Eating Disorder Recovery As Spiritual Transformation (All Together Podcast)

Eating Disorder Recovery As Spiritual Transformation (All Together Podcast)

Welcome to the latest ALL TOGETHER -- the podcast dedicated to exploring how ethics, religion and spiritual practice inform our personal lives, our communities and our world. ALL TOGETHER is hosted this week by Antonia Blumberg, associate editor of HuffPost Religion. You can download All Together on iTunes, or Stitcher.

An estimated 20 million women and 10 million men in the United States will suffer from an eating disorder at some point in their lifetime, according to researchers. Forty to 60 percent of elementary school girls, ages 6 to 12, report concern about their weight or about becoming too fat.

Chelsea Roff, 25, developed an eating disorder as a child, had a stroke at 15 and has lived to share her remarkable journey to self acceptance.

Roff went on to start the eating disorder recovery nonprofit Eat Breathe Thrive, which runs both clinical and community training programs that utilize yoga, meditation and mindfulness to help participants develop healthier relationships with their bodies. The program doesn’t treat eating disorders, Roff emphasizes, but complements traditional medicine by providing the “fertilizer” for full recovery to take place.

As it turns out, a handful of researchers, like Jennifer J. Daubenmier from the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, have found evidence to suggest that yoga can promote lower self-objectification and fewer disordered eating attitudes.

Beyond the clinical side of eating disorder treatment, Roff spoke with HuffPost Religion about the powerful, but often overlooked, spiritual consequences of living through an eating disorder.

Need help? Call the National Eating Disorder Association hotline at 1-800-931-2237.

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