After an eating disorder nearly ended her life, Chelsea Roff started
Eat Breathe Thrive to ensure all people have support to recover from eating disorders.
A Non-Profit Born From Lived Experience
Eat Breathe Thrive began as a deeply personal mission to shift the way we understand and care for people with eating disorders. It was an illness that our founder, Chelsea Roff, knew all too well. At fifteen, her life took a dramatic turn when she suffered a stroke due to severe anorexia. After years of repeated relapses and failed treatment attempts, she had nearly lost all hope for recovery.
After nearly eighteen months in the hospital, a therapist recommended she try yoga. Chelsea was ambivalent at first. But she began attending regular weekly classes, and slowly her relationship with her body and mind began to change. Yoga helped her integrate insights from psychological therapy, notice hunger and fullness cues, and appreciate her body for the life it allowed her to live rather than what it looked like.
Years later, Chelsea was invited to deliver a presentation for patients at the treatment center where she had once been hospitalized for anorexia. Soon after, she developed a yoga-based intervention to supplement conventional treatment programs. This later became the heart of Eat Breathe Thrive: an integrative program that combines yoga, psychoeducation, and peer support to help people recover from eating disorders.
Watch how Chelsea’s ambitious crowdfunding campaign helped kickstart Eat Breathe Thrive.
How A Rooftop Campaign Launched Eat Breathe Thrive
In 2013, Chelsea quit her job and launched a crowdfunding campaign. The goal? To raise $50,000 to start a nonprofit organization, under the umbrella of the Give Back Yoga Foundation
44 days into the 50-day campaign, the campaign was at $19k—a lot of money, but not enough to start an organization. Chelsea knew it was time to do something drastic, or the campaign would fail.
So, she climbed onto a roof on Main Street in Santa Monica, set down a yoga mat, and vowed to remain on that mat until the rest of the funds were raised! For five days, Chelsea held the widely-publicized rooftop yoga strike, #OccupyYouAreBeautiful... until the campaign finally reached $50,000—and so, this organization was born.
From Personal Healing To Global Impact
A decade since its inception, Eat Breathe Thrive has helped over ten thousand people across forty-two countries on their path to recovery. Under Chelsea's direction, Eat Breathe Thrive programs have achieved recognition and validity, backed by four separate scientific studies, including two randomized controlled trials.