Fasting is a scary word for most of us. I tried fasting multiple times but failed. Failed in controlling my hunger during fasting, I walked into the kitchen subconsciously and ate something.
It was the month of Apr 2020. The lockdown was on when I first understood the importance of food and its connection with energy.
When Food is always believed to be connected with energy, not eating makes you feel dizzy and sometimes crash out of low energy. I saw people sleeping most of the time during their fasting that made me assume that fasting is a challenging activity that is not everyone's cup of tea.
If you go deep into the secrets behind the energy of our body, you know that gaining energy from food is a half-truth. So come out of this mindset that if you don't take food, you will become weak. There is evidence when a person stayed healthy and fit by just drinking water for many days. There are also a few examples where the person didn't take food life long and stayed healthy.
We take energy from multiple sources of nature other than food. Also, we deplete energy in multiple ways, knowingly or unknowingly.
If we are planning to do fasting, we can follow the below steps or ways to make it pleasant.
Disclaimer: "A diabetic person should consult a doctor before fasting"
1) Two types of fasting:
a) 24 hour fasting
b) 36-40 hours fasting.
> 24 hours fasting: This starts from dinner time to the next day dinner time. Say you took dinner today at 7PM and on fasting for 24 hours, you can break the fast by taking juice next evening around 7PM.
> 36-40 hours fasting: This starts after today's dinner to next Next day Breakfast. When I first did fasting, I could do 40 hours fast easily. If you have taken dinner around 6-7PM today, and not eat anything for the next 40 hours. You can drink only water and green warm tea all day. Day after tomorrow you can break your fast with juice around 9-10AM.
About Juice for breakfast: It's important to break your fast with juices only. It should be fresh fruit juice with no sugar or milk. Juice shouldn't be filtered. It should be pulpy juice or you can call it smoothie. The reason for the juice is: our stomach was resting and was in process of detox. We should give it soft things which can be easily digested. Juices are great in that respect. one hour after juice you can eat whatever you like. It should be only fruit juice and not milk shake. The reason behind this is milk is tough to digest hence heavy on the stomach.
2) Start your day on Fasting: On fasting day,Start your day with morning rituals. Do bed yoga and get up with a smiling face. Do affirmations when you are still in bed like:
Thank God for giving me a new day. I am healthy and joyful. I love and accept myself.
Once you are out of bed, put Gayatri mantra or simple OM or any mantra of your choice. Mantra vibration, Nada Yoga is a great source of energy. It makes our mind calm and increases focus.
3) Connect with Nature: Sun and Air. On fasting days take a long walk in the morning, morning yoga at the time of sunrise is very helpful. Pranayam, alom vilom and bhramari can be done properly. deep breathing is also a must. Deep and slow breathing quickly gives energy to our body. This should be done 3-4 times on a fasting day.
How to deep breathing: Sit in a comfortable position. With the opening of your arms, take a deep breath, hold it for a few seconds, and with closing arms breathe out. You should do it 30 times in one cycle. This can be done 2-3 times.
If you are in the office, you can go for a quick walk of 10 minutes. While walking you can breathe slowly and deep.
4) Brain Fasting: Fasting is always misunderstood only with food. To make fasting pleasant, we should always do brain fasting along with food fasting. What does it mean? Most of our body energy is consumed by the brain. Hence, even if we don't do much physical work, but take stress or do work that requires a lot of brain activity, we feel tired and exhausted.
On fasting day, avoid TV and news completely. Take calls which are really important. postpone other calls for the next day. Keep mobile away as much as possible. Avoid talking much. It's "me time". Try to be with yourself. The more we calm our brain, the easier and happier our body will be during fasting.
5) Drink water or green tea: Make sure that you have a good intake of water. You can also make green tea and keep it in a bottle. Keep drinking it all day. Do not let yourself be thirsty anytime. Saliva is also a good source of energy which goes slowly in the stomach with water.
Green Tea or herbal drink: you can make a quick herbal tea by adding cinnamon, elaichi and tulsi in hot water. You can also add honey also for taste.
6) Meditation: Since you are not eating today, it saves your lunch and dinner time. You can do meditation. Put any guided meditation and relax your body completely. You can lie down or sit and do meditation is your choice.
If you are in the office, you can escape in some meeting room during lunch break or in the worst scenario, you can sit in the toilet as well. Put earphones and switch on a guided meditation.
7) Proper sleep Follow night rituals to get proper sound sleep. Deep leg in hot water with salt, take warm water bath, keep mobile away 1-2 hours before sleep, no TV, news or even book reading. plan your next day and sleep with meditation.
Fasting is a day to cherish and celebrate with yourself.
Benefits of fasting: reduces Obesity, burns fat, reduces chances of chronic diseases, improves heart health, removes toxic from the body, boosts immunity.
Practice fasting proper way and let us know how was your experience by commenting below:
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Prashant is also an Author of the Amazon India bestseller book, "The 7 Productivity sutras for Professionals"
