Continuing our discussion of juice fasting yesterday, and the inspiring Aris LaTham video, I felt we should also look at the difference between fasting and cleansing.
Fasting is undertaken to cleanse, yet most people use these terms interchangably. Fasting always includes cleansing in some form, but pursuing a cleansing diet or modality doesn’t always mean one is also fasting.
As Sayy pointed out in our
Team meeting last night, fasting is something you do every night when you sleep and/or rest your body for 8-10 hours. This why when you eat in the morning it is known as break-fast.
The difference is, most people who fast during the day generally include drinking water or juices in their process.
Only the Islamic Ramadan fast is like the nighttime fast, in that one does not eat or drink during daytime—so it’s a switch-up of the fasting period the body needs. Many Muslims stay up all night eating, drinking and in other ways subverting the benefits. That’s another subject.
Suffice it to say fasting is a long period of no food intake. And although imbibing juices is ingesting a liquid form of food, it is not usually prohibited in nonreligious fasts.
On the other hand, using essential oils during a fast is an issue. Pure oil super-concentrates accelerate healing responses throughout the body, adding oxygen and building immunity along the way.
Certain oils have cleansing effects documented by the science that underscores their ability to clean the receptor cells of important molecules, and to facilitate the movement of blood, lymph and other fluids throughout the body. Lemon is the best example.
If you use them, you know it’s generally best to limit or decrease pure oils usage when fasting. Whether it is a short, nonreligious fast or long, religious one like Ramadan, you need even more hydration –water or coconut water– than you would otherwise.
The toxins being released must be removed –cleansed or cleaned out, as soon as possible. (I have never attempted a 70-day juice fast like the one Aris recommended.)
Cleansing is better understood as a process for a body system, like the liver, kidney, intestines or bloodstream. Fun facts:
We have around 42 billion blood vessels and if we were to put them all end-to-end, it would stretch about 160,000 km (4 times around the Earth’s equator, or almost half way to the moon).
The heart pumps around 8,000 liters (800 buckets) of blood each day and 219 ML (megaliters) during a lifetime (around 88 Olympic swimming pools).
These body facts are mentioned to emphasize that a one-shot measures to correct something going on in your body has a formidable task. One shot, one attempt at fasting, or cleansing your kidneys, for example, is not enough.
Do not play at trying a holistic approach and then drop it because you don’t see immediate results.
I usually will drink teas like the soursop I just drank, which I’m drinking as a cleanse for my gastro-intestinal tract. I could have dropped an oil or oil blend into the tea but frankly forgot.
This immersion into hot water and its accompanying trademarked element, used with or without essential oils, is a reliable way to boost my energy and shed pounds as well.
When I do the foot detoxes for clients, I always massage their feet and legs with a blend of essential oils and carrier oils.
Cleansing and fasting are part of a lifestyle ensuring above-the-line health, not just okay or ho-hum health, but really feeling as if you can walk around your block ten times and feel nothing but great. Hmm. That’s a goal.
–Rev. Niamo Nancy Muid
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