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The Value of Yoga in Eating Disorder Treatment
By Hugh C. McBride
At first, the thought of incorporating yoga into an eating disorder treatment program doesn’t seem like the wisest of ideas.
With most eating disorder patients also suffering from impaired body image as well as an unhealthy fixation upon weight and appearance, is it really a good idea to introduce them to a practice that is widely associated with sculpted physiques and thin practitioners?
In many cases the answer to this question is a confident “yes.”
With proper supervision and as part of a medically sound eating disorder treatment program, yoga can, indeed, be a positive, healing experience.
Studies Show Effectiveness
The ability of yoga to minimize symptoms related to eating disorders is not necessarily a new concept, but it has received increased attention in recent years.
According to a May 18, 2005 article on the medical news website ScienceDaily, two studies conducted at the Preventive Medicine Research Institute (Sausalito, Calif.) had determined that yoga led to “less self-objectification, greater satisfaction with physical appearance, and fewer disordered eating attitudes” among adult female subjects.
“In yoga class, a woman develops sensitivity to bodily sensations and practices listening to her body's feedback,” ScienceDaily reported.
"This heightened sensitivity and responsiveness to bodily sensations is associated with less preoccupation of physical appearance, more positive views of the body, and more healthy regulation of food intake," the study’s author Jennifer Daubenmier said in the article.
More recently, a study conducted at Seattle Children’s Hospital indicated that yoga offered a number of benefits to young people who are struggling with eating disorders.
The Seattle study, which was published Nov. 3 on the website of the Journal of Adolescent Health, involved 50 subjects (male and female patients between the ages of 11 and 21) who were treated with either standard care or standard care plus yoga over a period of eight weeks. The JAH article provided the following details about the research effort:
Outcomes evaluated at baseline, end of trial, and 1-month follow-up included Eating Disorder Examination (EDE), Body Mass Index (BMI), Beck Depression Inventory, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and Food Preoccupation questionnaire. …
The Yoga group demonstrated greater decreases in eating disorder symptoms. Specifically, the EDE scores decreased over time in the Yoga group, whereas the No Yoga group showed some initial decline but then returned to baseline EDE levels at week 12. …
Individualized yoga treatment decreased EDE scores at 12 weeks, and significantly reduced food preoccupation immediately after yoga sessions. Yoga treatment did not have a negative effect on BMI. Results suggest that individualized yoga therapy holds promise as adjunctive therapy to standard care.
Why Yoga Works
With a variety of studies documenting yoga’s positive effect on eating disorder patients, the question about yoga and eating disorder treatment shifts from “Is this a good idea?” to “How, exactly, does yoga help?”
Documenting how something works can be much more challenging than merely recording if it works, but various individuals have offered opinions about the ways in which practicing yoga can improve the life of an eating disorder patient.
In general terms, the effectiveness of yoga in eating disorder treatment appears to be more a product of mental focus than physical conditioning.
A Nov. 4 post on the Time magazine website reported that the Seattle researchers opined that “food preoccupation may be reduced by focusing attention on yoga poses,” while some of the study subjects had told the researchers that “this is the only hour in my week when I don't think about my weight.”
These comments were echoed in the observations of eating disorder survivor and yoga expert Simone Moir, who credits the practice with helping her overcome the anorexia nervosa that nearly killed her as a teenager.
"In hospital one of the therapies was meditation, which is a big part of yoga. It seemed to rekindle some kind of life fire inside me,” Moir, 34, said in a Nov. 8 article in Great Britain’s Sunday Mail newspaper. “I didn't want to make my family sad and didn't want to die. It gave me the strength I needed to help my body heal itself."
Finding a Program
As is the case with eating disorder treatment itself, both yoga and meditation are often misunderstood, and require expert guidance in order to achieve desired results. If you or someone you love needs help for an eating disorder, and if you’re interested in the opportunities presented by participating in yoga, be sure to discuss this matter with your physician, your therapist or with representatives from any eating disorder treatment programs that you are considering.
Many residential eating disorder treatment programs incorporate yoga and related practices into a comprehensive plan that is designed to address clients’ physical and psychological issues.
For example, at Sierra Tucson, an addiction treatment center in Arizona, the eating disorder program includes integrative therapies such as acupuncture, massage therapy, qi gong, reiki and yoga. And at the Center for Hope of the Sierras (a residential eating disorder recovery program for adult and adolescent women), self-respect and self-care are promoted through therapeutic activities such as meditative walking, yoga, yogarate and massage.
