Yoga Therapy in the Treatment of Eating Disorders and Trauma

Contributor: By Megan Ross, LPC, R-DMT, GL-CMA, Director of Program Development at Timberline Knolls

The benefits of experiential therapies, including yoga, have been gaining steady recognition. Yoga brings complex simplicity to the awareness development of a woman.

The various poses offer simple guides to breath, alignment, and balance. The therapeutic benefit of all three of these areas is profound.

The repetitive sequencing of movements also allows a woman to experience predictability and familiarity in her body. This aids in growing her capacity to tolerate present-moment sensations. For the first time in a while, a woman may experience a sense of safety within herself as her body begins to enliven.

Gaining Confidence In Strength, Ability, and Respect

What’s more, the practice of yoga engenders confidence in a woman’s strength, ability and respect for her body. Far too often, a woman blames her body for the traumas of her past. She moves towards behaviors that alter and mask her body such as starving herself or bingeing and purging.

Equally impactful in the simple complexity of yoga is the concept of shifting. A woman shifts from movement to movement, posture to posture, learning the deep connection of her physical state and emotional state. She sees how subtle shifts in movement alter the perception of self and of situations.

In tandem, she learns through experience that shifting is constant. A new posture will arise and pass. Yoga becomes a profound training ground to the process of trauma recovery.

Developing Awareness and Tolerance

Developing awareness of self and tolerance of possibly painful sensations, thoughts and emotions coupled in trauma are holistically supported in the practice of yoga.

A woman discovers that when seemingly debilitating anxiety, depression or dissociation occurs, given time, it will pass. This empowers the process of recovery further because through yoga the body and mind develops a knowing that is not theoretical but experiential.

Through eating disorder behaviors, a woman often strives to gain control of her life and the world. She attempts to establish a constant, never shifting experience of life. No shift, no distress. This however is biologically impossible to sustain.

Yoga in Partnership with Other Therapies

Yet, through the practice of yoga, in partnership with such therapies as dialectical behavioral therapy, group processing and psycho-education she learns of her own natural ability to handle normal shifting. It is incredibly empowering to realize that suffering can come and go without rendering her emotionally incapacitated.

And here is the beauty: once a woman experiences this revelatory knowledge, once she “knows” it, she can’t “unknow” it. Even if a woman experiences relapse, deep within, she still keeps that experiential knowledge. She can tap into this knowledge again.

Focusing on the Present

Although recovery is not easy, in this situation recovery can benefit from something as simple as laying out a yoga mat. Establishing space for her body and mind, she can intentionally focus on the present and the possibilities inherent to the present.

As she moves through a sequence of familiar postures, she can renew faith in her body, and hopefully, rediscover the knowledge and power that she temporarily disconnected from.

---

The opinions and views of our guest contributors are shared to provide a broad perspective of eating disorders. These are not necessarily the views of Eating Disorder Hope, but an effort to offer discussion of various issues by different concerned individuals.

Last Updated & Reviewed By: Jacquelyn Ekern, MS, LPC on March 13th, 2015
Published on EatingDisorderHope.com