Of human bondage : investigating the relationship between anorexia nervosa/bulimia, spirituality and the body-self alliance

Abstract

A growing body of research recognizes spirituality as a key element in well-being, but the agency of individual spirituality remains unclear. This study explores the role of embodied knowledge in reality construction and its effect on illness by considering how spirituality as embodied existence shapes reality. Spirituality, as a form of embodied knowing, is shown to reach deeply into the fundamental relatedness of existence. The study argues for a mindbody- spirit unity, making no distinction between self and spirit, emotions and subjective experiences situated in the spirit. As the medium between body and self, spirituality gives form to the felt reality of embodied knowledge and meaning, shaping language, cognition, thought and action towards lived reality. New ways of thinking about eating disorders were stimulated by innovative discoveries through investigating the lived reality of the illness within an epistemology that included subjective experiences as part of reality. While acknowledging the influence of social discourse, the study calls for a recognition of vulnerability in the human condition giving rise to the embodiment of a wounded self or disenabling spirituality, manifested in the development of an eating disorder. It uncovers the anti-spiritual properties involved in the lived reality of people struggling with anorexia/bulimia, evident in social withdrawal and/or self-injury. Behavioural patterns of obsession and repetition underscore similarities to addiction and ritual. The study synthesised pastoral therapy and research. A postmodern approach to illness and a qualitative design with interpretive phenomenology were used. Three young women struggling with anorexia/bulimia participated in semi-structured research interviews. Their narrative accounts provided a chronology of developing, living with and healing from anorexia /bulimia. Emphasis shifted from an approach aimed at fixing the body to focusing on individual experiences of the illness; what she brought to the encounter in her own resources and potential to heal. Healing is envisaged as the ongoing development of a renewed sense of self, an inherently spiritual process orchestrated from within. Previous disassociation of body and self is replaced with reconnection between body, self and other, care of the spirit became care of the body, expressed in harmony and wholeness of being.