Yoga was the tool that could give me the inner peace to accept myself and let all the mental pressure go.
I really wish that more and more young girls and also not so young girls would find and use yoga as a tool and way out of their eating disorders. Yoga has the magic power to open your perception of yourself and get a glimpse of your true self inside that is pure love. If you start to connect regularly to this source, your fears and mental pressure will disappear.
“Yoga has the magic power to open your perception of yourself and get a glimpse of your true self inside that is pure love. If you start to connect regularly to this source, your fears and mental pressure will disappear.
That is why yoga is a helpful tool for everyone and not only for people with eating disorders, but in this post I want to focus on these special diseases and tell my own story and way out of that challenge.
The rebellion of the soul
Today I look at my experience with bulimy as an important step in my life to realize, how much suffering can there be in a young person without a purpose or path that touches his or her soul and heart. With 12 years I got my moon blood for the first time and from that moment on I started to see the world differently and reject many typical behaviors of the sexual awakening of many girls. I wanted to be accepted without all the make-up, hairstyle, fancy dresses, high-heels stuff and I could not understand, why I should spend hours painting my face and fixing my hair and so on. I always had male friends and they liked me even without all this. Beneath all these teenage problems I started to question myself about the purpose of life and if procreation and family and studying and working was really everything we could aspire in this life and if there was nothing else than this existence.
By the time I felt so weird with my classmates and family and with society in general. It felt as if no one was thinking bigger than his or her own daily routine. I started to feel a big and painful emptiness in my heart and it really looked like there was no way out of this.
Then two books appeared
Then two books appeared in my life when I was 14: The art of happiness by the Dalai Lama and Power Yoga, by the editorial GU from Germany.
These books gave me an insight into another reality and the hope of some deeper reason and existence, than the material one. But the more I read, and the more concepts I learned about ethics and spirituality the further away from reality I felt in the mainstream world. Sometimes it felt as if the world was hopeless and the humans and myself too. At that time I often felt deep sadness and emptiness and the easiest thing to alleviate my pain was food and especially chocolate and other sweets. After eating more and more chocolate I felt so guilty and afraid of gaining weight, that I forced myself to vomit everything out again. Depending on the stress level at school and at home or with friends and boyfriends and other factors like the weather I had this bulimy attacks more or less often.
From the outside I was still a very good student with a normal family life and normal social life and also successful in my hobbies like playing the akkordeon and dancing, but from the inside I felt a lot of pressure and sadness and did not really know how to canalize that.
At that time I often felt deep sadness and emptiness and the easiest thing to alleviate my pain was food and especially chocolate and other sweets.
The Ashtanga Yoga was the first practical revelation of the big amount of positive energy we can get from the practice of asanas and pranayama. Every time I practiced I felt much better and the day developed much smoother. I started to get some of my body awareness back, that I lost nearly completely since I was forced to give up all the sports activity after a horse riding accident at the age of 9. But with the yoga I felt that I could begin again to conquer my body and that I could recover my strength and flexibility. At that moment I was very bad in school sport but I never gave up my yoga practice and I also started running and today with 29 I am showing many people with my age how to raise their body awareness.
New life and mind in Spain
But back to the age of 14, I still had to walk a long way till I got rid of my bulimy attacks. Yoga was a regular part of my life, but only as a home practice. With 18 years when I moved to Granada in Spain I started to attend classes regularly, at least 3 times a week and and started to meditate almost daily. That was the time when subtly, without any notice I just did not fall back anymore. Every day of practice made my own emotional energy and mental energy more stable and I experienced more and more moments of deep connection with the world and myself. I started to accept so many things and the relaxation reached my heart and every day I had lesser and lesser thoughts at all.
My life in Spain had changed and so did my mind. Two years later I started my yoga teacher training that would last 3 years and from that moment I can not remember myself even having any craving for sweets or chocolate or any other food. Of course I still love eating and I really enjoy one or two pieces of chocolate sometimes, but then my body automatically gives me the sign that this is enough and more would not be good for my health.
Every day of practice made my own emotional and mental energy more stable and I experienced more and more moments of deep connection with the world and myself.
Of course I can not say that it was only the practice of yoga that improved my health and wellbeing. Ayurveda was also an important experience to change my relationship with food. Ayurveda lifestyle and especially cooking is all about awareness and keeping things natural. Cooking and eating natural fresh food would nourish my body in a way it will not claim anything else. An important fact, that I learned in Ayurveda was, that every meal should include all six tastes: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, pungent and astringent. After such a meal your mind will be calm and your body deeply satisfied. Of course the ayurvedic diet is another profound topic, that will have my attention in another post.
The more you allow yourself to enter and feel the stillness of nature, the more it will heal you.
Another important medicine to cure myself and find balance in my soul was nature. Every free weekend I had and even many afternoons after school, university and work I searched the stillness and pureness of the mountains, forests and sea. It is still today a real need and the best therapy, as soon as I feel a bit out of balance, I go to the mountains, forest or sea. Nature has such a strong energy directly connected to our inner self that just being in its presence will change you. The more you allow yourself to enter and feel the stillness of nature, the more it will heal you. Just be aware of it and curious. Just let your inner child play and discover. When I go running in the mountains I often think of them as my playground. Finally I can move there as I wish and freely express myself and no norms of society are limiting me anymore. Of course nature has its own rules. You have to respect the environment and act careful for your own safety, especially in the high mountains. But usually these rules are self explaining and more logical for me than for example: You have to sit on a chair, when you go to a restaurant. Well sometimes I would prefer sitting on the floor but it would not be the appropriate behavior.
I can just encourage everyone to start exploring the practices of yoga. There are many types of yoga. I did mostly classical hatha yoga and ashtanga yoga. I tried Vinyasa and Kundalini yoga but for me they did not work so well, although I found some practices I liked, but I know they can be very effective for some people as I had several friends with emotional issues and depression and they found kundalini yoga very helpful. You just have to try and once you found a practice that that feels good, just stick to it and create a routine. Apart from the asanas and pranayama I recommend 25 minutes of meditation daily. That is what I learned from my master Swami Purohit in Granada. That is the perfect amount of time for a beginner in meditation to start a deep cleansing of the mind and it fits in any daily routine of a working person, you just have to set your priorities and create space and time. For myself I found the late evening a good time or the early morning.
At the end of this text I want to thank all my masters and all the help I got to learn this beautiful science of yoga and ayurveda and that I am still learning everyday. Namaste. Om Shanti.
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