Why Yoga Is So Much More Than Just A Physical Practice And How It Helped Me Heal From My Eating Disorder

In today’s culture, it’s not uncommon to know someone who has suffered from an eating disorder. As a very complex and variable mental disorder, it can be daunting to know where to begin to find healing. I think it’s important to note that while a lot of eating disorders stem from or largely incorporate negative body image, many occur from other issues related to control in one’s life, the need for a coping mechanism, or a variety of other factors.

My personal experience included a combination of all the aforementioned factors, and yoga has helped me to find peace with all of them. While this is just my own experience, I am passionate about sharing yoga because I believe it can help others in similar ways.

I first discovered yoga at a time when I wasn’t quite ready to hear what I needed from the practice, but I was fortunate to have a teacher who subtly included wisdom from the non-physical aspects of yoga in her classes. Yoga has eight limbs, only one of which is the asana or physical practice. As my yoga practice and knowledge has grown over the years, I now recognize which limbs of yoga resonated with me the most, even if I didn’t know what they were at the time. There are four concepts I’ll be briefly touching on: pranayama, ahimsa, satya, and svadhyaya. I’ll be speaking a lot in the past tense, but these concepts are very much an ongoing journey in my life.

Pranayama is connection with breath. I had no idea how powerful staying present with my breath would be in helping heal my mind-body connection. It sounds so simple, but learning to tune into my breath was a safe way for me to pay more attention to my body without focusing on the physical aspects so much. It was the first time I really began to tune inward in a way that felt safe.

Ahimsa is one of the yamas, which is a limb of yoga focusing on social ethics. Ahimsa translates into non-violence, but another way to interpret this is kindness. In my personal practice, self-kindness is where this resonated most. I had spent so much of my young life in self-hatred and harm, that this concept seemed foreign to me. Let me tell you, it took a LONG time for it to be something I embraced and lived by. But over time, I truly learned to love myself and speak only kind words to myself. I remember my teacher always prompting “Tune into your body. What do you need right now? Even if you can do the ‘full’ expression of a pose, are you pushing yourself with the need to prove something, while your body is asking for a less demanding version?” Ahimsa probably most directly led to healing of my mind-body connection as it really forced me to look inward and to LISTEN to my body, to be kind to myself, which is something that I hadn’t done for many years.

Satya is another yama, meaning truth. In these yogic teachings, truth is either personal or universal. Tuning into my personal truth brought immeasurable benefit to my life at a time when I was completely disconnected from self. Satya asked me to be honest with myself. To ask who I really was, why I was behaving the way I was, to reevaluate things I believed. Over the years I have listened more to what feels right to me, not what I think should feel right. This alignment with my truth has brought immense freedom and joy into my life.

Svadhyaya is one of the niyamas, which is a limb of yoga focusing on personal practices. Svadhyaya translates into self-study, and I’ll admit this one was possibly the most difficult for me to face at the time, and sometimes is still . As mentioned earlier, an eating disorder can be multi-faceted and complex, especially for the individual trying to understand how it developed within themselves. Studying myself involved facing a lot of dark truths about myself, many of which I was ashamed and embarrassed. It involved acknowledgement of my faults, admitting how I had hurt others with my selfishness and anger, and ultimately forgiving myself for being my own cause of so much pain.

For me, the physical practice of yoga offered a safe space for me to be with these things, while providing my body a way to release what was coming up through movement. Yoga is my sanctuary, mind body and soul. It is a practice that has taught me so much about how to honor and love myself for exactly who I am. And whether through yoga or something else, I hope everyone reading this can find the same!