Fasting Space

Have you ever had to start over,

either in life or in health?

Well, this is a place today to do it.

If you are in a season like that,
or if you are just reflecting on it,

trying to dig deep into the past, find
periods of strength where you overcame.

Channel some of that into the present
moment to help carry us on.

Power us on in life and health.

We're going to try to dig deep into
this thinking.

Today I am at a bit of a starting over
point myself.

If you've been following
along on the channel, you know a little

unplanned mini summer hiatus.

I got a little bit ill, unfortunately.

Lyme disease hit me somehow.

You know,
I spend so much time out in the woods

and never saw a tick.

I tried my best not to get it,
but then somehow it got it's

been a tough stretch, I'm going to share
some thoughts with you from this book.

The last session we did a few weeks ago.

Radical acceptance.

I watched that again yesterday
and just really liked the thinking.

Going to dive in and share some thoughts
that have been really helpful to me.

I hope that they are helpful to you.

Help us get through
whatever season we're in.

Hopefully it's a good season.

Take whatever season we are in.

Try to make it our best season
that it can be.

Given the circumstances that we have,
whatever we're facing,

our obstacles will face them together
and walk forward in health.

been reflecting.

You know, went through a season.

Spring, more snacking, not so much.

Fasting wasn't as active as I wanted.

Really?

Kind of got out of a lot of health
routines.

I started thinking, you know, doing
these sessions are talking.

I was like, oh, health routines.

What are the foundations?

The things we fall back on
during difficult times?

We got a quote,
I think it was from Atomic Habits.

What was it?

We don't fall back to something.

We fall back to the level of our habits,

our routine, our process,
something like that.

So we spent the spring
I did building the processes,

the daily habits, the practice,
and then hit it really hard.

That was my perspective.

How did you do summer weight
loss challenge?

Weren't
we hitting that like July, June, July?

Something like that.

I hit that so hard
and I was feeling so good.

I was feeling about the strongest
and best that I have felt in years.

And isn't this the case in life?

So often we have linear thinking.

We just think,

oh, life is just a straight line,
and isn't this what we want it to be?

You know, in a weight loss space,
in a health space, we just say,

oh, like just easy street
right to the goal or we're trying to

maybe this is the better line to make
the number go down in a smooth fashion.

Okay, but isn't life more like this?

So often life is cycles.

Maybe we say, oh, we're trying

to smooth that out a bit,
and then we say, oh, dip and then back.

You know, I'd be playing for that one now.

But then sometimes also
we can have seasons like this where it's

like we try to come up for air
and then it feels like, whoa.

So that was one reflection
I have life and our journey through it

rarely a linear process, and accepting

that this is what we're going
to get into a little bit today.

So many times
have you experienced this in life.

Are our biggest frustrations
come because of expectations that we have?

We have expectations.

We set them linear process A to be.

And then life happens.

And all of a sudden
we have fallen so far from that line

because we cycled through something
and now we say, oh,

we should have been up here
and now we're here can be so discouraging.

What have been seen during this low point?

As I've been sitting on the couch in with.

I've never liked the phrase brain
fog, like, that's I've,

I've never liked that, but that that's
been what I've been experiencing.

Just feeling in a fog.

I was feeling that discrepancy.

I was like, wasn't
I just hiking up mountains?

Like my my curve.

I mean, I was hiking up mountains
and then it feels like we crashed.

And then now we are somewhere down here.

The very big discrepancy between

where I want to be,
you know, personally where we're going.

Have you ever felt like that
some of this reading going to help

to reframe our thinking
as helping me reframe my thinking?

This is from a section titled

Without Anxiety About Imperfection
There's four paragraphs here.

I'll give you some thoughts on
each of them, I think, as we go.

But even this phrase,
how does that sit with you

without anxiety about imperfection?

We get into a very low season,
and it's easy to pile on ourself.

In this last session

I did a couple weeks ago
when I was just starting to feel badly,

I was even reflecting on that

so much negative thinking coming in, and.

I had so many expectations of so many
thoughts that I want to share with you.

Talks.

I want to give papers and books to read,
and I have all these things

I was so angry at myself, like,
can't you write a single talk?

You know, and it's like,
you know, hindsight is 2020, right?

Like in retrospect,
like I had no idea what was coming.

Oh, man.
Without anxiety about imperfection.

Okay, here's
this author, Tara Brock, saying,

many people have told me
that when they are finally able to see

how long their life has been imprisoned

by self-hatred and shame,
they feel not only grief,

but also a sense of hope,

like wiping up from a bad dream.

When we can see our prison,
we also see our potential.

Marie is here.

Welcome back.
I hope you are feeling better.

I hope you are feeling better.

How are you doing?

Did you have your procedure done
and how did it go?

I hope you are doing well.

Thank you for the note. doing okay.

This is the first day
that I feel like I could

possibly do this,
so diving back would take a step.

This is what I'm trying to do today.

I say a health journey.

It's a path. It's a process.

And every day
we have an opportunity to take a step.

And so, you know,

like I was saying, it's like we can feel
all we have fallen so far.

We come down to this level
and we can feel very far.

That's how I'm feeling right now, very far
from where I want to be.

But it's like, what can we do?

This is what we're going to see here.

This is just the reality.

Everything I want on this program
is our session, reality based.

We're just accepting the reality,
doing what we can with where we are.

We take one step today.

Maybe that is one small step to me.

I've been spending so much time
just resting

and one of the big reflections
I have, I was like,

I really like sharing thoughts,
you know, on health.

I think it would feel good for me

to share some of what
I'm reading of this beautiful things.

I think that would be good
for the mental health.

Like feels scary.

To start over is like,
look at the camera again.

I was like, okay, I can do it, you know?

So this is a step, you know,
I know I'm going to feel better.

I feel better doing it already.

And then a health step.

You know, I've got tiny goals today.

I'm going to try to get the dog out
for a walk around the block myself.

Like, you know, just I've, I've signed up

and already bought the tickets
for two half marathons this fall.

And it's like you can sell these things,
you know, again, but it's just laughing.

This morning I was grabbing a coffee.

I was like.

I was like, I should be training
for the half marathon.

And instead I am,
you know, just contemplating

getting the dog out
for a walk around the block.

It's like, oh man, it's going to be okay.

Whatever it is,
you know, a ticket is a tickets,

a few bucks, lunch or Reno.

Welcome.

I hope you are doing well.

Really appreciate the mindset.

Hey, awesome. Good to embrace
slowing down.

Absolutely tiny goals.

Yeah. This is you know,
I've got another mug.

I almost grabbed the other mug.

Simple fasting mug here. Free for viewers.

Send me an email.

Send everybody a free mug.

DRC as doctor Z at Simple Fasting.

My other favorite mug.

It just says, see the good you know,
and maybe I should

have grabbed that one today.

Because if there's a silver lining,
you know, in things like this,

when life is not going
the way that we expect or want,

you know, it's something like this,
you know, giving us an opportunity

to break things back down to a foundation
and, and just really embrace

some simplicity, strip out the complexity,
find gratitude.

You know, even in the midst
of struggle and difficulty

and set a tiny goal
and just realize that even that.

How beautiful is it, you know, to be here,
you know, in this moment,

to be able to get out and walk around
a little bit like it all is a miracle.

You know? That's
how I've been thinking about it.

A few things really resonated

with me in this first paragraph here.

How long has our life been imprisoned
by self-hatred and shame?

Like,
this was a really intense line, you know?

And, you know, I just think I've been
in kind of three weeks here of feeling

pretty badly and like,
here is just a tiny microcosm to me.

Whereas like an illness is really,
you know,

such an intense experience
in the physical body.

Then I was just thinking of this line
as a mirror for times

where we bring so much discouragement
and things on ourselves

and like an illness,
hopefully we're, you know, lucky you say

this is a relatively self-contained
process, but self-hatred and shame, like,

how much even more misery

is that bringing you to our whole,
you know, emotional, spiritual

sort of body
that can be such a long process.

And so this was helping me just reflect,
okay, as much as we want to bring health

to the physical body, which is of course
like the big thing that I want,

you know, and say, how do we lose weight,
improve the metabolism, get blood sugar

in a better place, you know,
all these wonderful sorts of things.

It's like from my perspective,
the next level is getting into a place

like this. Are we burdening ourselves?

Are we getting putting ourselves
like, in a box like this?

Can this process help us to see a way
out of something like that?

And is that something
that is even so much better?

Easy to be frustrated
when your body isn't cooperating?

Three weeks out from gallbladder surgery

and my head thinks I should be doing
more than my body will let me.

Hey, thank you for sharing.

Yeah. Isn't that.

Isn't that really the case? It is.

This is something I'm
personally really been struggling with.

One of the miseries of this experience
that I've had

has been some facial paralysis.

You know, I was like on my left side,
and it's a lot better now, but,

you know, to not be able to control,
you know, part of your body.

I have found it,
you know, even on an emotional level

to be really difficult thing.

But hey, thank you.

This is the most important thing, right?

The mindset is the key.

We spend a lot of time
in our talking about mind body connection.

That is really the same thing.

And I think this is what I'm personally
trying to work through.

I recommend this to everybody.

When we're in a space
like this, body is in need

of healing,
strengthening the mind and the mindset.

What an incredible thing to do.

And it's the same thing, right?

As we're improving our mindset
that can bring healing to the body.

Absolutely want to help these things
to flow together.

Stronger in the mind, stronger in the body
every day.

Taking a step forward.

This is the mindset
that we want to bring bring.

I really love this sentence,
like waking up from a bad dream.

When we can see our prison,
we can see our potential.

I've felt the last few days like really
like waking up from a bad dream.

This whole experience
has been like a bad dream.

It was like a big blur.

I was like, oh, I was like living my life.

Things were going great
and all of a sudden it was like

tornado caught up in it. And.

I'm trying to now you take a deep breath
and then it's like, this is to me,

the whole experience is giving us
a little microcosm,

a couple weeks that are like, oh,
we can do things like this to ourself.

See the potential of breaking out of it.

I'm trying to feel the potential,
you know, just to realize,

like you were saying,
there is strength in the body here

and the potential and the future,
both physically in the body

recovering from, you know, some illness,
some medical procedure.

Okay.

In our emotional body,
how we are caring for ourselves,

breaking things back down, maybe.

If we can really get to a silver lining,
or you can think of a time

if you're in a good place
now, bless it if I in gratitude for it.

If we think back into difficult periods
where we have.

During times like this where things
get broken down, it can be a reset.

Can we dig a little bit deeper,
just clearing out some patterns

and some other things,
taking some time really to rest?

Can it help us
dig down into a deeper level

and really get down into the core?

Bring an extra amount of love
and compassion to ourselves

that maybe a year from now,
we look back and say, hey,

even some good came out of that.

Here's our next session section.

Renowned seventh century
Zen Master Singh San taught

the true freedom is being without anxiety
about imperfection.

This means accepting our human

existence and all of life as it is.

Imperfection is not our personal problem.

It is a natural part of existing.

We all get caught in wants and fears,
we all act unconsciously

and we all get diseases and deteriorate.

Boy, that hit me.

You know it hit me.

Reading it, I was I was like, man. The.

I had brought in so much,
you know, just in this sort of space,

so much judgment on myself, you know,
I think.

All the things that I should have done.

Of course, you know,
I should have worn double sacks.

I should have, like,
you know, done all these things,

you know, say, because theoretically,
you know, something could have been done

to mitigate this from happening
in this sort of thing, like, well,

some stupid bugged at me
and gave me a disease.

It's like, and, you know,
I was just in this spiral of negative

thinking and I, you know,
I realized this and

and I'm like,
this is a part of the natural world.

This is the type of thing
that happens to people.

It's just and then, you know,
look at look at that.

Okay. Disease there that hits. All right.

We're everything I'm trying to do in
medicine help people avoid that.

Yet some amount of this is inevitable.

And then certainly
the deterioration. Right.

You know we can think especially
in this modern moment, all the technology,

all the miraculous
biomolecular engineering of our day,

you know, still we're mortal,

you know, mortal beings,
nobody solving this.

Right.

And so seeing our place in this,
this reading was just helping me to see,

okay, look, we are here
and we're alive in this moment.

And, you know, it's like a flower,
you know, you see a flower.

Such a brief moment. Live and die.

And then the point, the seeds
and then the generation and the things

and and here we're just like
an extended version of this a few decades.

And that's a very difficult thing.

I posted one,
I had one kind of lucid interval

in the middle of this miserable
experience, and I went back.

I did a session last summer, mortality
and the Wisdom of fasting,

and I went back and watched
that as I was thinking what?

I was kind of feeling

like dying, honestly, for a little bit,
I was like, it was this was really rough.

And so I listened to that
and I found a lot of benefit from that.

I took the audio.

Not every session
do I take the audio out of our live

sessions,
but I take a lot of the sessions

and I put the audio onto the podcast,
which you can find on simple fasting.

Com but I took that old audio
and put that out as a podcast,

and it felt good to listen to it
and think through it.

And it's like, okay,

everything we're here in this moment,
we're trying to push back against disease,

make every attempt to akin
to be as healthy as possible.

And then the other side of it
is just recognizing here we are a mortal

being
and we are flowing through this process.

And this is the thing about radical
acceptance is to radical acceptance

doesn't mean
not pushing to be as healthy as possible,

but it means not punishing ourselves
like I was doing

when when parts of this natural world
and cycle happen, they go on.

When we relax about this imperfection,
we no longer lose our life moments

in a pursuit of being different
and in the fear of what is wrong with us.

I just took a big, deep breath when I read
that I was like, lying on the couch.

I was reading this.

I was like,
I can't barely do anything, you know?

Took a deep breath and.
Not that we like it.

So I was like, I don't like being ill,
but how do they phrase it?

I'm not going to lose my life

in the fear of what is wrong right now.

It's actually that we can find life
in a moment like that.

Imperfection is not our personal problem.

Do you need to hear that today?

You know imperfection is not your problem.

This is the state of all of our existence.

Does that help you take a little deeper
breath, you know.

And can that process
taking a little bit deeper breath,

finding a little bit
more compassion about, you know, here

I am dealing with one illness,
but this can be anything, right?

This can be traumatic
things that we've experienced in the past

that we hang on to.

This can be habits and patterns
that we cycle through

that aren't really leading us
in a healthy direction.

Can we relax about an imperfection

and actually help us to flow
then toward better health?

Hey, Pat is here. Good morning.

So nice to have you here.

I hope you are doing so well today.

Thank you for the well wishes I am.

I'm feeling a bit better, a bit better.

It feels good to be here.

Yeah.

Resist the urge to push yourself.

Yes. Thank you.
That's why I push this out.

You know, I gave myself an extra
two hours on the start time today to just,

you know, ease into it and and rest.

And so this will be this will be my big.

Big thing for the day.

And then a little walk at some point
with the dog and then back to resting.

Probably try to do a little reading.

I try to bring you another beautiful
thought from this tomorrow

and we call that. call that good enough.

Yeah.

Resist the urge to push yourself.

Let's let's send that out to everybody.

You know, we are in a hustle culture here.

And the culture
I know it makes me feel this way.

I've felt this way
a lot over the last couple of weeks.

It's like, because I haven't accomplished

anything, you know, other than healing
and getting better.

Like the most important thing
a person can do.

And, you know,
I thought a lot about it today.

You know, I was like, should I,
should I just take another week?

Would it be better take another week?
I could do it.

You know, I'm not I'm not pushing myself
too hard to come back.

it just it really feels good to be here,
you know?

Hustle culture
is creating illness in itself.

Holy cow, isn't it?

I mean, it's incredible
how much illness it is causing.

I just I just can't even comprehend it.

I know in my own personal life

the amount of illness
that it caused for me.

You know,
I think the most important lesson

that I never learned in medical school
is, is just how to set appropriate

boundaries and all the role models
that I had in medicine.

I, you know, I don't
I don't honestly know how they really do

what they did other than the fact
that they sacrifice most.

I think of their,
you know, personal lives.

You know, they're running ten different
programs and clinics and research things

and, you know, all this
and you know, all the rewards in medicine.

The more things you do like this,
the more the system is set up to reward,

you know, people.

This is like true in medicine is certainly
true in every corporate sort of space.

You know, you're going to make more money.

People are going to be more happy
with you.

The more things you do for people,
your people pleaser.

Everybody's like, thank you
and you win awards.

You know, people do all these things
and before you don't have boundaries,

you can take you to a really bad place.

I unfortunately had to learn that a really
hard way because I got on such a cycle.

I was like, every individual thing
I was doing was so good.

I supervise a resident teaching service
at a university hospital.

I'm seeing the most complex, you know,
medical cases in the state of Wisconsin.

Everybody coming.

I was like, I'm learning.

Like,
I mean, this is great, and I'm teaching.

And I was like, that's so good.

As I'm running my whole clinic, you know?

And I was like,
and that's good. And I love that.

And we're promoting health
and all of this.

And you know,

I could just it'd take me an hour to run
through all the things I was doing.

But then I ended up
with an autoimmune disease,

which I think was was just triggered
by years of stress and lack of self care.

And so there's just a personal example
where it's like hustle culture.

I was like at the I feel like I was toward
the pinnacle of hustle culture.

Wasn't happy though.

I had a reporter when I left.

When I left the university,
I started simple fasting.

You know, I was like actual reporter from
a newspaper called I Want to Have Coffee.

And they're just like, what are you doing?

You know, it's like,
you got to tell me about this.

They, like, heard about it, and.

They couldn't get it.
They just didn't get it.

They're like, why would you do that?

But I was like,
we finally ended the thing.

I was like,
look, we've been talking for an hour,

and you've asked about how much money
I was making and how prestigious

the job was and
and all the things I was helping people.

You never wants to ask me if I was happy,
you know, like,

oh, man,
you know, it's just hustle culture.

Not asking if people really happy,
if people finding a a deep,

emotional,
centered place of peace and contentment,

you know, isn't that
where health can really spring out of.

Oh, man.

Yeah. This is the thing.

You know, society
always say you are not doing enough.

You can always do one more thing.

Yeah, absolutely.

But I see a lot of silver lining in it
to for myself.

You know, sometimes
we have to learn a lesson the hard way.

I learned some hard lessons that way.

And that is the lesson right there.

Absolutely.

That happiness trumps riches every time.

It really does.

Listen to how this segue is into this
section. D.H.

Lawrence described our Western culture

as being like a great uprooted tree
with its roots up in the air.

We are perishing for lack of fulfillment
of our greater needs, he wrote.

We are cut off from the great sources
of our inward nourishment and renewal.

We come alive
as we reconsider the truth of our goodness

and our natural connectedness
to all of life.

Our greater needs are met in relating
lovingly with each other,

relating with full presence
to each moment,

relating to the beauty and the pain

that is within and around us.

We must plant ourselves again
in the universe.

There is a message you will not hear
from hustle culture, right?

Plant ourselves somewhere you know.

Dig down a bit.

Tree would not.

Tree would be the anti symbol.

You know of hustle culture.

You know, something rooted and grounded
that stays in a place

and like really settle in.

And to me that feels like
the type of cultural critique

that is the antidote to
the other statement

where you say like hustle culture,
creating illness in itself.

Yeah, of many, many kinds.

I think what they're writing here, like,
we have these greater needs fulfillment.

Right?

To me, when they say
fulfillment is finding contentment,

I think a lot of times hustle culture,
we're trying to find these things.

You know what?

What this culture sells
is that you're going to find fulfillment

and happiness
when you reach a certain dollar number

in some account somewhere where you reach
some social status of something.

Many of these things are nice to have,
and especially in a moment, you know,

someone gives you some award,
someone says, oh, you did such a good job.

Like, don't you feel good?

And you can derive, you know,
some meaning from things like that.

There's nothing wrong with it.

But when we're using that, see,
that's something external.

All these are external things.

We don't have a culture that teaches us
to find contentment internally.

That's what the point of this
is that we find self-satisfaction.

This is a big thing about how we,
you know, take health habits,

other sort of things,
not doing things for other people.

We're doing things for ourselves,
our own body, our own mind, our own path.

Relating lovingly to our self
first especially,

and then letting that flow out,
not seeking

to do things for someone else
so that they think better of us.

Reversing that process,
thinking better of ourselves first.

This line, this line really hit me.

And other days, other sections of this
really get into this. But.

Relating to the beauty and the pain
that is within and around us and.

That's that's tough.

But isn't that the reality?

Beauty and the pain
so often is to together?

like we don't want the pain.

Oh man, I was sitting reading this book.

I, you know, other like I said, other days
I'll get into some of the reading.

One of the things that happened to me
with this Lyme disease, like, hit

one of the spinal nerve roots in my back

and was causing just this radiating pain.

It was just terrible.

And I was sitting here
reading out of this book and it was just

talking about. Acceptance of pain.

And I think really

my reading of the book is like it's
especially talking

about emotional sort of things,
like emotional pain.

I was like, I don't know that
this is a chronic pain management book.

I was sitting here trying to like just
accept it, and it was kind of not working.

You know, I was like,
oh, it's still still pretty miserable.

But we plant ourselves again
in the universe.

And, you know, this, this section, it did
help, you know, some of the worst of it.

I was reading this
imperfection is in our personal problem.

Beauty is present with the pain.

Here's how they conclude this section.

Although the trance of feeling separate
and unworthy is an inherent part

of our conditioning as humans,
so too is our capacity to awaken.

We free ourselves
from the prison of trance

as we stop the war against ourselves,
and instead learn to relate to our lives

with a wise and heart.

And I would say that
that's ended that section,

and in some really dark experiences
that I've had, I just

I sat there in that type of space

and thought about a compassionate heart
for the experience

that I was having,
and I focused on taking some deep breaths.

And, you know, we made it.

We made it through so far
one step at a time.

And so this would be my encouragement
for everybody today.

Think about that word,
a wise and compassionate heart.

And can we foster right in here,

you know, that kind of environment
for ourselves, seeking wisdom,

something that I want us
to all be about, for sure.

And even more important, compassion
for ourselves.

Hey, we're trying to do something
difficult.

We are in the middle of a very difficult
cultural experience.

The waves can be coming against us,

currents flowing in a direction say,
I don't really want to go that way.

A lot of a health path.

Walking upstream
in the middle of a difficult experience.

I find some compassion for ourselves
in that sort of space and.

Bring things into the present moment.

Here we are in a day
we have an opportunity to do

a few tiny, small, limited things.

Take a few minutes here thinking about
some hopefully beautiful thoughts.

Try to take a few moments in our day.

Take a few steps.

That's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to take a few steps
around the block with the dog I'm

going to be before I came on our stream,
I just tell you a quick,

I think it was three years ago
when I started

to recognize, like thinking
of our discussion of hustle culture.

When I started to realize, man,
I never really developed like really good

self-care routines, I,
I started a yoga routine every morning.

I have kind of a series of kind of yoga
moves, kind of stretches

I go through, kind of loosen up the body
at the start of the day.

I've pretty much done it every day for,
I don't know, three, three

and a half years even, you know, even

when I had the flu, even other times.

But then but it knocked me out
this experience, I haven't done it in 2

or 3 weeks.

And so I did it this morning
before I came here.

Just try to do some of these simple moves,
you know, little cat cow thing.

Oh man, it was not good.

I got to tell you, it was not good.

It was good, you know what I mean?

But it's good to restart.

But I was like, whoa.

It's like we're going to start
from tiny place, build it back up.

So wherever you are at today, hopefully
at a much better place, take a step today.

But think of our discussion
of the expectations.

Keep our expectations in check.

Recognize where we are on a cycle,
and just take the next step forward.

In struggling with weight.

And since finding your channel
of last 20 pounds and kept it off

comfortably, the mindset I have learned
here has been life changing.

Hey, thank you so much for sharing that.

I'm just I'm just really,
really encouraged by that.

And I hope, you know, I'm
just so encouraged by your presence here.

And sharing
your thoughts really means a lot to me.

So really nice to have you all here.

Thanks for the great discussion
and thoughts.

I hope you all have a beautiful day
and take it easy.

Be healthy everybody!

I'll be back again
830 Central time tomorrow.

We do some more thinking,
share some more health space together.

So wish you
very well and we'll see you again soon.