Control & Release: Introduction

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The Impact of Integrating Yoga into Treatment for Disordered Eating

Little research has been done on the effects of introducing a yoga practice to traditional eating disorder treatment, and the studies that have been done have come back inconclusive. Nearly 30 million people in the United States suffer from an eating disorder, however, only 1 in 10 receive treatment. Considering that eating disorders currently have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, that is a terrifying statistic.

In recent years, yoga has been increasingly integrated into therapy programs for mental disorders such as depression and anxiety. Exercise releases endorphins and mindfulness practices have proven to improve mind-body awareness.

But what about when your anxiety erupts from your own self-image; when it is your relationship with food and exercise that keeps you locked, isolated, within yourself?

A major problem with pinpointing a single treatment program for eating disorders is the vast spectrum of forms in which they appear. Eating disorders can manifest as anorexia nervosa (calorie intake restriction), bulimia nervosa (self-induced vomiting), binge-eating, and countless variations of the three. With so many different forms of the disease, every case must be handled differently and with extreme care.

The use of yoga as treatment is controversial because many people with eating disorders also maintain an unhealthy relationship with exercise, oftentimes pushing themselves farther than is healthy for their bodies, for long periods of time. However, what most people don’t realize is that yoga is much more than a physical practice.

Beverley Price, founder of the Inner Door Center and the “Reconnect with Food” program, uses a Yin Yoga practice for patients who have severely unhealthy relationships with food and exercise. In Yin Yoga, the practice is comprised of long holds of deep stretches that reach deep into the connective tissue and the joints. It opens up spaces in the body that rarely receive attention, while mentally allowing one to explore parts of the mind that have been left untouched or avoided. This practice is used to cultivate stillness in the mind and find a place of peace within discomfort.

“Life inherently includes cravings, hungers, and the motivation to satiate from them,” says Sarahjoy Marsh, yoga therapy instructor and author of Hunger, Hope, and Healing: A Yoga Approach to Reclaiming Your Relationship to Your Body and Food. Marsh recognizes disastrous cycles of depression and anxiety in patients with eating disorders. Marsh argues that the sensation of hunger can be daily manipulated and misinterpreted. “When a food strategy goes beyond basic satiation into binge-purge, chronic restriction, compulsive- or binge-eating, yo-yo dieting, we are causing dis-regulation to our brain chemistry, which can prompt depression and anxiety,” she says.

Over the course of this summer, I plan to reach out to several yoga therapists and facilities that use yoga in their recovery programs for disordered eating. I hope to connect with patients who have participated in similar programs as well as specialists such as Sarahjoy Marsh in my search for a clearer understanding of yoga’s effect on the treatment of disordered eating and other body-image related illnesses. As yoga’s popularity continues to explode in western culture, researching ways in which it can assist in curing the mental and physical diseases that plague our population every day is dire.