I’m So Glad You’re Here

About Dr. Ann Saffi Biasetti

The introduction of my book, Befriending Your Body: A Self-Compassionate Approach to Freeing Yourself From Disordered Eating, shares a bit about my own story of recovery from Anorexia as a teen into my early 20’s. I was 16, grieving the traumatic death of my Father, fearing what was next in my broken household, and not knowing what to do with all the intense, heavy emotions that lived inside of me. I now know what I didn’t know then, and what I teach to so many now: heavy emotions and the way they impact our nervous system also impact our sensory experience and the way we see our body. “heavy emotions leave us feeling overloaded and heavy in our body.”

I wished I had someone who could translate for me what I was experiencing inside my body and help me to make sense of it so that I wasn’t left feeling that my body was somehow against me and my enemy. I was only searching for a way to be at peace within my body and the only way I knew how was to shut down all sensations, including hunger, so that these intense, painful, heavy emotions could feel contained. I thought I could feel some sense of peace inside if they all just disappeared. Self-compassion has led me to understand that I never believed nor wanted to cause the cycle of harm that it did. I was only looking to feel peace.

My body and mind struggled to find the peace I was searching for. However, there was one space, even if just for a short time that some peace and ease emerged, and that was through my body on my yoga mat. I was first introduced to yoga in High School and fell in love with the way it left me feeling inside. It was the one space that I found the eating disorder did not come along. It came along in other forms of exercise, especially aerobics, but not in yoga, especially not while I was upside down in a shoulder stand pose. I never forgot the feeling. Rather than even label it a feeling, I will instead say it was a ‘remembrance’ of something. That remembrance felt old. It felt as if I once may have known it, like an old friend, but lost it along the way. That remembrance is embodiment and it was what I was longing to return to. It is what we all are longing to reconnect with and return to in our bodies and in our lives.

I had no formal therapy or professional care as there was still so little known about eating disorders at that time and my family held a great deal of shame about seeking help. So my recovery unfolded slowly through connecting with people that really cared and supported me and connecting with my body in a new way. The more I engaged in and with my body in gentler ways, such as yoga and beginning to nourish myself with regularity, I noticed a shift. I started to care about my well-being. I developed the self-compassionate wish to no longer cause myself harm. I started to actually care and feel sorry for the suffering my body was going through and I started to feel sad, for what I had gone through. I allowed myself to grieve. Eventually this care (self-compassion) outweighed the harm; some ease outweighed the heaviness and the hope outweighed the fear.

When I look back on those years and my path of recovery, I realize that my recovery was framed by two key concepts: embodiment, which consisted of body awareness, and self-compassion. Many years later these same concepts are what I decided to research. I heard story after story from women who found their way through recovery from the stage of feeling broken to feeling healing and freedom. They found this freedom through the same key elements that I, too, had found. They came to discover, as I had, that embodiment and self-compassion were the missing links in recovery, especially sustainment of recovery, and could provide the path to freedom.

As my body healed, I healed. As I allowed my body to unfold naturally, the way it really wanted to, I started to unfold naturally. I started to grow and want more from my life. I was drawn to the helping profession and have been blessed for over 30 years doing what I love most, helping others to connect, find choice, comfort and ease in and with their own bodies and in their lives so that they, too, may wish and hope for more.

As an undergraduate, I majored in counseling and social work and went on to pursue my degree in Clinical Social Work right after college. After twenty years of practicing as a psychotherapist, I went back to school to obtain my Doctoral degree in Psychology with a concentration in Transpersonal Psychology, which is the psychology of human potential and spirituality. My doctoral research explored the role of self-compassion and embodiment in eating disorder recovery. I was most interested in learning what sustains recovery as the clinical field knows so little about that. My first book, based on my research, Befriending Your Body: A Self-Compassionate Approach to Freeing Yourself from Disordered Eating, was released through Shambhala Publications in August, 2018 and my second publication, the Awakening Self-Compassion Card Deck was released through Shambhala Publications December, 2021.

I have found my clinical career to be very rewarding. As a somatic psychotherapist and embodiment expert, I have helped hundreds of people regain body awareness, trust and safety as they heal from disordered eating, eating disorders and trauma. I am a Certified Eating Disorder Specialist (CEDS) through IAEDP, a Certified Yoga Teacher and Certified Yoga Therapist through IAYT, a trained Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) and Mindfulness teacher, a trained Polyvagal Theory therapist, and in Somatic IFS, as well as a Certified Mindful Awareness in Body-Oriented Therapy (MABT) Practitioner. All that training to say I love to help people find peace within their body and learn how to truly “befriend their body.”

I wrote my book and created the BFYB Program to share the powerful skills that I not only came to understand through my research, but the skills that I also use on a daily basis that have helped me fully heal and feel free in my body for the last 30 years. I am proud to say I practice what I preach. Therefore, anyone who knows me knows you can find me, often daily, on my yoga mat, mostly practicing Yin and Restorative yoga, and meditating, as well as taking a walk or a hike in the woods with my dog. I am a Mom to three young adults, pretty great humans, and a partner to my husband of 28 years. I am human and make mistakes and have learned through self-compassion practice, how to embrace my humanness with gentleness. The critic still awakens from time to time but self-compassion is always there now to meet it. I hold gratitude for my practices of yoga and meditation and my in-depth study of Buddhist teachings which bring balance and ease to my body and my mind and have greatly influenced my own personal growth and the work that I do.

I also hold gratitude for all the clients and bodies I have been privileged to work with throughout the years. I honor the lived experience of each and every body I work with and it has been an honor to help others step back into life, embody and feel empowered in choice and actions that lead to freedom. My hope is that you, too, will feel the same after joining me along this new path.