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whippoorwill
USA
450 Posts |
 Posted - May 07 2012 : 10:12:21 PM
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I’ve recently started a sort of mini-fast. I’ve been wanting to fast for several months, but I have only just now worked out how to go about it given my lifestyle.
There were several things holding me back on the commitment to fast, the biggest excuse being my three teenage daughters. I didn’t want this spiritual practice to be interpreted by my daughters as: “It’s okay to starve yourself” and cause a bunch of harmful body image issues. We don’t watch much television, but the pop culture “perfect female body” is still a pervasive phenomenon. Another thing I have to work around is a sensitivity to sugar levels. If my blood sugar gets low, I get CRANKY! The final (and by far most difficult) challenge is my attachment to food as a brain stimulator. I find it’s easy to eschew food if my hands are busy and my mind is empty, but I work all day at a computer doing various kinds of writing and analysis. I reach for a snack when I feel like I’m slowing down; it’s a strong attachment to the pleasurable and stimulating effects of food.
The fast that I’ve come up with is simply to skip lunch and eat no snacks. I eat whatever I want for breakfast and dinner, and I allow myself a very small dessert. In the hours between breakfast and dinner, I add a tiny amount of juice to my water to deal with the blood sugar issues. Since the kids have lunch at school, they’re not around to see me skipping meals, so I don’t have to worry about affecting them adversely.
I’ve only been doing it a couple of days, and it’s been difficult, but I've been able to stick with it. And the effects on the pranayama in particular are already noticeable. I’ve always had trouble feeling the energy as it descends below the heart, and my hope was that the fasting would clear things up a bit in the abdominal cavity and let me feel the energy a bit more as it descends into the lower spine.
Anyway, it’s an experiment.  I intend to do this for a month or so and see what happens. I was wondering if any of you had thoughts about this approach, and particularly I was wondering if any have experience with fasting as a spiritual practice in the presence of teenage daughters.
--Liz
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whippoorwill
USA
450 Posts |
Posted - May 25 2012 : 3:52:00 PM
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I ended the experiment early. The midday fasting did have a profound effect on the energy. I could feel it all the way up and down the spine without any problem at all. At first it was great, but after about a week it was too much. After two weeks, it was way too much. I had no idea I had been doing such a good job of grounding myself!  The other reason I ended early was weight gain. ! ! I was floored. How could eating approximately the same amount cause me to gain weight?
I started looking for the answer in Ayurvedic texts. I read Dr. Vasant Lad's "Ayurveda: The Science of Self Healing" and "Absolute Beauty" by Pratima Raichur. I would recommend "Absolute Beauty" to anyone interested in and new to Ayurveda. The author, a chemist, botanist, and aesthetician, gives a clear and thorough introduction to the principles of Ayurveda. It's really well-done, and you get recipes for skin cleansers, shampoos, and massage oils!
Anyway, I was eating big-ish meals in the morning and evening, when the digestion is very slow, and I wasn't giving my body anything to work on during the midday hours, when the digestive energy is high. So I was working against my own body's biology with my eating pattern, and it probably lowered my metabolism even more. (I have a pitta-kapha constitution with a bit of a kapha imbalance -- think firefighter/gymnast/runner turned into a slightly plump, comfortable, and happy housewife. )
The next project will be to figure out how to lose this weight without aggravating the pitta, my main dosha, too much. And I'm going to have some fun mixing up cleansers and massage oils for my skin type.
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Started a mini-fast
