Our Approach

Traditional definitions of health often focus primarily on physical health, but for Embody Lib, health is not just the absence of illness. We acknowledge health and well-being as multidimensional and encompass many factors that help communities thrive.

Embody Lib also understands that community health and wellbeing are collective responsibilities, not just individual ones.

Organizations and institutions significantly influence the environments, systems, and structures that enable a community’s ability to thrive and can cause unintentional harm to the mental, emotional, social, and physical wellbeing of people with systemically marginalized identities.

Embody Lib is not a health coaching business, nor do we offer one-on-one nutrition or health counseling for individuals. While Embody Lib encourages individuals to incorporate our framework and strategies into their daily lives, our services best suit providers, organizations, and institutions seeking transformation through a policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) lens.

Embody Lib dreams of shifting the status quo to an interdisciplinary, multi-dimensional, and weight-inclusive health paradigm, which provides the foundation for working toward liberation, justice, and equity.

TO SUPPORT or improve the mental, emotional, social, and physical wellbeing OF:

  • Black, brown, and Indigenous People of Color, otherwise known as People of the Global Majority (POGM)

  • People living in higher weight bodies

  • People living with disability, particularly those who identify as mentally ill, “Mad”, and/or neurodivergent

  • People of marginalized genders, including women, non-binary and gender nonconforming individuals, and trans men

We use various tools and frameworks to aid transformation, including:

  • Crossdisciplinary scholarship & theory

  • Evidence-informed practice

  • Asset-based framing

  • Appreciative Inquiry

  • Qualitative & quantitative evaluation methods

  • Blended teaching methods, pedagogy, and andragogy

  • Incorporation of lived experience

  • Collaborative and community-informed design

  • Accountable space curation

  • Transformative community engagement

  • Humanity-centered facilitation

Our FrameworK

DECONSTRUCt & Examine

Cultural narratives dictate many thoughts, beliefs, and choices individuals make regarding their health and wellbeing, whether for their benefit or detriment. Dominant power structures shape this narrative as they navigate gender identity, health practices, and their relationship to food and bodies. Deconstructing cultural narratives allows for a close examination of current systems and their connection to oppressive beliefs, structures, and practices. Gaining context and understanding of the past and present is a vital step in working towards justice, equity, and liberation.

Reclaim & Rebuild

Drawing from liberatory frameworks and Indigenous knowledge, we work in tandem to reclaim ancestral beliefs and practices while reimagining new structures and institutions that center collective accountability, communal care, and dismantling systemic disinvestment.

Strengthen & Nurture

Many of the ideas and concepts behind this framework are not new. Embody Lib’s framework has roots in liberatory praxis (theory + practice) and justice movements such as Fat Liberation, Black Feminist Thought (including Intersectionality), Decolonization, Racial Justice, Food Sovereignty, Healing Justice, Modern Abolitionism, Liberation Theology, Reproductive Justice, Queer Liberation, Indigenous Reclamation, Mutual Aid, and more. The final part of the framework involves leveraging our knowledge base and skill set to strengthen and nurture interpersonal and community relationships, serving as a catalyst for continued transformative change.