My Journey from Disordered Eating & Exercise to Intuitive Wellness
My name is Helen Phelan, I’m a former dancer turned pilates instructor and I’ve been living and teaching pilates in NYC since 2013. I started studying dance when I was 3, and went on to double major receiving both a BFA in dance performance and choreography and a BA in psychology from Elon University in 2013, which also included TA-ing the somatic theory classes, a semester of independent study focusing on pilates for dancers, and doing my initial mat pilates certification. I immediately moved to NYC to pursue my professional dance career, doing odd project based downtown underground type contemporary dance and a stint with Celebrity Cruise Lines.
Throughout this time period from about age 10-25, I had a very disordered relationship with food and exercise and my poor nutrition and excessive training landed me with 3 stress fractures in my left foot and sidelined from dancing for nearly a year. Needless to say, it was a tough time, and my relationship with food worsened because of it. After my foot finally healed, I went on to pursue dance a few more months, but ultimately found the joy had been sucked from it. Upon completing my 600 hour comprehensive equipment (reformer, cadillac, chair and barrel) certification and I began teaching pilates full time. I found that teaching left me feeling fulfilled in ways that rejection and performing for love in the dance world had left me feeling empty— though I still very much adore the art form and miss many aspects of being a professional artist.
I started my teaching career with very low self worth and terrible confidence, as well as extreme social anxiety (dancers aren’t all that used to public speaking!) but as I practiced and got to understand the industry more, I my confidence and trust in myself and comfort leading a room grew. I will always say that the best cure for social anxiety (in addition to therapy and medication when needed) is teaching 25 group fitness classes a week for a few years! The more time I spent out of the dance world, the less “normal” my disordered eating habits seemed and I knew that I had to start doing things differently.
In those first few years I spent teaching, on the surface, I looked incredibly healthy according to society’s markers of health (my being a thin white woman). What wasn’t visible to the naked eye, of course was that I had traded one set of disordered habits— traditional ED behaviors— for another, obsession with being healthy or eating clean and exercise compulsion. After I moved in with my partner and realized the stress my issues with food and exercise were having not just on me, but on my relationship (anyone who’s ever lost their shit when someone else used sugar in a recipe without their knowledge can relate) it became clear that there was still something wrong, even though I had convinced myself that I wasn’t actually sick and that I was managing just fine.
I decided to go back to therapy— not even initially because I needed support going through the ED stuff- but to help work through some family dynamics, and of course, it ended up coming up. I did several years of CBT and somatic experiencing and along the way, started to realize that a lot of what was happening in the fitness industry was extremely unhealthy— and mirrored a lot of disordered thinking patterns but was mysteriously societally accepted. It’s for this reason I empathize with the people I disagree with re: diet culture, because I know not everyone has gotten to a place in their journey where they realize how harmful it is and that it can seem impossible to put two and two together when you are still entrenched in that belief system.
Empathy aside, I had no desire to be a part of that harm causing roller coaster. I had a really hard time rationalizing having spent my entire life studying the body and movement and genuinely loving how movement made me feel, but feeling unsafe in an industry that said that health was it’s priority, when really it was thinness. So many people “graduate” from eating disordered like anorexia or bulimia to orthorexia and consider themselves healed despite exhibiting similar obsessive and controlling behaviors because society congratulates them all day long for their virtue and discipline. It’s toxic.
At the same time, movement IS a crucial component of a healthy and happy life and it felt really unfair to me that I would have to let go of something that had been a huge part of my identity since I was even aware that I HAD an identity to protect my mental health- so, instead, I refused to choose, and found a way to make my wellness habits support both physical and mental health. I discovered the concept of intuitive eating while training to become a health coach through the Institute of Integrative Nutrition and it became the framework upon which I built the Helen Phelan Studio methodology.
Conclusion
As you might be able to gather from the images throughout this post, my body’s appearance didn’t change all that much when I shifted my thinking around food and movement— a testament to the fact that the body is not nearly as controllable as diet culture leads us to believe, and it will fight you every step of the way if you try to control it. However, learning to trust my body, to find a new why to motivate my movement practice that didn’t center body size or appearance and to start respecting my body instead of trying to change it changed me fundamentally as a person. Those ideas might sound obvious or simple to someone who hasn’t struggled with feeling at home in their body, but for me the impact it has had on my life has been nothing short of radical.
Unfortunately, my experience isn’t universal. The fact that I am a naturally thin, cisgender, straight passing, white woman protected me from the stigmatization (and even lack of medical care) that people in marginalized bodies experience. It has highlighted to me the problems in the wellness industry and in our culture at large. When I stopped trying to force my body into submission, I remained a societally accepted size and my healing process would’ve been incredibly different if that weren’t the case, which is a problem.
I made Helen Phelan Studio to not just make pilates training (a notoriously inaccessible and elitist modality) available wherever you are, but to make challenging, creative, and joy sparking movement practices possible without bringing in triggering language or body shaming that infiltrates so much of my industry. I created what I needed a few years ago, and it has been so rewarding to see the impact it has made on my students. So, whether you are just looking for a challenging pilates class or are looking to work on your relationship to exercise itself- Helen Phelan Studio is a home for you to explore that. I offer a free 10 day trial to see if it feels like a fit for you, plus you can try a few of my quickie workouts over on the Helen Phelan Studio Youtube Channel to get a taste too.
In good mental and physical health,
Helen
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