We are a Soul-centered treatment center, which means, we believe that everyone is simply learning and evolving. Having an eating disorder is simply an opportunity to learn and know who we truly are. It is a difficult homework assignment. It isn't that one "achieves eating disorder recovery" or "conquers having an eating disorder". It is that one learns enough that the eating disorder imbalance recedes.
In order to help women heal we believe that it is more powerful to teach women how to nurture and love themselves then it is to focus on trying to get rid of the eating disorder behavior. In other words our program focuses on helping women create lives that are fun, balanced and fulfilling, rather then focusing on the eating disorder. In adding positive, the negative recedes.
Many women are seduced by this culture to believe their worth depends upon how they look and how productive they are. It is all about the external world of "doing". We go around in circles never finding the love and fulfillment we were hoping to find. An eating disorder is sometimes the voice of the hungry soul that is desperate for this cycle to end, the voice inside us that knows something is not right, a voice that has been silenced but will not be forgotten. When we learn how to slow down and "be", when we make time to listen to our heart and our soul, when we make time to acknowledge and process our feelings, when we make nurturing and loving ourselves our real job and goal, we discover who we truly are. Then we love ourselves. Then we find the fulfillment we were looking for in food, perfect bodies and perfect careers.
We believe that our culture is unhealthy in a lot of ways and just by being born into it we can become sick. Women who are sweet, sensitive and intuitive are pre-disposed to picking up an eating disorder. We have to get out of the reality we were born into, find our true selves, our true voices, and re-create life on our own terms. Then there is no more eating disorder. We strengthen our emotional immune system by learning how to love, honor and nurture ourselves. At The Loving Heart Center we teach women how to do this.
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us: it's in everyone. And as we let out own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." Marianne Williamson
