In 2019, "Evidence Based" is the #1 scientific research catch all buzz phrase. We want to know that opinions are not just anecdotal reports of one or two people, but have research and data behind them. We want double blind controls and carefully crafted experiments that can be repeated, independently and objectively verified. This is the power of the scientific method that gets ever closer to what is objectively true. The quality of the research and the methods employed are always in question. So the authors of the research, their controls and methods must be carefully considered.
With that said, "evidence based" research has overwhelming found that the gut is the home of our immune system. The gut is the front line of defense against the outside bacteria, fungi, viruses and parasites that enter the body. The gut is where it all the action happens. The gut needs to identify what is useful and what is harmful to the body. If it can.
If you take up a breath practice, eventually you will have to deal with your gut and immune system. I went so far with breath practice, one hour of Anuloma Viloma every morning for over 8 months, that eventually I had to deal with the gut. There was no bypassing it. I felt that my diet, my practice of Mitahara, was failing once again. My gut was confused. I gained weight. My body was chronically inflamed and puffy and had been for years.
I felt that I had lost my way. I have lost my way with food repeatedly through life. What to eat? It was all so confusing. I have been Macrobiotic for many years, Ayurvedic for many years, Vegan for many years, Omnivorous for many years. I have been a natural foods cook for many years, and earned a living that way at many points in time.
The stresses of family life had thrown me for a loop. My diet had devolved into foraging on whatever is around teenage kids, like pizza, and pasta, and pizza, and mashed potatoes, and ice cream and pasta. Sticky icky diet. My gut tube was full of mucus and insensitive. I was eating emotionally to stuff down feelings. I was lost in a standard American diet, (the SAD diet) to once again learn the lessons that I thought I had learned so many times, so many years ago.
"Food is God" proclaims the Upanishads. Food creates the body and mind. Food matters.
What kind of food? My belly was confused.
I thought back to my ashram days at Kripalu. I remembered how amazing fasting was! In the ashram, we didn't know shit about fasting then, but we did it with religious zeal. I did a 12 day juice fast and a 16 day "Kichari fast" (which isn't "fasting" at all, it is a rice, beans, ghee and spices diet.) These were my only longish experiences.
I distinctly remember that I "felt good." "I felt TOO good and fasting must not be real." "It is not normal to feel this good."
The first few days of fasting is emotionally hard and then it gets really easy. I had heard of horror stories of people becoming very toxic when water fasting; that you can die from fasting. In my mind, I still I equated fasting with death. We are told that eating is the only way to get strength. It you want strength, eat. I began to think that equating fasting with death and deprivation is fake news. Then I thought back to how good I felt back in the ashram days.
In December of 2017, I found a teacher who had fasted serious amounts of time, like hundreds of days in a 3 year period. Modern fasting has a science to it, in order to do it safely. Fasting in 2019, is different from the unfortunate souls who fasted without training or knowledge, drank only water and became very sick by damaging their kidneys and livers.
The Big Picture of fasting is to completely clean out the gut tube. That is what you want. If you are confused about food, if you are inflamed and puffy, you probably have lots of mucus in the gut. That heavy coating of oil in your gut is the body trying to protect itself from all the shit you have been feeding it. This was my story. Again.
Clean out the gut tube entirely.... for a long time. I must give considerable credit to the many pioneers of modern fasting, Luigi Gino Di Serio, who discovered how to do it safely. I did not follow his "Master Fast" perfectly, or anything like perfect. I didn't do all of his herbs and tinctures, but it was good enough and it was safe. It did the job. Clean out the gut tube and start over.
My old microbiome was screwed with candida and years of a horribly bad bacterial environment subjected to many courses of antibiotics. Antibiotics kill everything and then you are left with the sugar craving bad bacteria. That deadly sugary microbiome is not going to leave unless you physically remove everything. Just eating better stuff and adding to the old toxic microbiome, won't do it. Just adding pre and probiotics won't do it.
I fasted safely and joyously for 54 days, which sounds like a lot. It is not. I could have gone much farther, but it was long enough to see the light. It was so necessary to fast for a long time to get used to being "light." So many things happened along the way. I lost 45 pounds. My inflammation was gone (inflammation is basically all about the gut and your immune system.) That heavy oily depressive feeling of a gut-gone-wrong was gone. Everyday was a spiritual revelation.
Many people worry, that they can't fast because they will lose TOO much weight. "I don't have weight to lose!" This is a big worry for many people.
This is an unfounded fear. It doesn't happen that way, you won't lose too much weight, if the experience of 30,000 people who have done the Master Fast is any testament. You don't lose weight endlessly. Actually the body is more miraculous than that unfounded fear. The body weight actually stabilizes at some point on a long fast. For me the stabilization happened around Day 41, and for 13 more days, no more weight came off. That is how modern fasting works. But modern fasting is complicated and you will have to do more research into safe fasting to learn about the point when your weight stablizes. Two weeks later, and I have gained only 5 pounds back.
With the extra weight, I had problems with my congenital heart murmur .... gone. Prediabetic, hypoglycemic problems... gone... arthritis... gone. My thinking is so much clearer. I feel and look young again. 10 years have been taken off my age.
The gut tube is the elephant in the living room. The gut tube either helps us or harms us. We are trained to look for health and wellness in synthetic pharmaceutical pills with horrible side effects. This little expensive pill is supposed to cure and reverse the 33 feet of poop that is in plain sight, at the core of the immune system. That little pill doesn't stand a chance against a sewer system of past sludge. If you are sick, get rid of the huge amount of bacteria hiding in your gut. Start the microbiome over.
One thing about pooping that fools everybody: If you eat corn and you see corn coming out later that day, you assume that the effects of the corn is over. Actually only part of that meal is gone. All kinds of things hide out in 33 feet of nooks and crannies in the small intestine. Just because you see some evidence of your last meal, it is only part of it. It is like a river. There are always little pools and eddies where some of the river and leaves and twigs swirl around in, maybe for days. Hence, the need for psyllium and charcoal when you fast. You need to push everything out.
There is a whole mystical, spiritual side of fasting, which really interests me. You come "close to your truest Self," "you commune with your Spirit." This is what the long fasters say. Without the poisonous influence of the past 150 meals you have eaten this month, that leave their slimy sticky residue in the gut, the gut brain gets quiet and goes into healing mode. The whole body heals. Evidence based research consistently shows fasting starts up the healing process of the body. Another mode of being and thinking arises when you fast. The immune system becomes super strong in fasting. Your digestion, your "Agni" in Ayurveda, improves!
Now I am in the phase of relearning about Mitahara, the yoga of light eating, from a whole new perspective. Light eating, is now mostly raw vegan. I know my Ayurvedic friends, from a conceptual standpoint, are horrified by the idea of "raw vegan," but it is what my body genuinely craves. I don't want cooked, sticky, starchy, spicy foods. I avoid grains, but allow small amounts of cooked beans. A little bit of steak or fish, once month is something I am open to.
To be successful, after a long fast, you want to try the "Fun Meal out." Once every two weeks or once a month, for CONTRAST, go out to a restaurant and get ANYTHING you want. With an empty gut tube and new sensibilities, a whole new perspective dawns. If I had only fasted 12 days, the new perspective would never have taken hold. It is very important to do a significant long fast, before you try the restaurant experience. The mind needs time to really get the lessons of fasting and having an empty gut tube for months as the new norm.
On the North End of Boston, I ate an immodest amount of lasagna, created by a master Italian chef. It was the best experience going down. It was thrilling. And go down I did. It was like an airliner crashing into the ground, spilling luggage and dead bodies all over the mountain side. The suffering and mucosal reversal was so obvious. Oh dear lord. If I had ate just a small amount of lasagna, the wreckage might not have been so bad, but I went whole hog.
Immediately, after the crash, I craved the heavy fiber, nutrient dense, marinated raw live food. Give me fresh, enzymes and phenols! Give me the polyphenols and terpenoids. Don't cook away the best part. We want food live. We want it fresh, organic. All that cooking, cooking, and more cooking kills off what is so precious, no matter what the theoretical abstract concepts of Macrobiotics and Ayurveda say about what is digestible and what is not. Gimme real. My super Agni can handle it.
One of the interesting things, is that fasting people GAIN muscle mass if they exercise. That is so counter intuitive! You will gain strength if you go on a long fast and exercise! Besides losing your chronic inflammation, arthritis, diabetes and heart disease, you can gain muscle mass. That is so curious!!!
Culturally, we have a hyper focus on (animal) protein? If it is true, how could anyone gain muscle mass fasting? It doesn't make sense. Everyone talks about excessive protein consumption being the only way to build muscle mass?
Fasting people who exercise gain muscle mass? Far out.
And Praanaayaama.... the evolution of your breath practice will accelerate at light speed. Nothing will hold you back now.
Evidence based:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18721321
