Yoga Beyond the Postures: Healing Through the 8-Limbed Path

Yoga is often portrayed as a physical, body focused practice, but it is SO much more. Yoga is a practice. It is an 8-limbed path that allows you to connect deeply with the present moment, your highest self, with the divine. Yoga offers the opportunity to peel back the layers of mental, emotional, environmental, and social conditioning. Yoga is an opportunity to tune into your limiting, self-defeating thought patterns that cause discomfort, pain, and unnecessary suffering while at the same time offering growth and healing on the very deepest levels.

When I incorporate yoga therapy into the work I do as an integrative therapist, it typically has very little to do with the physical postures. The focus on the yogic elements is a process of creating a connection with your own internal guidance, inner knowing, inner wisdom and inner truth. The mind/body are intimately interconnected, really—they are just one thing—so addressing the physical body is absolutely a necessary part of the process, however, it is just one limb along the 8-limbed path to freedom.

When engaging with the 8-limbs of yoga there is time to set an intention, contemplate, and integrate the five Yamas and five Niyamas; which together create the first two limbs of yoga. These simple yet powerful concepts (such as the first Yama, Ahimsa: non-harming or kindness) allows a connection and renewed intention with how to approach your internal interaction, your external and environmental interactions with more kindness and love. Ultimately contemplating and integrating these ten concepts leads to emotional balance, internal balance and well-being.

The third limb, Asana, or the physical postures, address the physical body. The postures create freedom and comfort in the physical body by reducing tension, increasing flexibility and developing strength. When engaging with and practicing an Asana it is useful to abandon all attachment to any particular outcome (what the posture looks like). This can be a challenge as your ego may have its own agenda. Practicing a posture offers an opportunity to once again return to contemplating the Yamas and Niyamas. The physical postures, or the Asanas, are meant to combine steadiness and ease in your physical body, promoting and offering steadiness and ease in the mind.

The fourth limb of yoga is Pranayama. This limb offers a dedicated time to breathe and connect with the present moment. When you breathe you draw in prana which is our healing life force and life enhancing energy. Pranayama offers a time to release what does not serve you, mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Breath work creates a sense of grounding, preparation and training for the nervous system to be calm and quiet.

As your body becomes steady and at ease, the breathing practices create a calm and serene internal experience, the body/mind is then ready to move into the fifth limb of yoga, or Pratyahara. This is an experience of true relaxation by withdrawing your senses. This limb is all about deep relaxation. The process of surrendering to true deep relaxation is tremendously powerful and allows the possibility to feel, to experience, to open to the expansiveness of your being. The process of deep relaxation is the bridge to the inner limbs of yoga.

The inner limbs begin with the sixth limb, or Dharana, where you create a concentrated point of focus. To create this focus you might use a mantra (word or phrase), your breath, an image, a chant, a candle flame, or anything that is useful for you and assists in the process of creating a one-pointed focus of your mind. Concentration requires effort. The mind will wander, there may be physical sensations that distract you, noises in your environment, emotions that arise and impact the mind/body. The practice is all about returning to your point of focus and maintaining effort to concentrate on your single point of focus.

This practice of concentration can directly lead you into the seventh limb, Dhyana, or meditation. This limb offers the opportunity and ability to completely absorb with the present moment: the only moment. Dhyana offers the opportunity to dive into the space between the fluctuations of your mind. Meditation offers precious moments of complete stillness, complete connection to your point of focus without effort, complete peace. Essentially, yoga IS complete absorption with the present moment. Yoga IS the present moment.

When you experience this deep, timeless connection with the present moment through concentration and meditation you may experience the eighth limb, or Samadhi. Samadhi is sustaining the complete absorption and allowing a connection with your highest self, the divine.

As you embark on your yoga journey, know that yoga is always available. When you set an intention, reflect inward, take a breath, calm your mind/body, you are engaged in the practice of yoga. Samadhi is an opportunity, not a goal. It may be an outcome but not the driving purpose of the practice. When you practice without attachment to outcome, without expectation, you create a deeper freedom and complete surrender. There is no quick path to reach it. In life, you get good at what you practice. With yoga, that is all that is needed: practicing with dedication, consistency and effort. Practice being present, and you are practicing yoga. Practice yoga and can come home to yourself and find true peace, the divine, and a deep connection to all beings.

Surviving SIBO Part 2: The Treatment Phase

Now that you know the background of my experience with SIBO from my post Surviving SIBO Part 1- I wanted to follow-up with how it’s going. If you didn’t read part 1, no need to go back to it, I’ll just give you a quick reminder of how it came to be that I got SIBO: rough diet, over-prescribed antibiotics, leaky gut, stress, anxiety... While how it happened was important to for me to know and understand, but what treating my SIBO led to is the most important part of my path to healing. Uncovering SIBO led me to greater self-awareness, significantly improved health, more sympathy, and more humility (~I actually don’t know it all~ and a plant-based diet is not for everyone~). So, once I knew I indeed had SIBO, I started researching how to treat it. That is where I got really-really-really confused.

If you haven’t already noticed, there is a lot of contradictory information out there when it comes to treating SIBO. There are varied dietary protocol approaches, herbal antimicrobials versus traditional antibiotics, and not to mention the timing of when to add, use, or implement it all. Since it seemed that being on antibiotics for the majority of my adolescence was a main factor of how I got SIBO, it did not seem reasonable to me that antibiotics would be the best solution for me.

After a ton of research that included reading articles, books, blogs, websites, listening to podcasts, getting some random advice, as well as some very well-informed advice, I decided to go with a specific dietary approach combined with herbal antimicrobials. There are differing options in the SIBO treatment community: some say to not change your diet while taking the herbal treatment so the bacteria stay active and alive long enough to get destroyed by the antimicrobials. Other experts say to starve the bacteria by following the dietary protocols along with antimicrobials. Starving them seemed like the quicker route to getting the job done, so I chose this combination in an effort to get this over with as soon as possible!

After several weeks of planning, prepping, and maybe over-obsessing, I began a regime of the herbal antimicrobials Berberine and Neem Plus. I immediately implemented a low-FODMAP’s nutritional protocol. FODMAP’s are: Fermentable Oligosaccharides, Disaccharides, Monosaccharides and Polyols. The concept of low-FODMAP is that you don’t eat anything that is fermentable in the digestive tract. This will starve the bacteria that have migrated to the small intestine- hence the name SIBO- (hint: they are not supposed to be there)! If the bacteria don’t have the delicious fermentable compounds in the high-FODMAP’s foods to feed on, they can’t survive in your gut any longer! You can google it for more specific information, but basically on a low-FODMAP approach you can’t eat much—of anything—at all. I mean you can eat all the low-FODMAP’s foods you want, but overall it is limiting (and honestly, a little bit sad).

I downloaded the SIBO Food Guide app that is based on Dr. Allison Siebecker’s work. She has helped many people heal SIBO, and it seemed like a reliable and useful tool. The app has a handy list of all foods in every category: veggies, fruits, grains, proteins, fats… with a Red dot for: ILLEGAL-OFF-LIMITS-DO-NOT-EAT foods. A Yellow dot for: eat only LIMITED amounts, for example- asparagus: 1 spear is legal- (I mean seriously, I’m going to have just one spear of asparagus?) An Orange dot for: you are PUSHING IT, example- asparagus: 4 spears are legal, (again, seriously?) A Green dot for: EAT ALL YOU WANT!: meats, oils, some leafy greens, some veggies, and some fruits, but basically, not m(any) carbs allowed.

I had to make a ton of changes. I used to have apples every single day. Well guess what, they are ILLEGAL-OFF-LIMITS. I had avocados every day, they are mostly illegal. I ate sweet potatoes a good bit: ILLEGAL-OFF-LIMITS. I ate a good bit of quinoa and rice: ILLEGAL-OFF-LIMITS. Onions and garlic: ILLEGAL-OFF-LIMITS, this made it super difficult to eat out or cook anything that had the robust flavors I enjoy. (You can use garlic infused oil, which was a life saver for me!) I consulted some cookbooks and websites and seemed to manage, but a lot of the joy of eating was zapped (no carbs allowed).

This is one of the hardest elements of surviving the healing path: finding pleasure in eating. Not just because I couldn’t have carbs, avocados, and apples, but also because I felt miserable. In Sylvie McCracken’s ebook about SIBO, she recommends a different specific gut healing approach: The Elemental Diet. When I first read about it, it seemed insane. After a week on the Berberine and Neem Plus I was seriously considering the Elemental Diet! (Hint: you don’t actually eat on an Elemental Diet.) No Food. You just get the nutrients you need through an expensive or difficult to make concoction- which is the most important part of doing that particular healing protocol. But no food. Sounded miserable and a little crazy. Didn’t happen for me, it was enticing because I felt so terrible, but it really seems overall dangerous and unhealthy. But, I digress…

The Berberine made me feel horrible, way worse than the day to day SIBO symptoms I had been experiencing. You feel worse before you feel better. The bacteria die-off side effects are dreadful. (At times, the Elemental Diet really seemed like a really enticing option? Wait, no, it’s terrible). Pretty much everything I ate made me feel sick, and yet at the same time I was having the craziest cravings! I would drive past a fast food place and think, cheesy fries, THOSE WOULD BE AMAZING!!! I NEED TO EAT THEM RIGHT NOW!!! The bacteria were desperate. They wanted carbs. They wanted sugar. They wanted pizza. They wanted cookies. They wanted everything and anything I could not eat in order to heal. They really did not want to go away. Now remember, I had been working on healing my leaky gut for a year and half before the SIBO diagnosis, I had not eaten pizza, cookies, cheesy fries, bread, or much added sugar in over a year! Those bacteria just wanted carbs, dairy, and sugar and they were trying super hard to convince me that I should eat pizza, eat cookies, eat fries! It really was the bacteria talking, I didn’t feel well enough to be genuinely craving these foods.

The cravings were seriously off the charts and my stomach and digestion were mis-er-able. I started taking Activated Charcoal to help with the die-off symptoms, and detox the nasty little bugs and their toxic die-off waste (called Herxheimer reaction.) The Activated Charcoal seemed to help, but I still felt pretty bad. When treating SIBO it’s considered to be counterintuitive to take probiotics, as adding in any bacteria, even the good stuff, is supposedly not useful. I had been taking and eating probiotics as a part of my lifestyle for some time. Not having them seemed to be impacting me, so it was recommended that I take a “SIBO-safe” probiotic called Sibiotica as well as S. boulardii. Integrating these did seem to provide some relief for my sad, mad stomach, and digestion. I took digestive enzymes with every meal, and took apple cider vinegar shots at night.

After about 15-days on the herbal antimicrobials I started taking Interfase Plus, a biofilm disruptor. The gross bacteria create little biofilms in your gut where they can “hunker down.” They seriously DO NOT want to be destroyed, and they are resourceful little buggers (gross). The Interfase Plus helped clear out the biofilm, and while I think it was effective, it was also unpleasant. After the herbal antimicrobials were finally over, I began taking MotilPro, which is basically super ginger, with some other helpful elements to aid with gut motility. One of the main causes/effects of SIBO is poor motility of food through the digestive tract. The longer it takes to digest, the more likely bacteria will start to feed on it. Yuck.

Another oh-so-delightful symptom of SIBO is that your small intestine (which is super important for assimilating the nutrients in your food) becomes terribly inflamed, and you don’t properly absorb nutrients. This left me deficient in some vitamins and minerals. Over time, if not treated, this will cause other health problems that often get misdiagnosed. The inflammation was definitely where my skin troubles, including the rosacea, were coming from, and most likely my hormone imbalances, low energy, and anxiety as well. I started supplementing the vitamins, and I also took L-Glutamine in powder form to help repair my gut. The money I once spent on wine, tasty chocolate, and going out to eat I now spent on freaking supplements!

During this phase I still felt rough, and my skin was looking rough. Although I was still feeling pretty bad, (the die-off symptoms last a long time) the cravings did begin to decrease. While I was no longer jonesing for pizza and cookies, I was craving tasty real food.

Oh- did I mention I was a total grump throughout this whole treatment phase? I was. It was miserable, I felt miserable, I basically whined and chose to stay miserable. When I finally got tired of whining and feeling miserable, I remembered that wait—I am a yogini and a health coach! I had some really cool tools that I had been too busy being whiny and miserable to access. I love helping others, I can think of so many ways to give people useful tools and strategies to heal, but I forgot to help myself! What is wrong with me? I started including Ayurvedic approaches to healing the gut, which supported my process of getting rid of SIBO.

I started doing self-abdominal massage of the ileocecal valve (the IC valve is located between the small and large intestines, and it should stay shut after digested food moves from the small to large intestine). Because of the inflammation and low motility associated with SIBO, the IC valve may be stuck open, which allows bacteria to migrate from the large to the small intestine, again, gross. I had fresh ginger infused in my tea every morning to help aid digestion and soothe inflammation. I started doing Kapalabhati breathing, Agni Sara exercises, and oil pulling with coconut oil every single morning. I added in additional yoga postures that aid in detoxing and toning the digestive system. These changes allowed the detoxing processes of my body to improve, which significantly began to aid in me feeling better.

After a good bit of research, I also started incorporating Intermittent Fasting (IF). With the slow motility associated with SIBO, my body did not have ample time or energy to digest after each meal. Eating the same amount of food in a shorter eating window helped to heal my gut, and improve my overall health. Although it was initially tough to figure out the right timing, and assure that I got enough caloric and nutrient density during the eating window, it helped. Staying on top of Intermittent Fast is super important, you must nourish your body with ample nutrition and give it enough calories or it won’t heal! You are not intended to skip a meal, but eat more just within your eating window. (It’s also important to note that this is not meant for a long-term dietary approach, 6-12 weeks and then back to a more normal eating window).

This integrated approach helped me turn the corner. I started feeling better, but still was not normal digestively. I was freaked out that the SIBO was not completely healing. I never want to go through the misery of treatment again, so not feeling 100% was not an option. I found an acupuncturist who had experience with healing SIBO, and her treatments and magic herbs seemed to be the final trick. After just a few acupuncture sessions I returned to having “normal” digestion. For those of you who also suffer with abnormal digestion, or IBS, you know how exciting it is to have “normal” poop! She put me on a regimen of Chinese herbs, recommended I stay away from food that are difficult to digest, and to begin adding the FODMAP’s back in one at a time.

I had been on the low FODMAP’s for just over 12 weeks, so I was super excited to start incorporating them again- but also terrified of regressing. It is important to start slowly. I added in one, then increased a little every day for 5 days. I took good notes on all of my symptoms: digestion, energy, skin, mood, and so on. I started with onions and garlic and had no problem (YAY!!). After 5 days, I added in avocado, no trouble again (SWEET!!). I continued with this pattern, and was able to add all the FODMAP’s back in with no major problems, but I had some ideas about what would be best to reduce. This process took about 2 weeks, and I’ll admit, it was super tempting to just go all the way back in after adding in the first couple with no troubles. Taking it slow really helped me to notice what foods cause what symptoms, positive or negative, to assure that my system remained happy.

This brings me to the most important phase of treatment: maintenance. I’ll be back to share how I am maintaining so far. I’ve made it over 8 months since beginning treatment, and so far, I am hopeful. Once I started feeling better I wanted to go back to how things used to be. To eat whatever, whenever. At times, I have let some things slide, but I know I can’t make that the norm. It takes a long time to heal the gut, and if you remember from Surviving SIBO Part 1: I probably started damaging my gut at a very young age. I am 42 years old. That is a long time to have a crazy gut, the damage runs super deep. Keeping my gut happy and healthy, keeps me happy and healthy. While the nutritional healing protocols, supplements, and lifestyle help keep my gut in check, maintaining stress management, and self-care practices, are also extremely vital to remaining healthy. Everything is intimately interconnected.

I will be back to let you know how I continue to maintain a healthy, happy gut-- SIBO free!!

Are you struggling with an unhappy gut, a SIBO diagnosis or treatment? If so, reach out! Community is super important and sharing your story can be healing!

What Exactly Is Wholistic Food Therapy? (And How It Will Help You Break Free From Emotional Eating!)

Someone recently asked me, "so what exactly is Wholistic Food Therapy?"

So here is what I came up with to help clarify!

Wholistic: I love this word. When I first wanted to call the work I do Wholistic I thought I was being so clever, however, upon some quick research I found that it really is a word! I love this word because it focuses on the concepts of Whole Person and Whole Foods at the same time! It is integrative and recognizes that there is nothing left out as you explore your relationship with Food. As I say in the introduction of my book: "No part is left out in this process. From what you eat and why you are eating it, to how your food choices make you feel physically and emotionally. To what you do with your time. To how you breathe, and how you think. While this is not a nutrition book specifically, I use the word wholistic as it implies addressing the whole person and the importance of eating whole foods at the same time."

Food: Food is so important to address within the Wholistic Food Therapy process as the relationship with food has become awry and food itself has become about more than eating for pleasure or eating to live. Food becomes for so many a solution to difficult emotions while simultaneously being the source of frustration and feeling out of control. Herein lies the source of the problem: Food is the problem and Food is the solution. This becomes a vicious and quite dangerous cycle. When engaging in Wholistic food therapy, we deal with your relationship with food over time and as the process unfolds you are more and more able to allow food to become just food. 

Therapy: It is therapy, in that we work on emotional intelligence, coping skills, self-expression and self-awareness. When something is therapeutic, by nature it is anecdotal. Therapy provides a space of acceptance, safety and non-judgment and as you open yourself to the process you can create from within a sense of relief, hope and motivation. Through therapy you will continue to move forward, to grow, to heal. The goal is to heal your relationship with food from the very deepest root. Once the roots are gone. You will stop the negative cycle and begin planting new seeds of beginning to live a life free from emotional eating. As you make peace with food, you find the freedom and ability to heal your relationship with you body and with yourself. 

So, that's the Wholistic Food Therapy official definition. Making the decision to enter into into this work is difficult. If you are ready to start your journey to healing but not certain about how it can work in your life contact me. I am happy to answer any other specific questions you may have about the process, the integrative and Wholistic approach and how this process can benefit your life, your health and create peace of mind as you make peace with food. I look forward to hearing from you when you are ready to do this work.