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Mindless eating is often a major component of binge eating disorder, where a person may eat in a frenzied or semiconscious way and then feel regret, remorse, and low self-esteem later. Because mindfulness is such an integral part of yoga practice, yoga can be particularly helpful for binge eating and emotional eating.
Mindless eating is a disconnect; a mindfulness and yoga practice restores that connection gently and slowly. Yoga is more than just postures or asanas; it is about:
- how to connect with inner peace through imagery and meditation
- how mindful tasks can help with even behaviors and staying motivated
- how self-compassion heals self-contempt
- how relaxation, along with mindfulness, helps us recognize stressors and know what to do about them
Recovery always starts with awareness. Binge eating behaviors have served an adaptive function in your life, but they have also formed some kind of impairment. Once we have some understanding of why and how this particular problematic eating happens, then we can start the healing process. We can resolve the trauma that needed coping mechanisms to adapt and survive. Then, through mindful practices including yoga, guided meditation, and stress management, we can develop new skills to help you thrive and live in recovery.
Continued and growing awareness helps us make changes along the way. We work on the relationship between the mind and the body and the emotions—what we call in yoga the heart center—creating a new perspective of self-compassion through this mind-body-heart practice.
Relaxation is woven through all types of yoga practices, such as restorative, meditative, and yin. The yoga we do depends solely on you and what your body needs. If it is challenging for you to move up and down from the mat, for example, we may do a session that uses only standing and grounding and empowerment postures.
Or we may stay close to the floor with yin yoga poses, possibly exploring our shadow sides. Yin yoga uses the tool of gentle discomfort as a tool that teaches us how to tolerate discomfort.
So how does that relate to eating? Well, there are many situations throughout our day and lives that are uncomfortable, that we would like to avoid dealing with. Instead of retreating into mindless eating as a way to cope, we can bring forward the gentle perspectives we learn from yoga. That is when we begin to change in a therapeutic way and take our practice “off the mat.”
My yoga therapy clients leave a session with one or more prescriptive postures that are customized for their issues. They’re doable for them to practice at home and weave into their life, to integrate into their being as a way of pushing out the desire to emotionally eat or binge eat.
Taking yoga off the mat and into life gives us ways to handle these situations that don’t involve cutting ourselves off from relationships or reacting. We learn to respond instead of react, and make decisions we feel good and calm about. In turn, this boosts how we feel about ourselves.
Binge eating is typically a numbing out and disconnect from uncomfortable emotions, which then become repressed in the body, bringing additional pain. In mindfulness and yoga we’re reconnecting—from the mat to the plate, from the yoga session to the dinner table.
Any body shape or level of health can benefit from yoga-based therapy, which is of course applied with caution and by a trained practitioner. Better Body Esteem® is a program I created to specifically calm the body and mind, while addressing those stressors that drive unwanted behaviors. Please contact me to learn more about online and in person group classes and workshops, and one-on-one yoga-based therapy.