Fasting Space

Today I'm asking the question.

Do we already have what we are truly seeking?

I try to help people lose weight.

That's like a big part of my medical practice for a long time.

A big part of what I'm trying to do now
in our beautiful YouTube space

and the podcast Simple Fasting.

In a focused, simple fasting practice at an actual clinic

now leasing a space in Fitchburg, Wisconsin,
you want to meet in person.

We don't have to be telemedicine anymore.

We can meet in the office again.
Really looking forward to that.

We're seeking something that is it
deeper than just a simple health goal.

This is like really
the subtheme of what I try to focus on on the channel.

Yeah. Like, yes, we have a health goal.

We're in a health space.

What is health really mean?

And what are the most important parts of health?

The things we're really looking for.

Oftentimes I, arrive at the place

that what we're really looking for
is a mental space of peace and contentment.

That's, I think, what I'm looking for.

We discussed yesterday finding a space of contentment,
even a better place than happiness.

Happiness pretty good.

But happiness can be fleeting if we aren't really content.

So it can be easy to answer this question superficially.

Say, of course, and here I'm trying to lose weight.

I haven't lost it.

I don't have what I seek,
you know, that I could see people going.

I say, stick with me a sack, listen to this story.

I'm going to read you a story.

Yesterday I was talking about this, analogy.

The four burners was thinking a lot about that yesterday.

It's like picturing our life as a cooktop with four burners.

Gas stove can only go 100% on two of them.

Between health and our work, whatever that may be,

and our family and our friends,
we got kind of 220% to burners.

Could be 2 to 100%, but then you got the other two on simmer.

And how do you want to balance that?

And do you want to back off from some areas

so that we can bring balance?

I was thinking about how does this how would.

How would different people approach
that, you know, across the lifespan?

How how is someone who is younger versus someone who is older.

Does that change?

And so as I was thinking about this, I was looking for
different perspectives about how people, think about that.

And, one person shared this story that they felt, framed it.

Well, have you heard it?

The article that they sent it, from, interestingly,

it started with a Warren Buffett
quote to which I like Buffett quotes.

Here's a guy you know, pretty grounded fellow
for being a billionaire.

I think a lot of his financial advice
just doubles as just practical life advice.

I say, Buffett says.

I mean, I can buy anything I want, basically,
but I can't buy time.

The good, wisdom for anyone.

We can't buy time.

Right now we are here in this space,

and time is something that we at least have some measure of.

Find some gratitude, and presence,

in this time, in this space, this moment that we can,

share here to try to center our thinking

before we move on the rest of our day.

Here's the story.

An American banker was at the pier
of a small coastal Mexican village

when a small boat with just one fisherman

docked inside the small boat where several

large tuna and the banker complicate,

complimented the fishermen on the quality of his fish
and asked how long it took to catch them.

The fisherman replied only a little while.

Banker asked,
why don't you stay out longer and catch more fish?

He said, I have enough to support my family's needs.

But what do you do with the rest of your time? He asked.

Fisherman said I sleep late, no fishing,

play with my kids, take a nap,

strolling to the village each evening or sip on a wine
and play my guitar with my friends.

The banker scoffed.

I have a Harvard MBA.

I could really help you.

You should spend more time fishing.

Take the more money you make.

You could buy a bigger boat with a bigger boat.

Hire a crew.

You can end up with a fleet of boats.

And you'd have enough money
to start your own processing operation instead of

sending it to the man vertically integrated, you could control
the product, the processing, the distribution.

You have to leave this village.

You could end up moving to LA, New York could run.

You're expanding fishing enterprise.

But how long would all this take? The fisherman asked.

To which the banker replied, I'm 15 or 20 years.

But then what? Ask the fisherman.

Banker laughed. That's the best part.

When the time is right,
you could announce an IPO, sell your company to the public.

You become very, very rich.

You make millions, millions.

And then what? Well, then you can retire it.

Move to a small coastal village, sleep late, fish,

pray with your grandkids, take siestas,

stroll to the village,
sip a wine, play your guitar with your friend.

I loved reading that.

Think about the entire enterprise, the potential

creating this vast structure

to obtain something that we already have.

Here, it's a story, and it's written to weave it all together.

Are there places like this in our life?

Are there times where we are doing this

and where we're being convinced by other people

to follow a dream
that is validating their vision of how to live?

Or are we doing it ourselves?

Are we chasing something that we actually already have?

A big thing that I want to help people see and,

this channel that so much of what we look for,
we already possess.

We live in a culture that teaches us that conditions us, that

we have to purchase everything that we need, including health.

That health is somehow a commodity that we can buy.

Instead of something that we are,
something that we do, something that we are being.

Something that arises naturally
when the conditions support it, that we just buy it.

Same doubles for our mental and emotional state.

So much of what is being sold in society today

is that you can purchase

contentment, that a certain amount of money,

a certain amount of buying of things or experiences

is going to bring satisfaction, peace, contentment.

Just tell you my honest, reflection.

I don't see that either of these propositions are true
or that they work.

Health is something that you do.

It is a way of being.

And a space of peace and contentment.

Whatever we are doing to try to reach that point
we had it all along exists inside of our being.

Whatever you say it inside of this physical, mental,

emotional structure that we are navigating the world through.

A process of finding peace

and contentment in the mind and body.

As far as I can see, it's like a big prerequisite

to getting on a sustainable health path in the first place.

You're saying yesterday

a lot of people trying to punish their way to health,
a lot of people putting themselves in a box of rules

and things that they have to follow,
or saying things like no pain, no gain.

There's benefit to that potentially. Right?

So many things that can be half true.

You can.

Human being is strong and powerful. I want people to see that.

I want you to see human being can do incredible things.

Strive and overcome incredible challenges.

Move through great difficulty.

Do things that we thought we could never do.

But a process of a health path.

If we are just having that mindset,
but we don't feel called to it.

If we are intentional in bringing intensity
to things that we are trying to do,

that is a beautiful process that can be inspiring

and you can lean into and find strength

in an attitude like that,
but only if you are called to it, only

if it is bringing a measure of joy from it.

Space that we're really navigating in our society today.

Tell me how you feel about it.

Is just pressure from every avenue,

from political things and news of finance and economy and

and all these sort of things
and just the whole social construct.

So much anger, so much pressure, a whole culture built

around of valuing our worth and what we are

as a person by what we do and what we are currently doing.

And it doesn't leave any space to breathe.

It doesn't leave any space to just be, to say that,

you know, there's value simply in existing here.

When we think about the things,
do we already have these things?

How do you encounter it?

If peace and contentment is inside, how do we find it?

We talked about that a lot yesterday,
about flowing through the space,

letting these hormones, the dopamine,
the withdraw that we experience

if we aren't consuming something that the real work off

and that we have to do is to pass through that space

so that we can make it to the other side is not that far away.

This is what I want to tell people.

Good health isn't that far away.

A space of contentment isn't necessarily

that far away sometimes certainly can feel like it,
especially when we're dealing

with, great difficulty
and the challenges that come through, life.

But having a practice of something
like this, centering the thoughts,

bringing intention to these spaces, as we practice that,

we start to teach the mind and the body.

Now we're going to be okay here.

Then we are more resilient.

It's a process of building resilience.

Then when the difficulty comes
that we pretty sure are going to come our way in life,

okay, we've built the structure, the habits,

the practices, the strength to help us flow through it.

And from that place, grounded, centered.

To just to say it, do you say these words to yourself?

Just makes me take a deep breath.

That's the foundational practice.

Now, the core practices to cope with, deal with,

minimize, reduce, get rid of stress.

Right.

Just to breathe it out centers the body and the mind.

Once we flow through that space, have you done it?

You you try to clear out a mental space,
maybe say even I've got ten minutes here.

And between things that I got to do,
instead of grabbing the phone, instead of doing something else

instead of whatever it is,
you can just have a little relationship with myself here.

I do a little check in to.

I'm open to it.

I know it's going to be a little pleasant, unpleasant.

I'm going to sit here in this moment.

I'm going to want to do something, but then I don't.

I'm going to let the thoughts kind of come out.

I'm going to let the nervous system settle down,

like it's like a gift that you can give to yourself,
even in a brief moment,

even a few minutes, or trying to do it here
just for a few minutes.

Think some centering thoughts.

Engage in some centering practices.

This is the process of how you actually be present in a space
just to to be there,

to not have to do anything else,
to not actually do anything else, just to be in that moment.

And now we are getting into that type of space.

Do we have already what we're seeking?

See? Oh, and that space we see, hey, actually I am here.

I am as an and everything is okay.

Like we can exist in that space.

That's a way of being.

This is the way we want to flow through the world.
At least for me.

I say this is how I want to try to flow through the world
present.

In each moment, not dependent on some other thing.

That is the process of finding contentment internally,

finding an inner strength
to approach the difficulty that we face.

We realize we already have contentment.

That is a very, very, very strong place.

To find centering beliefs that we have.

Things that we know,
including that we know that we're going to be all right.

And what I really want to help people create,
we've done a number of things, especially in the fall.

We did a bunch of these sessions reading through
the creative act, artistic books about self-expression

through art, that our way of being in the world

is actually our artistic expression of life.

Such a beautiful thought.

We just be don't have to do just have to be already have it.

This is where I really want to go.
Even in the weight loss space.

Even say, hey,
I want to release some energy, okay, from the body.

This is what a fasting space can offer.

From one perspective you say, that is something to do.

From another perspective
you say it's nothing and nothing to do.

And from one perspective you say this is trying to accomplish
something that we don't yet have.

And from another perspective.

Say we already
are this experience where we're being healthy in the moment.

We don't have to wait for anything to happen before

we are experiencing health in a moment.

And maybe if you say,
oh, is that a mental construct, here's a mental construct.

Just imagine that you already have it.

Vision. It. That's part of that program.

And trying to program the mind, giving ourselves
every positive thought and encouraging idea.

So many negative, Thoughts coming at us,

negative experiences, difficulty
that is happening in the world.

Are we creating at least a space for ourselves
where we can just be in that moment?

Experience contentment in that moment.

The space that I want for people with a fasting space.

If you're trying to use that path to move toward health
in any fashion

weight loss, blood sugar, digestive problems,

mental health processes
so many good things can flow out of a space.

It is a process of finding contentment.

Without food, we can practice that mental state

by just finding contentment without any kind of distraction.

And if someone says, it's overwhelming to me
to move through a fasting space like this, okay,

let's just start by practicing it mentally getting,

using our imagination, seeing ourself practicing it.

This is people use visioning for all kinds of things
like athletics, people, high level athletes

picturing themselves doing it, mentally doing the rap

so much is the mind, the thought that controls everything.

So practicing for a sport,

you got to do the physical thing in the body too,
but you can wrap it in the mind

20 times and seeing yourself, and then you can go practice it.

A lot of people do that dancers and stuff
that doing the routine mentally

and then helping the body to flow through it.

Take that mindset into our health process.

Have a visioning space vision.

Your perfect health day.

See what you are feeling in these moments.

See how you are approaching the difficult experiences.

Know like. See the patterns.

Oh, every time I get to this place, I have this experience.

Here's how I'm going to approach it.

Maybe help you proactively say, maybe I need to change
some things about my environment so that I can support it.

Maybe you get in and say, see, oh, look, this is what I do.

I'm going to see this thing, and then I'm going
to feel this way and that's going to make this difficult.

And let's practice changing

how we respond, ultimately changing how we feel

so that we can flow through that space

realizing, hey, contentment is already here.

I don't have to do anything else to do it, to receive
it is already here.

So this is the other side of what is sold in society
so much as society sells.

Like you got to buy stuff and consume things
in order to find something

like, here's the total inversion fasting, showing the process.

So many things are finding things,
actually saying no to things, removing things,

realizing
that we could actually see what it is that is going on here.

If we just cleared out the space
to see what is already present.

It's reminding me of, I think there's like.

I don't remember exactly.

Some famous sculptor was talking about, like,
they're carving this huge block of stone.

They're like, the statue is already inside of it,
like British removing everything that isn't a part of it.

You know, it's like we take everything out in the sculptures
already there.

Isn't that cool?

Think of that.

Just in a weight loss process,
like the leaner version of ourself.

Like you're trying to lose weight, says like the sculptor.

And we're just letting go of everything
that isn't part of this

leaner version of ourself is already there,
just like the sculptor.

We're just releasing it.

There's fasting as a process.

This is how energy flows out of the body.

Body fat is energy.

It's stored by the body because the body cares about us.

Body not broken body, is trying to collect resources

from the environment
when more energy came in than we needed, body said.

And then what we do, we just
we put this in the storage system, maybe comes in

handy, helps us out, and then it really can.

It's just pros and cons to these things.

Body not broken.

Think how much judgment is brought into this space

and how people are labeled as diseased and broken

when the body is just trying to help us in the midst

of a very, very confusing and difficult society.

It's just kind of like.

Hurts to even think about it enough to say,

well, let's take the pressure off this whole situation.

It's like you let's say no to so much of this judgment.

So much of this labels in this thing is just like, really
look at what is happening here.

Like, what do we have here?

We have.

Health is right in here. See, there's pros and cons.

There are negatives. There we go.

Body can store energy for us if we have

had an experience
where we have pushed that a little farther, right.

Like we're leaning into the cons side of it.

Body is carrying a burden to do that is why

we can look at fasting or any other sort of process.

Pick your path.

If you can lean into an exercise process that helps the energy
to flow out in a better way, it's perfect.

It's just fine.

Choosing the healthiest foods of course.

So important mainly means saying no to the processed foods
that have not exist.

We say no to that.

Say yes to the most nourishing things that were.

Part of this experience.

That the body knows how to work with. Okay.

And then fasting is like the pinnacle to me.

Part of that process is to say
we're saying no to everything right now.

Saying no to everything except for what's already here.

So that's just turning everything here, saying that.

Lena's version of myself is already here.

I'm just saying yes to that right now,
so I don't need anything else.

We can let go of everything that isn't there.

See, we already have that.

You don't see it. Do you believe that?

You see that the leanest, healthiest,
strongest version of ourself.

It's already in here, right now. Like.

We don't have to seek anything external to find it.

We already have it.

The process of actually having it, like,

without anything else, okay, is

is not a process of buying anything or consuming anything.

It's a process of saying no
to everything that no longer serves us.

Do you see the physiology in the body?

Do you see the process? Say.

I want this version of myself that I choose.

If it's not your choice, it's
no problem, no judgment, no pressure to do it.

I'm going to start living my life
in a way of being that is just.

That lets that emerge.

Even if it could be a little uncomfortable.

So is fasting always perfectly comfortable?

Like, not really, you know, is it perfectly comfortable
to feel hungry for a period of time?

Like, not really.

It's it's not the most pleasant experience.

And especially in the beginning,
especially when you're new to it,

especially when it's like,
is this something you can really do?

We're trying to learn a way of being in the world,
and we say, like, of course, our default state.

We want to be comfortable and like, who doesn't?

I mean, I do okay, so you say to

to abstain from eating for a period of time to say,

seems like the path for me here is to say no

to this or something healthier can emerge.

Say, is that always comfortable?

Listen, change of any kind is rarely comfortable.

Just isn't.

But that's okay. It's also okay.

We're we're in a space.

You understand the saying rock and a hard place, right?

Struggling.

With too much weight
that we don't want isn't comfortable either.

If you see what I'm saying.

There are cons to this.

Like we said, pros and cons.

Do it.

Which? Which discomfort?

Do we accept?

Do we choose?

It's easier to say in the moment
okay, I'm going to not choose hunger

because I eat something and I immediately feel better.

And the hunger is resolved.

But then that choice is balancing it out against the deeper
emotional experience

where you say, here is a goal that I want.

I want the healthier version to emerge to.

This isn't really comfortable for me either.

This is leading to other health problems
because this is in communication

with our whole being in this experience.

What I really want people to see on this channel
through this experience

is that choosing in the short term,

something maybe stretching ourselves
a little bit, see, isn't this

the not the most comfortable choice to accept into my

being some hunger for a little while?

Actually, as you practice, as you come to see,

in my experience, not so bad.

You can come to reframe.

It can in many circumstances come to feel

even more pleasant
or so I know what is happening here is hunger.

Experience is not so bad because do you see results from it?

You see, I open up some of this space. I see what's happening.

I'm giving my body the opportunity to come back into balance.

Can feel that.

I can see it.

I'm willing to accept this experience into my life,

to give a gift to my body, because I'm accepting that burden,

to feel that experience
so that we can take the burden off of the body.

Bodies carry the burden for a long time.

You see, we want to show some love
back to the body and say, hey, thank you.

You know,
thank you for doing your best to provide this resource for me.

I'm just opening up this space

so he can use it now, and the body will do it.

And as long as you are choosing
that out of a place of love and kindness.

Not forcing anything.

Not punishing anything,
then you flow through that space, even in a joyful way.

That's the only way
I want people to flow through a fasting space

joyful, positive, courageous.

And if you're not in a space like that,
I just say, don't do it like never do it.

Take some time walking along the riverbank.

That's what I say fasting is is the flow
or trying to get in a flow

through it, not struggling, minimizing the struggle.

Struggle is everywhere in life, right?

Trying to minimize the struggle

flow in a direction of least resistance.

The direction of least resistance
that's going in the direction we want.

The path of least resistance in society.

Just do what everybody's doing is flowing in a direction
that is not healthy.

So we are trying to thread the needle, you know,

how do we find the flow that's against the flow really?

Gracefully navigating it. That's what I want.

If you're not in that place,
maybe you just come hang out here and hang out.

Simple fasting.

We do the fasting space.

We're talking about things and lean into the other path.

You know, just moving the body as much as you can see.

This is the other thing, such a good thing to do.

Lean and strong.

You got to have a dietary practice
and a movement practice to hit that wonderful space.

And then the foundational space,
making sure our mindset in the right space.

We don't want burdens burdensome.

Let go of as many of them as we can.

Really nice to share this space with you today.

Have a beautiful day.

Think on these things.

Think about what you really want, who you really are.

What is the person you are trying to be?

What is the way that you are expressing yourself

in, this life?

Do you already have in some surprising way,

what you are already trying to find?

And from that space, can you find the content?

Can you find a place of wholeness
and then flow out from that space,

in health, in a way of being

that is just bringing joy, love and light both to yourself.

Everybody we come into, encounter with.

I hope so I'm going to try to do it today.

Let's bring, bring the positive energy to everything

we do in health and life today.

And I will look forward to being back with you tomorrow.

Have a great day, everybody.