ABSTRACT
Individuals with eating disorders often respond inappropriately to feelings because the emotions feel too painful, incomprehensible, terrifying, uncontrollable, etc. They then become habitual patterns, which yoga calls samskaras. Yoga develops our skills to deal with triggers and sensations by taking intentional nurturing action, rather than using compulsive or unconscious habits of avoidance, repression, or distraction. Yoga also helps access desirable emotional and relational states by moving the body into a position that illustrates those states. Yoga breathing and poses enhance other recovery tools like traditional therapy, nutritional counseling and other treatment modalities. A lethargic, depressed person may show up with rounded shoulders, slowed breath and not engaging muscles in their abdominal region. Meanwhile, people-pleasing can be a dishonest expression of anger and passive-aggressive behaviors turn suppressed anger into a form of self-punishment, while indirectly signaling others. Shame is the internal process of feeling and believing a deep rooted sense of unworthiness and inadequacy.
