Guest contributor Haley Schiek shares how yoga philosophy and the physical practice influenced her journey towards recovery and health. Haley not only talks about the positive ways yoga has helped her but is also honest about the negative aspects, too, and the challenges it caused in her recovery. Haley's story will leave you feeling less alone and inspire hope for recovery and health.

I recently came across a story from the early days of my recovery after a relapse that occurred later in my life, when my children were little. Revisiting this emotional scene reinforced a message I often share with my yoga therapy clients: recovery is relearning how to participate in life, and this includes sharing meals with the people who matter to us. I invite you to read how my children taught me to participate in life and have fun with food again.

Guest contributor Sarah Webb shares how living with scoliosis affected her body image, causing her to feel trapped in a broken body. Sarah describes the pain she endured as well as the hope that she felt after attending her first yoga class. For Sarah, yoga was the beginning of true healing, offering a path to feeling empowered and whole in her body.

I can remember feeling trapped in a tug-of-war between the eating disorder and recovery. While it may have "looked" like I was "doing" recovery, I was not all in---until one day my dietitian called me out on it and it was time for me to learn how to truly face my fears. If you feel trapped in this tug-of-war, I invite you to read this post and know you aren't alone, and that recovery is possible.

For so many of us in recovery, being “healthy” creates quite a conundrum. Although we commit to health and desire the benefits that come from being healthy, it can be painfully difficult to hear the words: “You look healthy.” Here I open up about the trouble I had with this word, and how I eventually learned to expand my definition of healthy from one rooted in eating disorder thinking to one that aligns with recovery values.

How would giving yourself permission to see yourself as part of the whole rather than a collection of imperfect parts change your relationship with your body? Somewhere along my body image journey, this was a question I began asking myself daily. Surprisingly, with time and support, I felt a shift, a sense of wholeness versus a fragmented mess of imperfect body parts. If you struggle with body image, this blog offers some guidance on how to practice “seeing” yourself as a whole being.

How might cultivating everyday wonder be helpful with alleviating body image distress? This is the question guest contributor Minh-Hai Alex, MS, RDN, RYT, explores in her latest blog post. Drawing on personal insights, research, and expertise from body image experts, Minh-Hai invites us to pay attention to how small doses of wonder —whether grand or small—in our everyday life impacts our relationship to our bodies.

Guest contributor Steph Hillier (she/her) writes with honesty and humor about the fears, challenges, and hopes of going through eating disorder recovery. Read Steph’s story to learn how living with anorexia ultimately exhausted her of beating herself up for being an imperfect human, leading her to commit to walking the path of recovery wearing “kick-ass love glasses and self-compassion capes.”

Guest contributor Minh-Hai Alex, MS, RDN, RYT, helps understand why food guilt, which feels so personal, is an internalized response to eating because we are “a society that’s so inundated with dieting propaganda, often times imperceptibly, that it affects how we relate to ourselves and each other.”