Fasting Space

Welcome to fasting space.

So nice to have you here.

Hope you are well today.

Whether you are well or not feeling so well,
let's move toward wellness together.

The fasting space I like to say it can be very simple
in both theory and in practice.

It doesn't have to be a deep experience

or say we can have a superficial fasting experience,
meaning just make a few small changes.

Think atomic habits.

Break things down into a very small steps.

Open up a little bit more.

Space without food might mean delaying a meal,

decreasing some snacking,
just opening up some windows without food

so we can replace it with something else from energy within

fasting space, we're trying to release an awaken energy

within ourselves in a way that benefits our body and life,
in a way that helps us to flow

through obstacles of all kinds that we have on a journey

toward greater wellness.

If that's on a fasting space ever is,
and it made your life a little bit better, I would say bless it.

And that is fantastic.

And if fasting even isn't for you, but the ideas of it,

maybe you don't practice it, but you say I like the ideas.

Also beautiful.

Nothing required,
no rules, only things that serve us and things that don't.

But I'll tell you, there's a shallow end of the pool,
and there's a deeper end of the pool.

And whether you are in a space

where fasting is difficult and you need help with it

to really unlock it, or it's a superficial practice
that you're flowing through and you say,

I just am interested in
what does a deeper level look like today?

Answer any questions you have.

If you're not even on the path to say, how do you get there,
let me know.

Do you have a fasting practice
and what does it look like and what is your experience?

I'd love to hear about it, but to me, fasting is so fascinating

because it is sitting really at the center of our being.

And it is.

We have these multiple beings,
at least from a certain point of view.

We have a mind, we have a body.

And I would say we also have a spirit.

And that isn't something you have to believe,

but it is something that many people believe.

And that's why I put the mandala here.

Mandala here is just

the summary from Wikipedia,

a sacred circular symbol originating from Sanskrit

meaning circle representing the cosmos, unity and wholeness.

Those are some things that I'd love for us to move toward.

In many spiritual traditions, I use balanced

geometric figures used as a tool for meditation,

something that can definitely take us into the same space,

marks a sacred space, or marks a journey.

From the outward self to the inward.

So I definitely want to take us on that sort of journey today.

Is that a journey that you are up for in life?

Journey from something superficial to something deep,

from something outward to something inward.

This is something that I really resonate with,
especially fasting.

See if we're on a weight loss path, aren't we trying
to get in a field that sometimes people talk about that?

How do I unlock? How do I find where is this energy?

How do I release it?

Think of the entire weight loss industry.

Isn't this what we're trying to do?

We're trying to exercise in some fashion to burn up energy.

We're trying to change our diet in some fashion

to create hopefully negative energy balance.

Let the energy out.

Maybe we're taking medications for the purpose

of trying to get into that space.

I am here primarily, say, a natural path.

Is there a way to lose weight and move toward

metabolic health
naturally, working with the body instead of fighting against it?

Recognizing health
that is already present without having to buy it or consume it?

I did a session a long time ago.

Minimalism and fasting.

Minimalism as a philosophy.

Doing more with less.

Okay, you can take that to your living room.

Say we're going to decorate, arrange

our furniture and the amount of it in a minimalist fashion.

Not so much. Only the essential to me.

Fasting is minimalism for the body, the bringing it into our life

like literally into ourselves.

Think about minimalism, minimalism in the living room.

Maybe we don't need three couches there when one will suffice,
you know?

Think about
what does that mean in our body when we bring that concept in?

Help to clear out things we don't need?

Do you see the parallel and how we're walking on a path today?

We are walking on a path of forgiveness.

When you're sitting at the space,
I said the intersection of our physical body,

our mental experience, whatever

you believe about the spiritual existence that we have.

Okay, I say forgiveness is something we can see
more in a spiritual sense.

Can we bring it in to like our mind?

We're going to hear from some psychologists today,
not in any kind of spiritual sense.

Say our with our mental health, often
we have to forgive and think how many sessions we've done.

Seeing the body.

The mind is really the same.

Mind arises out of the body, presumably in some

mysterious fashion, the same thing.

When we get into that very interesting intersection,
what are the things that we find?

I say we find gratitude, compassion, love.

Such good things, such good things that can give us nourishment.

Talk about fasting.

You say, oh, we're not eating, are we not getting nourishment?

We are a type of being,
a type of person who needs more nourishment than just calories.

Okay, we're not just talking macronutrients here.

People say how much protein and how much carbs and how much fat.

Okay.

How much gratitude. Okay.

How much compassion.

These are the types of nourishment that I say we really need.

Okay, look at this quote that I found.

I want to center our thinking with this quote from Eckert Toll.

Emotion arises at the place where mind and body meets.

It is the body's reaction to your mind, or

you might say, a reflection of your mind in the body.

And I really loved this quote for sure,

because it's like really trying to take us into this space
where I'm saying today.

So emotion like if weight loss path,
if a path to a better health,

if change of any kind was easy, or if we were just like a robot,

like some kind of android, then we say
we just type in the program and we can just do it right.

But isn't it the case that when we change
and when we get into a different situation.

Okay. Emotions okay.

Emotions can inspire us.

They can carry us on, but they can also be difficult.

And isn't that what makes change complicated?

That it's emotional.

Especially when we get into changing how we eat,

what we eat, when we eat all of these things, right?

We see that hunger is a physical state in the body.

It's also an emotion, right? So you start trying to fast.

You try to say, I'm going to approach
a totally different realm here.

It's like a realm without food
where we're leaning in and trusting the body.

Okay, that is an emotional space.

And as a human being, when we get into an emotional space,
do you find this to be the case?

You bring up one emotion.

It can bring up another, often under one emotion.

There are layers of emotion under it.

Maybe anger is on a superficial place,
but then sadness is beneath it, for example.

Maybe there are emotions just under the surface,
like anxiety is there.

Maybe we cover over it with eating or depression.

Is there discouragement? Resentment?

These things can lie just under the surface.

So often when we are eating, it is like a drug

is giving us some peace and contentment,
helping us to flow through a space.

It's kind of keeping the lid on the emotional space.

Now we start opening up some fasting.

Like we're saying at the beginning, it's
getting in toward that center of the being.

Now we're removing this distractions.

Food isn't coming in
just like a meditation space coming to the same place.

Move away.

Other distractions.

Phone is off, notifications gone, schedule is clear.

Going to try to just sit and build a relationship with myself.

Right? With ourselves. Right?

Fasting.

Taking us into that same place.

There's two practices that you do both together.

Clear out some fasting space and give some space for reflection.

Then the emotions come, like Eckhart Tolle is telling us.

And what do you do in that space?

So I am reading a very interesting book,
The Fellowship of the River

and by Doctor Joseph Tafur,

if that's how you say it, and I want to give you.

A slight passage to frame our thinking

on forgiveness today,
because I really do believe that forgiveness

and a pathway toward that, both for ourselves,

maybe most importantly, and for other people.

Incredibly powerful process to move toward health.

If you are feeling stuck in a health path worth it

to take some time, I say and reflect.

Is there a space where forgiveness is needed for myself
or for someone else?

And have you ever done that?

Or have you experienced forgiveness from someone, or towards

someone where it felt like a weight that was weighing
you down is actually released, right?

And is that however you believe that?

Is that in your mind? Is it actually in the body?

We've done a lot of thinking that trauma and darkness
and difficulty

that we experience in life is actually stored in some fashion

in the body, that it can weigh us down.

You know, if we're on a weight loss path,
we say we're literally trying to be lighter in our physical body.

All right.

How about the emotional body?

Is there heaviness that needs to be released?

And does that actually because mind and body the same.

Do these concepts actually help propel us on?

I really think they can.

I want people feeling lighter, being lighter in our spirit,
in our whole being.

Here's what Doctor Tough were says about forgiveness.

I've come to see and more fully
appreciate the healing power of forgiveness.

Renowned Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung remarked

that forgiveness exists at the intersection

between spirituality and psychology.

It's there helping to bridge spirituality and science.

It's both a mystical process, fundamental to many traditions,

and a psychological process vital to overcoming guilt.

Forgiveness is ultimately a faculty of the psyche

or the soul, and through such faculties
we resonate with higher energies

like gratitude, compassion, love,

forgiveness acts across the entire psychic landscape,

whose terrain includes dreams

as well psychological, psychiatric, and psychosomatic phenomena.

Meaning. Mind, body.

It is a spiritual process that heals the emotional body.

That's what I'm saying in this session.

Forgiveness to heal the emotional body.

Is it the case that if we heal the emotional body

where we have been wounded, can that lead?

This is my big question to us.

And I would say, I do believe it, that healing
the emotional body can heal the actual physical body.

You say, look, we're just in kind of a medical space, right?

We want to get a medical effect. And I think one of the big.

What do you call it, the poverty of Western medicine

has been the complete disregard for anything like this.

We just say, listen, weight loss is simple.

You're eating 950 calories.

Like we can dial that.

So precise now it's going to be 1650.

It's like, do you see how we're so far away from a thoughtful

human perspective of of what it is actually like?

This is what and I would say in the fasting space
broadly, the fasting,

if you will, that it's even worse,

you know,
and this is one of the reasons I started talking about fasting.

From my perspective, fasting is incredibly powerful.

It's taking us to a deeply profound.

Some people would say even spiritual place.

You don't have to believe that. But.

Therefore I say it should be approached extremely gently,

kindly and compassionately,
which is the only way we should treat ourselves.

Because my experience both as just as one person,

I've been incredibly hard on myself
for a very long period of time.

And most people are fasting as a tool
could be used in appropriately.

It could be used by someone to punish themselves

and actually inflict, you know, restriction on themselves
and that sort of mindsets.

How many people have approached all health practices,

people
working themselves to death in the gym and exercise process,

like a fasting process, should be a joyful expression of health.

Okay.

Do you have a relationship like with yourself like that?

That is joyful and positive?

And are you approaching a fasting space
through a space of openness,

positivity, joy, and forgiveness?

Here we go on with doctor T in order to forgive oneself.

One starts with the mental concept and the intention.

Okay, you've got to understand the idea of it.

You've got to really want to do it.

That's the intention.

I talk a lot here about intentions. What are our intentions?

What are we trying to do and accomplish?

You think about it and you try to do it.

You try to forgive, but nothing happens,
he says, until you feel it.

This is moving it from the idea
and the intention into the emotional body.

Maybe that is a practice.

Maybe that takes time. No doubt.

Once you feel it in your emotional

being, in your heart and your soul,
then something begins to shift.

You release and you accept.

Forgiveness is a spiritual process that heals us.

Emotionally is the emotional healing

that leads to psychological and physical improvements.

And that, of course, is where I want to take us psychological
and physical improvements.

Who would like some of that?

I would like some of it for myself, and I would like it

for everybody who is interested in having it.

This is one of the big things that I want.

Marie says.

Definitely feel relief in the body when I forgive.

Yeah, this is a,
you know, another intersection that we're finding

where we're like really getting into the connection, mind

and body, our total being, you know,

you know, we can think the thoughts that we have
all they just exist in our mind.

But then we can see they exist in the body to like
if we can really start to see that,

then we can start to really move
in a very powerful direction of health and healing.

In my view,
that is looking at our total being and our total experience.

And we aren't just living in a land of numbers
where we say the only thing that matters is like,

did I have an extra quarter of a sweet potato or not?

You know, and it's like we're just and we're
hitting the spreadsheets and, and these things which, you know,

there is a place for under some circumstances

in my weight loss counseling practice,

if someone has a mind for it, I'll have someone do a spreadsheet
and we can track that.

It's not that that doesn't matter, it's
just that it's part of it.

And often people find it a hindrance.

Some people can can find support with it for a while.

Some people who are really analytical, I've seen, you know,

track things for years and years and that's fine.

But most people get lost in numbers and most people feel it
as a reduction, you know, in an experience.

And the thing that I want most of all for people
is to try to create a flow

through a space that you put in work,

and you do things to find a state of flow

where it's like,
you know, we don't have to struggle so much with it.

And and we don't have to micro analyze every sort of thing.

And really we're developing
and creating a way of being that just feels good.

Similarly,
it feels good because we are meeting our emotional needs.

We're removing barriers.

Maybe forgiveness, a key tool in removing a barrier to the flow.

Like if you say, man, I am stuck.

It's like things are such a struggle.

Like, is there forgiveness
that is needed for self or someone else

so that you can experience, like Maria saying

release that the body is feeling better?

Let's say we've got to do it.

Well.

I'm telling myself that you make your own decision.

Make your decision.

What is your path that you are feeling in this moment?

Are there things that are coming up as we're talking through it?

Say yes. Spaces.

Maybe we just need.

Maybe it can be in the contemplation space today.

Maybe we're not aware of it right now.

Maybe the initial step is to bring awareness to it.

Are there areas where you're being hard on yourself?

Are there regrets and things that you have?

Have you had difficult experiences?

The weight loss space is full

of, you know, difficult experiences to say.

We have tried so many things and we have had a history

where it has been marked by something that didn't work
and then try again,

build up the stamina right and try again.

Okay, that process can can where someone down over time, right?

Trying and failing can be very discouraging.

I want to help people reframe.

What we see as a failure is a process of learning.

These are all steps up our journey.

We're all on a journey up the mountain.

Process of forgiveness is a process of seeing that,
especially for ourselves

to find appreciation, compassion and gratitude for it.

What is the quote from just the other day?

Bless, bless the thing that broke you right?

Bless the difficulty that we have been through.

Recognize that it has been part of the process
that has formed us into who we are.

This is how we bring in love and light into everything

that we are doing, and it's how we encounter joy.

Recognizing that that is present here,
we aren't going to find it too often,

meaning a deep, satisfying joy.

Not too often we find it out.

We might find some entertainment.

We might find something fun.

Okay, for a time, right?

Trying to get into that deeper place,

to really move forward in a different direction.

That is what we want.

My thoughts of the day on forgiveness.

Do some good thinking on this today.

I think an extremely deep topic can be

and if it is feeling too

deep, say recognizing hey Grace for yourself in every direction.

Okay?

Just say you've been exposed to it.

If you listen, let it percolate in the thoughts.

If you have the time to do it, making it an intention
and a meditation space,

and as part of some other intentions,
as you say, my broader intention

stepping toward health, wholeness, wellness, weight loss,
metabolic healing.

Okay, weave this in as a thread with the other thoughts
as you're moving toward it.

And a lot of times,
what happens in a space like that, or think of all the thinking

we've done, all the emotional processes
that are running in the background.

We're trying to move toward weight loss and better health.

Give the brain

all of our being working processes

in the background, and we want to give space to let that run.

When you open up a space and all these things
kind of working through,

they're like, yeast is working through the dough, right?

To let it rise.

What you find a lot of times in a space,
sometimes a thought will be coming up.

And sometimes this takes discernment.

But you say a lot of times if we are being thoughtful,
we're taking a deep breath, we're moving

towards something deep, and we give things some space.

Pay special mind to the thoughts that come up when you start

loading in forgiveness into this thinking machine.

What are the thoughts that come up?

A lot of times I think the body that is storing it
say, hey, here is something that is blocking

and it will try to release it into that space.

Maybe a memory comes up, maybe a difficult thought comes up.

Is that something that you can acknowledge?

Can you bring forgiveness to that.

Like you load it in forgiveness.

Right. We do it. And then the body brought up an idea.

Can those meet in a space

like matter and antimatter just obliterated.

And then the barrier is gone.

Barrier is gone or barrier is integrated,

that we accept it, that maybe it always stays a part of us,
but it stops being a barrier

and transform it from something dark into something late.

Just like we're trying to transform ourselves
into something lighter,

something more positive and healthier day by day.

Lovely to share these thoughts with you.

I hope you have a beautiful day.

I look forward to chatting with you again soon.