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.

Guest contributor Maria Scrimenti believed that if she could make her body perfect, then she would score revenge on the boy that broke her heart. This mindset led her to an obsession with exercise and fitness, and later binge eating disorder and body dysmorphia. Here, Maria shares how, with the help of yoga and a commitment to living her values, she made peace with her body and resolved to respect herself.

For many of us, body acceptance feels like an unrealistic reality. How do we go from hatred to acceptance? Here I talk about the space between hate and acceptance and share a video about how yoga has helped me and my yoga therapy clients to experience degrees of what I call "body tolerance."