A Yogic Approach to Healing Emotional Eating

When you hear the word yoga, what comes to mind? For many people it’s a picture of a very flexible person doing something super bendy, but very unapproachable for most bodies. When I took my first yoga class, I was intimidated but interested. I took a pretty strait forward class that moved from static posture to static posture concentrating on form, alignment, and awareness of both my body and breath in a way that I never had before. As someone who tends towards anxiety and who carries a lot of tension in my body, it had a huge impact on me. I felt different in a way I couldn’t specifically explain—and wasn’t just a physical shift, but a mental and emotional shift as well. 

When I set out to become a yoga teacher in training, the very first class was all about the philosophy of yoga. When my teacher said that the yoga postures are only one small slice of what yoga is all about, my head nearly exploded! He then went on to say that the whole purpose of the yoga postures are so that we can sit and meditate comfortably. He said that the postures are a part of the yogic process so that they can assist in our ability to meditate by allowing our body to be less of a distraction to going inward, and at this, my head did explode—in the best possible way. I saw something I’d looked at in only one way from a whole new perspective, and this new perspective changed my life.

Yoga philosophy is non-dogmatic. It is not based on any religion and does not require any beliefs. It is a series of ways to grow your self-awareness from all angles so that you can fully know yourself and express your true self in an accepting, peaceful, and compassionate way. Yoga philosophy has nothing to do with what to do, but with how to be. There are 8-limbs of yoga, and the postures are only one of those limbs. Each limb builds on one another so that full self-awareness and self-actualization can occur. 

When you struggle with emotional eating, you are moving further away from yourself, you are entering a form of self-abandonment and escape. Applying yoga philosophy to healing emotional eating can be an absolutely transformative way to heal. Yoga philosophy allows a way to create ease with emotions, full self-acceptance and self-compassion, and a way to be calm, grounded, and at peace internally—no matter what.

The first two limbs of yoga offer concepts of how to be with yourself, others, and within the world. They are intended to be a guide to how to feel most connected to our true nature and include concepts such as non-harming, truthfulness, non-stealing/craving, moderation, and non-possessiveness. They also consider concepts such as purity, contentment, consistency in practices, self-study, and surrender. The third limb is about using physical postures to build both strength and flexibility in your body so that you can feel comfortable and at ease physically. This limb relating to your physical body is also about embodiment and creating a healthy relationship with your body. The forth limb is about harnessing the power of your breath for mental, physical, and emotional fortitude. The fifth limb is about releasing the five senses and becoming deeply relaxed. The sixth and seventh limbs are about creating mental concentration and moving into a deeper state of meditation. The eighth limb is a culmination of all of the benefits of the first seven limbs into transcendence.

So how do these yogic concepts help with healing emotional eating? This process offers a way to be with yourself that is exploratory, curious, compassionate, and growth-focused. When integrating these concepts you become more grounded, accepting, comfortable, curious, and self-aware. Very often the part of yourself that desires to numb out or avoid discomfort through food is afraid of what will happen if you feel these uncomfortable feelings, or change your internal and behavioral patterns. This part of you is actually functioning as a protection from pain, discomfort, or suffering that it does not want you to have to handle, and is worried you possibly couldn’t handle without the old coping strategy of emotional eating. Through the yogic process, you become more curious about, and comfortable with your feelings, your experiences, and your body. Through exploring emotional eating through the lens of yoga philosophy, your mood becomes less of the driver of how to be, and more of a guide to what you need. If this all seems a little out there, I get it. I hope you will approach these concepts at least with curiosity and an open mind. However, if I’ve piqued your interest, which I hope I have, I will be outlining the process in the next few blog posts to break down each of the 8-limbs of yoga, and how to apply them with how to be with yourself, your body, your nervous system, your mind, as well as with food. 

EMDR Therapy + Manifestation

The concept of manifestation is not new, however, the way it is practiced has changed significantly over the years. Information about the brain, consciousness, imagery, and self-worth, continues to be studied and researched, and there is great evidence to the science of manifestation. So much evidence has been offered to understand more logically how and why it actually works.

I remember hearing on the Oprah show years ago, and it struck me in a big way, “you don’t become what you want in life, you become what you believe.” This is the foundation of manifestation, and why some of the concepts that popularized it, and made it seem a little out-there of just picture it and it will happen, have not proven to be how or why manifestation actually works. What you are unconsciously creating in your life, is created directly out of your level of self-worth. If you believe you are not good enough, destined to fail, are unworthy, inadequate, unloveable, or even always in danger, then no matter how much you want something, most likely you will find yourself in patterns of subconsciously sabotaging any efforts to create it in your life.

This is where EMDR therapy can be a very powerful and useful technique to integrate with your manifestation, or self-worth improvement process. EMDR therapy (if you want to learn more about EMDR therapy, you can read previous blog posts HERE, HERE and HERE) works to reprocess the memories, experiences, and feeling states that have created or reinforced the negative internalized beliefs that hold you back from living your best life. These negative beliefs create unconscious blocks to moving forward in your life. I know this to be true from both as a certified EMDR therapist, as well as a client receiving EMDR therapy. I have experienced how it helped me unravel more than one negative cognition, or negative internalized limiting belief, which has allowed me to take more intentional and subconscious action towards what I want. EMDR therapy has helped me embody how it feels to be worthy of what I want.

If you are familiar with some of the concepts of manifestation and cast it off as woo-woo, I totally get it. However, there are more and more studies and books out there explaining the brain-based science of how it actually works. I have been doing the work of To Be Magnetic (interested? try it out here with a coupon code here: TBM) for a few years and have seen it work really well with EMDR therapy. The process is logical and there in no woo-woo belief required. What I like about TBM specifically is that she has partnered with a neuroscientist and an EMDR therapist to create the process, which is a wonderful compliment to EMDR therapy, or any therapeutic technique.

Once doing the manifestation work (or any self-development work) many find that they discover that they have one or more blocks related to self-worth. Working through these blocks with an EMDR (or any) therapist can not only speed up the work of manifesting (creating the life you desire) or feeling more grounded in your sense of self, but also create more ease, self-awareness, emotional tolerance, and overall improve your mental wellbeing on many levels. 

When you create a vision for what you want and know why you want what you want, you set in motion opportunities for your brain to subconsciously seek it out. When you incorporate how it will feel to have what you want, and align it with your personal values, the why you actually want it, and then practice being in that desired feeling state, you again, set in motion opportunities for your brain to subconsciously seek it out. When practiced repeatedly while simultaneously clearing out the past memories, traumas, and experiences that created the blocks in the first place, you open yourself up to living in alignment with your new internalized beliefs, such as: I am worthy, I am lovable, I am good enough, I deserve what I want, In this moment I am safe, I’m ok…

Curious about integrating EMDR therapy with other types of self-worth development work? Feel free to reach out and schedule a complimentary consultation. You are capable of creating the life you want, the life you desire. You deserve to feel worthy of what you want and to do the work to support your mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual wellbeing.

Calming Your Inner Critic to Release Body Shame

When it comes to having a healthy relationship with your body, one of the most challenging obstacles to overcome is your relationship with your thoughts. Do you notice what goes through your mind when you look in the mirror, when you look at a picture of yourself, when you are trying on clothes in a dressing room? If you struggle with body-image, most likely there is an inner critic who has some less than kind things to say.

Body shaming often starts very young and is deeply engrained into the fabric of our culture. Commenting on other people’s bodies based on size and shape has happened forever in the media, and this is not likely to change. However, for many people who struggle with body-image, the shaming most likely began within familiar environments, such as at home or in school. Sometimes the body shaming could look like a parent commenting negatively about their own body, their child’s body, their partner’s body, their neighbors body, and so on. For many people, the body shaming happened in school, where kids are often bullied for how they look. Sometimes the shaming came directly from parent or caretaker to child, where the parent constantly commented on their child’s body, and even made decisions about food for their child based on how their child’s body looked. All of these experiences often leave a residue of shame, feeling not good enough, resulting in trauma, and the development of a very unkind inner critic.

When a child feels shame, they internalize the negative language said to them and then begin to say these unkind things to themselves. This happens as a protective measure in our psyche to help reduce the suffering of when it’s heard from an external source (especially a parent/caretaker). This is where the inner critic is born. This is where this part of ourselves develops and sinks its roots in deep. It begins as self-protection, this is a maladaptive coping mechanism that served a purpose for the child to reduce emotional discomfort. This then becomes the language of our own thoughts, creating opportunities to develop perfectionism as a way of managing inner fears and anxieties.

The inner critic starts as someone else’s voice, and then becomes our very own. The words it says are unkind, even cruel, and cause hurt, pain, suffering, and increased feelings of shame. Shame triggers the belief that there is something wrong with us, such as not feeling good enough, unworthy, or deeply inadequate, which causes tremendous psychological pain. This pain limits how much we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, open, to feel deep connections, and even limits our experience of finding joy.

When we can learn to see our inner critic as a part of ourselves, not our true self, we can begin to heal it. When we get to know this inner critic part, it often is a very young, child-like part of ourselves, and we can more easily begin to understand why it is there, how it came to be there, and what it’s trying to protect us from. With this information we can begin to develop the capacity to lean into healing and self-compassion by working with this part. We work to give this part a new job that is supportive, healthy, and useful.

To begin to get to know your inner critic more intimately, it requires listening, and then getting curious about why it says what it says. Curiosity becomes the anecdote and where the healing can truly unfold. The next time you hear a self-critical thought about your body— or anything else really—try going through this process:

• Acknowledge your inner critic, and see it as a part of you, not your true, authentic self.

• Get curious, ask it what it wants you to know? Does it have a specific message for you?

• Ask it how old it is, when it learned to speak in this way.

• Ask it if it would be willing to reframe and shift into more self-compassionate language, just to see what happens? If it’s willing, try it out and see, if it isn’t, ask it if you can try again later. Let it know you want to get to know it, to understand it, and to validate its fears and feelings.

• Ask it if it might consider a new task, as this one it has learned to do so well is no longer serving you, in fact, it’s causing significant harm. If it’s open to that, offer some suggestions, or get ideas from it. If it’s not, let it know that change is difficult and you will try again later.

• Thank it, let it know that it is worthy of being seen and loved unconditionally.

• Practice reframing, reframing is looking realistically at the fear based negative thought and using mindfulness to answer what is really true right now. (If you want a deeper dive into thought work you can read a blog I wrote about examining your thoughts here).

• Try this reframing example, if the inner critic said something like, “you look terrible today, you don’t deserve to be in the pictures” try reframing with, “although I am having a bad body-image day, I still deserve to have the memories of this event and to be in the pictures.” Or, “Even though I don’t feel my best, I am going to choose to be in the pictures to remember this event.”

Over time you will be able to create a new inner language with the assistance of your inner critic. The more you get to know your inner critic, understand its role, you will get better and better at reframing. This process of reframing will help your inner critic to find—and get just as good at—a new job internally. This new job will be non harming, supportive, and a job that most importantly increases your capacity for self-compassion, and self-love.

Through this work you can create a deeper appreciation for your body, just as it exists within this moment. Your body deserves this, this hurt protective part of you deserves this, you deserve this. You are worthy of creating a new language within, and shifting from inner criticism to inner kindness and inner peace. If you feel overwhelmed with where to begin or as though your inner critic is unmanageable, you may benefit from EMDR therapy, IFS therapy, or an EMDR intensive. With this work you can reprocess the traumatic memories that have created or reinforced the negative beliefs that have given your inner critic so much power. Healing is possible, you deserve to release the internalized shame and feel your best in mind, body, and spirit.