The Yoga of Eating
Healing Your Relationship with Food

led by Debra Benfield, M.Ed., R.D., 
LDN, Clinical Nutrition Therapist 
& Sydney Hughes-McGee, LMBT 1243, 
RYT 500, Registered Yoga Teacher

October - December 2008

This group will meet twice monthly for three months, including one Saturday workshop and one Tuesday night dinner monthly. 
Saturday Workshops 
9 am to 4 pm 
at The Yoga Gallery on Trade St., 
October 18, November 8, December 6, 2008 
Tuesday Night Dinners 
6 to 8 pm at 823 Reynolda/ Blessings 
October 21, November 18, December 16, 2008 

In a culture focused on the pursuit of thinness, many women become dissatisfied with their bodies and disconnected from the wisdom they contain. This training/journey is designed to increase your control of eating behaviors without dieting, and will support you in developing a powerful and trusting relationship with food. Rather than the rule-based approach of dieting, this approach develops your ability to eat with greater sensitivity and awareness. When you eat in this way you will find that your digestion will improve, you will feel better, and your weight will regulate itself.

Emphasis will be placed on learning to quiet the busy mind so that you can discern cues signaling hunger and satisfaction, as well as recognize the difference between biological hungers, emotional hungers and hungers of the soul. Practices from the yoga tradition, as well as creative writing and movement, will bring you into a deeper alignment with your body, provide you with new tools for self-nurturance, and help you to transform habits that don't support your deepest happiness.

This training is led by Debra Benfield, M.Ed., R.D., LDN, Clinical Nutrition Therapist and Sydney Hughes-McGee, LMBT 1243, RYT 500, Registered Yoga Teacher. Debra is a clinical nutritionist with more than twenty years of clinical experience specializing in preventing and treating eating and body weight problems. Her approach to nutrition therapy is unique in that she blends both up-to-date nutritional knowledge and mindfulness-based eating practices. Sydney has practiced as a Yoga Teacher and Massage Therapist in Winston-Salem for 18 years. She is a student of Gary and Mirka Kraftsow of the American Viniyoga Institute, has recently completed AVI's Advanced Yoga Teacher Training Program and is currently working toward certification as a Yoga Therapist. She has a long term interest in the body as the center of spiritual practice. 

Registration for the full program is required. The cost of the complete training is $525 and can be paid in installments of $175/ month. 

You can bring your own food or purchase food provided by the talented Mary Haglund of Mary's of Course for $15/dinner and $12/lunch.

Contact:  Sydney Hughes-McGee at 336.777.1797 or wsyogatherapy ( at ) clearwire dot net Debra Benfield at 336.773.1443 or dlbenfield ( at ) bellsouth dot net.

The goal of this work is to remove barriers between you and a fuller, 
more satisfying experience of both 
food and life.

"Whereas willpower implies pitting mind against body, in the Yoga of Eating we develop greater sensitivity to the body, greater sensitivity and trust. We stop seeing the body and its appetites as the enemy, but instead listen to the messages encoded in cravings, appetites, and tastes. As we develop trust in these messages, we discover subtler levels of sensitivity and greater unity of mind and body. The Yoga of Eating does not sacrifice pleasure: on the contrary it uncovers unimagined dimensions of it."
- From Charles Eisenstein's The Yoga of Eating