Fasting Space

Fasting space.
one of the most profound spaces that we can have in our life
in our society today, so often overlooked what it even is.
So a fasting space.
Sitting right at the intersection
of our physical health and our mental health.
The physical open space in the body
space where we can rest and reset physiologically, is a mirror for the emotional landscape that we're navigating. At the same time, fasting space emotionally, a space without distraction,
a space where we're not using food.
To approach the emotional space to get us through that space where so we can open up,
this space.
And today we're going to do that by focusing on a practice and a concept of forgiveness.
A really, really deep, emotional concept that,
in my experience,
we don't talk very much about in our society.
But we're going to talk about it today because it's so, so important
Here's what I want to explore today.
Fasting is creating open space in the body, and we talk a lot about the benefits of that
space to bring down our insulin and blood sugar levels. Space to run autophagy pathways. Space to lose weight. Think of fasting is like letting go of the weight is what we're trying to do on a weight loss channel. We're trying to lose the weight.
But now let's look at the mirror of forgiveness, another practice of openness. Because all these things weave together our physical and mental health. It's only a mental construct that lets us separate them. Really. They're the same thing. We are a being, and that is a physical and a mental being.
Forgiveness. Think of it this way. The practice of opening up space in the heart,
of letting go of a different kind of weight.
Are there weights
that are holding you down? When we think,
think of this mirror or saying, okay, I want to be lighter in my physical body. I want some amount of weight loss so that this physical being is lighter and moving through the world more easily. Okay. What does that look like? To head to the heart,
the heart of the matter.
Maybe much more important. Weight to lose is the weight that is burdening your heart. Your spirit,
for so many different reasons. We've been talking lately about trauma, about things that happen to us, loss.
And darkness that come to us either because of things that happened or things that didn't happen. Things that someone did to us, things that we experience in the world that we wish were not the case. And how do you feel it? You know, we can store all that. Right in here.
And we were talking especially on that trauma session the other day. How do you get down into deep layers
of our being,
where things like that reside in some sort of.
How would you say it? Abstract or or tangible way.
You know, a fasting space. This program that I'm trying to bring to you, a fasting space program like a container where we can look at all of these things in as objective and thoughtful way as possible.
So we come toward it,
gather together, move toward, these things together. Helpful
when we're moving towards something difficult, like a darkness that we might be holding in ourselves. Helpful to do that together.
So here's a picture that I took a few weeks ago. I was up in northern Wisconsin, did a half marathon, with some friends.
And this is a river that I had the great privilege of, staying by for the evening. And I just loved how this,
sky and the trees are reflected in the water. And so here is a very,
I thought, beautiful space to reflect. Right. So here's the reflection in the water. So I have this kind of idea as we're reflecting today.
About this topic.
Give you a definition. So.
you know, how would you define forgiveness? Actually
doesn't have to be just one dictionary definition. But here's Merriam Webster on forgiveness to frame our thinking,
to cease to feel resentment against
something, against an offender, against something that happens,
I think, in our society. Tell me what you think. When people think about forgiveness.
I mean, it's rare that I hear you say, I forgive you is like
We've been talking a lot about how we substitute things. We're confronted with a difficult situation, forgiving someone, difficult.
We tend to have these kind of short circuits that go in an easier direction. And the easier direction is to say, hey, it's okay.
Isn't that much easier to say?
Most people will say instead of forgiving someone,
say, hey, it's okay, but think about the language. Like, let's take some time at the outset
and think about what is forgiveness really? And what is it not?
Forgiveness, from my perspective,
is certainly not saying something that happened
is okay.
And so when I think when we use that kind of language, say, oh, it's okay,
hey, that might not necessarily be true.
And secondarily, it isn't necessarily helpful. It might actually be harmful. We were talking the other day in our trauma discussion about how
these dark things get buried deep down inside of us.
And that, that is can be like planting a seed that just grows. And so how do we stop doing that?
Maybe something for us to think about is to stop
covering over forgiveness and just saying that things are okay when they're not. Isn't that burying it?
I thought it was really interesting. You know, in this definition it says it's a feeling.
Think on that for a little bit.
To cease to feel resentment.
That's a track, right? I mean, that is a trick.
It's, And by that, I just mean that's really deeper. I think a lot of times we externalize forgiveness. We say forgiveness is about somebody else.
I'm forgiving you. It's almost like we're blessing them or something. Like,
good for you. Like you should be happy now. You're forgiven. Isn't forgiveness an internal work isn't a process for us.
It's not really about the other person is not saying that it's okay or the situation, the loss, whatever it is.
If we're trying to let go of something, this is what I'm showing us, the parallels. We're trying to lose weight or trying to let go of that. That is not serving us right now. Okay. What else can we use as that pattern that can flow together, that we can release, that is not serving us?
So when we say forgiveness is about not feeling
resentment,
it's about letting go of the emotional weight.
It's about us. And sometimes we think, do you experience this?
You have resentment. You have anger about something.
I know I've felt this way like
if we
keep feeling angry about it,
it's easier to see with a person, someone who hurt us if we keep being angry at them.
It's like we're getting back at them. Like we don't want to let go of that anger
or the sadness or something, because do we feel like
we're getting them? You know? But isn't that just eating us? Isn't that weighing us down? Isn't this what forgiveness is, is about not allowing that experience to control us and weigh us down anymore?
That's why this analogy, letting go of it, getting rid of the weight of it.
Forgiveness. Very deep personal practice of bringing lightness
and then light
light into the body. We think about things that we're trying to forgive. We use this metaphor of light and dark. There's darkness. We've talked about how do you bring light into darkness?
Talking about some traumatic thing that we've buried deep in there.
It's like got its roots in there.
They say like, dig in there, light. You know, a seed won't grow if the if you dig up the roots, you put it in the light, it won't grow. That's not how it works. So we want to bring light into a dark situation. I think forgiveness is a path to do that.
And to me, this path.
You know, maybe for the right person, in the right way.
This is the most important thing.
Letting go.
Choosing the path of peace. Think of that move. We're holding on to it.
that's the path of struggle. That's the path of difficulty. That's the path of taking our limited
mental capacity like we've been seeing and focusing it on this thing.
We're going to keep them from getting away with it. We're going to keep these things. We're doing this okay. Forgiveness is saying, I'm not going to feel this resentment anymore. And then this is the emotion of it, right? Letting go. And you can see what that's doing already. It's creating openness.
Already see the emotions are connected in our being when we think it.
When I do this, I, I intuitively I take a big deep breath and openness is a concept. It's connected. Our body understands it as we're forgiving, as we're releasing.
That's lightning up that that is cueing this system. It's telling us, take the big deep breath. Things are okay.
I was having, the thought the other day we were saying, like.
Shallow, deep breathing becomes this habit in this pattern.
That becomes a way of being. And because shallow, rapid breathing is the stress situation, it's communicating to the body. And the body understands, okay, like we got to be on edge. Things are not okay. Might not be safe. Got to be vigilant.
That feeds into this whole process. The chronic inflammation, the hormonal dysregulation.
Like we've been saying look what happens. You just forgave something.
Take deep breath and let it out. Now the parasympathetic flow is happening. Now the body is calming down.
We forgave our self for things. How many things? We how we are. See, we're externalizing forgiveness in so many ways. We think forgiveness is all about someone else. Forgive ourselves. This is the incredible cycle that can develop where we are
bringing guilt and disappointment and frustration from things that we did or didn't do, and that can really spiral.
Then we can be laying on the weight of
everything, because of course, we are so much more aware of everything in our experience that we did or didn't do. And then we can really pile it on
to ourselves.
Yesterday we were talking about the illusion of understanding. So much of what happens is that our intuitive, fast thinking, which is like an association machine, it grabs on
to things that happen. It it ignores huge amounts of context. It grabs on to big things that happened. A mistake we made
becomes these
nodes in the stories that we weave about ourselves.
That I'm not good enough, that I'm awful and I've done all these things and I you know, and it weaves into this story and then that story, because of the way the mind is working,
creates this narrative about who we are.
And this is how we can get trapped in these emotional cycles of these things.
What is the antidote to that
is forgiving it, letting it go, recognizing that we are not defined by these things and that we are choosing now with our definition,
to no longer feel resentment and regret
about it, to no longer bring the guilt onto ourselves or these things.
That's the process. Letting go.
When we build an experience like that.
That process can flow back into the other side. Openness. Anywhere,
affecting openness throughout the system in the body and say, I'm really struggling to practice fasting even for a little bit.
I need to let go
the food, the consumption things. Why is that? This is the sort of thing to unpack in the journal, in the meditation space.
What is happening in there?
Is there something else that is the unlock somewhere else? Maybe there is something that needs to be forgiven, not for anyone else other than yourself.
Let's just take it away from our personal selves for a little bit and just say, hypothetically, let's talk about a hypothetical person. So no pressure. The hypothetical person
as
an experience where they were traumatized, they were assaulted, they had a terrible experience, happened to them,
and they're harboring
deep
resentment
about it. And they are using food to
cope and cover over that processed food, said the socially acceptable drug of our time.
Because it works right, doesn't work. You're experiencing an emotional difficulty. You can eat your way through it
if that's the pattern that is helping you get through. It's an adaptive pattern. It's helpful. Like we don't, you know, take off the judgment about it, but just realize for this person, for what it is.
What is going to be most harmful to some to that person or hypothetical person
to you? Don't you understand is the calorie, you know, 1500 calories? You know, this is where we hit people like you have to hit the calorie target. We've reduced the human experience down to a numbers game. That's what I was telling people. The other day I read that interesting song,
numbers
is always a number that can make you feel bad about yourself, basically taking the human experience.
I just, I think about this in medicine. I know forgiveness is nowhere in medicine that I have really encountered.
How many people coming in
say we want to help someone be healthy?
They've experienced horrible drama. I mean trauma and darkness in their life. You see an orange you need you need to eat 1500 calories.
You need to start an Excel sheet where you start tracking your macros.
Like maybe for the right person, it does. And I always tell people you can have benefit from that. Sometimes I will tell people to do that, but that is way down the line from something, like this.
I will tell you, look at this quote
that I found as I was trying to find inspiring quotes about forgiveness.
The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward.
This is what forgiveness is allowing us to do from something, to move forward from it, to release control of it over us.
Not to say it was okay, not to to forget about it,
not to endorse it in any way,
but to be able to move forward.
Never pretending. Oh, I wasn't hurt by it. Oh.
But just
letting it go so that we can move forward. That's what it means to let go of the weight of it. I think if we're on a journey. We've said this. Look at our beautiful lake. See? See, there's a path along this. We're trying to head forward.
Through our pathway. Over. Say, our campsite is way on that distant shore.
I don't want to be carrying these huge bags all the way. You're going to be dragging it. You're like, my arms are killing me like it. And my back is so tired. These huge packs of stuff we don't even need. Okay, just set those out. And then our. This is how we're finding joy on the journey.
What we want
in a path toward health that isn't just a fad, that isn't something we do for two months and say, I tried that for a little bit.
We want something sustainable. In order to have a process that is sustainable, it has to be enjoyable. It has, to me, making our life better. Why would we stick with it?
So when we're talking about an openness, we're talking about fasting is like, okay, now we have forgiven. Now we are getting to this deep level where we say, my being is lighter.
See then. And that can flow out over into this physical side. Someone is saying, I've struggled for so long to get any sort of dietary process that I feel in control of.
When we're starting a really UN packet,
this is how we can get lightness in our journey and move forward in a place without struggle.
Practice opening up the space anywhere in your life, and maybe the journal will be telling you, where is the place that I need to start?
Maybe it's it's with, this, forgiveness.
Not an easy thing to do. So let's flow back to the other side. Let's look to the fasting space. So just like we can struggle to open up a space without food in many ways, we can struggle to stop snacking. We can struggle to open up space without a meal. We can. We can struggle for many different reasons.
Without forgiveness, the trauma has the space to live again every day. Oh yes.
And I think we're just we're giving the space to it, by it, by our withholding of forgiveness is like we are just giving it the space. We say, just stay there.
But we don't want to do that.
We want to be more,
it can be the easier decision in the short term is, say, this was dark. I don't want to look at it. I don't want to go there.
I don't even want to say forgiveness of it.
But then it sits, then it stays, then it keeps living.
When we want to move forward.
So I don't want this darkness living in me. Forgive it and release it. That's how we move forward from it. Absolutely.
Let's say you're struggling to do it. Very common. We have a very difficult thing to do. This is why we got to really dial in, on it.
Now we're circling back around on the.
Physical side, fasting, a physical pattern of openness, a process of openness in the body.
Just like forgiveness can lighten us up, can help us go on a fasting path. If we're really struggling to forgive something, to move, to let it go and move beyond it.
We're looking, you know, we're testing, we're probing. We're looking for the path of least resistance. There's no rule or right answer.
Maybe the emotional situation that you're in right now.
Or have been for a long time
is, I'm having trouble
with it. I'm having trouble having the openness, the perspective to let go of it.
The roots are deep.
Maybe fasting like a little hand spade, where you can start to get in there and start practicing some openness in a tiny little bit, is what I was saying the other day. We think fasting only means 16 aid or omad or like all all day of fasting
here, we can break this down into much, much smaller parts. Since this is how we keep ourselves from being overwhelmed, we respect the intensity of a fasting space, the value of it, and how easy it is to overlook or say hey, in the morning, I'm usually eating right away.
I'm going to open up this fasting space, you know, just for ten minutes before I'm consuming something else. I'm going to give this open space to my body.
Just set aside, you know, we're all busy. We all have demands. Let's take 5 or 10 minutes even. That is the very first place to start
and practice some openness.
In our day, physically sit in that space, feel it. That's what we see. Okay? Forgiveness about a feeling as I haven't thought about it that way to, in the past, I haven't thought, oh, the feeling of forgiveness, the definition. Remember,
cease to feel resentment.
Now we're over on the physical side. Now we're in a fasting space. We're trying to literally get comfortable with it. So then we realize fasting is a feeling. Just like forgiveness is a feeling.
Fasting can be a feeling. And we tend to think. We say fasting. We think hunger, of course, right? But let's get deeper.
The feeling of fasting is the physical feeling of openness.
That is taking us toward that same space, letting go, embracing openness. We start practicing that in our life, a little bit of openness that we practice physically. Get that feeling,
getting comfortable with it, realizing all.
I thought this was bad,
but actually it's okay. It's a feeling of openness.
Same thing on the other side, the forgiveness. We don't want to do it.
It doesn't feel right in the moment. We think, I need to hang on to the anger, the feeling, the resentment, but then we do it and then we realize, oh, this feeling is good. Then we are feeling lighter.
Then we are feeling lighter on each side. Physically, emotionally, in our spirit, in our being. One practice can reinforce the other.
If we're struggling in one area, we're finding the path of openness that allows this whole system to open up.
That's what we want total flourishing physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, flourishing where we say, I'm experiencing peace, contentment, joy, satisfaction. I'm not struggling. I'm flowing through this space now without struggle. That's what we've been trying to get through with our psychology readings.
Understanding how do we get in these spaces? Well, we're flowing through a space without struggling. That is a practice. That is something we build and we have to be thoughtful. That's why we call it a creative act and a way of being something that we construct thoughtfully. Day by day. We work at it. It's like any sort of practice.
You don't become a master
overnight, start at the novice level, but even attain novice levels of fasting, bringing benefit to the body. How about a novice level of forgiveness? Maybe there is something that you can, be pretty skilled that right away because it's just it's just one thing, one difficult action that you do.
To let go.
I.
Think I was going to suggest I made a note.
That's what I was calling it. The forgiveness fast.
Maybe we have a concept of forgiveness fast
that is trying to merge both of these practices
into one thoughtful space that helps us move through it. Maybe that's what I was starting to describe. Maybe that starts in as simple as 5 or 10 minutes. It could extend into something much bigger, into an hour's into a day to say, take a day and have an experience, whatever you're open to, you know, rules on it.
This is a concept that you can bring into your life wherever you're at physically, with your ability to open up a food free space comfortably, thoughtfully. That feels like an encouragement, and that is bringing energy into your being. That's how I want you feeling. If you're fasting, I want you to feel that space like, oh, this is openness manifested in my body.
This is I can feel my body coming alive. I can feel the energy is being mobilized. This is why it is so empowering. Realizing you're in a space, you're trying to lose weight. You see it. You can feel it. The weight is here. You see the body is mobilizing. That energy is there to serve you. We give space for that energy to fulfill its purpose.
Come out of the body, serve us. And in that process of serving us, that's how we rid ourselves of it, a beautiful process in that space. Then
physically, we're opening up that space. We're feeling the openness
in a forgiveness fast is bringing our intention. We've been talking a lot about intention, setting our intention, moving forward.
Love in action.
Right. That was intention love in action. And so here we are in a forgiveness space.
Forgiveness of course, really connected in to a loving, compassionate mindset.
And then we've seen with our definitions about ourself first bringing
love and compassion to ourselves.
Very hard to give something we do not have
fill ourself up with love and compassion that can flow outward
first. So that's the forgiveness at the root level to let go of the darkness so that love, kindness and compassion can flow outward from that.
So a forgiveness fast.
Are you aware of it at the start? Something I need to let go of that is difficult.
Forgiveness fast can be specifically, intentionally about that, to move toward it, to open up the physical space in the body
so that the whole being resources are freed instead of having to run digestive processes, instead of having to do all this metabolism body is saying, we are very intentionally taking all of our resources toward
helping us achieve this forgiveness that we are seeking.
Now, maybe there is another layer to it where you say, I don't even know.
Is there forgiveness that needs to happen? You say, this is not really a concept that I'm familiar with. Is there something deeper? This is how we merge all these worlds together. Forgiveness fast says open up that space
physically in the body, even if it's just ten minutes.
I'm going to start a practice of openness. Ten minutes at the start of the day, or even at the end, wherever it is intentional,
and then see what comes up in that space
when we're setting our mind.
We're seeing, what do I need to let go of?
And then notice this is a process of building awareness. We've talked about how do we build our awareness.
What comes into that space. You opened up the space. Something is going to fill it.
This is this is bridging a gap between fasting and a meditation space is creating openness in our whole being physically and mentally. Something is going to fill that space,
you know, think about the thoughts that will come to you.
You've had the experience. We can just think some of the thoughts might be, why am I really doing this? Is this necessary?
Of course it's not urgent. This is the thing we need to, in that space, take away what is urgent versus what is essential. We've got our list of 100 things to do in a day. Taking ten minutes of openness, not very urgent, say, might be very low on the list of things to do, but is it essential?
Is it the actual type of thing that can help us figure out some of these things on a deep level? Okay, another thing that might come in I'm hungry. I'm normally eating now. Okay. So this would be a very normal physiologic experience that might come in
a very good thing to unpack.
And this is why it's a practice. But as we're going through it,
as you practice it, as you build the experience of it
and you increase the openness,
if there is something in here that needs to be forgiven, I'll tell you, it's it's going to come out if you give it the space.
To come out, we say.
Like Pat said,
did you say it?
Without forgiveness, the trauma has the space to live again every day. If there if there is trauma, if there is darkness, if there is anger and resentment
about something that needs to be forgiven,
then it's there.
And when we don't address it, okay, it's got its own space. What we are doing through this practice.
Creating our own space to get that out, we open up the fasting space. We open up the mental space. We set our intention to say what is here. We give it the space. That's like forcing that out. It is going to get that up to the surface. And so the experience of that, maybe you have experienced it, but if you haven't
in that sort of space, the thoughts will come.
Maybe they don't come right away, maybe they've been buried very deep. Maybe it takes some practice of a couple of weeks of doing this.
Maybe you have to get the physical sensations out of the way. If you've never practiced fasting, okay, it can take a number of weeks of any sort of level of intensity of fasting for that practice to feel less intense.
And that's because the body adjusts and strengthens, and that strengthening process is a very healthy thing,
practicing in the body, how to access the stored energy that is within it, a very, very healthy thing. That is the process of lowering insulin resistance and of of burning excess physically, as the intensity of that comes down,
we deepen our experience.
That's going to let you open up more and more space. Okay. That's another distraction that's out of the way. At some point
the thoughts will come in. Maybe it's a memory I remember now. Is it really coming and that sort of space. That's what happens. You it's a
the fasting space okay. For people who are not
thoughtfully moving toward it.
You say, oh, it's all about hunger. It's all about struggling through a space. Is something difficult and people have said, oh, I
probably not worth it. Okay. But when you start practicing and learning to do it, you realize what it's really about.
Is bringing rest
and calm to the body and the mind the same time?
Finding peace and contentment.
If I'm going to try to do a meditation, which I have said, I'm not skillful, that is something that really, work at,
I'm not going to do it
after I just eat some big meal. It's the vibe is not just in my personal experience, is not it? I'm going to really try to do it as much as possible in a fasting space.
If it's the afternoon, I'm going to try to put it away from lunch. You know, I'm going to try to put it in a space where this whole physical system is shutting down, because it's like we're saying, we are one being. We want to give our whole being physical, mental, same thing space in order to do the difficult work of understanding.
Why do I feel the way I do? When are the traumas and the darkness that needs to come out? We give it the space to do that. That's the way I would, say it. So maybe starting the day with that practice is a way to do it. You can do it any time. Maybe closing the day in that space is what works with your lifestyle and commitments.
Any time. It doesn't have to be 18 hours of fasting. You say, I had dinner, you know, the only time is after the kids are in bed or whatever it is, they don't stress about it. No rules. Take the time where you can get it. The intention being the most important mental space to allow, these things to go.
So that could be a forgiveness fast. See if that is a process that helps you identify, move toward,
and then move away and let go.
From whatever the most important thing is.
I wrote down a list of some questions.
To, to frame, this mindset going forward.
This would be a question that you can just start a very.
Simple question who or what is weighing on me today?
That is a very simple place to start.
What am I carrying now that is no longer serving me?
Maybe these are the types of questions you could bring into this space. Is here carved out ten minutes or I carved out a longer amount of time.
What am I carrying a try to center that and then see what comes in.
Here's an interesting question to think about in that space. What would letting go
of that feel like physically in the body?
We think okay is emotion or trying to let go of it. What would it feel like
physically to let go of whatever it is that's coming into these questions? What is weighing me down?
And then here is a question I came up with for someone who's specifically struggling with hunger. And that experience has struggled to open up fasting space, struggling with hunger, try to use both of these sides together to support each other.
What peace
is trying to emerge underneath
my hunger?
Because there is peace there. There is contentment. I believe any human being who is thoughtfully moving toward a space like this can find, and this is what's most important to me.
Peace and contentment without food for a period of time. You can experience that. If you struggle to do what you say, where is that peace? What is the peace that is under this hunger? And what does the hunger really mean?
So question for contemplation.
So fasting, openness in the body, forgiveness, openness in the heart, both leading us toward peace and contentment in a way that is opening up renewal,
vitality, health, a path forward in joy and wholeness.
I hope you experienced that. Let me know your thoughts as you reflect on and practice this, through the week.