In her final blog of our 12-month series, Niya Bajaj explores how the experiences of systemic exclusion and the power imbalance in healthcare systems impact how people seek help for eating disorders, and how yoga therapy can support inclusive recovery. 

In this month’s blog series, Niya Bajaj explores how the experiences of stigma and silence around mental health concerns, including eating disorders, impact how people seek help and how yoga therapy can support inclusive recovery.

In this month’s blog series, Niya Bajaj explores how yoga therapy can support a more inclusive eating disorder recovery for people wishing to incorporate their cultural foods and ancestral food practices, which they may perceive as unhealthy or undesirable due to diet culture messaging.

In this month’s blog series on yoga therapy and inclusive eating disorder recovery, Niya Bajaj investigates the impact of systemic exclusion on eating disorder recovery. She educates about how we can apply the niyama of tapas (TAH-pahs) to make systems more inclusive. Niya offers practical suggestions for how researchers, care providers, and individuals seeking care can practice tapas to build systems that are more inclusive.

In her latest blog post, Niya Bajaj highlights how the experience of intersectionality--or multiple social identities--impacts eating disorders and recovery outcomes. She explores how the yoga concept of svādhyāya (self-study) guides us to deepen our awareness of what influences our identity and body image. Niya also explains how researchers and care providers can apply svādhyāya to help address eating disorders in a truly inclusive way by including systemically excluded populations in the eating disorder community.

In our latest blog series on yoga therapy and inclusive eating disorder recovery, Niya Bajaj investigates how gender identity impacts eating disorder recovery, and explains why yoga therapy —specifically the practice of pratyahara—can help support a more inclusive eating disorder recovery for transgender, non-binary and agender individuals.

The culture we are raised in provides the lens that determines what is beautiful and influences our body image. Guest contributor Niya Bajaj explores how the philosophical principles of yoga, or the niyamas, are guides for both addressing biases and definitions of beauty and healing body dissatisfaction. She offers practical suggestions for how to apply the niyamas to address eating disorders in a truly inclusive way, beyond the limitations of personal and cultural biases.

In February 2020, guest contributor Cameron Pettinato came out to his friends and family as gay. As Cameron shares, what followed was an “uncomfortable transitionary period” fueled by social media images of '“ideal” and unrealistic body standards for gay men. Read on to learn how moving to another city and finding an inclusive community was the catalyst for Cameron learning to accept his body.

Sharing about my experience at #NEDAcon Philadelphia and how I plan to live and spread the call to action for inclusion of all body sizes, races, abilities, genders, socioeconomic statuses, sexual orientations, ages, and other behavioral and mental health conditions in the eating disorder recovery community.