Rediscover,
Reconnect, and Repair:
A Lifelong Commitment
Lisa Diers
Your relationship to your body is the longest relationship you’ll ever have. To expect to be “in love” with it all the time is unrealistic. To be at war with it is not the answer either. But can you appreciate, respect, and love your body even if you are not always “in love” with how it looks, feels, or functions? Can this be done at a time of everyday body objectification via all mediums of media that use emotionally clever, manipulative, and disempowering messages aimed at our insecurities, perceived shortcomings, and ailments, creating a void for which only “blank” product, procedure, or belief system can fill? In the era of image-dominant forms of expression and communication, with good intentions or otherwise, can you develop a noncompetitive relationship to your body rooted in camaraderie and friendship? Yes, you can.
For more than ten years, I have worked exclusively in eating disorder treatment as both a dietitian nutritionist and a yoga instructor at The Emily Program. I understand both personally and professionally the food and body challenges so many people face. My hope is that sharing some of my experiences and thoughts with you proves helpful and hopeful on your journey toward developing a deeper understanding of and curiosity toward the relationship you have with your body—even in a world that seemingly has the cards stacked against you. I hope that by reading this essay (and the others in this book), the ideas for social change and ways to create a body-positive environment wherever you go spark a fire within you. My greatest hope is that all people can begin to see past the external layer of the body and into the most beautiful part of a person—their soul.
My Body: A Storied Relationship
EveryBODY has a story to tell. You may very likely relate to similar experiences of hurt, violation, worry, and mistrust, with the body taking the brunt of the suffering. For many, an instinctual coping mechanism for pain and intense emotions is to find some sense of control and numbing of feelings through food and the powerful distraction of being preoccupied with changing one’s body. For all, the body holds experiences. Until we can begin to reconnect to, rediscover, and repair those experiences, we will not know peace.
My body has been an amazing follower of my critical mind from the young age of eight years old. At various times in my life, I have defied my natural weight by being underweight, overweight, fit, and unfit. I have both hated and loved my body at all of these sizes. I know what it feels like to be judged for being on both ends of the weight and appearance spectrum and also in a healthy place and still be judged. I also know what if feels like to arrive at the place of having a deeply rooted, authentic, honest, and respectful relationship with my body. Over its life span, my body has been the armor that has protected me. It has also received a few significant blows that cracked its protective layer. And through it all—through all the times I swore I’d never measure up or I thought the struggle, pain, and heartache would never end—I blamed myself and was convinced that my body was the problem and that by changing it I would find the solutions. Through it all, my body stood by me, waiting patiently, until I figured it out. Its unwavering love and wisdom eventually stood the test of time and shone through. I have a deep love and respect for my body that has been built by the experiences we have lived through together. I accept my body’s forms and iterations, see the important purposes for each, and use that wisdom to navigate my work with others and my future.
Creating an Image
My relationship to my body is like any other deeply committed relationship; it’s had a complicated history! Some memories I have of women I looked up to often include their latest diet, negative body comments, and the need to constantly lose weight. These experiences played a role in shaping my self-perception. How could women I thought the world of think of themselves in this way? If something was wrong with their bodies, then there certainly must be something wrong with mine.
At that time, people were mostly unaware of how damaging these appearance-focused comments or unhealthy forms of weight manipulations were on impressionistic minds. The women of that era were without the level of understanding and knowledge of theses struggles that we have today. Negative body image wasn’t even a known phrase. Eating disorder? What was that? We have more knowledge than ever and I couldn’t be more proud to be a part of an organization committed to destigmatizing these so very common struggles. These early experiences and the one’s that followed connected me with a passion within. At the age of twelve, I realized I wanted to help other people feel better about themselves. As I began to find my own inner peace, that fiery passion to help others grew stronger. As I mended my own relationship to my body, I deeply wanted others to see there was so much more to life than what you did or didn’t eat in a day or the number on the scale. It was so much better to be at peace!
I also wanted people to consider that their negative food- and appearance-focused actions and thoughts may be just as dangerous as an addiction to smoking. With that consideration, certainly negative and disordered comments made around others were just as damaging as secondhand smoke.
My mission for change began in college by making a vow to love myself first and to practice compassion toward myself and others. I moved away from body- and appearance-focused comments. I began to question everything I saw in all forms of media and quickly realized how body-centered approaches to marketing were not only skewing self-perception, but also were sneaky attempts to create or validate insecurities as an attempt to sell the solution. I saw myself for who I really was, and I wanted others to see that for themselves. I also became bored by what I felt were trivial conversations surrounding diets, weight, exercise, and appearance. I was irritated that so many women around me overshadowed their greatness with food and body judgments. I saw the waste in it and had enough. Although the journey to body acceptance was a very difficult one, for me, it is what needed to happen so I could both relate to others and help do my part to stop the cycle. I have no anger or resentment toward those times in my life. Although I wouldn’t wish them on anyone, those challenging times shaped my future and who I am today.
How Yoga Discovered Me: Practice Makes Progress
In my twenties, while working in a suburban hospital outside of Minneapolis, my manager asked the dietitians to partner up on a topic they were unfamiliar with, study it, and present it during the next staff meeting. One of my colleagues suggested yoga. I hadn’t heard of yoga before and, being a lover of learning, I figured why not?! We did our research and I was never more confused and curious about something in my life!
It wasn’t until I took my first “official” yoga class two years later that I began to understand yoga. I took a community class, looking for a way to de-stress and calm down. It was one of the most familiar and natural things I had experienced. For the first time since I could remember, I felt complete, relaxed, and at peace. I remember being so engaged during class and leaving with this thought: I wonder if I could become a teacher some day. Four years later, I did.
Since that time, yoga has helped me see that my body holds a wisdom of its own. It is a part of me that can powerfully reflect change, circumstances, or emotions that are challenging to verbally express. Through yoga, I have learned to give my body a voice and try to understand the language it speaks with curiosity and compassion.
Our bodies are such amazing followers of our minds—doing what it commands. When it cannot perform in the way we would like, our body tolerates, in a saintlike way, the verbal and physical abuse we subject it to for not meeting our expectations. I have much remorse for how I treated my body years ago—I truly believe the body is not to blame. Even in times of terminal illness or tragedy, bodies don’t fail. Bodies protect, defend, and do their best to adapt to the situation at hand.
My yoga practice and my instruction have changed the way I talk to and about my body. Now, this doesn’t mean that I don’t get self-conscious at times. Of course I do! But with these thoughts, I try to “Catch it. Challenge it and change it.” I can see the emotion with my wise mind and have a conscious choice of action, reaction, or non-reaction. My practice has most definitely taught me that. It has taught me how to separate myself from my emotions. To notice where my mind goes when I become uncomfortable in my body or otherwise, and to know that I do not have to react to those emotions. Through the practice of yoga, I have seen that all emotions have a life cycle, just like everything else. There is a beginning, a middle, and an end. I can invite my breath to calm my mind, for one example, and see the emotional cycle end without reacting to it in a negative way. My body deserves better.
Also, when I practice yoga, my body gets a turn to speak. When I don’t do yoga or when I don’t check in with my body’s messages on a regular basis, it gets fed up and demands to be heard in ways that are often frustrating or inconvenient. The body is powerful, so I would much rather make sure it has a regular chance to “speak”!
Lessons I Have Learned on the Mat
Lesson 1: The body can serve as a great and important communicator. Listen to what it has to tell you. Be curious. Not furious.
Lesson 2: We all have a body image—a perception of ourselves. I believe the image is on a spectrum and capping the ends of this body image spectrum are the feelings “elation” and “devastation”—those are extremes. You can live in the middle and visit the extremes from time to time and realize it is not a static relationship. Try not to react to it, but learn from it. Listen to it.
Lesson 3: Yoga postures are only one small part of yoga. Asana is about function and not about form. Let go of what it looks like, lean in to how it feels, and be open to where it takes you.
Lesson 4: Face your fears. If anything scares me, I am curious about that. In yoga, it often plays out in resistance. In those instances, finding my foundational and safe pose is often helpful. Next, to the degree it feels right, I follow my body’s lead and oscillate toward instability. When I notice emotional or physical signs of instability on the brink of overwhelm, I breathe to see if that shifts anything. When needed, I move toward stability. This is yoga. Listening to your body, seeing past the fears in your mind to the freedom on the other side. It’s knowing life is a process, not perfection. Yoga cannot be the same from pose to pose because the body is never exactly the same from moment to moment.
Lesson 5: Discover your poses and yogic techniques. Although no yoga practice or moment is the same, there can be poses that are your safe and stable poses for exploration and reconnection. Familiarity invites safety. Safety invites opportunity to explore. Exploration invites transformation.
Lesson 6: Trust and be true to yourself. At the end of the day you have to answer to yourself. Believe in yourself. You hold the answers you need. You are unlimited.
As we have so many visuals available to us, just remember, yoga is not about what it looks like. Yoga is about how it feels to you. That is what is most important. I have recovered and repaired my relationship to food and my body to 100 percent love for who I am. This repair work happened in a variety of ways and yoga sealed it in. It helps me remember what life is really all about.
Weaving the Tapestry of Change
At the age of twelve, I knew I wanted to do something meaningful in life and it would involve helping others. That has never wavered. One of the best lessons my parents instilled in me early on in life was that one of the most important things a person can do to create change is to start from the change that needs to happen within. From there on, I was regularly reminded and encouraged by them to find and live in my truth, to trust my instincts, stay strong, be kind, remain open and curious, and stand up for what I believe in, no matter what anyone else says. These messages have remained powerful ones throughout my life, helping to direct and steer me wherever the road leads. I believe that all of us have the ability to connect to our inner strengths in this way. Surround yourself with people who support you.
Once I fully understood what negative body image and disordered eating was, how damaging it was to the gift of life, and that I was on the path to freedom, I was on a mission to turn something painful into something positive. I knew this was what I was meant to do.
My Body Positive Social Change Campaign began almost twenty years ago! My life’s work chose me, and I trusted the process. Helping people recover from negative body image and disordered eating was my “career goal” as a dietitian. At that time, there were two places in Minnesota to do this work. I knew of one and then saw The Emily Program had a job opening. I put my entire heart and soul in that application and was beyond thrilled when I was scheduled for an interview. As I waited in the lobby for my first interview to begin, I couldn’t believe how comfortable and inviting this clinic was. I knew I had come to the right place. After my interview with Dirk Miller, our founder, I left knowing where I needed to be. I walked down the hall to the restroom and did a happy dance chock-full of fist pumps! I wasn’t sure what kind of impression I had made or if I would make it to the next round of interviews, but I knew I had never felt more connected to a program, its mission, and the deep sense that this job was for me!
More than ten years later, I have been fully supported in development of our yoga program and honored to be a part of our client’s healing journey in this way. Our clients call our approach to yoga “Emily Program Yoga,” and our amazing staff of more than twenty registered teachers are specially trained in “Emily Program Approach” to eating disorder –sensitive yoga taught in all locations, levels of care, and groups nationwide. We offer more than fifty yoga classes a week to our clients of all types of disordered eating, body shapes, sizes, abilities, ages, experiences, activity level, trauma experiences, gender, anxiety, depression, race, sexual orientation, you name it. Eating disorders do not discriminate and neither does yoga.
With the utmost care for our clients, we also collaborate with the University of Minnesota to conduct research on how yoga actually helps with body image and disordered eating. We are committed to exploring the role yoga can play in prevention as well as treatment. As we begin our third research study in this area, I am proud of what our clients have taught me, the ideas formed, and the research that can happen to help better understand yoga’s role in making a difference in how people experience their relationship to their bodies.
Although we love how safe and supported our clients feel in The Emily Program yoga classes, what concerns me is the weekly requests from our clients for studios that teach like we do at The Emily Program. Regularly I hear from clients how they enjoy the yoga we offer at TEP, but they cannot find yoga like this anywhere else. In my mind, this must change, as yoga instructors have a responsibility to teach yoga that is accessible to all.
Well, my next mission is to change that! With the support of The Emily Program Foundation, my team and I are able to conduct yoga instructor and professional trainings on creating body-positive and eating disorder–sensitive yoga classes and studio environments. Through our blog posts, YouTube videos, writing, teaching, and speaking about positive and realistic body image and “Emily Program Yoga,” we can hopefully make a difference in helping repair body-mind relationships. To me, beauty is confidence, kindness, and compassion. That’s it. It’s all internal and not external. The internal shines through and projects upon the external. With time, this will show externally and add to the body-positive change so desperately needed in our culture.
Yoga is a tool and a versatile one for many to have in the recovery toolbox. Remember, your yoga journey is unique to you. As you begin your campaign to change from within, know you are taking the most important step in changing how our culture views the human body. Slow down, listen, be patient, be compassionate and kind to yourself. You are the only YOU you’ll ever have.
Lisa Diers, RDN, LD, E-RYT, is director of nutrition and yoga program manager at The Emily Program. She is passionate about the healing power that nutrition and yoga provide to those struggling with disordered eating and negative body image. Lisa has led numerous yoga and eating disorder research studies, conducts professional teacher trainings on body image and eating disorder–sensitive yoga, leads The Emily Program yoga blog and YouTube videos, as well as authored book chapters and articles on the these topics. Author photo by Nancy Linden.