Chelsea Roff is an internationally-recognized author, speaker, and the Founder and Director of Eat Breathe Thrive™. For the past five years, she has been pioneering integrative mental health programs to prevent and help individuals fully recover from food and body image issues. She writes regularly for GOOD Magazine, Yoga Journal, and The Huffington Post and is currently working in partnership with researchers to conduct an evidence-based study on yoga as a complementary treatment for eating disorders.
Chelsea is known for her intelligent, inspiring, and tell-it-like-it-is speaking style, and for weaving together profound personal experiences with her scientific background to deliver deeply moving insights. After nearly losing her life to anorexia and a subsequent stroke when she was 15, she has became a national advocate for yoga and community-based mental health interventions. Prior to her work in mental health advocacy, Chelsea worked as a researcher in a Psychoneuroimmunology laboratory. While in university, she completed two Honors Theses: one on how stress affects mental, emotional, and social health, and the second on how mind-body practices like yoga can improve the outcome of chronic immune diseases like HIV/AIDS and cancer.
Chelsea was recently featured in a “viral” YouTube video that received over 20 million views, which showed her winning a car, money, and a trip to Hawaii. This video helped bring light to Eat Breathe Thrive™, and her work has now been showcased by Good Morning America, The Today Show, and Sanjay Gupta on CNN. She has been keynote speaker at 92nd Street Y, California State University, and The Omega Institute, and she is a featured presenter at various universities and conferences worldwide. Chelsea is available for talks, trainings and seminars.
Talk Topics
From 58 Pounds to Thriving: Three Keys to Resilience
This talk weaves together an incredible personal story of overcoming adversity (anorexia, alcoholism, foster care) with practical tools for cultivating resilience, no matter how bad circumstances get.
#OccupyYouAreBeautiful: Loving Your Body From Within
TALK TOPICS
From 58 Pounds to Thriving: Three Keys to Resilience
This talk weaves together an incredible personal story of overcoming adversity (anorexia, alcoholism, foster care) with practical tools for cultivating resilience, no matter how bad circumstances get.
#OccupyYouAreBeautiful: Loving Your Body From Within
This talk begins with an incredible personal story of overcoming an eating disorder and explores four key pillars for developing a compassionate relationship with one’s body. Themes include embodiment, community, and service.
I Had No Idea: The Hidden Epidemic of Eating Disorders
The prevalence of food and body image issues on college campuses is alarming: 25% of all college students have eating disorders and 91% have used dangerous weight control behaviors (purging, overexercising, dieting, etc) to lose weight. This talk explores the story of a young college student who lost her life to an eating disorder, as well as four ways that students, faculty, and college processionals can support those who many be suffering in secret.
TRAININGS
Eat Breathe Thrive Facilitator Training for College Professionals This intensive training teaches college professionals how to run a program that incorporates yoga, service, and community to help students cultivate a healthier relationship to food, body, and self. The Eat Breathe Thrive™ College Program is a six-week series, which integrates yoga, group-processing and service opportunities to support students in building a healthy relationship with food and improving body image. Led by Eat Breathe Thrive™ Certified Facilitators, the program is designed to seed small, community-based networks of support (“Thrive Tribes”) on college campuses to help students to help one another overcome food and body image challenges.
SEMINARS
Eat Breathe Thrive: Coming Home to the Body In this seminar, students learn how to use yoga-based practices for overcoming disordered eating and distorted body image on all ends of the spectrum. Students learn practical techniques for tracking hunger and fullness signals, practices for coping with difficult emotions, and overall how to create a sense of “home”in your their skin. Seminar includes group discussion, interactive exercises, movement and meditation.
VIDEOS