Fasting for better health

I am doing my weekly fasting while I am writing this article.

What is fasting? Fasting is not to eat anything voluntarily. It can be as short as one day, and as long as a few days or a week. In all the traditions of different religions, there is the practice of fasting. Eg, Muslims fast for a month in the annual Ramadan, they only eat or drink anything before sunrise and after sunset. Also, Indians are used to fast in different festivals.

I remember why did I start my first time fasting a few years ago. I was in Amma's Ashram (Amma is my guru, she is famous for giving hugs to everyone) in South India, learning different kinds of spiritual practices, eg meditation, yoga, chanting, selfless service etc. Besides, in silence and fasting are also part of it.

Although I always heard people in the ashram fast regularly, but I couldn't make the determination. You have to know that I really love eating, only by just imagining that I should not eat, I suffer. Until one of my ashram friends told me one day, 'Amma said, if we cannot even control our senses, how can we control our mind?' She really woke me up immediately, because if I put so much effort to calm my mind through meditation, but I forgot to laid a good foundation, wasn't it like learning running before I could even walk?

Since then, I started to fast once a week, in between I paused because of different reasons, I resumed it again, stopped and resumed again. At first, I allowed myself to do a fruit fast, that's to eat one kind of fruit on that day. I tried once, but I found that it was worse than not eating anything, because if I allowed myself to eat fruit (I chose banana), on the contrary, I ate a lot and it caused discomfort in my stomach.

So I tried not to eat anything at all, but just drinking water. The duration of fasting is from the time after dinner on the previous day, until before breakfast on the following day, that's around 36hours. Although at first I struggled a lot and I always felt I was hungry, but once I could keep up until a certain time of the day, I didn't feel hungry anymore. On the day after fasting, my mind was so sharp and so clear, I also felt very light, and I found that meditation was especially good after fasting.

Fasting is not only good on the mind and heart level, it is very important on the physical level also. In Indian Ayurveda, it says as our bodies are susceptible to different toxins, fasting is the best way to detox. Ayurveda also says, fasting is the best healing method as it can remove the sources of diseases through detoxification.

Moreover, fasting can cleanse our bodies, boost up immunity and balance metabolism.

Amma even explains it in a much better way, 'Our digestion system is like a machine, unless we fast, it will never take a break. Any machine which works 24hours a day can easily break down. So fasting once a week can maintain our machines in a better way.'

Of course I have to say that, not everyone is suitable for fasting, some people may experience stomachache or feeling weak, if so, you need to do it according to your ability. For example, you can try to fast after lunch, like Buddhist monks, or you can do the fruit fast or juice fast (drink only fruit juice or grass juice), and you should choose a day which you don't need to work. When your body get used to it, then you can try the whole day fasting.