Dear Friends,
Namaste!
As we saw in our last discussion, regular resting and fasting is vitally important for us to keep our body at its efficient best. But we also said in the same breath “Go Slow on Fasting”! Is this contradictory?
Actually not! We are only talking about going slow on fasting, not actually stopping it altogether. Also, we are not talking about overeating either!
Fasting is necessary as a preventive and breakdown maintenance strategy. However, why we will be well advised not to overdo it is because, when we go overboard with fasting, we cause our body “klesh”(penance). Buddha, while propagating the ‘middle-path’, has strongly advised against causing any kind of “klesh” to our toolset, viz., body, mind and intellect. Penance is not a good Yoga practice, restraint to maintain equilibrium is.
Just like an electric current flowing through an electrical circuit makes it ‘live’, “Life-force” flows through our body. Our body has five ‘circuits’ that Life-force flows through (and hence is known by five different names). Life-force flowing through our respiratory system is known as “Prana”, our excretory system is known as “Apana”, our digestive system as “Samana”, our circulatory system as “Vyana” and our nervous system as “Udana”.
We have partial control over “Prana” and “Udana”. For example, to some extent, we can control our breathing (that is what “Pranayama” is all about) and we can control actions of our voluntary muscles through our nervous system.
However, we have little or no control over how food is digested, its useful part converted and distributed for the whole body’s nourishment and how the waste matter is thrown out of the system. These systems are involuntary and are designed and built to operate continuously. For example, our heart keeps beating all the time! Similarly, digestive juices are created even when we skip a meal. If these juices (strong acids) do not find food to act on, they act on the empty stomach and damage it. In extreme cases where our body has to go without food for extended period of time, it starts eating itself! It may ‘eat’ fat but it does not spare muscles. (And some fat is actually healthy!)
Therefore, it is important to maintain steady supply of food in small quantities. This assures the body that it does not have to stack up fat as ‘reserves’ and it actually starts spending freely. (On the other hand, people who go on a crash diet observe that their weight initially goes up – the body is trying to fight the artificially created famine!).
The other important consideration is, after we have our meal a good couple of hours before going to bed, by not eating until breakfast the next morning, we are already ‘fasting’. And if we are eating small meals throughout the day, the digestive system does not need any more fasting or resting (unless it has broken down and is undergoing medical treatment).
Another common mistake people make is ‘compensating’ or ‘adjusting’ meals. For example, they may get their stomach overfull at a dinner party and skip the next day’s breakfast in trying to make up for the lost ground on their dieting front! Or they skip a meal or two to ‘conserve’ or ‘build’ appetite for a sumptuous meal ahead.
It is like pouring 2 liters of water in a one liter vessel in one go and then pouring no water to ‘make up’ for the extra water poured earlier. The best thing is to put a liter each on both the occasions!
There exist any number of people who strictly observe a fast for a period of time only to gorge and stuff themselves to the brim as soon as the ‘fast’ gets over. This, to say the least, is a double-whammy. They should not have starved the body in the first place and later should not have overstuffed it.
So, if we have to keep our system at its efficient best, we must:
1. Eat five to seven small meals throughout the day at regular intervals
2. Take our last meal at least a couple of hours before going to sleep
3. Observe a good eight to ten hour ‘fast’ after our last meal of the day
4. Break that fast in the morning as early as possible (ideally within half an hour of waking up) with nutritious ‘break-fast’.
Thus, overnight fasting should suffice under normal circumstances. When the circumstances become abnormal, as in the case of contracting any dis-ease for example, we must always go by the expert medical advice (whatever that may be).
In a nutshell,
‘For our system to become long-lasting
We must go a wee bit slow on fasting
Our body, if we decide to, starve and punish
No rewards for guessing whether we will vanish’
Ciao…
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