cannot measure.
The idea of listening to the body — trusting its rhythm, following its cues — can feel unsteady at first.
Especially when you’ve lived in systems that rewarded disconnection.
Or when your body has been a site of pain, unpredictability, or harm.
There’s a kind of security in the mainstream.
In protocols.
In meal plans.
In rules.
And it’s okay to need that.
Safety matters.
Structure can soothe.
But what I’ve come to believe — more and more — is that true safety is not found in control.
It’s found in connection.
To the body.
To the moment.
To the deeper rhythms that live beneath the noise.
That’s why this work may feel unfamiliar — and yet strangely comforting.
Because even if you’ve never heard the phrase “the ancient body” before, some part of you knows what it means.
Knows it in your bones.
In your breath.
In the sigh you let out when you read words like these.
This work is not about perfection.
It’s about permission.
To be with what’s real.
To follow what feels warm.
To come home — again and again — to the body that has always been with you.
A Quiet Homecoming
There is a body within you
older than shame,
older than food rules,
older than the voice that told you
you were too much
or not enough.
It is the ancient body —
the one that knew how to eat,
how to rest,
how to grieve,
how to rise.
This body is not lost.
It’s simply waiting.
Waiting for breath.
Waiting for stillness.
Waiting for you to stop trying to fix it —
and instead, to remember it.
You don’t have to rush.
You don’t have to “get it right.”
You are not behind.
You are returning.
Not in a grand way.
But in the small moments —
the breath that softens your jaw.
The warmth that pools in your belly after a meal.
The way your body leans toward slowness,
even when the world demands more.
This is not self-improvement.
This is self-remembrance.
And you are welcome here.
Ready to come home?
This is exactly the work we do in nutrition therapy: rewiring your nervous system so you can feel safe, empowered, and peaceful around food—rather than overwhelmed, guilty, and anxious.