Yoga and Eating Disorders

Ancient Healing for Modern Illness

Carolyn Costin, Joe Kelly, Carolyn Costin, Joe Kelly

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317439479
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Applied Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Features contributions from more than 15 experts in eating disorders treatment, yoga practice, and research

Edited by well-known eating disorder specialist and treatment pioneer, Carolyn Costin, and family expert Joe Kelly—both successful authors and speakers

Written in accessible, compelling language that will make it a useful resource to practitioners as well as general readers

Part 1 Why and How Yoga Helps Heal Eating Disorders

Yoga: A Healing Journey, from Personal to Professional

Carolyn Costin

DOI: 10.4324/9781315694405-1

People with eating disorders have become disconnected from their true selves and lost their way. Every eating disorder client who walks through my door seeking help has a healthy soul self deep inside, but a disordered self has taken over and is running the show.

Eating disorders develop due to a combination of risk factors such as gender, genetic vulnerability, cultural weight and shape pressures and other psychological variables (e.g., anxiety or a trauma history). On a deeper level, there is profound disconnection.

These clients are disconnected from their body. They stop listening, paying attention to and responding to their body’s signals. They stop appreciating and caring for their body altogether. What may have seemed like caring in the beginning, “I want to be trim,” or “I need to lose weight to get healthy,” becomes something entirely different and takes on a life of its own.

At 79 pounds, a girl with anorexia is no longer restricting food to be healthy or trim, but because her brain simply tells her to. She is lost, not only disconnected from her body, but from her own mind, which has been hijacked. Her way of relating to her body and to food has been rewired in her brain and new circuits have created a pattern she can’t escape. Luckily, we can retrain the mind to change the brain. We can also help her connect her body, mind and soul.

When disconnected from soul, both body and mind run amok. The mind or ego, which thrives on personal identity and achievement, is attached to things like grades, status, appearance and control.

Untethered to soul and the truth of what really matters, things of the ego take on undue importance but can never be fully satisfying. All kinds of maladies such as depression, anxiety, addictions and eating disorders result. How do we heal such disconnection?

The Bemba people of Zambia believe that every human being comes into the world as valuable. Everyone is eager to love and have peace, connection and happiness. However, sometimes, in the pursuit of these things, people make mistakes. The Bemba see those mistakes as a cry for help.

If you are a member of the tribe and have done something wrong or harmful the Bemba take you to the center of the village for a ritual called Shikoba Nabajyotisaikia. For two days, they tell you all the good things you’ve done. The tribe believes you made a mistake and it is their responsibility to lift you up and reconnect you with your true nature; to remind you, until you can remember, the full truth from which you are temporarily disconnected¹.

How can we help those with eating disorders remember the full truth and reconnect to their true nature? Eradicating the symptoms of an eating disorder is a challenging task; even harder is healing on a deeper level. Yoga can help with both.

Yoga and meditation author Michael Singer writes: “The very essence of spirituality is represented by the question ‘Who are you that is lost and trying to build a concept of yourself in order to be found?’”²

Yoga is an ancient philosophy and practice in existence since as early as 300 BCE. If one goes back far enough there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of yoga poses and various teachings. Yoga philosophy and practices are designed as a means of transcending the idea that “I am my body.” (Hence one can find early yoga references denigrating the body.)

Originally handed down only orally, a man or several men called “Patanjali” compiled various yogic teachings and summarized the ancient art and science of yoga somewhere between 400 BCE and 200 AD. This work, known as the Yoga Sutras, includes the “Eight Fold Path” or “Eight Limbs of Yoga,” and has been translated countless times.³ Yoga poses or postures, called Asanas, are the third limb and thus only one part of a rich overall yoga philosophy and practice.

The Yoga Sutras are designed to help with understanding the nature and function of the mind and consciousness. They provide techniques and practices geared to cease the rampant activity of the mind, allowing for connection to a deeper awareness, to one’s true self and to everything else in the universe. This alone can reduce needless self-caused pain and suffering. It is thought that consistent practice brings self-realization and allows one to transcend the self and rest in his or her own true divine spirit or nature.⁴

When I learned what yoga really is, I was already familiar with many of the concepts and ideas from my exploration of Buddhist teachings. Like Buddhism, yoga is a philosophy of living and self-realization, not a faith based practice. Neither require belief in anything other-worldly, thus people of any religion, or none, can practice. I was already incorporating Buddhist ideas in my work with eating disorder clients, such as teaching the difference between their ego/mind and their core essence or soul self.

Yoga fit right in as a way to enhance and physically concretize what I was trying to do: help clients realize that the eating disorder self is ego/mind out of control. Help them understand that they are not their eating disorder self. Help them separate from it and re-connect with their true nature or soul. Once connected to soul, things like weight get into proper perspective, where a number on a scale is no longer a matter of consequence.

My introduction to yoga was an accident and came about when I decided to try it as a replacement form of exercise. Years earlier I had recovered from anorexia nervosa but my driven, tenacious temperament had turned my attention toward running and created an internal obligation to do so. Multiple stress fractures were now preventing me from putting on my Nikes and heading for the hills, and I was desperate for an alternative.

Fifteen minutes into my first yoga class, I was distraught and tears began to form. “This is not exercise,” I thought. “I will never be able to stay in shape doing this.” Though I cried, things about the class intrigued me, so I continued to go.

It didn’t take long before I realized that my body was actually getting stronger in new and interesting ways, but far more was also taking place. For the first time in a long time, I was listening to my body, paying attention to how it moved and felt, noticing how my breath could help or hinder me. Through yoga I developed a new kind of respect for my body, improving it with patience rather than pushing and encouragement rather than the “no pain, no gain” attitude I had been functioning under for many years.

Throughout the classes, my yoga teachers wove concepts that I already knew and valued, such as mindful awareness, acceptance verses resistance, and self-compassion. Practicing these concepts through movement and mind/body awareness helped me physically embody them, making them more tangible. I learned that “Asana” was derived from a Sanskrit word meaning “seated,” because practicing the postures or poses was supposed to help one sit in meditation. Patanjali describes asana as “a comfortable, steady pose.” I found this intriguing because meditation had always been hard for me but yoga was helping me slow down, pay attention internally, and become aware of my awareness, which was the closest I had ever been to what I understood meditation to be.

My knowledge of the history of yoga barely scratches the surface. I am not adept at any particular form of yoga. I don’t call myself a devotee of any kind of yogic philosophy. What I know is that yoga, as a practice and philosophy, helped me embody what I already cognitively understood was true. It helped me live in my body with awareness, respect, non-judgment, harmony and honor. It enhanced my ability to be still, go inside, maintain balance, avoid comparison and be in the moment, yet not totally disconnected from the past or future. Practicing yoga taught me to accept where I was while, at the same time, guiding me to improve.

If yoga did all this for me, how could it not be beneficial for my clients? I began recommending yoga to certain clients in my private practice. At the hospital eating disorder unit, where I served as clinical director, I lobbied to hire a yoga teacher for the patients. I was denied. Then, in 1996, I decided to open my own program, Monte Nido, the first residential eating disorder facility licensed in a home setting. I asked my yoga teacher, Lauren Peterson,⁵ to provide yoga philosophy and practice as part of our services.

A few reactions were surprising, for example: “I’m not sure I can come to Monte Nido because yoga might be against my religion.” Some clients thought they would have to meditate, do headstands or put their feet behind their head. Several were disappointed that yoga was in place of “real” exercise. Even though the program included walking and fitness training with weights, they wanted to run; they wanted treadmills and stair stepping machines.

Though yoga is now far better understood, and is often included in treatment settings, resistance still persists in some clients and professionals. However, those who experience it learn that yoga is not what they thought and, although an excellent form of physical exercise, it offers far more than they ever expected.

As one client explains:

When I attended the first yoga class at Monte Nido I thought at least it would be better than sitting in group.

When the teacher started by having us sit on the floor, I thought I would lose it. As she spoke about the theme of the class, I started paying attention. She was talking about the feeling of being “centered” and asked us if we had a concept of what that was like. She asked us to sit in a way that we felt centered on the mat and to notice how it feels. Then she got us to stand up, lean to the left and notice the non-centered feeling, then ever so gently try to find “center” in that position. She helped us go from center to off center in various poses, feeling “off” until finding our center of gravity. I noticed my body working to be centered and me paying attention to it and helping it. I noticed how it felt to be able to find my center, to get grounded, even when at first it seemed out of my reach.

At the end of the class the teacher asked us to think about where we feel centered in our lives. She asked what throws us off center and if and how we listen to what our body tells us. She asked us to see if, during the next week, we could gently guide ourselves back to center when we get pulled off. I was astonished. I felt the teacher was talking to me. I enjoyed moving in the poses and working at doing them “correctly” but I had been moved in another way. To this day, in all areas of my life, I use the centering lessons and all the lessons I learned and continue to learn in yoga.

How Yoga Transforms Exercise

Fifteen years of treating eating disorders prior to opening Monte Nido taught me the importance of incorporating healthy exercise. Taking away all exercise, as was the general practice, did not work. In private practice a no exercise rule is almost impossible to enforce. When enforced under 24-hour care, clients go right back to unhealthy exercise habits after discharging. Monte Nido has a gym, exercise equipment and a fitness trainer, but it is yoga that profoundly transforms our clients’ approach to exercise in a new and healthy way. Of course, many clients are initially interested in yoga because it purports to provide some kind of exercise. Yet, whatever clients come in the front door expecting, yoga provides a back door into teaching them much more: Yoga teaches us how to be “in” our body, use our body, and take care of our body with understanding, awareness and acceptance.

Yoga was the first time I could do exercise without trying to calculate calories burned. At first I hated it because I thought it wouldn’t do anything, then I saw my body change. I saw that where in the beginning I could hardly touch my shins, I soon could touch my toes. I realized that with patience I developed the capability of doing the splits where I had thought it would never happen. Yoga taught me to accept and be where I am with my body. I found myself for the first time being really interested in how my body felt, not how it looked. I could have never ever imagined that.

Is Yoga Appropriate and Safe For Use With Clients Who Have Eating Disorders?

I believe yoga can help all eating disorder clients. However, some professionals wonder: “Are you s...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Foreword by Linda Sparrowe
• Introduction
• PART 1 Why and How Yoga Helps Heal Eating Disorders
• PART 2 Shadow and Risk
• PART 3 Using Yoga in Eating Disorder Therapy
• PART 4 Integrating Yoga in Eating Disorder Treatment Programs
• Index