The Juice Fast

I want to let you know a little more about my dieting history and how I came to be a Sensable Person. I was always the person who reached for the forbidden fruit and for me that is candy, cookies and cake.

A few months back I decided to go on a spiritual quest and cleansing during a six day supervised juice fast. My experience was uplifting. On the first day, we wrote what our intention was for being in the program and I wrote “Revelation.” Learning about eating habits and understanding that over eating was caused by wanting to avoid an “emptiness” or a feeling of “overwhelm” gave me hope. During this six day journey, you let down the masks or the face that we show to the outside world. It is a sacred journey and a cleansing of the spirit as well as the body. You are eliminating the toxins from your body and you feel elated.

John Lennon’s song “Love is all you need” reverberated in my head. It seemed so simple to me, so matter of fact. Deepak Chopra says, “The way to fill your life with love is very simple. If you want more love, give more love.” I recalled Deepak saying “to appreciate others, listen with your full attention and show affection.” My first revelation was that loving myself means being good to my body.

The next day, my intention was to breathe in love and to breathe out fear. The benefits of this juice fast was to have more energy, to get in touch with my body’s true appetite and to get in touch with deeper emotional and spiritual hunger.

The best part was drinking our first 8 ounce glass of juice and swirling it in our mouths and warming it and deliberately deciding when to swallow it. It took 30 minutes to drink eight ounces of juice. The miraculous part was actually feeling full as it reached your stomach.

To fast means “to draw a mirror to God” in Sanskrit. It was an acknowledgment and acceptance of the fact that most of us have a need for more spirituality in our lives. Most of us never felt hungry. We found that we could be nourished by attending a yoga class and felt especially nurtured when the teacher covered our legs with a blanket at the end of the session during meditation. It felt so caring, energizing and wonderful. We walked and played and danced and talked. It felt as if I were healing my heart.

It became clear that I do not need to substitute food for love or to fill an emptiness or when I feel overwhelmed.. I began to feel grateful for love and play and my real life as a coach and hypnotherapist.

As the week wore on, there were some moments that were trying, especially during the sessions where we really looked at ourselves. We evaluated relationships, work, our bodies, our environment and spiritual attunement. I work on these issues with my clients. But, I always say that “a dentist cannot drill his own teeth.” So, I carefully explored these parts of my life and wrote down the areas where I needed some conscious awareness. I looked at ways to create a more joyous, nourishing life for myself and my family and friends.

What I learned

· I learned that when you have enough protein that you have less of a need for sweets.
· I learned that your stomach is about the size of your own fist and ideally this is the amount of food you should eat.
· I learned that your body can digest only so much food and the rest is deposited as toxins.
· I learned about conscious chewing and learned to chew each bite of food 35 times.
· I learned that when you chew your food well that your body can easily absorb the nutrients.
· I learned to smell my food.
· I learned to trust what my body needed.
· I learned to serve food beautifully every night and not just for company because that helps for us to feel loved and cared for.

Chewing was the beginning of learning “Conscious Eating.” Herman Aihara said, “ Chew well! Anyone who is sick or who wants to be beautiful and intelligent must chew well before anything else. Chewing well increases not only your physical health, but also your related mental and spiritual clarity. Judgment improves.”

The leaders of the program said that fasting was the easy part and the hard part was when we arrived home. This part is true. Everyday, I use intuitive eating to guide me in my choices. Everyday, I use caution so that I do not revert to my old eating habits. I am grateful to have had this experience. I have a new relationship with food because of it. One word of caution, fast only under supervision and with your doctor’s consent.

Choose the foods that you put in your body with care. A women that I met during the week said it succinctly, “It’s not about how you look, it’s about how you feel.” May all of my readers be safe and peaceful and happy and may you find all that you are looking for right within your heart. May you love yourselves enough to fill yourself with only the most nourishing foods.

Of course, we cannot be supervised with every bite that we take nor be on a juice fast forever. We must live in the present. Now, if I can (not if, I take that back, I can, I can, I can do it)take my own advice and continue to sprinkle, I will be the healthy person that I choose to be.
Nadia