Spirituality is a topic that doesn’t come up very often in eating disorder recovery circles and it may not feel relevant to everyone. But for some, a sense of spirituality or even religion can be a source of support, strength and resilience.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to preach to you in this post! I’m simply discussing some of the benefits of spirituality that I’ve personally experienced during my mental health recovery, which also helped strengthen my relationship with my body, and learning to trust it, as well as getting to know my body’s signals and connecting to my inner knowing/intuition.

Intuitive Eating and Spirituality

I had a very secular upbringing, and considered myself to be atheist until I was around 27. While in the depth of exploring intuitive eating, I began to turn inwards to practices such as meditation and yoga. I made using the Headspace part of a part of my regular daily routine and read a couple of books (I’ll share these books below) on the topics of Law of Attraction, manifestation, and even intuitive Tarot reading, which while sounding very woo-woo, was actually a very useful psychology tool to use to connect to my subconscious mind/inner knowing, and eventually lead me to make huge changes in my life shortly after the death of my father, including getting divorced.

While grieving for my father, processing the trauma of losing him to violent vascular dementia, and going through the heartbreak of divorce, I struggled enormously with panic attacks, depression and generalised anxiety disorder. I was put on various medications which reduced some of the physical symptoms, enough for me to do the essentials of daily life (parenting, get myself out of bed, washed dress, and on good days - filling in forms, divorce application, paying bills, doing the food shop, and batch cooking).

I went back to CBT through IAPT (a type of short-term online therapy) which helped bring awareness to unhelpful thinking styles. I went swimming daily (swapped out for walking when the gym closed due to pandemic lockdowns) and practised yoga in the evening, all of which helped ground me and reduce the build-up of panic I could physically feel surging through my body.

Spiritual Awakening

But despite all of this, there was something... missing. I needed another ‘tool’ to add to my ‘recovery toolbox’. This is where my deep dive into spirituality began.

Formal/organised religion was not for me. I was not opposed to religion, I just didn’t connect with the concept of God. I did however read around many different religions and found parts of each that resonated with me, for example, the concept of karma, and the teachings of key religious figures such as Buddha and Jesus.

Books I came across during my ‘spiritual awakening’

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1. Light Is The New Black - by Rebecca Campbell (HayHouse, 2015)This book introduced me to the concept of ‘light working’, which gave me an added sense of purpose to my career in psychology. What most stuck in my mind from this book, for months, while going through the hardest, darkest time of my life, was Campbell’s poem titled “I Pray You Hit Rock Bottom” which she has posted on her blog too: https://rebeccacampbell.me/i-pray-that-you-hit-rock-bottom/. This book brought me so much comfort and set me on a path of really assessing what I really want from my life.

2. Rise Sister Rise - by Rebecca Campbell (HayHouse, 2016)Rebecca’s second book gave me a sense of a collective ‘call to action’ and made me feel like I was a part of something bigger than myself. This is a feeling that members of a religious community often describe, and it was something I felt I lacked as a non-religious person. At this point, I began to join spiritual groups on Facebook and follow spiritual teachers on Instagram, which gave me a ‘light’ during a very dark time where I had become isolated and cut-off from everyone I was once close to.

3. The Secret by Rhonda Byrne (Simon & Schuster UK, 2006)My neighbour (also divorced) recommended this to me, or rather she insisted that I urgently read it, given my situation at the time (depressed, anxious, in debt, applying for divorce, moved back). This was my introduction to the Law of Attraction and after falling into a YouTube rabbit hole after searching this term, I began creating vision boards, using a vision board app, and practising visualisation of what I wanted to ‘manifest’. Spirituality or not, I believe these approaches help you really crystallise what you want from life, and your mind will then find ways in the background to make it a reality.

4. Headspace Guide to Meditation & Mindfulness by Andy Puddicombe (Coronet, 2012)My therapist at the time felt that mediation and in particular, mindfulness would help me get through my panic attack and nightmares. It took A LOT of practice, and without the Headspace app and this book, I’d have probably never managed to make it a regular practice. Meditation helped me tune into my body, and its signals, which was a huge help for Intuitive Eating. It also made me aware of my thoughts, which, as my therapist had said, helped during cognitive behavioural therapy.

5. #HigherSelfie - by Lucy Sheridan and Jo Westwood (HayHouse, 2016)This book introduced me to the concept of co-dependency in relationships which resonated with me. There was also topics such as comparison and judgment, which were particularly useful to me as I wrestled emotionally with seeing my ex husband’s girlfriend with my son

6. The Universe Has Your Back by Gabrielle Bernstein (HayHouse, 2016)This is where I began to label what I had become to have ‘faith’ in. The label ‘God’ just didn’t resonated with me, but learning to trust in a universal force, and seeing things in my life turn out far better than they were likely to, began to instil a feeling of faith in me.

7. Dodging Energy Vampires by Christiane Northrup, M.D. (HayHouse, 2019)The first time I heard of the term ‘empath’ was in reading this book. I remember reading it a few years ago, while I was still married. I was feeling very drained, ignored, neglected, and overwhelmed with the needs, moods, an tempers of two of the people around me at the time. The concepts in the book resonated deeply and lead me on a journey to finding out more about highly sensitive people and empaths.

8. Empath Survival Guide by Judith Orloff, M.D. (Sounds True, 2018)This book outlined practical and spiritually-minded techniques for protecting myself from the emotional drain of the people I had to emotionally distance myself. This then gave me the space I needed while I evaluated my life, trauma, feelings towards them and set boundaries going forward.

9. Soul Searchers Handbook by Emma Mildon (Atria Books/Beyond Words, 2015)By this stage, I was keen to learn a lot more about spiritual concepts, as I sense I had only begun to scratch the surface with concepts and approaches such as manifesting, visualisation, meditation, yoga, mantras, affirmations, Law of Attraction, and manifesting. This book gives a brief introduction and a helpful ‘woo-woo’ rating on a wide variety of spiritual practices which is perfect for beginners who are exploring which bit resonate with them (and gives you permission to leave out anything that doesn’t).

10. Inner Alchemy: The Path of Mastery, Updated and Revised Edition by Zulma Reyo (LightEn, 2021) www.zrsoc.com)I was asked to review an advance copy of this book and accepted it as I am intrigued by the concept of ‘inner mastery’. This book felt very advanced to me, and I quickly realised I have a lot more to explore and learn about. It reads like a huge illustrated textbook on spirituality and spiritual concepts, and feels quite advanced to me. The book introduced me to ‘energetic work’, including chakras, the seven rays as well as concepts such as our seven different bodies, astral realms, dimensions, karma, consciousness and ego death. These are new concepts to me, and I have very little understanding of them at this point. I feel like I have to be in the right mood or sense of ‘openness in order to further explore a concept in the book. Reyo mentions that her book is designed to be read in parts, revisited and re-read when it feels right, and that’s exactly what I’ll be doing with this book over the next few months.