A 5 day Juice Feast & Body-Spirit Connection
Last week I did 5 days Juice Feasting. Many of you know that I have a long history of Juice Feasting, and many are familiar. If you are not, please click here and enjoy massive amounts of information!
The last cleanse I had done was in May of 2009, so I was definitely due for one. My goal is to do at least a 7 day Juice Feast or fast, 4 times per year, optimally linking up with the seasons.
The first 2 days of this Feast were a little bumpy, as the first few days usually are for me. It feels like my body is acclimating, and although this sounds odd, it feels like my brain is, too. I always notice shifts in my brain, perhaps from getting used to extracting fuel from juice rather than spirulina (wink). The first few days, as usual, I also felt a little melancholy about the whole fasting thing, even though physically it felt good.
By day 3, everything settled physically and mentally, and the experience came that always amazes me: the feeling of elevated serenity where my mind is much quieter and observational, and it feels like there’s an inner smile happening throughout my whole being. What emerges is a deep urge, with an energy of fondness and expansion, to meditate, to be in nature, and to engage in other practices to deepen my connection to that omnipresent energy. Now, some of this has to do with the fact that I am in a setting conducive to this space and I know it would not be the same experience if I were in a city.
I have always found it fascinating that fasting creates the inner space that so many strive to get to simply by willpower of meditation and other spiritual practices. It’s almost as if it happens backwards than what most of us conceptualize. Without effort, simply because I am fasting, I enter that space and I desire to meditate. There is no forcing, no controlling, no intention, just a natural opening and deepening blossoming from a place beyond my mind. The meditation is not a means to an end, but simply done to honor that space of being. For me, it further validates the body-spirit connection, and how imperative a clean, light body is for spirituality.
With peace,
Courtney
