Isvara Pranidhana (Surrender)
B.K.S. Iyengar: “To contemplate on God, to surrender one’s self to Him (the divine) is to bring everything face to face with God. Pranidhana is the surrender of everything: one’s ego, all good and virtuous actions, pains and pleasures, joys and sorrows, elations, and miseries to the Universal soul. Through surrender, the aspirant’s ego is effaced, and the grace of the Lord pours down upon him like torrential rain.”
The first and perhaps most transformational step in my recovery from bulimia was admitting I had a problem that I could not resolve on my own. It took a long time to get to this step. For many years, I clung to the hope that if I only tried hard enough and got my life together, I could muscle my way toward wellness. Admitting my addiction to another and asking for help was risky. Therapy had not worked, leaving me feeling hopeless. In a few situations, I had been shamed by health professionals who did not understand the psychic wounds that underlie eating disorders. Stopping the compulsive eating on my own seemed my only way out, even though I failed and failed again at stopping.
When it arrived, surrender came as an unexpected gift from the Divine, an invitation from deep within my heart to follow a new path.
I was almost 26 and hadn’t been to a doctor for several years. That winter, I was not feeling well, but my father convinced me to go to the clinic where I was attending graduate school by saying, “It’s free!” At check-in, one of the questions on the form was, “Do you have an eating disorder?” I was about to check “No” automatically — why would I risk admitting to this anyone — when something inside made me pause. Maybe they ask this question for a reason. Maybe there are people here who can help? In this pause was an invitation to surrender to a new path opening before me. Where before I had seen only risk and humiliation, I now saw the possibility for tenderness, help, and love.
When I checked that box, I did not know where it would lead, whether the person seeing it would be kind or shaming, what the next steps would be, or what I might be capable of doing in my life. In that moment of grace, I only knew I could open my heart for help.
Poses to cultivate Ishvara Pranidhana:
Supta Baddha Konasana
Adho Muhka Virasana (trunk on bolster)
Niralamba Sarvangasana
Viparita Karani
Savasana
Satya (Truthfulness)
B.K.S. Iyengar: “Truth is an absolute of staggering power.”
The next step in my recovery required me to be truthful to the reality of my life. It required a ruthless honesty about what I was doing, an admission of my addiction to myself and a few trusted others. In my first session with SF — the therapist who was to help me heal and emerge from the chrysalis of bulimia — she asked me to list the foods I ate on a binge. In my shame, I had never made an open accounting of this list to myself, let alone to anyone else. But again, grace was present that day because when she asked, I began to speak my truth of the situation. And rather than humiliation, I was flooded with relief to speak my truth to another who did not shame or blame me.
Voicing the truth to SF and myself helped bring the bulimia out of the shadows and into the purifying sunlight of awareness. The light helped to burn away my shame and guilt. She asked me to pause before binging, so I might become aware of what I was feeling. Was I eating because I was bored, afraid, or angry? Did I want to be with others or alone? Was I afraid of failure or rejection? Over time, I developed an awareness of strong feelings arising before my drive to binge and the deeper hungers for love, comfort, and courage that lay hidden underneath my hunger for food.
After a few years, I took a big step and, for the first time, told a friend of my struggles with food. To my surprise, she did not spit at me or look at me in disgust but simply listened. Sharing my truth and her compassionate listening moved me closer to healing and inner integration.
Coming out from behind the addiction, we can see within us the deep emptiness we are seeking to fill with food, drugs, alcohol, sex, work, and the deeper hungers underneath calling for our attention. Rumi has said that “all longings are holy.” Naming and acknowledging our hungers in truthfulness, we can begin to see them as callings from the Divine, from our soul, from our deepest inner parts, to become known to us.
Poses to cultivate Satya:
Vrksasana
Uttitha Trikonasana
Virabhadrasana II
Uttitha Parsvakonasana
Svadhyaya (Self-Study/Sacred Study)
B.K.S. Iyengar: “You will not reach Knowledge of the Divine Self without passing through self-knowledge.”
In our journey towards well-being and recovery, we cannot know what we will need. As we learn to feed ourselves in more nourishing ways, there will be unexpected difficulties, setbacks, ruts, and backsliding, along with the joy, ease, and freedom that well-being and true nourishment bring. Indeed, figuring out what nourishes is a profoundly spiritual practice.
Svadhyaya asks us to be open to whatever is happening to us, to bring self-awareness to the feelings and emotions rising inside — the physical discomforts, agitations, cravings, tension, stress, fatigue, or fear. In Svadhyaya, we are asked to seek self-knowledge and encouraged to explore with compassion and curiosity whatever unfolds before us from moment to moment. Only in the moment can we be aware of what we are longing for and wanting, what we need to do to nourish and care for ourselves, and what resources are before us that can help.
I remember the first time I was able to choose not to eat compulsively when the craving arose. It was a Sunday afternoon in early spring. It was cold and rainy, and the familiar urge to binge rose inside me. I wanted to binge on cookies, watch TV draped under a soft frayed blanket, and sit in my favorite old chair. I wanted to turn off the day and numb the inner sadness. Instead, I found a sacred pause between the urge to binge and acting on that urge, and in that pause, I was able to do what had previously been impossible. In that pause, I sunk deep below the hunger for food and numbness to touch the rich and profound sadness underneath my cravings for food and escape. I touched this pain with loving compassion. I let the blueness inside rise to meet the blueness of the day. I sat at the kitchen table and let the sadness wash over me like the rain. As I gave it space, I was amazed it did not destroy me as I feared but began to soften and spread. I felt its richness and fullness, its tenderness and mystery, and the nascent possibility for joy within the grief.
Then, I felt the presence of something soft, kind, and warm with me in that moment, something familiar and grandmotherly reaching out to me. I was not alone with this sadness. I was held even as I held this pain. And then I wanted to play with something colorful and soft. I wanted to make something beautiful with my hands.
I found the clay I had lying around the house and warmed it with my hands. It softened with my touch. I took it in with all my senses: the colors, the smell, the smooth stickiness between my fingers. The blueness inside began to mellow and soften like the clay between my fingers. I sat for several hours rolling beads of clay, thinking of how I might string them together into a necklace. The clay, the beads, the textures, and the colors were exquisite and deeply comforting. I was an artist. I was making something precious from deep inside that was an expression of my deepest self. It was the transformation of suffering into spiritual healing. And I wasn’t alone.
The urge to binge left me for that moment, on that cold blue Sunday, even as the blueness inside rose strongly again and again before falling away.
Poses to cultivate Svadhyaya:
Marichyasana III
Parvritta Trikonasana
Ardha Halasana
Parsva Halasana
Entering Darkness
Ahimsa (Nonviolence/compassion)
B.K.S. Iyengar: “The shame of violence, of harming others, is simply that; it is an offence against underlying unity and therefore a crime against truth.”
Ahimsa asks us to consider our words and actions and whether they are bringing us into a deeper connection with ourselves and others (ahimsa) or disconnection (hmisa). When it pertains to healing from compulsive overeating, we can use ahimsa to become aware of and pay close attention to how we are treating ourselves. As we begin to feed and honor our needs for love, acceptance, and connection with our deepest selves, cravings to binge will start to fall away.
Kindness and compassion towards ourselves come from paying close attention to ourselves (svadhyaya) and to the truth (satya) of how we feel in our body, mind, and emotions from moment to moment throughout each day. Through this receptive, ongoing, and open curiosity, we can come to know what we are hungry for to uncover the hunger behind the hunger, which will lead us into a profound caring for the deepest parts of ourselves, our wholeness, and the divinity and grace within.
As I first noticed and then explored with openness, curiosity, softness, and kindness, the inner longings, ahimsa began to unlock a key to my well-being. Ahimsa meant allowing myself to experience the full and normal range of human emotions, let them loose, give them space, and listen to and respect these callings from the deepest parts of my being.
While recovering, I began to take ahimsa very seriously, realizing that each time I ignored these deeper longings, the urge to binge and purge was fueled, and this caused me harm. Ahimsa, the study and practice of self-care, became (and remains) an organizing principle of my well-being.
In early recovery, I noticed how certain situations would trigger a binge, and when possible, I began to avoid them. Sometimes, this meant not spending time with friends or family members who I found upsetting or shaming, not participating in social events out of obligation when my body/mind craved rest and solitude, and breaking the isolation when that was needed. I learned to honor what my body/mind needed in the moment in my practice of ahimsa. Caring for myself in these deep ways made me aware of my humanness. In touching my humaneness, I became aware of and reverent of the humanness of others.
Poses for Ahimsa:
Adho Mukha Virasana
Adho Mukha Svanasana (head supported)
Setu Bandha (supported with a cross-wise bolster)
Viparita Karani
Aparigraha (Gratitude/Non-covetousness)
B.K.S. Iyengar: “Energy needs to flow, or its source withers. By covetousness or miserly clinging on, we stop energy against a natural law, it is we who are impoverished and poisoned by our own hoarding of life’s riches.”
As the grip of compulsive eating began to loosen, I noticed a disturbing fact about myself: I was often filled with jealousy and envy for what those around me had and that I felt missing in my own life. Rarely satisfied with myself, I wanted a different body, a higher grade, more success at work, and deeper friendships. I felt greedy for more attention from professors, my lover, and my friends. I wanted to be the most persuasive in class and could become obstinate and argumentative when that didn’t happen. Wanting these things made me feel ashamed and depleted.
It can be scary when food begins to lose its grip because emotions become more intense. No longer numbed by food, complicated feelings rise to our consciousness and demand attention. The practice of aparigraha helps us to become aware of what we cling to and hoard and understand why. This gives these hard feelings the fullness, space, and recognition they need to be understood and transmuted into something divine, the holy longings we are all seeded with.
After a long period of observation, I found that underneath the jealousy and envy was enormous grief, abandonment, and emptiness. It takes a lot of humility, courage, and suppleness to enter this pain. It is a practice that matures over a long time. But when we allow even a sliver of this psychic pain to express itself fully, touched with love, we can begin to experience wholeness, integration, and gratitude.
Poses for Aparigraha:
Ujjayi breathing
Viloma I
Viloma II
Savasana
Asteya (Non-Stealing/Generosity)
B.K.S. Iyengar: “So at each stage of our lives, we do our best with yamas, the external moralities, but it is only through refining the self that we really improve the quality of this morality…when we’re young, stealing might mean actually stealing something from a shop. Whereas when we’re older, we might refrain even from saying a harsh word that might steal somebody’s reputation.”
To be generous towards others, we first must learn to be generous with ourselves. When I was actively bulimic, I thought generosity meant pleasing others, even if it meant sacrificing my boundaries and needs. In recovery, I learned that projecting a false self drove a wedge between myself and those I longed to be closer to. I realized that generosity towards others came as I learned to take good care of myself, my deep need for healthy boundaries, and honesty about self-care. Genuine giving flowed from an open-heartedness, leading to deeper connections with others.
My beloved grandmother had the habit of never sitting down to a family meal. After spending the evening preparing the family dinner (eggplant parmesan with fresh tomato sauce, baked chicken, green beans, and roasted potatoes), rather than sitting down to eat, she would spend the meal piling food onto platters, pulling hot pans out of the oven, going to the porch for more soda and wine, replacing lost napkins, forks, or knives. She wouldn’t serve herself a plate of food even as she heaped food on ours, encouraging us all to“Manga!” When she did feed herself, it was from the uneaten parts of the meal left on our plates, chicken bones with bits of meat hanging on, potatoes stuck to the roasting pan, and leftover ends of bread from the loaf. Giving to us in this sacrificial way took a toll on her health and well-being. Not eating properly led to obesity and diabetes, and the daily pressures to cook and clean and tend to a family, along with holding down a job cleaning for others, sometimes led to bitterness and anger. When neglecting her needs, her giving was unbalanced and occasionally hard to digest.
In recovery, I learned when I could give with generosity and open-heartedness and when I could not. The intensity of my craving to binge was the guidepost telling me whether I should proceed with the giving. If it was clear I could not “give” to another without binging, I learned to say no to giving that was not born out of love but of fear. With practice and trial and error, I learned that setting appropriate boundaries with others that honored my need for rest and care didn’t leave me abandoned as I had feared. On the contrary, in practicing a more honest and balanced way of giving, I cultivated richer and more authentic connections with friends and loved ones because the giving came from a mature, open love rather than a fearful grasping.
Poses for Asteya:
Salabhasana
Dhanurasana
Ustrasana
Viparita Dhandasana
Tapas (Sustained Devoted Practice)
B.K.S. Iyengar: “Practice implies a certain methodology, involving effort. It has to be followed uninterruptedly for a long time, with firm resolve, application, attention and devotion, to create a stable foundation for training the mind, intelligence, ego and consciousness.”
As recovery progresses, it asks for more commitment, attention, discipline, and love. The recovery process never reaches an endpoint but continues to draw us toward the next step in developing courage, faith, and self-abiding. Tapas (devotion) is required to address all the interconnected aspects of life that require reattachment and rebalancing to serve an ongoing recovery. Recovery, through tapas, becomes entrenched when it serves as the organizing principle to our life, the lens through which we weigh decisions, actions, and the multitude of choices and relationships that comprise a life. Recovery through tapas is the choice made over and over in each moment to choose awareness and aliveness over dullness and oblivion.
After a year or so of recovery work, there came a point when I plateaued. I was tired of working so hard but making so little progress. The desire to binge had ebbed, but not entirely. I didn’t think it would be possible for me to go further and wanted to give up trying. For days or weeks, I would let myself give up the hard work of recovery. I would give myself a recovery “vacation,” but not for long. Because I had cultivated so much support around me and had caught the wave of recovery through inner transformation, I had the inner and outer scaffolding to get going again.
This speaks to the importance of sangha to help us with our commitments on the spiritual path of recovery. We can draw on the strength of the community when our self-will flags. Once I committed myself to the hard work of recovery, I organized my life around this goal. I joined several support groups, met weekly with a therapist and a nutritionist, and began to plan time each day for the pleasure of a long walk in the woods, a favorite TV show, or coloring. One summer, I cut my vacation to Cape Cod short because I missed my sangha and was not ready to be apart from my supportive community for so long. The sangha was my training wheels to help me find my balance and renew my tapas, my motivation for the hard ongoing work of recovery.
Poses for Tapas:
Virhabhadrasana I
Virhabhadrasana III
Adho Mukha Vrksasana
Urdhva Dhanurasana
Opening to Light
Brahmacharya (Moderation; Balance)
B.K.S. Iyengar: “Balance in the body is the foundation for balance in life.”
I took my first yoga class towards the end of my journey to recovery. Less occupied by food, I had more time to try things I thought might bring me pleasure, comfort, or company. While I had been active for most of my adult life, in that first yoga class, I couldn’t believe how much effort it took to stand up straight in Tadasana, spine erect, legs engaged, chest open.
In pose after pose,I found stiffness and tightness I had been unaware of and significant portions of my body I had not inhabited for many years, if ever. Despite the pain and exhaustion, this practice touched something deep inside me. I haven’t stopped practicing or attending classes since.
Seeking and establishing balance within the body gradually and over time led to a desire to find more balance in my emotions and reactions. This meant I could no longer sit for long periods without a break, that working to the point of depletion was no longer justified, nor was hunger to the point of being irritated or agitated. I began to long for a connection to the quiet still point within, a place I did not know existed before I started practicing yoga.
To find well-being, we can no longer work ourselves to exhaustion, sustain long periods of unyielding stress, or sit still in front of a computer or TV screen until our body becomes numb and lethargic. Like a seesaw coming to balance, brahmacharya takes ongoing adjustments that sometimes swing us further in the opposite direction than necessary. Because life is ever-changing, this exploration of balance, not the achievement of balance in and of itself, brings us into wholeness and awareness to touch the still point within.
Poses for Brahmacharya:
Tadasana
Urdhva Hastasana
Urdhva Baddhangulyasana
Anantasana
Sauca (Purity)
B.K.S. Iyengar: “If your lake is muddy and impure, if there are lots of toxins in your system clouding your vision, clarity of vision is impossible...When the mind is stable, the sediment held in suspension that clouds it sinks to the bottom, and the consciousness becomes limpid.”
When self-judgment, fear, shame, or unawareness clouds our consciousness, we cannot see ourselves or others clearly. Provoked by self-judgment and fear, we lose the ability to act with freedom. Sauca helps us let things settle inside, pause, and find clarity before acting out of fear, anger, or shame.
Along with asana, which purifies the blood, soothes and strengthens the nerves, and opens and aerates the lungs and the spine, a practice of selfless service has helped me to cultivate sauca, especially around the sullying and pernicious effects of negative self-judgment. In recovery, I am continually relearning this lesson of selfless service as a keen antidote to negative thinking and actions. Putting others before myself, when I am able and in ways that are not self-depleting, helps me to let go of self-judgments and feel useful and purposeful, with more compassion for myself and others. Selfless service brings me into a state of sauca where my view of the world is clearer, less muddied by negative and critical self-hatred, and I am in deeper connection with the divine nature in myself and others.
Poses for Sauca:
Bharadvajasana I
Bharadvajasana II
Supta Padangusthasana I, II, III
Urdhva Prasarita Padasana
Paripurna Navasana
Santosa (Contentment)
B.K.S. Iyengar: “When consciousness, strength, and energy coordinate, then the little upsets of the day can be taken in our stride, dealt with for what they are — real but limited — and then put down. Contentment, which is an acceptance of one’s mixed lot as a human being, returns. Resentment does not fester and poison even the less satisfactory sections of our day.”
During a particularly stubborn part of my recovery, when I felt I might not be up to the task, I wondered whether recovery was worth the effort. Life wasn’t necessarily getting easier, even as the urge to binge and purge was fading. In fact, at times, the opposite felt true. Without the numbing effects of food, overwhelming feelings of anger, shame, fear, or grief could rise and flatten me. Recovery wasn’t making life perfect or easier. People were still disappointed, money ran out, jobs were lost and not found, and love was tepid. Some days in recovery, even when the sun was streaming through the windows, I didn’t have it in me to do more than watch TV. I experienced days of rage and sadness.
As I continued with recovery into and through the ruts, setbacks, and difficulties and allowed myself to feel everything more fully, something shifted. I began to acquire a taste for the feelings and longings that rose when I no longer numbed them with food. The desire to care for myself in deeper and more profound ways, no matter the outside failures or disappointments, brought a newly acquired trust in myself and, beyond that, an encounter with that which helped sustain me beyond my self-will. Having an inner refuge to return to and trust became prize enough. I was (and am) learning I didn’t need the world to be a certain way to be happy. This newly acquired taste for inner awareness and connection brought santosa with myself and the life unfolding around me.
Santosa, not happiness or success, has been the fruit of my recovery. Through the practice of the yamas and niyamas, I have come to appreciate myself and my life as it unfolds around me. When I am anxious and fearful, I have a place to turn to find respite. Like a hinge to a hidden doorway, my yoga practice opens me into an ever-deepening relationship with my deepest self and the divine.
Poses for Santosa:
Sirsasana
Halasana
Viparita Dandasana
Uttanasana
Hinge
B.K.S. Iyengar: “The techniques of yoga give you the opportunity to capture energy from the outside as well as from the inside and to use that energy for your personal evolution.”
My addiction served as a hinge into the sacredness that may have remained closed to me if I didn’t have an addiction. For this, my recovery, and yoga, I am grateful.
“Every Desire is Holy”
Addiction is a sign that our purpose in life is out of balance. At its root, addiction points to our deep inner longings for love, completeness, wholeness, and compassion. The compulsive action can be considered a calling from the deepest parts of ourselves, which long to be known, loved, seen, and heard but which we have abandoned out of fear, shame, woundedness, trauma, and confusion. These longings come from and through the body but are not of the body. They are of the soul longing to be known to us.
Embracing the yamas and niyamas for recovery, we learn how to taste the essence of the infinite through the particular, find the balance and firmness to harness life’s flows of pleasure and pain, plumb the inner depths of our being, the soul, so that we might make good use of the precious gift of our lives on this earth.