#EDAW2018 Namaste and me

Firstly, picture the scene if you can, me, late 2012, very anorexic, very anxious, my brain going to thousand miles an hour and generally a bit scatty, not really caring, and sitting in the therapy clinic with a very chilled out therapist who says ‘right Sarah, we’ve tried CBT, let’s give active mindfulness a go...” that was one of the first sessions I had with Dr B. I remember thinking at the time ‘what the hell are you going to make me do, weirdo....’ People had spoken about mindfulness but I’m much more of an ‘action person’. I just don’t do meditation.

I suppose I got my back up about mindfulness from the off. I tried to do it, tried to meditate. I tried to embrace it and to do the whole ‘let it happen and let it go’ listen to his voice and remain present, but it just wasn’t working for me. 

So yoga then? Is it about my mind or body? Well, both. For some context, I’ve tried yoga over the years, a few sessions here and there, but generally at a leisure centre and focused around fitness weight loss and middle-aged women in lycra. None of which were helpful to me and my mental health. I’d always wanted to rock up and be the bendiest; thinnest and best. But wasn’t, obviously. 

Now, after years putting it off because my own issues with body and making excuses, last year I walked in to Sky Blue Yoga studio at the Northfield Centre in Stafford. I took a big gulp and thought ‘I can do this, I know how to breathe, I know how to stretch...’ I told myself I’m just going to have to see how it goes. And the rest is already history.

I'm now practicing almost daily, mixing a hot vinyasa flow class, with Yin - is a slower practice where you hold your asana for longer, and Yoga Nidra - which is also called 'yogic sleep'. I’m pretty sure if Dr B saw me doing yoga Nidra on a Sunday, he drop down dead in front of me out of shock of seeing me setting aside an hour for meditation.

Nidra is purely the practice of focused breathing, body scanning, switching the sides of the brain used and listening. I love it. I also practice dhama yoga wheel, which really stretches me and is all about balance and coordination and core. Nell, my teacher who’s own learning of yoga theory inspires me to read more and guided savasana is more helpful than any meditation I had in hospital, (as is Kelly's - seriously, these ladies need snapping up by the NHS!)

But all in all I’m loving it. I’m not just turning up and working out. I am taking this with me outside the studio. Learning more about yoga, being a yogi and the theory behind it. It’s the closest I’ll ever get to following a religion! 

Take Sankelpa - the setting of an intention or dedication for yoga practice - it is much like the ‘rewiring’ challenges in the active mindfulness therapy I had. It’s like a metaphor to translate yoga off your mat and into real life. This to me is what makes yoga a lifestyle, rather than something I’m doing just for exercise. My intentions have ranged from ‘Believe am enough’, to ‘focus on breath not body’ and so on.

For some reason yoga and it’s theory clicks with me more than reading books about meditation or trying to practice pure mindfulness. I’m doing it with out thinking. Those days when I have yoga after work it’s like a reset button, it’s teaching me to be more present. I’m slowly learning through yoga to act without ego. With that I mean not to be doing what I think I should be doing, but just what my body is craving. Regular practice is teaching me that taking a moment breathing and just focusing on purely that can put everything else aside and seem less pressing.

I believe finding Nidra or gentle yoga class earlier in recovery would have helped me massively. It’s got the potential to be a really positive things for someone fighting anorexia, after all it is about connecting with your body. Creating new prana. You need to know where your body is, what it can do, when it feels sore and when you need to back off. The more I read, the more I am understanding about yogi lifestyle, the more I accept, and let go. 

According to yoga tradition, there’s a part of us we can’t see. It’s where our energy flows, There are seven key parts, the chakras. Ancient yogis taught that when energy becomes blocked in a chakra, it triggers physical, mental, or emotional imbalances that lead to things like anxiety. 

Never before did I think that focusing on certain part of my body, be at the root or the solar plexus, recalling chakras, could make a difference to my wellbeing. But trust me, it does. I’ve felt really connections to asanas, the poses, which are believed to balance places linked to body or anxiety, I’ve almost cried when practicing pranayama with mantras about self esteem or grounding. I always walk out, standing a little taller. A little more balanced. The release in tadasana, just standing strong in mountain pose, alive Is simple but powerful. It’s just standing up. But it’s not!

Not only that I have met some inspiring people at the studio too. Those who share the same ethos as me, they are not people with multiple disorders, those in and out of therapy or people that simply do yoga for the way it looks to others. They believe in the practice and that’s inspiring. Some of the people at the studio live yogi lifestyles. 

It’s often said when one door closes another opens, and it seems to me that as therapy closed, both at the eating disorders unit and private counselling stopped benefiting me, the door to the Yoga studio opened.

Having done CBT and mindfulness, and all the bits in between, during recovery and before, I can honestly say yoga is more than enough in terms of therapeutic time than I need. Plus a glass of gin and a massage now and again, it’s changing my life, one savasana at a time!

I've also been speaking to Kelly, one of my fabulous teachers at the studio, about how we could work together to help more people with EDs try yoga. I think that people with anorexia especially, could really benefit from practicing Nidra. I’m hoping that one of the positive changes I can make this eating disorders awareness week is to set the ball rolling in implementing this onto the ward at my old hospital. I know If I had been told I was practising yoga in hospital it make me feel better, and maybe, just maybe I’d have been a little more accepting of those mindfulness sessions with Dr B if yoga had taught me to just breathe...? 

Namaste 

Don't forget that if you are suffering from an eating disorder - YOU NEED TO SEEK HELP and speak up about it. Don't wait, there are services out there for you: Check out https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/support-services

Whispering about eating disorders in Westminster

When I have my mind set on doing something, it often becomes hard to stop me striving to change the thing  I feel passionately about. That comes in handy sometimes.

And there's not much that comes close to matching how determined I am to raise awareness of eating disorders and push for quicker access to specialist services for people trapped by them.

That's why at the start of last year I wrote to my local MP Jeremy Lefroy, during Eating Disorders Awareness Week, urging him to listen and to take action to change things here in Staffordshire and right across the UK.

We're lucky in Stafford to have an excellent eating disorders service, but even our neighbouring NHS trusts are still short of the specialists and when they do have them, the challenge is getting access. Quickly. Even The Royal College of Psychiatrists say the level of specialist care out there is not good enough. 

If nothing else, I hope other services can learn from the multi-disciplinary approach I know I'm lucky enough to get. I know cash is short, but when eating disorders alone rack up healthcare costs of £80-100 million every year and affect at least 1.6 million people, it's got to be worth investment, right? 

If we think of the wider economy, eating disorders cost an estimated £1.26 billion in England alone. Shocking, yet preventable. 

Jeremy Lefroy (second left) with the EDU team at SS&SFT and me.

Since writing, I've met with Mr Lefroy at his Stafford office, he's visited my EDU, met with staff and learnt more about how things work here - I'm trying to arm him with enough of the facts to take the issues to the top. The very top.

And that's what he and I did, we arranged to meet with the inspiring Brooks Newmark, MP for Braintree, who's also an eating disorder survivor himself. 

So, in November I caught a train to London, hoped off at Westminster, jumped feet first into the heart of Parliament and met Jeremy and Brooks at Porticullis House, avec an large americano, of course. 

We discussed the findings of Beat's shocking Waiting Times research, which highlighted more than a quarter (26%), that's one in four sufferers, have to wait longer than six months before they're referred to a specialist OP service, in which time many people's desire to recover reduced. 

I shared my experience and was able to hear first-hand about Brooks' own battles and why he is also keen to keep eating disorders on the agenda, and of course we spoke about ideas for change.

Brooks Newmark MP

Of which I have lots, firstly education, education and more education to break down the stigma in schools and arm teachers, friends, parents and doctors with the facts to provide early intervention. Who could argue that this would be a way to PREVENT eating disorders from taking control at all? 

But when they do start to ruin lives? Well, that's when the Government needs to ensure the right services are in the right place and at the right time. It would cost the NHS a lot less to treat the early signs of eating disorders, than it does right now to rescue people from crisis.  

This is what I want to keep at the forefront of politicians' conciousness, until we can see changes to the way eating disorders are viewed and until more people are getting help, sooner. I can't do this alone, and knowing who they know, and with me pushing from behind, I'm sure both MPs can ensure our voices are heard in the right ears. 

There is much more to do and so much more to say, but as I think both Jeremy and Brooks have already realised, I'm not going anywhere any time soon.

I will go to Parliament, speak openly, tweet and meet as many people, as many times as it takes until I feel change is happening. 

Just you watch me. 

It's not all the Mail's fault

Search for 'anorexia' on the Daily Mail's website and you get sixty pages full of emaciated images and lowest weight headlines pop up on your screen, followed by all the gruesome details of the minuscule calorie intakes of 'death bed' anorexics.

Frustrating, yes. Dangerous, most definitely, but are they the only culprits in the sensationalist media circus that is the reporting of eating disorders. No.

The Mail Online is littered with bad coverage of anoreixia

As a media volunteer for Beat, the UK's Eating Disorder charity, I find myself stumbling across so many bad examples of eating disorders coverage in the press, on what seems like a daily basis. But as a journalist, I find it even more frustrating that my fellow 'media lurvies' aren't changing their extremely bad habits.

We KNOW that sensationalism sells, if it's not anorexia, it's drugs, if it's not drugs, it's booze, if it's not that, it's teenager having 30 children under 3, or some other monstrosity of a 'shock factor' headline.

But what I am starting to catch on to, and this is where I think the REAL problem lies, is that somewhere along the line a vulnerable sufferer's felt pressured to sell their story to a journalist at the paper or magazine itself or more often than not, to a news agency. There's always someone BEHIND the headline.

The last few articles I've come across and flagged up as completely throwing Beat's media guidelines out the window, haven't been written by staff AT the paper or magazine, but by reporters at these 'news' agencies, which then sell copy to a whole host of publications.

"Journalists often think these are shocking when in reality they are

potentially harmful to people affected by eating disorders." (BEAT)

This is even more dangerous.

Why? Because a single writer sits at their computer, hashes out a poor piece of journalism along with skeletal images of someone with anorexia. A commissioning editor at the said paper picks up on it, thinks it sells and pops it online, in the paper, tweets about it, adds links to Facebook and the damage is done.

We all need a few extra pounds in our pockets, right? So why NOT sell our stories of torment and struggle to a pushy writer, why not email over our lowest weights, BMI and how little we ate?

 I'll tell you why, because every person who thinks providing that information is helping raise awareness of eating disorders should. know. better. It doesn't help and never will.

The media is splashed with sensationalism. 

So, solutions? I think more needs to be done to educate people WITH an eating disorder in how to handle journalists. Yes, let's talk about anorexia, let's tell people what it's all about. But please dear God, let's stop handing out images and figures of our darkest days. We know these stories don't cause eating disorders, it's much more serious than that, but we DO how 'triggering' they can be and we CAN say NO. 

I'm fortunate to have friends who work on national newspapers and weekly magazines who are taking note. Having watched me go through my own battle with anorexia, and now my war on the coverage of eating disorders, are kicking up a fuss at work - and subtly (and less so sometimes) suggesting that Beat's guidelines are followed. Every little DOES help.

So yes, the Daily Mail are often rightly the target of my rants, but I do think suffers can do their bit too.

Let's get clued up and STOP selling sensationalist spin on anorexia, they will HAVE to wake up to the message at some point.

What Can YOU do?
If you spot a poor example of eating disorder coverage TELL Beat and flag it up or write to the paper. Journalists often have a by-line and the news agency will be credited too. Recent poor examples of anorexia copy have come from Hot Spot Media and News Team International.

A link to BEAT's Media Guidelines:- http://www.b-eat.co.uk/about-beat/media-centre/media-guidelines/

Journalists PLEASE take time to read through the guidelines. Eating disorders CAN be covered well.

RECOVERY POEM: The Longer It Goes On

Another insight in to the mind of a recovering anorexic...

This is a poem I wrote three months into treatment, but looking back, I wasn't quite ready to recover. It was the first stage in my recovery where I was needing to JUMP and turn weight loss in to weight gain. 

It sums up the constant debate and confusion that someone choosing to fight anorexia nervosa feels and has to fight on an hourly basis, especially in the contemplation stage. 

It was one of my lowest points and hardest periods in the last 3 years, both mentally and physically and the anorexic voice still consumed me...But I did JUMP from here and it WAS worth it.  I hope some of you are able to relate and JUMP for yourselves too.

Recovery is ..being pulled in every direction mentally...

The Longer It Goes On. 

The longer it goes on,

The harder it gets,

The longer I stall,

The less I forget.

The fuller I feel,

And the less I weigh,

The harder it gets,

To keep her away.

The more I hold on,

And the longer I stall,

The harder it gets,

And harder I’ll fall.

I don’t want to listen,

And I don’t want to care,

But whenever I try,

I still feel her there.

There when I think,

There when I talk,

There on the scales

And there when I walk.

She’s there when I try,

And there when I don’t

There when I eat

And there when I won’t.

I take steps away,

I run, jump and hide,

I block out her voice

But she’s hiding inside.

Waiting to grab me,

Waiting for control,

Stood there judging me,

Waiting for my soul.

I’m speaking my truth

And exposing her rules,

I’m trying to fight

And using the tools.

The tools I have,

And the strength I can find

To get back my body

And retrieve my mind.

 (c) Sarah Louise Robertson Nov 2011