Yoga, Fatphobia and Disordered Eating - Part 2
Recent post on IG by an Ayurvedic counselor.
A couple of years ago, I was getting ready to teach a class series for the Yoga Well Institute that explored how the philosophy and tools of Yoga could be part of working with our relationship to food.** The person handling their social media at the time created an IG post to market the class that went something like this: Summer is coming! Get your beach body ready with this new class series exploring yoga and food!
For a hot moment, I found myself part of the very thing that I was trying to dismantle.
No shade to the person who wrote that post. It is swimming against a pretty powerful tide to step away from a good/bad, reward/punishment relationship to food, where thin is good and fat is very, very bad. This attitude is true almost everywhere, including in Yoga and Ayurveda communities (see photo above).
That class was one of the ways that I had begun to deliberately understand how Yoga could be part of a way out of the tyranny of disordered eating. I mean, I knew that you can pacify and balance the system with various tools of yoga but I wanted to get to the heart of the matter - what is really happening when someone decides that eating too much or not eating enough is the solution to their problems? But for the person engaged with disordered eating, it doesn’t feel like a decision. It feels more like it just happens over time. Maybe there was a triggering event or maybe there wasn’t but somehow or other, we ended up in an unsustainable place.
I remember saying something at the start of that class series that was as much for me as for anyone in the class. I said this: according to Yoga, you can eat whatever you want as long as you know why.
This was an adaptation of something that was said by TKV Desikachar. According to my teachers, he said, you can give a student anything for a yoga practice, as long as you know why. That last bit is very important! It is an approach to yoga therapy that I have embraced so bringing it specifically to food and eating seemed like a natural extension of the concept.
Let’s look a little closer at what that might mean.
An important piece of practicing of yoga is self-reflection/study or svādyaya. In Patnajali’s Yoga Sūtra, II.1, it is the second word he uses to describe the process of practicing kriya yoga. He says that we make an effort to change our patterns that are harmful and that effort creates a kind of friction (that’s the first word: tapas). With tapas comes an opportunity for self-study. Why? Because that’s when all our shit comes up: I don’t like it! I don’t want to! It’s your fault! I must be a horrible person if this is happening. You must be a horrible person if this is happening. Or whatever narrative arises when difficulties appear - chose your poison.
Most of us have a pretty well worn set of responses to discomfort: anger, blaming, victimhood, depression, fear. The practice of yoga asks us to notice these responses. Over time, we may begin to see them as patterns: when this happens, I react with X. Over some more time of noticing, we might become aware that these patterns are generated from within us based on our past experiences rather than being things that happen to us.
Can we take a moment to acknowledge that, if we have come this far in the process, it is pretty monumental? This shift in perspective is pivotal to deepening our practice and moving our life towards a more sustainable, joyful way of being. If this is you - excellent work!
One pattern that we may notice is that we use food as a tool for self-soothing and comfort. This might look like eating when we are upset rather than when we are hungry, or not eating, which offers its own version of comfort. It is important to add that we come by these patterns honestly. Everyone is doing what is needed to feel safe and survive. These patterns follow their own logic, which leads us to the next step: no judgement. Easy to say, very difficult to do.
Many people with disordered eating patterns tend to hide these behaviours. We do it in secret because there is an element of shame involved. If you eat a pint of ice cream (or two) after a fight with your friend, the eating part will likely happen out of view of anyone. If you skipped breakfast and lunch and went for a run instead, you probably made a up story to tell your family about what you ate that day. Again, we come by this honestly! Even if we weren’t judging ourselves, society is judging us and judging us harshly. I think this is especially true for women and extra especially true for fat women. Add in intersections of race, ableism, ageism and we can safely say that this pattern of disordered eating not a kind place to land in so we tend to hide it.
This is where “you can eat whatever you want but you have to know why” comes in.
The thing that makes what we call disordered eating a problem is that it does not address the actual issue that is causing our suffering. We are reaching for the wrong thing in our time of need. But, before we can start to change this unhelpful pattern, we must become aware of both what we are doing and what the actual need is. This is where Yoga has a lot to offer and this is where YS II.1 is one of our best guides: make an effort, reflect on what comes up within us and release judgement.
So beautiful. So powerful.
In that Yoga and food class, I had everyone make two lists: Things I Do for Comfort and Things I Do for Nourishment. It quickly became apparent that these two categories were meeting a need in very different ways. For nourishment, most people listed things like walk in nature, spend time with my partner, garden, read, etc. Under comfort: glass of wine, chocolate, “night cheese,” Netflix, etc.
Looking over these lists, you could say that the things offering nourishment are generated from a feeling that comes from within us while the comforting things come from more obviously external sources. It is part of that same shift in perspective that is so vital to our practice. Or, to say it another way: when we don’t feel empowered to nourish ourselves then these other things - that do bring temporary comfort - really seem like solutions.
Yoga gives us many tools to help us learn to receive genuine nourishment. When our whole system is truly nourished then our actions - including choices around eating - also come from that place. This means that food gets to be food in all its glory without needing to carry any extra baggage for us. For me, this is the key piece of “you have to know why.”
Truthfully, you don’t even have to know with why with certainty - a glimpse or a gut feeling will suffice to get started. The path out of disordered eating is not about creating lists of good and bad foods or do’s and don’ts or this or that. It is about looking honestly at what we are doing and deepening our awareness around this question of nourishment vs. comfort. Then, choices can be made with clarity, even when we make so-called bad ones.
When you are clear about that, then you can eat whatever you want because you know why.
** Thank you to my teacher, Chase Bossart and the Yoga Well Institute for giving me the encouragement, opportunity and forum to lead that class series. I am very grateful for their ongoing support.
If you would like to listen to this blog post, you can hear it on Atha Yoga’s podcast! Check it out here.
