By Evie Rose, Guest Contributor
I couldn’t tell you the exact moment that my relationship with eating became disordered. It happened gradually. You don’t just wake up one day and decide to ‘try’ anorexia. The thoughts and behaviours creep up on you slowly, and contrary to what people often assume about eating disorders, they are rarely about the food or one’s weight.
I started to become very body conscious in my teenage years, at a time when things felt very out of control in my life. To avoid the feelings I was experiencing internally, I began to fixate on my external appearance. This developed into compulsive rituals around exercise and restricting my food intake. I felt very disconnected to myself and the rest of the world, and lost sense of what was real/unreal. My relationships suffered as well as my academic performance. My world just got smaller and smaller, and I saw no way out of it. I couldn’t understand what was happening to me, and I felt completely powerless to change anything, other than by following what I call my ‘ED Voice’ was telling me to do.
Naming the ‘ED Voice’, as suggested to me by a therapist, has helped me to separate my own voice from that of the eating disorder. I’ve learned how to ask myself ‘whose voice is that?’ whenever I hear myself slipping into the toxic trap of negative self-talk. This helps me to remember that I am not my eating disorder. I have an active role in my recovery today and tools to help myself. Anorexia is something that happened to me, but I am not my anorexia.
My recovery journey began in 2022. I was in my second year of university and things had come to a climax in terms of my mental health, eating disorder and addiction to substances. I had to make the difficult decision to leave my degree and sought help from a rehabilitation centre. For the first time in my life, I was encouraged to acknowledge that I was suffering in the grips of an eating disorder and addiction. This was painful to accept, but over time, I began to see that recovery was possible. I connected with other people who understood how I was feeling and realised that isolation and loneliness was a commonly shared symptom of survivors of this kind of trauma. I shared my story and I felt lovingly held by those who listened.
Two things I learnt in my time in rehab are that ‘connection is the opposite of addiction’ and ‘shame dies with exposure’. These are sayings I often return to when times are tough and I feel myself isolating, mentally or physically. The other amazing thing that happened, were the yoga classes I attended as part of the rehabilitation process. There has been lots of research into the effects of yoga for eating disorder recovery, and from my personal experience, its effects have been transformative.
When I got out of treatment, I continued to practice yoga as part of my recovery. I started with Yin, which is a gentle style of yoga, where the practitioner holds restorative poses for longer periods. I learnt how to embrace stillness and my relationship to movement changed dramatically. I went from viewing movement as a method to punish myself to instead, viewing it as a journey inward. What I didn’t realise, was that in Yin, I was also practicing a kind of mini meditation. By focusing on my breathing and moving my body mindfully, the mind began to quieten. I had been very resistant to the idea of meditation before, as I feared facing my feelings and did everything in my power to try and avoid them. One of the most beautiful yet difficult things about recovery is that you get your feelings back, and yoga sessions gave me a safe space to process all these new feelings.
Yoga takes a holistic approach to well-being, integrating the body, breath and mind. The body is viewed as a whole system. Not only does it have a multitude of physical benefits such as aiding digestion and improving sleep, but it has also fostered a sense of self-acceptance and forgiveness in me which I never had before. Each day that I show up on my mat, I re-surrender to the process of recovery and remind myself of how far I’ve come.
To me, yoga is coming home to myself. Feeling embodied in the practice by following my breath and listening to my body instead of rushing to achieve perfection in every asana (yoga posture). I meet myself with compassion and non-judgement. This perspective extends beyond the mat, and I am better equipped to weather the natural storms of life. I am stronger, I am more resilient and yet I am softer.
My experiences have given me a deep empathy towards anyone who might be going through an eating disorder, addiction or mental health struggles or to anyone going through something difficult in general. Recently, my journey has led me to the path of training as a yoga teacher. I have and a desire to help others heal by sharing the transformative effects of yoga. Yoga has given me meaning and purpose and an eternal journey inward. I hope what I have written might give you some hope. If not, then I hope that hope eventually finds you.
