Regrouping

For those of you who know me (and why else would you be reading this blog?!), you probably know that I've had a few chronic pains and bothers over the last couple of years. Repeatable neck pains, intermittent persistent cough, leaky gut, blow outs, etc. Well, I decided that maybe it's time I changed my lifestyle around a bit. I like to think that I'm not getting older, I'm getting wiser, and maybe it's time I took a little bit more direction and discipline to my life. An easy way to do this, I thought, would be a detoxifying fast. I did a little research, and despite the numerous devotees to the "Master Cleanse" fast, otherwise known as the lemonade diet, I decided that I would do a full on water fast. I actually started prepping for this fast on Monday of this week, and have put nothing in my body except water for over 36 hours now. Here's a few reasons that I decided to do this fast in the first place.

Detoxification
First off, it seems to me that if I want to truly get stuff out of my body, I should put into my body the absolute minimum. I've been running myself pretty hard in the last year. I'm sure the lemonade diet would have given me many of the same benefits when it came to cleansing, but I figured that if I'm going to do this, I'm going to DO this. Really, I just wanted to do some sort of a fast that would give my body a chance to kick start back into gear, to reset from a healthy baseline. In addition to only drinking water on my fast, I'll also be doing a daily "salt water cleanse", which is essentially a enema you give yourself by drinking body temperature salt water. It's like flushing the pipes. I'll get more into that later.

Redefine relationship with food
I realize that I have an over indulgent relationship with food. I actually spend a good portion of each paycheck's leisure money on eating well; perhaps a little too well. A fast is a good way for me to again reset a baseline. Coming off of the fast I plan on being careful and picky about what I eat for a few weeks, and try to form some new healthier habits about what I consume. I've tried to form these habits with varying degrees of not-success before, but I'm hoping that this will give me a way to start anew. If nothing else, the last few days have certainly been full of meditation about food and the way I eat.

Spiritual connection with my totem
I know it may sound kooky, and I've seen the way some people look at me when I state this, but I really do feel a connection to my totem, Bear. I often feel like I'm hibernating in the winter, and this year I'm just taking it a step further. During this time when I feel like I need to regroup, I've been hiding in my cave, sleeping a lot, and working on projects that will pay fruits in the spring. In this way I feel like I'm following the path set down for me by my spirit archetype, and getting back to a root that I've been too busy partying to pay attention to.

Heal aches and pains
Fasting, from what I've read, gives your body time to heal and recover from the pains it's built up and just glossed over. A lot of the work that our cells do throughout our lives is spent dealing with the things we put into our body, both beneficial and harmful. Fasting gives the body time to do its own internal housecleaning. That's what I've heard, and I'm hoping for, anyway. Once the body reaches ketosis, where it's feeding off of fat stores instead of sugar, I've heard that the body will start pushing out toxins and knitting wounds that it's been putting aside. Supposedly I'll become aware of the old wounds as my body tends to them. I'm expecting a nice outflux of mucous from my lungs from smoking and running in the cold, a severe pain in my neck from playing rugby, some wicked hangover headaches, and some nice IBS. I just hope that heartache isn't something I can expect; I feel like I've had plenty of that in the last couple of years.

Get a little grounded
All in all, I'm expecting this to be an experience I can use to recalibrate my internal compass. Already, I'm feeling much more lucid and conscious about myself and the direction in which I've been going. I'll write more tomorrow or the next day about my actual experiences with it so far, just in case any of you wackos out there actually think I'm doing something interesting. Personally, there's a voice in my head that's giggling the whole time, calling me a dork. Ah well, little voice, I might be a dork, but I'm the captain of this particular meat ship, so shut the hell up. Anyone else, not currently on board my meat ship, is allowed to laugh all they want.