Hunger, Hope & Healing ─ A Yoga Approach to Reclaiming Your Relationship to Your Body and Food

"A yoga approach to dealing with disorded eating patterns--like overeating, food addiction, and stress eating--and the resulting emotional distress they can cause. Yoga philosophy and practice is increasingly being used in therapeuticsettings with great efficacy to help treat eating disorders. In this book, Sarahjoy Marsh, a yoga teacher, counselor, and meditation teacher, offers a program using the tools and philosophy of yoga for addressing addiction--specifically, food addiction, disordered eating patterns, body image issues, and emotional eating. She educates the reader about both the nature of addiction and the philosophy of yoga and offers a methodical approach to recovery that is neither dogmatic nor rigid; rather, it is empathic, hopeful, and deliberate. Full of clear, empathic advice and photographs of the step-by-step practices, this book will help alleviate the isolation that people with eating disorders feel; offer strategies for changing the behaviors; and give clear guidelines about the processes of recovery and the development of new life skills, which are taught in the book"--

SARAHJOY MARSH is a certified yoga teacher with nineteen years of teaching experience. She has an MA in counseling and has been a student of yoga and vipassana meditation (mindfulness and insight meditation) since 1989. Marsh has been teaching since 1994 and has specialized in addiction and eating disorders since 2001. She founded Amrita, a sanctuary for yoga based in Portland, Oregon, and known for its integrated approach to yoga, mindfulness, and recovery. She regularly teaches retreats, national workshops, and international service and yoga adventures. She is also the founder of Living Yoga, a nonprofit yoga outreach organization that brings yoga to prisons, alcohol and drug rehabilitation centers, and transitional facilities. In 2012, Marsh founded the DAYA Foundation, a nonprofit yoga therapy center serving Northwest communities, to teach yoga and mindfulness tools to those with addiction, anxiety, or depression; to those with medical issues; and to those who otherwise would not be able to attend a regular yoga class because of social, financial, or physical constraints.