How to Nourish Yourself While Fasting.
Fasting is all the rage these days with magazines and bloggers going on and on about its health benefits.
These claims range from boosting your immune system to increasing blood sugar sensitivity, fighting inflammation, creating a healthier metabolism, brain, heart, even reducing aging.
Benefits aside if I skip a meal I’ miserable. . . at least most of the time.
I fast most Saturdays and by the end of the day, I feel restored.
On the surface, this doesn’t make sense considering how much I love food and how spacey I get if I go more than four hours without eating.
But I discovered early on that what you do while fasting matters. I’m not talking activity levels. Two weeks ago I got in a good ten miles of walking while fasting all day.
I’m talking about the quality of the things we do while fasting.
Mindful Fasting
My friends, it is wise to nourish the soul, otherwise, you will breed dragons and devils in your heart.
— Carl Jung. Red Book.
What sets my Saturday fast apart is the intention I set, my activities, and my mindfulness practice.
I wake up in the morning and dedicate the day to my fast and self-nourishment. From that moment on I work at maintaining mindfulness.
Saturdays are the days I avoid social media except for some work. They’re the days I make sure to stop scrolling if I find myself mindlessly browsing.
If I reach for my phone unconsciously to check if someone texted Saturdays are the day I put my phone down and meditate on my attachment.
I don’t watch Netflix on Saturdays. I try not to check my email. If I’m going to entertain myself it’s with music or a book and not just any book it has to be a book that feeds me somehow whether it be wonder, wisdom, or insight.
Saturdays are the days I nurture my soul. If I catch something draining my attention, causing me to go on autopilot, or draining my energy I stop the activity and consider if it’s necessary.
When I practice mindfulness and spirituality on a Saturday the hunger vanishes and rather than the daze that normally accompanies my low blood sugar my mind takes on a new clarity.
The day becomes a way to release my hunger not only for food but all my attachments and addictive stimuli. It’s a day to reset.
It’s about knowing where you are in the moment.
The image of the world is half the world. He who possesses the world but not its image possess only half the world, since his soul is poor and has nothing. The wealth of the soul exists in images.
— Carl Jung. Red Book.
I’m not perfect so not every Saturday is spent in meditative bliss. Last week I just couldn’t make it happened and continued to obsess about creating a tabletop character I’ll probably never play.
Rather than try to have a perfectly mindful day I let myself have an obsessive day and simply insured I did something healthy for me.
I went to yoga.
Heads up, don’t go to yoga after a day of fasting and expect to last the whole 90-minute session.
Lesson learned.
To be honest, the last two weeks have been spent moving from work to distraction. I’ve known there’s something brewing within and I’ve known my mind is fighting hard not to see it.
So I let it brew.
Last night I analyzed my drifting obsessions and set myself the task of discovering what it is I’m running from which helped me let go of the attachments today.
Today I’ve found it incredibly freeing to let go of all the ways I’ve been distracting myself and spend the day breathing and mindfully observing what is going on inside.
It’s not an entire day of sitting and meditating rather it’s being mindful in all that I do. Whether I’m creating a hypnosis recording or writing an email. I ask “what’s the best thing for me to do right now,” and then I do it with all my attention.
Rather than being hungry or tired my Saturdays end in a sensation of clarity and feeling restored.
What about you?
What is a practice you can use to release your attachments to the addictive things in life? Checking your email, your text, your facebook?
How can you bring more mindfulness into your life?
Love and share.
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