How Yoga Helps in the Intuitive Eating Journey

This blog post is sponsored by adidas, as always all thoughts are my own.

This may sound dramatic, but yoga saved me.

When I started exercising at the age of 16, it was deliberately to change the way my body looked.

Exercise became a way to burn calories, to force my body to move and to try to manipulate the way my body looked.

This lasted for almost an entire decade as I battled with yo-yo dieting, restrict and binge eating, and the unhealthy obsession with healthy eating and living.

As I started to heal from disordered eating, I felt lost for a long time with exercise.

For awhile, I needed an exercise break. It was important because I had over-exercised for such a long time.

But then I started to feel the desire to move again and had no idea how. I had never exercised to connect to my body, it had always been a form of disconnection from my body, something I viewed as a necessary evil to burn calories.

As I healed, I started to experiment with different forms of movement to see what I enjoyed.

I had always heard yoga was so good for people like me (hello busy bees and recovering perfectionists!) but had previously dismissed it since it didn’t seem hard or challenging enough.

But I couldn’t be further from the truth.

Yoga IS for everyone. But especially for people  like me, who need help slowing down and connecting back inward.

Yoga helped me connect back into my body, feeling every part of my body with each change in yoga positions.

Yoga helped me slow my mind down, focusing on my breath and staying in the present moment.

Yoga helped me see that some days going to your edge is challenging yourself to push harder and some days it's slowing down and lying in savasana when everyone else is in the middle of a yoga flow.

Yoga helped me understand that movement is one of the many ways to take care of your body, and that yoga is more than just the movement practice, or asana, it is also about the breathwork and meditation aspects of the practice. 

Yoga helped me come home to my body.

These days, yoga is still one of my favorite and primary forms of movement.

As someone who lives and breathes the principles of intuitive eating, I’ve found having a variety of ways to move my body critical so that I have different options depending on my mood and how my body feels.

I love to go for walks, practice barre, do circuit workouts, and lift weights but most of all, I love to practice yoga.

[What I'm wearing: This bra and these leggings.]

This blog post has quickly turned into a love letter to yoga, which I had not originally intended but speaks to my true love for yoga and what it's done for me and to me.

Thank you, yoga. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

If you are new to intuitive eating and living and trying to create a new relationship with movement, I think yoga is absolutely the best place to start. I’ve even recommended it to clients who are having a hard time understanding the “intuitive” part of intuitive eating, as it can help you deepen the mind body connection to understand things such as satisfaction, food cravings and hunger and fullness cues.

Thank you adidas for giving me the opportunity to share my love for yoga as part of International Yoga Day!