A Holistic Model for the treatment of Eating Disorders.
My Journey from Nutrition to Yoga, from Yoga to Yoga Therapy and from Yoga Therapy to Healing…
Five years ago I walked into my first yoga class in NYC. On some level I knew, even before stepping into the studio, that the experience of yoga was going to transform my life. This time frame also intersected with another big decision in my career: to pursue a full time private practice. I’m not sure if the chicken and the egg analogy is appropriate here or if it was that these two aspects of my life simply came together at the right time but what I noticed was that as my yoga practice deepened so did the nutrition counseling I did with my eating disorder patients. The lessons and teachings I observed and integrated into my body through yoga became a way to allow and invite a deeper, richer way for me to be with my patients.
My premise has always been that to truly recover from eating disorders and body issues one needs to learn to connect to their body as a pathway to healing. I have mainly done this over the years by counseling those struggling with eating and body issues to eat a balanced diet thus encouraging individuals to trust their bodies as the ultimate teacher. Currently the model for multi-disciplinary treatment in eating disorders combines nutrition, psychotherapy, the use of psychiatric medication if indicated and medical attention to help the patients stabilize their symptoms. What I noticed though was that SOMETHING was still missing in this equation. How could an individual heal without using the body as a therapy? The basis of yoga (which literally means ‘to yolk’) suggests that connection to and awareness of one’s body is the vehicle for ultimate healing. When I came to this realization a huge light bulb went off in my head as to this most important but somehow missing piece of the puzzle in recovery.
