With Anne L. Wennerstrand, MS, MSW, LCSW-R

In today’s culture, it is virtually impossible to live at peace in one’s body, no matter what one’s size or weight.

In this workshop, Anne Wennerstrand will discuss how and why we get the message to experience our bodies as “projects” vs. a secure home to live within. The awareness of the body as “home” helps us reclaim self-acceptance and self-compassion leading to a relationship with food and exercise as self-care.

Many people, especially girls and women, have been taught to ignore hunger and satiety signals, leading to distrust of the body. As an alternative to this approach, Anne teaches a way to access the body’s internal regulatory, intuitive system and respond to your natural cues for hunger and satiety. And, we will discuss what this method means from a spiritual and psychological perspective.

The workshop will also explore different paradigms for finding joyful, satisfying ways of moving the body for a lifetime as an alternative to the feeling that one “should” be exercising solely to stave off weight gain. We will spend time learning the Health At Every Size Approach ™ to wellness and learn to identify and question the stressful beliefs and assumptions we have developed about eating, food and our bodies.

Anne L. Wennerstrand, MS, MSW, LCSW-R:
Anne is a psychotherapist in private practice in Katonah, NY. She has over 20 years of experience working with adolescents and adults struggling with issues including body image dissatisfaction, eating problems, anxiety and depression. Anne is on the governing Board of Directors of The Women’s Therapy Centre Institute in New York City and the co-founder of the two-year, post-graduate training program entitled Minding the Body: Culture, Gender, Creativity and Subversion. Anne’s writing has been published in Dance Magazine, the Dance Insider, the Journal of the American Dance Therapy Association, Eating Disorders: Journal of Treatment & Prevention and the Encyclopedia of Mind-Body Disciplines among others. She is a body positive activist and supporter of the Health At Every Size ™ approach honoring diversity in size, age, race, ethnicity, gender, dis/ability, sexualities, spiritualities, class and all the attributes that make us human.