This article looks at the intentional aspect of fasting. For a detailed practical guide, check out Buhner’s The Transformational Power of Fasting.

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There’s a hidden sweetness in the stomach’s emptiness.

We are lutes, no more, no less.
If the sound box is stuffed full of anything, no music.

If the brain and the belly
are burning clean with fasting, every moment a new song comes out of the fire.

 ­-Rumi

—

Fasting has always been available to heal and rejuvenate the human body. Just as Jesus went 40 days without food in the Judean Desert, modern man has the 5:2 diet and Eat Stop Eat.

Learning to receive the gifts of fasting may bring a tenderness to our relationship with self, other and the world. Misused, it can be one more expression of abuse and trauma.

I see fasting as a deliberate reduction of food intake. People may fast for physiological, emotional, or spiritual reasons, or simply because they feel like it. The intentions behind fasting can include:

• To improve health
• To recover from disease
• To lose weight
• To discover or reconnect with one’s deepest desires and purpose
• To develop greater spiritual awareness 

Let us look at each of these in turn:

Fasting for health

A simple decision to stop eating for a few days (or even hours) can do more for our health than any superfoods or macronutrient ratios.  As Mark Twain has said:  

A little starvation, can really do more for the average sick man than can the best medicines and the best doctors.

I define health as harmony with life. The healthy tree is not one which lives forever,­ it is the one which grows as it was meant to grow, reaching its full potential, before slowly returning to the earth. So it is with our bodies.

In this sense, fasting has a dual purpose. It provides the clarity to make better lifestyle decisions – what to eat, what to do, where to go, how to live – while also allowing the body’s own natural healing energies to do their work, freed at last from the never ­ending cycle of digestion, assimilation and excretion.

Fasting to recover from illness

The natural healing force within each one of us is the greatest force in getting well. To eat when you are sick, is to feed your sickness  – Hippocrates.

There are now emerging more clinical trials demonstrating empirically what the sages have always known: Fasting is the first principle of medicine.

We can observe this in wild animals. When illness arises, they abstain from food, consuming only water and perhaps appropriate herbs and grasses.

“The job of fasting”, writes Joel Fuhrman, “is to supply the body with the ideal environment to accomplish its work of healing”. Our native healing energy, our natural urge towards harmony and alignment are strong.

Stronger, perhaps, than we allow ourselves to believe.

Certainly stronger than the prevailing cultural narrative ­ with its promotion of industrial pharmacology as the solution to disease ­ could ever hope to contain.

Fasting to lose weight

A fast is better than a bad meal – ­ Irish Proverb

There is not much to say here, other than that it is very possible to lose weight through fasting.

Yet remember that without whole body equilibrium, without bringing awareness to our emotional patterns, childhood trauma or cultural conditioning, any physical change is likely to be temporary. Shifts between extremes (of fasting and over­eating) are not uncommon in people who have plunged headfirst into fasting with little guidance or preparation.

The fast itself can bring these emotional patterns to the surface. There is no better time to release them, ­but go gently,  bringing a friend if you can.

Fasting to discover or reconnect with one’s deepest desires and purpose

Days, weeks and months can pass… even years… all suffused and suffocated with a sense of waiting, a directionlessness, a mere survival.

Fasting ­not only from food, but alcohol, stimulants, electronic devices, entertainment, idle chat, ejaculation, pollution, work, stress… may bring about the most wonderful, shocking clarity. There may be a sense of the metaphysical background upon which all these phenomena take place, almost as if one has awoken from a dream, only now realizing its illusory nature. This can be both liberating and sorrowful.

The effect may be increased if the fast is undertaken in nature. Some modern curators in the field of sacred masculinity use this method to facilitate deeper transformation. We can literally feel our hunger: for change, for healing, for love.

Truly, the decision to go without food ­ gently, consciously and with intent ­is no great austerity, but a pathway to the simple, native clarity resident in each human being.

Fasting to develop greater spiritual awareness

What the eyes are for the outer world, fasts are for the inner –­ Gandhi

The islamic Ramadan, christian Lent and jewish Ta’anit are all traditionally times of fasting. Mention of it is present in every major religion, though its place as a central practice has often been dislodged by more comfortable activities and beliefs.

In a way, abstaining from food -­ from the physical plane, we might say ­- can allow one’s essence to be more readily perceived. .

As St Chrysostomi wrote in the 3rd century BC:

Fasting of the body is food for the soul

A fast can be a time of intense fluctuations in energy, mood and motivation. It yearns for a turning of the senses inward, for rest, simplicity and stillness. On a fast, that stillness may be deeper, more expansive and more accessible than at any other time.

Now, on to some of the more common fasting styles.

Types of Fasts:

Intermittent Fasting (IT): is the practice of eating all one’s calories within a ‘feeding window’ during the day (usually between 4-­8 hours­) and fasting for the rest. An example of this would be to eat from 2­-8pm, then consuming only non­caloric liquids until 2pm the following day.

An alternative IT technique is a cycle of eating ‘normally’ for 5 days, followed by minimal calories for 2 days.

Water Fast: A challenging option for the inexperienced or unsupported, particularly beyond 3­-5 days. One could better honour the fast by avoiding work, noise and pollutants, staying warm and cosy and taking short walks in nature.

Dry Fast: I believe a dry fast is more effective for spiritual connection than for the cultivation of superior health. It can be a rewarding journey for the more experienced practitioner.

Juice Fast: Probably the best option for beginners. High levels of micronutrients with almost zero digestive effort. As most juices contain some natural sugars, detoxification will be slowed as compared to a water fast (not necessarily a bad thing).

Ketosis: This is the name given to a state of being whereby the liver and muscles have used all the available carbohydrate-­derived energy and switch over to metabolising fat. This is achieved by heavily restricting carbohydrate intake. There is much study currently being done (those interested could research the excellent Dom D’agostino) in this area to evaluate its therapeutic and anti-­cancer potential.

Fruit Fast: A fruit fast can be another lovely, gentle way to cleanse the body and digestive tract. Try a few days of nothing but watermelon, mango or apple.

Recommended reading:
The Transformational Power of Fasting by Stephen Harrod Buhner
Conscious Eating by Gabriel Cousens