Dr. Kristina Dobyns

I’m Dr. Kristina Dobyns — a Registered Somatic Movement Therapist with a PhD in Somatic Psychology, an MS in Exercise Science, and certification as a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner.

I founded Beyond Binge Eating, a holistic recovery platform for people breaking free from binge eating and compulsive eating, and The Lightwell, a metabolic health retreat brand.

My work sits where three things meet: what the body is doing metabolically, what the nervous system is doing underneath that, and what living inside both of those actually feels like from the inside. Most approaches pick one. I’ve never found that any of them work alone.

I believe recovery and vitality aren’t separate paths.

Whatever brought you here — welcome. I’m glad the internet finally did something right.

About Dr. Kristina Dobyns

I’ve spent more than twenty years working with bodies — first as an athlete and personal trainer, then as a somatic movement therapist and a recovery specialist working where metabolic health and nervous system regulation overlap.

The doctorate came later than the practice did. By the time I started the PhD, I’d already spent years watching people do everything right on paper and still not get better, and I wanted to understand why. What I found is that most recovery models treat the mind as the site of the problem and the body as something to be managed afterwards. In my experience that gets it backwards more often than it gets it right.

So my work runs the other direction. We start with the physiology — blood sugar, energy availability, inflammation, sleep, and the state your nervous system is actually in on a given afternoon. Once the biology is steadier, the psychological work gets dramatically easier. Not because insight stops mattering, but because you finally have the capacity to use it.

That framework now runs through three places: Beyond Binge Eating for recovery, The Lightwell for retreats, and Meat & Movement, a yoga retreat that offers animal protein (gasp!) in Costa Rica in 2027.

Qualifications

Select Trainings and credentials

PhD, Somatic Psychology — peer-reviewed work: Body-based strategies for urges to binge eat
Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy

MS, Exercise Science

Registered Somatic Movement Therapist (RSMT)

Nutritional Therapy Practitioner (NTP)

Ketogenic Diets for Mental Health Clinician Training
Completed under Harvard-trained psychiatrist Dr. Georgia Ede

Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention

Mindfulness-Based Eating Awareness

Mindfulness Oriented Recovery Enhancement

Mindful Awareness in Body-Oriented Therapy

Additional training in strength physiology, yoga, and body-based therapies

Athlete

The part that came before the PhD

Professional breakdancer first. Then a two-time All-Around Figure and Physique Overall Champion. Then a powerlifter holding three national records. Somewhere across all of that I built a personal training practice and spent two decades helping people with fat loss, strength, rehabilitation and mobility.

This matters now because it explains how I work. I know what it is to push a body hard and ask a great deal of it. I also know what it costs when pushing is the only tool you’ve got. Intensity and recovery each have their moment — most of us are just much better at reading one than the other.

Why this work, specifically

I spent twenty-five years caught in binge eating and ultra-processed food addiction. I tried the standard approaches. Some of them helped. Several made things worse — particularly the ones insisting that no food is ever the problem and that self-compassion alone should be enough.

What eventually shifted it was treating the whole thing as a metabolic and neurological problem as well as a psychological one, and eating in a way that finally gave my brain something stable to work with.

Explore

Choose Your Own Adventure

Recovery Platform

Beyond Binge Eating

Holistic, embodied support for breaking free from binge eating and compulsive eating patterns — for good.

Wellness Retreat · Feb 28 - March 6, 2027

Meat & Movement

A carnivore and animal-based yoga retreat on twenty acres of Costa Rican jungle. Come eat well, move your body, and remember what it feels like to thrive.

Retreat Center · Coming Soon