Workshops

I am pleased to offer 2½ hour workshops to women struggling with food and body image, each one based on a specific chapter of my book. Each workshop is considered a“half day” and many groups choose to pair two workshops to make a “full day” workshop available to participants. With every full-day booked (i.e., 2 workshops in one day), I offer a free one-hour talk for the evening prior to the workshop day. I offer both corporate and non-profit rates. Please call (250.338.1800) or e-mail me for more details.

Available Workshops:

Why Diets Don't Work

The workshop begins with some startling statistics and facts about dieting and why it’s so dangerous. After that, I share some of my thoughts based on doing this work for so long about why we keep on dieting and who is profiting. Followed by that is a detailed outline of what really happens to us physiologically when we diet and how this sets up a self-perpetuating cycle of defeat. Then I give participants an opportunity to delve into their own history of dieting, food obsession, weight loss, weight gain, and propose some different and healthier possibilities.

Mindful Eating

In this Workshop, I share everything I know with  participants about Mindful Eating. We start off with a Mindful Eating exercise, followed by a discussion of how Mindful Eating can become an incredibly powerful tool in helping us to find peace with food and our bodies. The rest focuses on what I believe are the five major roadblocks that get in our way of eating mindfully. I lead participants through several hands-on exercises designed to assist them in figuring out their own specific roadblocks and how they can move past them to begin eating with mindful awareness and a deep sense of peace and well-being.

The Food-Mood Connection

In this workshop, I lead participants through an exploration of how food and mood are connected in their own lives and how this pattern began. Also, we explore emotions that women with food and body image issues often have trouble expressing and give participants the tools they need to become “unstuck” emotionally so that they don’t have to turn to eating as a way to cope with difficult feelings. Lastly, I give people tips and strategies to nurture themselves emotionally without turning to food as a primary self-soothing strategy.

Changing Our Minds

This workshop begins with is an exploration of how women with food and body image issues tend to think and how it gets them into trouble. Then we examine the most common forms of distorted thinking and give participants practical tools which can be used to change their thinking from negative to positive. Lastly, I show people how to manage their thinking so that they are controlling it, and not the other way around.

I Love This Body

This workshop is divided into two parts. The first half is an exploration of how we have become susceptible to society’s beauty standards and ideals by exploring our own personal histories of trying to match what society ‘expects of us’, followed by an in-depth exploration of the history of North American women and body image throughout time.
The second half consists of learning tools to become freer of outside pressures to look a certain way. These will include journaling exercises, writings and examples of women who courageously defy our culture’s standards of beauty and success, as well as practical tips for learning to love the body you have.

Here’s what past participants have said about these workshops:

	I struggle with feeling beautiful, and have spent most of my life comparing myself to images of women that have been airbrushed, surgically altered and digitally enhanced. Not only have I bought products sold by the beauty and weight loss industries, I have also internalized that unattainable, nonexistent image of beauty. Esther’s workshops helped me gain a better understanding of my relationship with food, and gave me useful tools to refocus my energy onto more important and life-affirming things, improve my mood, and make peace with my body.

	I recently attended Esther Kane's "Making Peace with Food" workshops and found Esther both honest and easy to listen to. In this weight-obsessed world of ours, I found the information provided in the workshops both thought provoking and extremely helpful. Esther’s approach to making peace with food and our bodies was applicable to all women in the workshops, no matter what age or size. I do not "love my body" yet, however, I find myself remembering things Esther taught us on a daily basis and with time, I am confident that I will learn to accept and love myself for who I am... she teaches you how to do that.

	I got so much peace of mind from attending Esther’s workshops. As a busy working mother of two young children, it was such a treat to do something for a couple hours a week just for me. Being surrounded by other women with the same issues I’d been struggling with for so long was comforting because I learned that I am not alone in this. Esther helped me realize that so much of what I struggle with has very little to do with food and the size and shape of my body; but is more about how I treat myself and allow others to treat me. I gained valuable tools to help me be kinder to myself, let go of having to be perfect, and dealing with my emotions in healthy and productive ways.

	I enjoyed the workshops because of the humour that Esther brought to what can be a very serious subject for many women. I learned to listen to my body. I now have a better understanding about why we do what we do with food and our bodies as women, and also how to stop engaging in those negative thoughts and behaviours.