What if exercise was never supposed to be a punishment? What if your meditation practice doesn't have to look like anyone else's? And what if healing your relationship with your body requires understanding not just your personal history but the cultural forces that shaped it?

In this episode, Lili sits down with Bianca Simmons, Licensed Clinical Marriage and Family Therapist (LCMFT) and founder of Renewed & Transformed Therapy in Overland Park. Bianca brings both clinical expertise and lived experience to a conversation about movement, embodiment, and what it actually means to be at home in your body.

They talk about journaling and gratitude practices that combat hopelessness, why "ritual" is a more powerful word than "motivation," how to reclaim movement when diet culture has ruined it, the concept of embodiment and bottom-up healing, and why body image work is inseparable from understanding racism, fatphobia, and the systems that taught us to distrust our bodies in the first place.

Resources Mentioned

Fearing the Black Body — Sabrina Strings (book)

Maintenance Phase — podcast (episodes on BMI, anti-fat bias, and weight science)

YouTube: frequency/binaural beat videos for meditation

Qigong: QiYoga with LuChin

KU Medical's Center for African American Health on Instagram

Contact Bianca:

Website - https://www.biancasimmonslmft.com/ Instagram: @renewedandtransformedtherapy

Contact Lili:

Email - inbetweensessionspod@gmail.com Instagram: @inbetweensessionspodcast TikTok: @lilitorrecounseling www.lilitorrecounseling.com - reach out to schedule a free 15-minute consult for therapy!

The conversations on this podcast are meant to support, inspire, and inform, but they’re not a substitute for therapy or medical care. Listening to this show doesn’t create a therapeutic relationship. If something you hear resonates and you’d like more support, consider connecting with a licensed mental health professional in your area.

You can search for a therapist at psychologytoday.com.