Fasting

Regular fasting serves as a natural way to maintain good health, cure disease and improve your state of mind. Fasting cleans out toxins and poisonous wastes from the body and helps to maintain a balanced, stable mental state.

Fasting to prevent sickness and cure disease

As a result of our modern lifestyle and diet, the human body easily becomes congested with toxic poisons that cause sickness and disease. Fasting is like internal housecleaning: turning off the constant flow of food into your body and allowing it to cleanse itself automatically.

Benefits of Fasting

Fasting allows your entire system to rest and rejuvenate; causes the breakdown and excretion of poisonous wastes that have accumulated in the body; burns excessive fat; conserves energy and increases clarity of mind; prevents illness; regulates appetite; and makes the skin look younger and more radiant. Fasting will also help to cure skin eruptions; gas and indigestion; constipation; colds and allergies; and numerous other health problems. Fasting is a preventive medicine, a path to improved health and a cure for disease.

“By fasting I have found perfect health, a new state of existence, and a feeling of purity and happiness, something unknown to most humans…” - Upton Sinclair

Fasting and the effect of the moon

The best days to fast are three days before the new and full moon. In the same way that the moon’s gravitational attraction causes tides in the ocean during the new and full moon periods, it also causes “tides” in our bodies, which are composed of over 70% water. According to scientific research, during the full and new moon days, and three days before and after, the moon’s gravitational attraction draws the liquid in our bodies upwards into our brain. This excess of fluid in the brain disturbs its functioning, resulting in various mental and physical symptoms such as restlessness, irritability, extremes of emotion, anger and strange behavior. Newspapers and police departments often report increased crime and disturbances during these times. These emotional disturbances start three days before the new and full moons, and fasting without water is a way to negate the disruptive effects of the moon and maintain a calm and balanced mind. This system of yogic fasting has a duration from Sunrise to Sunrise. You begin at Sunrise on the fasting day and eat nothing. If your body is strong you can also refrain from drinking anything. On the next day, you can break the fast with lemon water, then with fruit and other suitable food.

How to fast

Some people think that fasting is difficult. But if you prepare yourself for fasting it is not difficult. Prepare yourself physically by taking enough food and also plenty of liquids the day before. Prepare yourself mentally by deciding the night before fasting: "Tomorrow is fasting day, and I am not going to eat anything." If you take this mental determination prior to the fasting day, you will not be hungry during the fasting day. If you do not make a prior determination, during the fasting day you will start to think maybe I should eat, and fast another day. Decide before hand and you will be able to complete your fast.

After fasting, you should take some lemon water with a bit of salt. This drink helps to flush the digestive system, eliminating waste material that might otherwise remain in the body if you didn't fast. All in all, fasting is one of the best practices for maintaining physical, mental and spiritual health.

Click here for a list of fasting dates

Please note: Children, pregnant women and nursing mothers should not fast.