Fasting Space

welcome. So nice to have you here.

Fasting space.

Grab a coffee or tea.

Dive in with me on another day.

Another opportunity
to take a step toward health and healing.

Today, something I really want to dive
deep in on our sessions together.

Healing for body, mind and spirit.

Such a beautiful vision.

Think.

A lot of times in medicine we can get stuck in our head.

I know this has happened to me quite a few times.

We get stuck in our head and we try to think

our way through all of our problems.

Without feeling our way through it, without recognizing

the emotion of what we're going through.

So many times, it's the fact that we think we can

we think we can solve these problems,
that we have these things.

Because isn't it
something that we feel really if you have a goal?

I mean, it's a thought.

That's the mental part of it, very important.

If we want an integrated, holistic

path toward health, wholeness and healing, okay.

Mind is important.

Our thoughts matter.

I'm going to try to bring you the best thinking,
but it's only part okay.

We're not just a mind. We are a mind and a body.

And sometimes these things and a spirit.

So easy to forget. What even is it? Oh my gosh.

When neglect these other parts of ourselves
to our own detriment.

And it can lead us to a place where we can feel broken.

That's what I put in this place.

Have you ever been in a place like that,
or are you in a place like that now?

Or are you in a great place wherever everybody is at?

We come together here, I say recognize in our brief moment
together.

Fasting space, fasting space in the body,
one of the most profound

spaces of health and healing,
completely overlooked in our culture.

I want to create a space where people come together,

share a fasting space,

bring it into areas
both physically and in our emotional being.

Open up space so many the time, so many times.

Healing is possible in the body
if would just get out of our own way.

Fasting is giving us the opportunity
to do that for a little while,

just as much as it feels good.

Look at the clouds going by,
just as it's bringing lightness into the body like a cloud.

If you're feeling in a broken place

in a difficult space, I want to tell you.

Let's hang out for a while. The sweet incense.

This is what I tell it is a sweet incense of a broken soul
I have in here.

And incense that I got in Peru.

So I've been in Peru,
been doing a lot of thinking about health

and wholeness and wellness of all kinds.

I had some exposure to some indigenous traditions in Peru,

one of which is they
burn a lot of different types of incense.

One of the main ones is tobacco.

I don't have any tobacco for you. This is sage.

This is an Andean sage.

And to hold this up to a flame if they are using tobacco.

I learned in Peru tobacco to many Peruvian cultures.

The master.

Master plants sage.

Not a master plan, but they might take it like this.

Bring some beautiful burnt sage
and they might blow it on you.

Here, I'll blow it on you.

And they believe that this the incense.

The plants can help to purify, cleanse, set an intention.

They also offer it as a blessing.

And so I offer this to you as a blessing to your day.

Okay. A blessing from the other side of the world.

A blessing of people together, coming
together around health and healing.

Not just in the body, but in our mind and spirit also.

I say, if you're in a difficult place like that. Hey!

Let's come together.

Let's take a step toward it, and we're going to take a step
toward it with this quote I want to show you.

A broken soul is not the absence of beauty,

but a cracked and torn soul reeks

of the sweet incense it contains.

I wish, I wish we had a smell of vision.

I wish you could.

I wish you could connect to the beautiful aroma
of this burnt sage.

Reminded me right now.

Okay, take a deep breath.

This is the foundation of health.

As much as we can look at every different avenue of health,
and we can even think of it as the foundation.

Sometimes I describe fasting as a foundation of health,
and I say it is.

Is the breath even getting to a more fundamental level?

Sometimes we can say all the healthy food is our foundation.

Today I say, let's bring it into this mental health
level to the breath as the foundation,

the incense telling us if we're at a lowest point,
we're at a highest point.

Okay, life is a cycle.

Whether we're at a high point on the cycle,
we're at a low point in the cycle.

We ground ourselves in the same practices.

I say take a deep breath.

I think an incense, something like this,
something that has such an incredible aroma to it.

Help you take a deep, centering breath.

Here we are in this moment, centering ourselves in this day,
no matter where we're at.

I feel better.

Just one deep centering breath. Oh, I feel it.

And do you feel that you take one deep centering breath?

If you're in a difficult place,
it can help you to feel better.

If you're in a great place, can help you center

the mind and bring us into.

Such a positive place.

More positive place, at least to cope with it.

Okay, if we're in the bottom of a cycle.

So take a few moments.

Let's take some breaths together here.

And as we're doing that,
I say think about the goal that you have.

You're coming toward a fasting space.

What are you looking for? What do you want?

What is a gratitude and a struggle?

One of the things I'll do with the incense as a starting
as we're

sharing this practice, people coming together,
share gratitude.

I just share my gratitude for this moment
in time like that.

We are here. We're using this technology.

We can connect in a space and I am grateful for it.

Grateful to have you here with me, grateful
for the opportunity as we are here,

and then leaving this space that we can do our best,
whatever that looks like.

And this is my centering thought for the day.

Do our best to take a step forward in health,
whatever that looks like.

Feel free to share gratitude in the chat.

Let me know. Gratitude and struggle.

I tell you, these are the two sides.

Like I say, life is a cycle and we can alternate

between these things,
especially when we're on the high part of the cycle.

Things are going well.

We're moving forward, leaning into gratitude to say,

let's build up that mental capital.

Like how carry us through.

And on the bottom side is looking toward the light.

Remember, we did that session in the fall,
looking toward the light, pulling ourselves,

uplifting ourselves up, finding kindness and compassion.

A gratitude process can help us so much with that.

Just reflecting on this quote, a cracked and torn soul

reeks of the sweet incense it contains.

Something like this.

And incense, you know.

So I was watching people make some of these things
in many different kinds that they use in Peru.

Some of them they crush, some of them they're breaking open
and releasing the natural oils as they're doing it.

This one is dried.

And. So many times in life it's the difficult things.

It's the struggle that we lean in and we go through

that ultimately takes us
toward our greatest success in accomplishment.

And so if I can give you an inspiring word in this day

to set us forward on our path is to embrace the struggle.

Wherever you are at, we have an opportunity
to lean into something difficult today,

whatever that is, to take a step.

Any stuff that we take almost, you know,

there is there are barriers to it.

A big part of what we're trying to do in a space like this

minimize the barriers, help
to flow through them as gently as possible,

help to step over them and move on

in to higher and higher levels.

Working up to our plateau. Remember our thinking.

Inverting our weight loss journey

into a climb up
the mountain helps us to see we ever feeling stuck.

Okay, we've made it into a plateau.

It's like base camp
and we are carrying on our assault on the mountain.

And today I say, let's take a step.

We're here together in this space,
and if it's a fasting space

that we're moving into,
we see is are like kind of like levels.

I like to use a dial. How many hours?

Maybe it's minutes on the start, then it's hours.

How much space are we opening? Yeah.

How much space feels good to open.

You know, it's kind of a level.

Where is the strength of the body at?

Where is the strength of the mind at?

How practiced are we at using the energy within us?

To me, a fasting space incredibly empowering

because it's about learning
to trust the body on a deeper level.

The body has given us energy and resources

to help us flourish, to power our body and life.

Fasting is a recognition of that, opening up the space

to allow the body
to use the resources that it has, that it wants to use.

Here's the paradox.

Here's the line fasting is openness.

Fasting is gentleness.

Fasting is space for rest in the body.

The other side.

Fasting can be intense, can be difficult to do.

You say, can there be struggle in it?

Sometimes we can see eating is comfortable.

Eating is pleasurable.

Refraining from eating.

I like to say more like the absence

of pleasure than the presence of suffering.

If we're heading into a space of suffering
where discomfort becomes

extreme or feels overwhelming,
I say stay far away from that.

I don't want anything like that in my life

personally, but I do want to do difficult things.

I do want to move powerfully in steps
and sometimes that is difficult.

You see the line,
the two sides of it is what I encourage people to walk.

If you're on a weight loss path, if you're on a path

to want to unlock, do you feel stuck?

Do you feel in a space where you say negative emotions,
negative experiences?

How do I get rid of them?

Opening up a space both in body and mind and in spirit.

Something we got to practice.

Something I've got to get into my mind and being I know.

When we open up the space,
that's that's the beginning of it.

We do some amount of fasting,
we do some amount of meditation.

We open up space that's given the opportunity

to things, for things to be released in the body.

We can see that it's energy, body fat, energy, blood sugar,
glycogen, energy sources that are stored.

We open up the space, we burn through the food.

We see the body releases energy.

We've gone through a large fasting period.

Maybe we spent 12 14 hours overnight into a space.

We just burned through all the food.

Now we have the opportunity to release.

We say things that are no longer serving us.

This is what we want to say.

If you're on a weight loss path, you're saying, I'm
trying to release something is not serving me anymore.

I want this extra energy.

I want it to be released.

So fasting space can do that,
just like exercise can help you to do that.

Such a beautiful thing to do. Same parallel in the mind.

This is the big space
that I especially want to help people in on the channel.

Open space in the body, open space in the mind.

Do you have a mental burden?

Are you struggling?

Trauma?

Negative thoughts, anxiety, these sort of things.

You open up a space, doesn't it come?

Don't you see it?

Just like you release the energy, the body.

Don't you start opening up some space in the mind?

Yes, without food.

Because food can be a distraction.

Yes, without the phone and everything else.

What are the thoughts that come
in? What are the experiences?

That's often just the start of it.

Give ourselves the opportunity to release it.

Then you can start processing it,
then you can burn it up and you can burn it up

like the flame is burning through the energy.

That's the type of thing that you can grow into and adjust.

Maybe it's just a few minutes.

In the midst of a busy schedule.

I'm going to take just a few minutes here.

And I'm going to sit in this space,

give the body, the mind, the soul, if you like that quote.

A little bit of attention like we're seeing,
we get trapped in the mind.

We have to think our way there.

When we take the space, when we pause.

Giving the mind a chance to rest, say,
hey, we're not doing anything else here.

Try to quiet the mind.

How many of these experiences that we have,
whether it's trauma, whether it's anxiety,

negative thinking, depression, a compulsion, an addiction.

How many of these thoughts are just loops?

Do you experience this?

The thinking keeps spiraling.

How do you quiet the mind, quiet the mind in a space?

Quiet the mind with the breath.

To me,
this is getting to a root level of health and healing.

Very profound.

Very simple, but very profound.

It's a type of space that requires change.

And like we said in the series,
the mountain is you that we were going through,

we often change at the lowest point.

That's when the soul breaks, when the spirit breaks,

when we are at a low point, this is how it becomes

a sweet incense you crush, open the herb,
it releases the oil.

You smell the beautiful smell. Right?

So if we have reached that point,
maybe we have already gone through it.

A difficult space on our journey toward better health.

We reach a low point.

We can reflect back on it.

That's what I hope for everyone.

I don't want anyone to have to get to any difficult point,

but we recognize that life is difficult and on our journey

we encounter obstacles and difficulties.

From that point. This is how it can become beautiful.

If we reach a place that is difficult, where we feel broken,
we say, hey,

this is the it's the end of that thread
and now we are moving forward.

Say, is that a sweet incense?

Do you look back on that day with gratitude for it

and say, hey, that's the day everything changed?

You know, this is the day when I am taking my life,

this body, all the trillions of cells

that together forming this being and we are moving it

in the most positive and healthy direction,
one step at a time.

Maybe it is just one small step at a time.

Was there not going back to a previous way of being?

Even if it has to be simpler?

Think about this society. Think of the complexity.

Think of what this society values.

The society values things that are flashy,

things that are big and fast
and complicated and expensive and.

It encourages us because this is a consumption culture,
that we find happiness outside of ourselves,

that we have to buy happiness like we should buy health.

Only three easy payments of 1995, right?

This is what is sold to us,

when in fact, so much of living a life you say is happiness.

What we're looking for is contentment.

What we're looking for maybe on a deeper level.

It's the simple, the simplicity of it

that we don't need so much external,

that healing and health and peace and contentment

can come from within and from these simple, grounded places.

Coming to peace with ourselves, finding love and compassion

for ourselves, filling ourselves up with love and light.

This is how health is built in the body.

Recognizing that things are okay
no matter how they are externally,

no matter what has happened,
finding a space where we can say everything is okay,

this is at the foundation
because look at what is happening in that space.

We can turn off the alarm signals.

We can turn off the cortisol, the stress signals.

It's telling the body you are not safe.

It's basically a war going on. This is the immune system.

Immune system, I say is like the National Guard.

It's got guns can fight, okay.

But it can also just help. It's due in disaster
relief, right?

We want to send the messages to the body
when we turn off the adrenaline, when we take a deep breath,

when we get the parasympathetic flow going,
which has got to happen to find love and compassion

for ourselves, to do these beautiful, simple, free things

that were describing, to find gratitude in a moment.

To give ourselves the gift and the space to.

Take a deep breath, center the hormonal space.

Parasympathetic flow flowing to every cell in the body,
including the immune system.

Say, put the guns down, you know.

Everything going to be all right here.

All of a sudden when the
when the immune cells can put the guns down, right.

Cytokine levels kind of dropping. Right.

We did some academic talks on that.

Say we see they're chemical warfare agents.

You say put that down okay.

Then they can start their other jobs. Right.

Surveying the battlefield. Right.

Do you ever feel that if we're talking about a broken soul
right at the bottom, I say, put the guns down.

Battle is over.

Maybe the war has been with ourself.

Maybe we've been fighting ourselves for so long.

And in a space like this where I say, is fasting space
a meditation space?

Space just to breathe, realizing the connection,

mind and body, we separate them, but they're the same.

See, when is how we start to break the cycle?

If you've been in that space.

God, I know I have the thoughts
looping around in the breathing.

Stop it.

At least slow it down and we start to see.

Okay,
when I'm taking a deep breath, I'm opening up the space.

What do you see?

I feel it now.

Oh, that's where the tension is, right?

Start to bring things into alignment in the body.

I like thinking of it that way. Is the body a battlefield?

Have you been fighting yourself?

Body wants to heal
and the body can heal for some from something like that.

And maybe the healing you're looking for, you say it is
metabolic

is saying I just want the weight to go down.

I want the blood sugar to go down.

I want the blood pressure to go down.

I want cholesterol to normalize.

I want, you know, some metabolic effect
that we're looking for.

Okay, all that is fantastic.

I want that for everybody who is looking for it.

And they would say maybe it's the deeper level.

So that's where we're going to go
as we step forward on these series.

My stack of books that I want to go through has grown

so large, it's going to start coming on the screen.

So I don't know, maybe we got to go faster, I don't know.

That's rarely going faster is rarely the right answer
if you're trying to become a sprinter.

And in our exercise space, yes, moving faster.

Beautiful thing to do.

But the mindset,
the vibe that I'm going for one step at a time.

This will be my centering thought for the day.
Let's take one.

Positive step today.

Pick your area.

Mental health. Focus. Food. Focus. Exercise.

Focus of fasting. Focus.

You know where do you want to lean in?

All these things are beautiful.

As we build a practice.

Do we want to do all these things in every day?

Yeah, I say we should, but it can really help.

Like,
it's like turn our focus into the one thing we want to do.

Maybe it's this fasting space today.

Say, hey, I'm gonna open up a little bit more space.

I'm going to grab a coffee, a t, some water, stay hydrated.

Even if it's five minutes in that space,
I'm going to lean into it and breathe.

Give my body the opportunity to release some things,
some energy, some thoughts.

Maybe those thoughts come to you.

Maybe you can write that down in a journal, journal,
the type of thing you can share that you want to bring it

here.

Say what came up in a fasting space for you

today, come back tomorrow or throw it in the comments.

We have a chat about it.

Happy to hear. It's also the type of thing it's just for.

You don't have to share anything like that.

I just tell people sometime
if it's something really difficult,

you can rip that page out of a journal, you can write it out
and you can burn it up and throw it in a fire.

And you know, that can be a very cleansing process.

Just like we started our session with this beautiful sage

and we said, we burn this incense, we share it together.

That same process, we say, that can cleanse and purify.

We use that in a way
to bring many levels of health and healing.

So beautiful to share this space and thoughts with you.

Thank you for being here with me.

Say hi in the comments
if you're coming through on the replay.

I look forward to connecting with you again tomorrow.

Have a great day everybody!