Into the Flesh:
Touch therapies help victims of eating disorders
reconnect with their bodies

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by Tyler Wilcox

©2005 Boulder Weekly. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

In the United States, eating disorders have reached epidemic levels.  Anorexia nervosa and bulimia affect nearly 10 million women and one million men, primarily teens and young adults—and that's going by conservative estimates.  Boulder is no exception.  According to Alisa Shanks, Ph.D., who handles eating disorder treatment and assessment for CU-Boulder's Psychological Health and Psychiatry Division, the university's rate of eating disorders is well above the national average—a statistic that likely applies to the rest of the city's population as well.

What's most troubling about the eating disorder problem is that there's no guaranteed cure; what works for one person may not work for another.

"As a clinician and just as a person, I don't think there's one way of treating an eating disorder," says Malia Sperry, the program director at the Boulder-based La Luna Center, a facility devoted to eating disorders and related conditions.  "It all depends on the individual."

As a result, there are several therapeutic tools (in addition to traditional psychotherapy) that are now being used to help people with eating disorders.  These tools share a focus on the positive aspects of the body; they are about what feels good, not what feels bad.  For a person who has a negative perception of or a bad relationship with his or her body, time spent experiencing the body in positive ways can be a powerful part of the healing process.

"We're just trying to find positive ways of being connected with the body," Sperry says. "We want a lot of options available."

Here's a closer look at a few of these options:

Massage therapy

"The power of healthy touch cannot be underestimated," says Elizabeth Menzel, a Boulder-based professional healer and massage therapist.  "It's so simple, but it can have such a profoundly healing effect."

She should know.  Over the past 13 years, Menzel has used massage therapy to help not only people with eating disorders, but also abused children and drug-addicted babies.  The results of massage therapy techniques on all these in-need individuals have been extremely beneficial.

"Just being touched with love in a non-threatening, non-judgmental and non-sexual way can set someone on the path to better self-care," Menzel says.

Clinical studies back up her claim.  In a 1987 study carried out by the American Psychiatric Association, 24 female adolescent bulimic inpatients were randomly assigned to a massage therapy or a standard treatment group.  The results were good right off the bat: The patients who received massage showed immediate reductions in anxiety and depression.  By the last day of the therapy, they had lower depression scores, lower cortisol (stress) levels, higher dopamine levels, and showed improvement on several other psychological and behavioral measures.  These findings suggested that massage therapy is effective as an adjunct treatment for bulimia.  A similar study—this time with anorexic women—conducted by researchers at the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami School of Medicine also saw generally beneficial results.

At La Luna Center in Boulder, massage therapy isn't offered as part of the center's treatment program.  It is, however, something the center suggests to certain patients.

"Overcoming an eating disorder is a process of connecting with [one's] body and accepting the body," Sperry says.  "Some women can have so much shame and negative thoughts about their body that touch can be an extremely important thing.  Generally the idea behind massage is kindness to the body, nurturing and attending to the body's needs.  That fits nicely with what we're trying to do with our treatment."

Menzel says that she offers her bulimic clients an environment where the focus is off their weight and on the more functional aspects of the body.

"When I'm working on a client, the last thing I'm thinking about is their weight," she says. "I'm thinking anatomically—not about how they look but more about the structure of the body."

The very act of simply scheduling an appointment to get a massage is a good sign, according to Menzel.

"People who show up for a massage are ready for a change in their emotional well-being," she says.

Energy healing

Energy healing is a broad term for any type of healing that restores and balances the flow of energy in the body, like Reiki or acupuncture.  According to advocates of energy work, the human body is made up of a complex system of invisible energy pathways, in addition to physical and biochemical systems.  The energy itself is what's referred to in English as the "universal life force energy." The Chinese call it qi or chi; the Japanese refer to it as ki; in India, it is prana.

Isabelle Tierney, a Boulder-based tri-lingual psychotherapist and certified play therapist with a degree in energy healing from the Barbara Brennan School of Healing, says energy healing can be used as a means to uncover the cause of an eating disorder.

"In energy healing, either through me or through the patient, a memory will pop up that will allow us to more fully understand the root of the eating disorder," she says.  "Putting my hands on someone may awaken certain thoughts or beliefs that lead us to that place.  And it never is something that overwhelms the person.  It always is at a level that the person is ready for.  So it is much more fluid than talk therapy—which I also practice and is also very helpful.  But this is a way to express something that isn't verbal."

The technique Tierney uses is an "enlightening system of healing that combines hands-on healing techniques with spiritual and psychological processes touching every aspect of [a person's] life."

Like massage therapy, the physical aspect of energy healing is an added benefit for those suffering from eating disorders.

"With energy healing you're sitting with someone in their full presence and giving them your full attention," Tierney says.  "The end result is the person being completely grounded, completely relaxed.  That's helpful, because people with eating disorders live in a world of stress, anxiety, shame and negative behavior.  That's the opposite of being relaxed."

As someone who struggled with an eating disorder for several years, Tierney has firsthand experience with the subject.

"With eating disorders, there's a complete split from the mind and body," she says.  "Energy healing is a way to bring yourself back into the body.  Once you're back in your body, connected with it, it's harder to act out this stuff—the binging, the purging, all of it—on the body."

Yoga

As part of its intensive outpatient program, La Luna Center incorporates yoga and meditation techniques into its group sessions.  The goal behind this isn't necessarily the physical benefits that yoga can offer, but rather the mental process that patients experience during the workouts.

"We offer yoga as a way for patients to connect with the body," Sperry says.  "The yoga isn't intensive work—it's relaxing postures and some flexibility work.  What I think is most important in the yoga workouts is what's going through the patient's mind—whether they're having negative body judgments about themselves or comparing themselves to others or whether they're able to get into that calm, meditative state.  We see it as a therapeutic tool.  Afterward, we can discuss what everyone was feeling during the workout—it's a way of figuring out what the root problem is, where a person might fall off track. "

Of course, there are physical benefits, as well.  A regular yoga workout can help rebuild the strength, energy and bone density that is often damaged and sometimes lost as a result of anorexia.

In the end, the goal is to reconnect eating disorder victims with the part of themselves that has come to seem like an enemy—their physical body—and enable them to break the cycle of self-abuse so they can begin to heal.

Eating disorder resources

www.bodybeloved.com— Isabelle Tierney's website

www.thehabitexperts.com — Elizabeth Menzel and Isabelle Tierney's company offering products and services that help transform painful habits, such as eating problems, drug and alcohol dependency, gambling, procrastination and unhealthy relationships.

www.lalunacenter.com —La Luna Center's website

Alisa Shanks — CU-Boulder Eating Disorder Treatment and Assessment, 303-492-2038

www.anad.org — National Association of Anorexia and Associated Disorders

www.edap.org — National Eating Disorders Association

www.edpco.org — Eating Disorders Professionals of Colorado

Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com

©2005 Boulder Weekly. All rights reserved. Used with permission.