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Fasting by yourself can be lonely.
Some people need accountability. Some people need a partner to keep them company through their journey. Some people need sound advice, especially when fasting to heal health issues. You can find all sorts of answers on internet forums – but are they right for you? Whatever your needs, I’m here to help hold the space for your fast. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt over the years, it’s that the emotional security provided by working with a coach makes the experience of fasting much, much easier. That security even tends to decrease the severity of detox symptoms – and when they do occur, I can help you find the most appropriate ways to relieve them. IN ORDER TO SET UP A CONSULTATION / COACHING:
Email(required) What length of fast are you considering and why?(required) Medical issues, prescription medication and/or eating disorders (if any)(required) Prior fasting experience (if any):(required) Time zone where you live(required) Height / Weight / Age(required) Preferred app for video calls (WhatsApp, Telegram or Skype) and relevant contact details(required)
*Please note: I am not a medical doctor and do not offer medical supervision for any fast. I encourage those with medical issues to seek advice from a qualified M.D., in parallel with my own knowledge and experience as a fasting guide. Before the fast: I’ll contact you in order to set up a preliminary video call. Ideally, this should be at least a week before you plan to begin your fast. That way we can talk about how best to prepare for the fast, both physically and psychologically, as well as discuss any concerns you may have (also taking into consideration any relevant medical issues, if any). During the fast: Once you actually begin your fast, we’ll stay in contact via daily DMs in which you can let me know how you’re doing, and I can offer suggestions to any problems you may be having: anything from detox symptoms to sleep problems to cravings for food. The simple fact is that most people do encounter difficulties while water fasting. A recent study by the National Institutes of Health (2018) showed that over 89% of people experienced some kind of adverse event during their fast, ranging from mild to severe. Once things are going smoothly, I can also offer tips to help you go deeper into your fast, both emotionally and spiritually. In case of emergency (which is highly unlikely!), you’ll also have my personal telephone number. After the fast: For many people, the refeeding process after their fast is the trickiest period: both in terms of resisting the temptation to overeat, as well as in making sure you don’t overload your digestive system. We’ll stay in contact until both of us are confident that you’re back on course to your everyday diet. Check out my personal experience while water fasting and the activation that I received a month after the 21 day water fasting ended.
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What is water fasting?
A water fast is when a person does not eat and drinks nothing other than water. There is no set time that water fasting should last for, but medical advice generally suggests anywhere from 24 hours to 3 days as the maximum time to go without food. Throughout history, people have undertaken fasts for spiritual or religious reasons. But, water fasting is now popular in the natural health and wellness movements, often alongside meditation for the expansion of consciousness both physically and energetically. |
By taking away food, by seeing who you are without it, you expose one of the most deeply ingrained and primal masks of all.
You’ll experience how your entire relationship with food has distorted and clouded your true being.
You’ll realize that, ever since the day you were born, you’ve confused the biological need for food with pleasure, comfort, solace: all the emotions required to quell the fears and insecurities of entering this world. It’s unavoidable.
For mother’s breast gives so much more than simply food…
You’ve confused love with sating your hunger.
As hard as it may sound, seeking the quick fix of love through food has made you comfortably numb.
By losing yourself in mother’s breast, in the safety of warm flesh, you’ve also lost your true self.
When you free yourself from food, you also free yourself from illusion.
Who are you? You’ll remember, you’ll re-experience that your true self, your soul,
has no need for physical sustenance.
You’ll glimpse behind the veil and catch sight of your full consciousness.
You’ll know that you are an infinite being, connected with everything through unconditional love.
People with risk factors for certain diseases could benefit from short-term fasting.
These include:
which are its preferred source of energy, it will use fats. So, a fast can result in weight loss as the body uses up fats in the body for its energy.
Safety:
If someone has health concerns, or is planning to fast for longer than 24 hours, they should seek the advice of a medical professional and consider undertaking a fast under supervision.
Who should not fast?
Water fasting is not safe for everyone.
People who should not fast, or who should seek advice from a medical professional before fasting include older adults, those under 18, and those who:
Should You Avoid Fasting?
The Physiology of Fasting
Should You Supplement While Fasting?
Why You Need Sodium on a Fast
You’ll experience how your entire relationship with food has distorted and clouded your true being.
You’ll realize that, ever since the day you were born, you’ve confused the biological need for food with pleasure, comfort, solace: all the emotions required to quell the fears and insecurities of entering this world. It’s unavoidable.
For mother’s breast gives so much more than simply food…
You’ve confused love with sating your hunger.
As hard as it may sound, seeking the quick fix of love through food has made you comfortably numb.
By losing yourself in mother’s breast, in the safety of warm flesh, you’ve also lost your true self.
When you free yourself from food, you also free yourself from illusion.
Who are you? You’ll remember, you’ll re-experience that your true self, your soul,
has no need for physical sustenance.
You’ll glimpse behind the veil and catch sight of your full consciousness.
You’ll know that you are an infinite being, connected with everything through unconditional love.
People with risk factors for certain diseases could benefit from short-term fasting.
These include:
- heart disease
- high blood pressure
- high cholesterol
- diabetes
- being overweight
which are its preferred source of energy, it will use fats. So, a fast can result in weight loss as the body uses up fats in the body for its energy.
Safety:
If someone has health concerns, or is planning to fast for longer than 24 hours, they should seek the advice of a medical professional and consider undertaking a fast under supervision.
Who should not fast?
Water fasting is not safe for everyone.
People who should not fast, or who should seek advice from a medical professional before fasting include older adults, those under 18, and those who:
- have an eating disorder
- are underweight
- are pregnant or breast-feeding
- have heart problems
- have type 1 diabetes
- have uncontrolled migraines
- are undergoing a blood transfusion
- are taking specific medication; seek the advice of a doctor
Should You Avoid Fasting?
The Physiology of Fasting
Should You Supplement While Fasting?
Why You Need Sodium on a Fast
The Mental Aspect of Fasting and what to expect
- Facing your ego through water fasting
Water fasting is an extremely powerful tool to help overcome addictions caused by smoking, drinking and drugs in general, as well as any food addictions, such as those caused by sugar, salt, caffeine, chocolate, flavor enhancers… Unfortunately, the list is almost endless.
On a physical level, addictive substances cause changes to your biochemistry which induce your body to demand more of the given substance in order to sustain homeostasis – that is, the stability of your metabolism.On an emotional level, addictive substances manipulate the way you feel about and relate to a given type of food, drink or drug, so that you want more of it. More than just simple desire, you actually need more of the addictive substance in order to sustain your mood or ’emotional homeostasis’. Because the physical and emotional elements of addiction are so closely intertwined, it’s all too easy to find yourself in a downward spiral.For instance, that bar of chocolate (literal or figurative) elicits biochemical physical changes in the brain as dopamine and other hormones are released. This makes you feel good emotionally. As a result, you crave more – and grab for another bar, thereby repeating and intensifying the cycle in a feedback loop.
Fasting works like a ‘reset’ button to bring addiction to an end.
By not ingesting anything except pure water, you finally have a chance to start living without the influence of any outside factors. You can just be. The beauty of it is that, at the same time, water fasting also activates your cleansing and healing metabolism. This allows your body to start the process of recalibration towards a new homeostasis: one in which you have no need for that ‘bar of chocolate’.
Instead, your body will begin to guide you towards what it already know is best for you. The most amazing feeling is when cravings for chocolate and sugar disappear during a fast, spontaneously replaced by thoughts of salad or fruit.
I’ve experienced it myself, and I see it in my water fasting clients the whole time. It’s a joy to witness!
Dealing with detox and withdrawal symptoms:
First, let’s be clear about the terminology. For all practical purposes, there is no fundamental difference between detox symptoms and withdrawal symptoms. Both present as a result of cleansing toxins from the body. Both also tend to result in a similar spectrum of symptoms. The main question simply concerns the source of the toxin. Withdrawal symptoms are caused by toxins arising specifically from an addictive habit or substance, whereas detox symptoms arise through the cleansing of any type of toxin.Just as there are both physical and emotional elements to any addiction, giving up the source of your addiction is almost certainly going to result in both physical and emotional withdrawal symptoms. I won’t lie to you: it’s the price you pay for any addiction.
On an emotional level, cravings are inevitable until your body is well into the process of recalibration. Although challenging, facing your shadows doesn’t have to be a frightening or even negative experience. With the right attitude and with support, it can also be hugely illuminating: a process of discovery towards deeper self. Almost all emotional addictions arise through trying to compensate for a lack of love, respect or fulfillment elsewhere in life (often originating in early childhood). Consciously facing these emotional withdrawal symptoms during a fast helps to shine light on issues which otherwise remain anchored in the subconscious – where they are able to continue to exert unwanted influence over your life. Since addictive substances usually create toxic byproducts, the cleansing of a water fast also tends to result in physical withdrawal symptoms. This is in addition to the more general detox symptoms of a fast, caused by the cleansing of accumulated environmental and metabolic toxins. Often it is impossible to distinguish between those symptoms caused by general detox and those caused specifically by withdrawal.
However, it is certainly true that consequently the overall weight of symptoms during a water fast tends to be greater for those who also suffer from an addiction. Although these can be nasty – causing headaches, nausea, blurred vision and severe swings of mood – they are rarely dangerous in most cases.*
When things get really rough, the important thing is being able to distinguish between when to push through a detox symptom to reach a full cleanse and when to abort the fast because of safety concerns. Unfortunately, though, this is not an easy task, especially for someone fasting without a lot of prior experience. Some purists argue that you should almost always try to push through, but I would stress that such an un-nuanced approach is unnecessarily dangerous! There is a time and a place for everything…For those who don’t consider themselves addicted to caffeine, sugar and salt, it’s still a good idea to reduce the consumption of these substances before a fast. This is because, even when consumed in moderate quantities, caffeine, sugar and salt almost always lead to headaches, cravings and/or low-energy levels during detox. Why weigh down your water fast with additional and unnecessary symptoms, when these can be addressed more smoothly before the fast?
During any water fast your emotional and physical condition are closely linked, so knowing how treat detox and withdrawal symptoms not only alleviates your physical condition, but it also contributes to a much smoother experience emotionally. And certainly, different symptoms respond with differing degrees of success to different approaches.
It’s important to know that water fasting does not automatically offer a magical solution to your problem.
It all depends on how you approach your fast.
For those with eating disorders, for example, water fasting can certainly help to alleviate and, in time, even overcome the abuse of food. But it is also all too easy for such people to abuse water fasting, thereby making the addiction worse.There are several ways for this to happen, such as attempting to undertake too ambitious a fast, which can easily lead to failure. Or it may simply arise from the fact that abstaining from food through a water fast already too closely resembles the illness itself – for in a way the withholding of food in an eating disorder such as anorexia already constitutes a kind of fast, albeit misguided.
The length of fast required to clear an addiction depends on the given substance, as well as the degree of severity of the addiction. When it comes specifically to many food addictions, a single fast hardly ever catalyses permanent success – even after a 40-day fast or other extended fast. This is primarily due to the fact that specific food addictions are impossible to disentangle from the general, lifelong addiction to eating. Quite simply, it requires more than just one fast to heal from habits which have developed since literally the day you were born.Although this may sound depressing, it can also be liberating not to feel like all your eggs are in one basket. The solution, therefore, is to conduct multiple fasts over a period of time. It is human to err, and inevitably old eating habits are likely to reassert themselves at some point and to some degree after your fast. In such cases, it is more useful to think of the process as ‘two steps forward, one step backwards’ Each fast provides a new, as well as renewed perspective on what it feels to live free from under the influence of an addictive substance. Over time you’ll approach your goal, and with a little patience, self-forgiveness and (most importantly) self-love, you’ll get there.
Once you do succeed, you’ll be able to experience the addictive substance for what it is.
After a water fast, alcohol tastes like poison, tobacco is noxious, refined sugar is sickly sweet.
Of course, for anyone with a serious addiction, it’s best to avoid the given substance altogether at this point
– but a successful water fast should reduce or even eliminate the temptation to fall back in the first place. You’ll simply be able to enjoy the gifts of mother nature without the need for anything more. The gift of simple food. The gift of life itself. The joy of freedom from the physical and emotional chains of addiction. What can be better than that?_________________________________
*A few drugs, such as alcohol, benzodiazepines (eg. Xanax, Valium) and certain opiates (eg. Methadone) can cause serious complications if detoxing takes place too rapidly. ALWAYS consult your doctor before undertaking a fast to tackle a serious addiction!
As important as any physical cleansing, water fasting also challenges you with emotional and spiritual blocks, bringing you face to face with your ego and fears. In a way, your journey through water fasting mirrors the entire spiritual path: both within each fast, as well as from fast to fast over the years. One of the most important things in your spiritual development is how you relate to your ego, your shadow self (inner child). By ego, I mean that aspect of yourself which feels isolated and alone in the universe, that aspect of yourself which tends to make judgements about everyone and everything you come into contact with. (Yes, it’s the ‘me, me, me’ element of your being!)Either you like someone or you dislike them. Either you want something or you don’t want it. Buddhists call this the cycle of ‘attachment and aversion’. By incessantly weighing up the world around you, you lose the ability simply to be: honestly accepting the world for how it is without the need to try to control it to your liking. In short, your deeper self – your soul – remains buried and lost beneath the ego’s petty dramas. Water fasting will help change this. Because we all want to eat. We like it. It’s a basic survival instinct: something which has steered every human being since the day they were born. When you fast, however, you make a conscious decision not to eat. This provokes a deep psychological-emotional-spiritual reaction from within, unearthing hidden fears often extending well beyond those relating to just food and the lack of it. To be honest, it isn’t always easy coming face to face with these fears – especially during your first few fasts, and especially during the first few days of each fast (before your digestive system has finished switching off). Normally, we don’t even notice how much the ego directs our lives. We simply fall into our daily, ego-driven habits. In fact, most of us are so immersed in our habits that we hardly even notice that we are alive. When was the last time you really appreciated the gift of life? While fasting, though, your ego is everywhere – especially in its thoughts of and demands for food. Without the daily rituals of mealtimes and eating, your ego is left exposed on an existential level.The ego becomes painfully transparent while fasting, but it is just this clarity which helps you to see it for what it is: a petty dictator and nothing more. Habits and the fears which cause them can now begin to peel away. With time and experience, you’ll come to understand – not just intellectually but also physically in your body – that you won’t die by temporarily denying yourself food. You’ll appreciate that the ego’s desire for food is just that: a desire and nothing more. And along with this, you’ll realize that all of the ego’s desires are just desires.As is true for any desire, ultimately it’s your choice whether or not to act on it. In other words, instead of your ego controlling you, you begin to control your ego. You are empowered. You gain freedom. The freedom to be, without the ego steering you according to its whims.As the ego releases its grip on you, emotional traumas from the past may resurface. But here, too, you’ll experience them from a new perspective. For in letting go of your ego and its desire for food, you also gain the potential to let go of the way that the past defines your present. You’ll simply be more rooted here, now, in the freedom of the present moment.Once you’re able to be, your whole relationship with the world begins to change. Instead of fear dominating your life, love can begin to blossom. This, in turn, will naturally begin to lead to deeper states of consciousness, both within each fast and more gradually in your everyday life as well
Benefits of extended water fasts (14-40 days):
In order to reach the deepest possible level of healing and reap the greatest benefits, it is necessary to dig deeper with a longer fast.
For instance, certain serious physical illnesses – those often deemed incurable by Western medicine – require the cleansing of an extended fast in order to permanently heal. Despite what allopathic doctors may tell you, conditions as wide and varied as Type II diabetes, multiple sclerosis, chronic high blood pressure, autoimmune disorders, as well as certain types of tumors are all potentially curable.
Beyond physical healing, the deepest spiritual cleansing can similarly take place only through the sheer length of an extended fast. Although nowadays we tend to remember only the Biblical 40-day fasts of Moses and Jesus, the fact is that many spiritual traditions over the millennia have demanded 40-day water fasts. Even Pythagoras required potential students to undertake a 40-day fast before he was willing to accept them. As much as we balk at the idea of giving up food for such a long time, it’s mostly just a question of unwillingness to forgo the addictions and pleasures of life.
Don’t believe the voice of your fears and reluctant ego. You won’t starve to death. Unless you’re seriously malnourished and underweight to begin with, you carry the better part of 100,000 calories on you, locked in your fat tissue and waiting to be released through ketosis.
That’s enough to last you well over 40 days. If you’re overweight, you could potentially fast for much longer
(although in most cases this is not advisable).
Experiencing a healing crisis:
Although in one respect an extended fast simply continues the notion of a 7-10 day water fast, it is also much more powerful because it gives you the opportunity to experience deeper ‘healing crises‘.A healing crisis often occurs towards the end of the first week of water fasting, as the symptoms of old illnesses, injuries and traumas resurface, before being permanently expelled from your body. A similar process often occurs around the end of the second week of fasting – and this is the reason that if you decide to extend a 7-10 day water fast, it’s worth aiming for at least 14 days. This second healing crisis tends to call forth deeper issues than the first healing crisis, or, alternatively, finishes resolving those issues which were not fully cleared during the first healing crisis. In other words, it’s from the beginning of the second week of water fasting that your body can begin to heal from more serious health issues. Simply, up until this point, your body has been cleansing the toxins of everyday life (and especially so if you haven’t been fasting regularly).
For the deepest and most serious health issues, whether physical or spiritual, healing crises often occur much later into the fast, whether 20, 30 or even 40 days.
There’s no way to accurately predict when they will occur. You can only trust your body and let nature take its course.
Occasionally, healing crises can be extremely intense, especially when they occur late into a fast.
When this happens, it’s critically important to be able to tell the difference between a healing crisis and a sign from your body urging you to stop the fast. Not every healing is accompanied by a dramatic healing crisis.
Sometimes symptoms of illness and trauma simply begin to disappear. In cases like this – when no clear sign indicates that you’ve obviously freed yourself from a health issue – it can be difficult to know when to end the fast. This is another reason why it’s advisable to consider conducting any extended fast under some kind of supervision: from (1) a fasting coach like myself and, ideally, also from (2) a medical doctor who understands water fasting. The other main reason for working with a professional is to make sure you don’t overstep your body’s nutritional capabilities, as a prolonged fast begins to reach its physical limits.
The dangers of fasting too long:
If you continue fasting indefinitely there comes a point where the fast turns into starvation. You obviously don’t want to overstep this mark! For when your fat stores are finally depleted, the body has no choice other than to devour muscle tissue, as well as feed from your inner organs. You’ll do yourself serious damage. Fortunately, though, the body sends a clear sign: extreme hunger. Although it’s unlikely you’ll miss this red flag, two other less obvious scenarios also demand the end of a fast – and it’s here, again, that fasting under supervision can help. The first possibility is that you run out of muscle tissue before you deplete your fat stores. In order to power your body as a whole, it’s true that ketosis is extremely efficient. The problem is that the brain demands another fuel entirely: glucose. And this cannot easily be metabolized from fat tissue. Instead, the body must extract it out of muscle. The second possibility is that you deplete your electrolytes (blood salts). Although unlikely, it’s extremely dangerous! For this reason it’s advisable to have your blood tested at relatively regular intervals after the first 7-10 days of fasting.
Refeeding:
After you break an extended fast, it’s extremely important to follow a well structured meal plan. If you return too quickly to a normal diet, you risk encountering both digestive problems as well as ‘refeeding syndrome’. This is a potentially fatal complication caused by the change from ketosis back to your everyday metabolism. After an extended fast, the body cannot be rushed in this process. We can discuss this more in our coaching sessions.
After the referring process is complete:
Many spiritual traditions encourage you to ask the question: ‘Who am I?’ Perhaps most famously, Ramana Maharshi taught that this is all you need to do in order to experience your true self and enlightenment. Just keep asking yourself, honestly, from the depths of your heart, over and over again…
Who am I?
By delving into this question, you’ll inevitably end up drawing a blank.
For who you really are is hidden beneath innumerable masks: the roles and identities you’ve created and continue to create over the course of your life. (Of course, these are the masks created by your ego.)
Consequently, the only things you’ll find are things you are not.
Is the essence of who you are, for instance, a mother? A father? Is it the you who spends all day at your workplace? Or, on a deeper level, is it the you who is seeking who you are in the first place? On the one hand, yes, all these roles do express certain aspects of yourself, but on the other hand, no, they aren’t really you. As much as you may identify with and even love playing out some of these roles, none fully represents your fundamental and true being. For ultimately, you are the one consciousness underlying all these things.As you become increasingly aware of your roles and identities – many of which are obscured by habits and addictions – it becomes possible to see them for what they are: masks you wear over your deeper self. In doing so, it becomes possible to let go of the given mask and see who you are without it. When you fully surrender yourself to this process, when you finish the monumental undertaking of unmasking yourself, you’ll finally experience the consciousness who has been wearing all these masks. You’ll know who you really are.
- Facing your ego through water fasting
Water fasting is an extremely powerful tool to help overcome addictions caused by smoking, drinking and drugs in general, as well as any food addictions, such as those caused by sugar, salt, caffeine, chocolate, flavor enhancers… Unfortunately, the list is almost endless.
On a physical level, addictive substances cause changes to your biochemistry which induce your body to demand more of the given substance in order to sustain homeostasis – that is, the stability of your metabolism.On an emotional level, addictive substances manipulate the way you feel about and relate to a given type of food, drink or drug, so that you want more of it. More than just simple desire, you actually need more of the addictive substance in order to sustain your mood or ’emotional homeostasis’. Because the physical and emotional elements of addiction are so closely intertwined, it’s all too easy to find yourself in a downward spiral.For instance, that bar of chocolate (literal or figurative) elicits biochemical physical changes in the brain as dopamine and other hormones are released. This makes you feel good emotionally. As a result, you crave more – and grab for another bar, thereby repeating and intensifying the cycle in a feedback loop.
Fasting works like a ‘reset’ button to bring addiction to an end.
By not ingesting anything except pure water, you finally have a chance to start living without the influence of any outside factors. You can just be. The beauty of it is that, at the same time, water fasting also activates your cleansing and healing metabolism. This allows your body to start the process of recalibration towards a new homeostasis: one in which you have no need for that ‘bar of chocolate’.
Instead, your body will begin to guide you towards what it already know is best for you. The most amazing feeling is when cravings for chocolate and sugar disappear during a fast, spontaneously replaced by thoughts of salad or fruit.
I’ve experienced it myself, and I see it in my water fasting clients the whole time. It’s a joy to witness!
Dealing with detox and withdrawal symptoms:
First, let’s be clear about the terminology. For all practical purposes, there is no fundamental difference between detox symptoms and withdrawal symptoms. Both present as a result of cleansing toxins from the body. Both also tend to result in a similar spectrum of symptoms. The main question simply concerns the source of the toxin. Withdrawal symptoms are caused by toxins arising specifically from an addictive habit or substance, whereas detox symptoms arise through the cleansing of any type of toxin.Just as there are both physical and emotional elements to any addiction, giving up the source of your addiction is almost certainly going to result in both physical and emotional withdrawal symptoms. I won’t lie to you: it’s the price you pay for any addiction.
On an emotional level, cravings are inevitable until your body is well into the process of recalibration. Although challenging, facing your shadows doesn’t have to be a frightening or even negative experience. With the right attitude and with support, it can also be hugely illuminating: a process of discovery towards deeper self. Almost all emotional addictions arise through trying to compensate for a lack of love, respect or fulfillment elsewhere in life (often originating in early childhood). Consciously facing these emotional withdrawal symptoms during a fast helps to shine light on issues which otherwise remain anchored in the subconscious – where they are able to continue to exert unwanted influence over your life. Since addictive substances usually create toxic byproducts, the cleansing of a water fast also tends to result in physical withdrawal symptoms. This is in addition to the more general detox symptoms of a fast, caused by the cleansing of accumulated environmental and metabolic toxins. Often it is impossible to distinguish between those symptoms caused by general detox and those caused specifically by withdrawal.
However, it is certainly true that consequently the overall weight of symptoms during a water fast tends to be greater for those who also suffer from an addiction. Although these can be nasty – causing headaches, nausea, blurred vision and severe swings of mood – they are rarely dangerous in most cases.*
When things get really rough, the important thing is being able to distinguish between when to push through a detox symptom to reach a full cleanse and when to abort the fast because of safety concerns. Unfortunately, though, this is not an easy task, especially for someone fasting without a lot of prior experience. Some purists argue that you should almost always try to push through, but I would stress that such an un-nuanced approach is unnecessarily dangerous! There is a time and a place for everything…For those who don’t consider themselves addicted to caffeine, sugar and salt, it’s still a good idea to reduce the consumption of these substances before a fast. This is because, even when consumed in moderate quantities, caffeine, sugar and salt almost always lead to headaches, cravings and/or low-energy levels during detox. Why weigh down your water fast with additional and unnecessary symptoms, when these can be addressed more smoothly before the fast?
During any water fast your emotional and physical condition are closely linked, so knowing how treat detox and withdrawal symptoms not only alleviates your physical condition, but it also contributes to a much smoother experience emotionally. And certainly, different symptoms respond with differing degrees of success to different approaches.
It’s important to know that water fasting does not automatically offer a magical solution to your problem.
It all depends on how you approach your fast.
For those with eating disorders, for example, water fasting can certainly help to alleviate and, in time, even overcome the abuse of food. But it is also all too easy for such people to abuse water fasting, thereby making the addiction worse.There are several ways for this to happen, such as attempting to undertake too ambitious a fast, which can easily lead to failure. Or it may simply arise from the fact that abstaining from food through a water fast already too closely resembles the illness itself – for in a way the withholding of food in an eating disorder such as anorexia already constitutes a kind of fast, albeit misguided.
The length of fast required to clear an addiction depends on the given substance, as well as the degree of severity of the addiction. When it comes specifically to many food addictions, a single fast hardly ever catalyses permanent success – even after a 40-day fast or other extended fast. This is primarily due to the fact that specific food addictions are impossible to disentangle from the general, lifelong addiction to eating. Quite simply, it requires more than just one fast to heal from habits which have developed since literally the day you were born.Although this may sound depressing, it can also be liberating not to feel like all your eggs are in one basket. The solution, therefore, is to conduct multiple fasts over a period of time. It is human to err, and inevitably old eating habits are likely to reassert themselves at some point and to some degree after your fast. In such cases, it is more useful to think of the process as ‘two steps forward, one step backwards’ Each fast provides a new, as well as renewed perspective on what it feels to live free from under the influence of an addictive substance. Over time you’ll approach your goal, and with a little patience, self-forgiveness and (most importantly) self-love, you’ll get there.
Once you do succeed, you’ll be able to experience the addictive substance for what it is.
After a water fast, alcohol tastes like poison, tobacco is noxious, refined sugar is sickly sweet.
Of course, for anyone with a serious addiction, it’s best to avoid the given substance altogether at this point
– but a successful water fast should reduce or even eliminate the temptation to fall back in the first place. You’ll simply be able to enjoy the gifts of mother nature without the need for anything more. The gift of simple food. The gift of life itself. The joy of freedom from the physical and emotional chains of addiction. What can be better than that?_________________________________
*A few drugs, such as alcohol, benzodiazepines (eg. Xanax, Valium) and certain opiates (eg. Methadone) can cause serious complications if detoxing takes place too rapidly. ALWAYS consult your doctor before undertaking a fast to tackle a serious addiction!
As important as any physical cleansing, water fasting also challenges you with emotional and spiritual blocks, bringing you face to face with your ego and fears. In a way, your journey through water fasting mirrors the entire spiritual path: both within each fast, as well as from fast to fast over the years. One of the most important things in your spiritual development is how you relate to your ego, your shadow self (inner child). By ego, I mean that aspect of yourself which feels isolated and alone in the universe, that aspect of yourself which tends to make judgements about everyone and everything you come into contact with. (Yes, it’s the ‘me, me, me’ element of your being!)Either you like someone or you dislike them. Either you want something or you don’t want it. Buddhists call this the cycle of ‘attachment and aversion’. By incessantly weighing up the world around you, you lose the ability simply to be: honestly accepting the world for how it is without the need to try to control it to your liking. In short, your deeper self – your soul – remains buried and lost beneath the ego’s petty dramas. Water fasting will help change this. Because we all want to eat. We like it. It’s a basic survival instinct: something which has steered every human being since the day they were born. When you fast, however, you make a conscious decision not to eat. This provokes a deep psychological-emotional-spiritual reaction from within, unearthing hidden fears often extending well beyond those relating to just food and the lack of it. To be honest, it isn’t always easy coming face to face with these fears – especially during your first few fasts, and especially during the first few days of each fast (before your digestive system has finished switching off). Normally, we don’t even notice how much the ego directs our lives. We simply fall into our daily, ego-driven habits. In fact, most of us are so immersed in our habits that we hardly even notice that we are alive. When was the last time you really appreciated the gift of life? While fasting, though, your ego is everywhere – especially in its thoughts of and demands for food. Without the daily rituals of mealtimes and eating, your ego is left exposed on an existential level.The ego becomes painfully transparent while fasting, but it is just this clarity which helps you to see it for what it is: a petty dictator and nothing more. Habits and the fears which cause them can now begin to peel away. With time and experience, you’ll come to understand – not just intellectually but also physically in your body – that you won’t die by temporarily denying yourself food. You’ll appreciate that the ego’s desire for food is just that: a desire and nothing more. And along with this, you’ll realize that all of the ego’s desires are just desires.As is true for any desire, ultimately it’s your choice whether or not to act on it. In other words, instead of your ego controlling you, you begin to control your ego. You are empowered. You gain freedom. The freedom to be, without the ego steering you according to its whims.As the ego releases its grip on you, emotional traumas from the past may resurface. But here, too, you’ll experience them from a new perspective. For in letting go of your ego and its desire for food, you also gain the potential to let go of the way that the past defines your present. You’ll simply be more rooted here, now, in the freedom of the present moment.Once you’re able to be, your whole relationship with the world begins to change. Instead of fear dominating your life, love can begin to blossom. This, in turn, will naturally begin to lead to deeper states of consciousness, both within each fast and more gradually in your everyday life as well
Benefits of extended water fasts (14-40 days):
In order to reach the deepest possible level of healing and reap the greatest benefits, it is necessary to dig deeper with a longer fast.
For instance, certain serious physical illnesses – those often deemed incurable by Western medicine – require the cleansing of an extended fast in order to permanently heal. Despite what allopathic doctors may tell you, conditions as wide and varied as Type II diabetes, multiple sclerosis, chronic high blood pressure, autoimmune disorders, as well as certain types of tumors are all potentially curable.
Beyond physical healing, the deepest spiritual cleansing can similarly take place only through the sheer length of an extended fast. Although nowadays we tend to remember only the Biblical 40-day fasts of Moses and Jesus, the fact is that many spiritual traditions over the millennia have demanded 40-day water fasts. Even Pythagoras required potential students to undertake a 40-day fast before he was willing to accept them. As much as we balk at the idea of giving up food for such a long time, it’s mostly just a question of unwillingness to forgo the addictions and pleasures of life.
Don’t believe the voice of your fears and reluctant ego. You won’t starve to death. Unless you’re seriously malnourished and underweight to begin with, you carry the better part of 100,000 calories on you, locked in your fat tissue and waiting to be released through ketosis.
That’s enough to last you well over 40 days. If you’re overweight, you could potentially fast for much longer
(although in most cases this is not advisable).
Experiencing a healing crisis:
Although in one respect an extended fast simply continues the notion of a 7-10 day water fast, it is also much more powerful because it gives you the opportunity to experience deeper ‘healing crises‘.A healing crisis often occurs towards the end of the first week of water fasting, as the symptoms of old illnesses, injuries and traumas resurface, before being permanently expelled from your body. A similar process often occurs around the end of the second week of fasting – and this is the reason that if you decide to extend a 7-10 day water fast, it’s worth aiming for at least 14 days. This second healing crisis tends to call forth deeper issues than the first healing crisis, or, alternatively, finishes resolving those issues which were not fully cleared during the first healing crisis. In other words, it’s from the beginning of the second week of water fasting that your body can begin to heal from more serious health issues. Simply, up until this point, your body has been cleansing the toxins of everyday life (and especially so if you haven’t been fasting regularly).
For the deepest and most serious health issues, whether physical or spiritual, healing crises often occur much later into the fast, whether 20, 30 or even 40 days.
There’s no way to accurately predict when they will occur. You can only trust your body and let nature take its course.
Occasionally, healing crises can be extremely intense, especially when they occur late into a fast.
When this happens, it’s critically important to be able to tell the difference between a healing crisis and a sign from your body urging you to stop the fast. Not every healing is accompanied by a dramatic healing crisis.
Sometimes symptoms of illness and trauma simply begin to disappear. In cases like this – when no clear sign indicates that you’ve obviously freed yourself from a health issue – it can be difficult to know when to end the fast. This is another reason why it’s advisable to consider conducting any extended fast under some kind of supervision: from (1) a fasting coach like myself and, ideally, also from (2) a medical doctor who understands water fasting. The other main reason for working with a professional is to make sure you don’t overstep your body’s nutritional capabilities, as a prolonged fast begins to reach its physical limits.
The dangers of fasting too long:
If you continue fasting indefinitely there comes a point where the fast turns into starvation. You obviously don’t want to overstep this mark! For when your fat stores are finally depleted, the body has no choice other than to devour muscle tissue, as well as feed from your inner organs. You’ll do yourself serious damage. Fortunately, though, the body sends a clear sign: extreme hunger. Although it’s unlikely you’ll miss this red flag, two other less obvious scenarios also demand the end of a fast – and it’s here, again, that fasting under supervision can help. The first possibility is that you run out of muscle tissue before you deplete your fat stores. In order to power your body as a whole, it’s true that ketosis is extremely efficient. The problem is that the brain demands another fuel entirely: glucose. And this cannot easily be metabolized from fat tissue. Instead, the body must extract it out of muscle. The second possibility is that you deplete your electrolytes (blood salts). Although unlikely, it’s extremely dangerous! For this reason it’s advisable to have your blood tested at relatively regular intervals after the first 7-10 days of fasting.
Refeeding:
After you break an extended fast, it’s extremely important to follow a well structured meal plan. If you return too quickly to a normal diet, you risk encountering both digestive problems as well as ‘refeeding syndrome’. This is a potentially fatal complication caused by the change from ketosis back to your everyday metabolism. After an extended fast, the body cannot be rushed in this process. We can discuss this more in our coaching sessions.
After the referring process is complete:
Many spiritual traditions encourage you to ask the question: ‘Who am I?’ Perhaps most famously, Ramana Maharshi taught that this is all you need to do in order to experience your true self and enlightenment. Just keep asking yourself, honestly, from the depths of your heart, over and over again…
Who am I?
By delving into this question, you’ll inevitably end up drawing a blank.
For who you really are is hidden beneath innumerable masks: the roles and identities you’ve created and continue to create over the course of your life. (Of course, these are the masks created by your ego.)
Consequently, the only things you’ll find are things you are not.
Is the essence of who you are, for instance, a mother? A father? Is it the you who spends all day at your workplace? Or, on a deeper level, is it the you who is seeking who you are in the first place? On the one hand, yes, all these roles do express certain aspects of yourself, but on the other hand, no, they aren’t really you. As much as you may identify with and even love playing out some of these roles, none fully represents your fundamental and true being. For ultimately, you are the one consciousness underlying all these things.As you become increasingly aware of your roles and identities – many of which are obscured by habits and addictions – it becomes possible to see them for what they are: masks you wear over your deeper self. In doing so, it becomes possible to let go of the given mask and see who you are without it. When you fully surrender yourself to this process, when you finish the monumental undertaking of unmasking yourself, you’ll finally experience the consciousness who has been wearing all these masks. You’ll know who you really are.
CONSCIOUS ALIGNMENT
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