Eating disorders are all about body preoccupation. To change that, you should not necessarily avoid thinking about the body. Rather, healing might be learning how to focus on your body, but in a healthy way. Yoga, Pilates, and related disciplines promote acceptance of the body the way it is, rather than sculpting or beating it into some ideal.
In general, Pilates is a form of exercise meant to realign and strengthen the body as well as balance it with inner sensations. There are many forms of Pilates. The original Pilates is truest to its creator, Joseph Pilates, but contemporary adaptations have also emerged, adding advances in physical therapy, spinal research, and biomechanics.
Similarly, there are many basic approaches to yoga, some highly meditative, others more outwardly physical. Yoga schools such as raja yoga, trika yoga, and kundalini yoga fit into the more meditative branches.
Techniques such as pranyama work with breathing and attention to inner sensations. Practices such as iyengar and ashtanga yoga synchronize the breath with a series of progressive postures. Because your body is stretched to its physical limits or sweating out toxins, it calls for focused attention on postures and breathing.
These techniques open paths to healing: reconnecting your thoughts to your body in a healthy way after years, perhaps decades, of self-abuse. "Yoga is, for some women, the only time when they and their bodies are allies," says Linda Sparrowe, a longtime iyengar yoga instructor and someone who has suffered from an eating disorder.
"They can say to themselves, 'With my eyes closed, on my own mat, where there are no mirrors, I can be safe and good at something that is not dependent on how I look or what people think of me.'" At the same time, yoga or Pilates can more gently substitute for the intense aerobic workouts that may be dangerous to you as you age.
But there is at least one disadvantage to yoga and Pilates: often instructors ask participants to avoid eating - or eat lightly - for an hour or two before a session. If that means I can starve myself before class and then take several classes back-to-back, not eating for most of the day, this defeats the purpose of these healing tools. As with everything else, yoga and Pilates should be practiced with care and moderation.
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