In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Mark Hardison — occupational therapist, researcher, and the co-developer of the ROADE Program, a community-based mindfulness intervention for individuals with disordered eating, funded by the American Occupational Therapy Foundation. Dr. Hardison’s career has been built at a fascinating and underexplored intersection: the place where physical function, mental health, and sensory experience all converge — and where he believes some of the most important work in eating disorder recovery is still waiting to happen.

What makes his perspective rare isn’t just his clinical credentials. It’s the way he thinks about recovery itself — not as something that happens in a therapy room, but as something that has to show up in the daily rhythms and routines of a person’s actual life. Cooking a meal. Caring for your body. Showing up for work or school. These aren’t just logistics. In Dr. Hardison’s framework, they are the work.

Here’s what we explore in this episode:

What occupational therapy actually is — and why most people have never thought of it in this context Most people associate OT with physical rehabilitation — relearning how to use your hands after an injury, regaining function after a stroke. But occupational therapy’s deeper purpose is much broader: helping people reengage with the meaningful activities that make up a life. Dr. Hardison explains how that framework — focused on function, self-care, and daily occupation — makes OT a natural and powerful complement to eating disorder treatment, even if it’s rarely positioned that way.

The mind-body gap in eating disorder care — and how OT bridges it Mental health counseling addresses thoughts, emotions, and patterns. But there’s a layer in between the mind and behavior that often goes unaddressed: the body’s sensory system. Dr. Hardison draws on his background in both psychology and occupational therapy to explain how sensory inputs — deep pressure touch, slow rhythmic movement, breath — directly regulate the nervous system in ways that talk therapy alone cannot reach. Understanding this gap, he argues, is key to building a truly holistic recovery.

The ROADE Program — what it is, how it works, and why it’s promising The ROADE Program began as a small passion project at the University of New Mexico and has grown, with grant funding, into a structured feasibility study. It combines mindfulness-based interventions with the occupational therapy framework — guiding participants not just toward symptom reduction, but toward reclaiming self-care as a meaningful, healing occupation. Dr. Hardison shares the program’s early results: reduced eating disorder symptom burden, decreased anxiety, and improved health-related quality of life — and outlines his vision for expanding it to Las Vegas and building toward a full efficacy trial.

Why mindfulness belongs even in the most biomechanical therapy settings One of the more surprising parts of Dr. Hardison’s journey is where his mindfulness research began — not in mental health, but in hand therapy. Stretching, strengthening, wound care, scar management. The idea of introducing mindfulness meditation into that setting was, by his own account, polarizing. Some colleagues were skeptical. But his core argument has stayed consistent: every patient with a physical injury is also having a mental health experience. Treating the whole person isn’t an add-on. It’s the point.

How OT and mental health counseling work together — not against each other A concern that sometimes arises in interdisciplinary care is overlap — or worse, competition. Dr. Hardison addresses this directly. Occupational therapy isn’t trying to do what mental health counseling does. The emotional depth of the therapeutic relationship is different. What OT offers is something more pragmatic: a bridge between the insights a person gains in counseling and the daily life where those insights have to actually land. The skills. The routines. The problem-solving. The return to function.

Sensory integration — the piece of the puzzle most clinicians aren’t trained in One of the most illuminating moments in this conversation is a reflection on what occupational therapists are trained in that most other mental health providers simply aren’t: sensory integration theory. The science of how the nervous system processes and responds to sensory input. How deep pressure, slow rhythmic vestibular movement, and specific tactile experiences can shift a person’s physiological state. In eating disorder recovery — where the relationship with the body is often fractured — this knowledge isn’t peripheral. It may be central.

What it means to reclaim self-care as a healing occupation Perhaps the most reorienting idea in this episode is the invitation to think about self-care not as a checklist, but as an occupation — something that can become precious, personal, and genuinely restorative. Dr. Hardison describes guiding participants toward self-care practices that belong to them, that they carry into their own lives, and that become part of how they manage symptoms on their own terms. It’s a subtle shift. But it changes everything about what recovery feels like from the inside.

If you’ve ever felt like something was missing from your recovery — like the therapy was helping but daily life still felt unmanageable — this episode will give you language for what that gap might be. Occupational therapy isn’t the answer to everything. But for many people, it might be exactly the piece that was missing.

Recovery doesn’t just happen in the therapy room. It happens in the kitchen, in the morning routine, in the quiet moments of self-care that accumulate into a life. Dr. Hardison’s work is about making sure people have the support to show up for all of it.

Watch the full episode on the Beyond Binge Eating YouTube channel, and don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe for more conversations about recovery, holistic health, and life beyond binge eating.