I'm going on a 30 day juice fast and i am on day 6 right now. I have not used an enema yet but I keep hearing that its so important to use one while fasting. I don't really want to. But if its crucial I will. Is there any way around this? I have been drinking organic smoothe move instead. Is that bad? Let me know what you think!

I was just going to post a question about fasting! Can I ask some of your advice since you have been fasting already for 6 days?
Have you ever fasted on just water? What is the rationale for doing a 30 day juice fast? What types of juices are you drinking? What changes have you noticed so far?
This is day #1 for me and all I have had is water and green tea. I am going to try to fast for 2-3 days and then go back to eating raw.
Any advice you can offer about fasting would be very much appreciated!
Thanks

I have never water fasted, I can't, I'm too big of a wuss. I think a ten day water fast is equal to a 30 day juice fast but I'm really not sure. This juice fast has been really really hard. I am incredibly emotionally dependent on food so giving it up was pretty intense, even after being raw for five months. The changes I've noticed so far were my intense mood swings and having no energy whatso ever. Today is the first day I've felt really good. I've lost four pounds so far, and I have huge dark circles under my eyes. My thinking has been pretty cloudy and I've been sleeping a lot. I'm hoping it will get better...today was really good though!

I just finished a 10-day water fast last Wed. The first day I ate again was Thursday. Today, I am fasting again with water only. I am going to fast every Sabbath from Sat 12Noon to Sun 12Noon from now on and integrate at least one 10-day water fast every year. Last year, I did 2 water fasts. The first was 10 days and the second was 12 days.

I'm not sure how the water fast compares to a juice cleanse. IMHO, since one is still receiving nutrients, it's not really a fast. A fast is something in which no food is taken. The best fast is a dry fast but I've not tried that one. I do think, however, that the juice cleanse does help clean out some of the debris but since the body is still using the digestive system, the body is not completely resting as with a water or dry fast.

I did notice that with this last fast ending, that I'm even more emotionally in tune than before. I hear or read something sad and tears immediately well up, even as I'm writing this sentence!

The enemas help clean out part of the intestinal tract but since you are still "eating", the colon is still being used. IMHO, green tea is a no-no. It has caffeine and eventually, tea will make a person incontinent. Herbal teas that don't have caffeine naturally, like organic German Chamomile or Senna Leaf tea (for inducing a bowel movement) are much healthier. I guess if one is drinking water, it would be best to put freshly squeezed lemon into the water and just do a lemon juice and water cleanse. This will alkalize the body and remove mucus.

Good luck. Therese

Hello life101, I am curious about your emotional experiences with the tearing up. I sometimes have this problem, well, maybe its not a problem for you but for me it can be inconvenient! For example, sometimes I cannot watch TV or read the newspaper because of this. If I am alone its ok but if I am with others it seems a little too strange.
Do you know what it is or how to deal with it? I have heard of this once before, someone who had a stroke said they were having this issue. Thanks!
Kate

re: tearing up
imo this is just part of being alive, and not stuffing your feelings. if its happening to you be happy about it, so many people can't access their feelings who desperately want to! keep opening to life, don't wall off your emotional experience of it just because our culture is so cerebral. you might get labeled "sensitive"... so what? there are worse things to be. like "closed" for instance.

Boyfriend, exasperated: "WHY are you CRYING?"
Me: "Because I feel like it!"

I think my emotions were one of the first parts of my body/mind to start detoxing. I definitely feel more open and in tune with everything--but if the tears hit, they hit. I always feel better if I let them out. =)

Kate, IMHO, I'm finding that the longer I am raw, the more child like I become in terms of health and emotions. When a child hears something sad, the child cries. The parent calms the child and reassures them that everything will be alright. In raw, we are adults and must assure ourselves and/or have faith that all will be right.

My hair is like a child's now. I can no longer pull at it like I used to b/c it will break due to the delicate nature of the hair. My blood pressure is 90/60, in line with that of a toddler's. In my face, though there are wrinkles around my eyes, there is a innocence. Not sure what your experiences have been thus far but I'm finding more and more that I must be more gentle with myself than before.

Emotions are "energy in motion" as my friend puts it. It is natural to be sad when things hurt, etc. Those that are not cut themselves off from the emotion and it builds up in their bodies to come out later as a disease-- a dis-ease of the mind. Whenever I feel sad, I allow myself to feel the pain and then overcome it and focus on the good. I also don't read or surround myself with pain unless there is a specific higher lesson to it. For example, I only read news that will have a detrimental effect in the future. I don't read daily news for fun. I like Ayn Rand's concept about pain. It is not something to carry around forever but something to feel and then one continues to move towards the higher goal, whatever that may be for you.

Hope that helps. Therese

Thanks Therese, Phantom and Maui! You bring up lots of interesting thoughts to me. I think you might be right that feeling the emotions rather than suppressing them is ideal, and maybe this is a more natural state. I actually have occasional problems with migraines that I believe to be a result of suppressed emotions, so maybe my true nature is this outwardly very emotional state. It certainly doesn't feel BAD at all does it, to cry! But again, due to the way my culture sees this sort of expression its not something I want to do. Maybe this is another more subtle form of the difficulties of being healthy in an unhealthy society. Like eating raw food causing what might be seen as anti-social behavior. Do I need to extrapolate myself from situations in which I can't be emotional? Maybe, as a long term goal! Your idea of not reading the daily news seems very radical to me! I can't imagine...really...but I will try to think about things like this.

I did a ten day water fast , I didnt do any of that. I went to work too.
What works for you may not work for others. There are anal people and there are sungazers. Find what fasting is best for you!! love Suvine

I like to go to work while fasting because it keeps me occupied and is usually not too stressful. There was a stressful incident one day while I was fasting, but it was actually a blessing. I was in such a calm state of mind that I quickly cried and let it go and it didn't bother me the rest of the day like it would have normally. I felt so grateful that I was fasting and in that state of mind. One difference is that normally I bike a lot and am very active, but after the first day or two I only walked, to keep things restful and not burn up my muscle.

You bring up good points about feeling emotions. I *wanted* to cry, to get it out and process it and be done with it. But I went into the bathroom so I wouldn't freak people out... they want you to stop or pretend or you're not upset because it makes them uncomfortable. But really it felt great. I thought about all the hurt, cried until I couldn't, and then I felt good.

ks and rost: reading yourposts made me think about how our society interprets crying and sadness as BAD, but you're right, if you just let it happen,it doesn't feel bad, and can actually feel good. its just another part of the human experience, the "bad" comes in when we label it, or have thoughts about what it must "mean", either about us ('i'm too emotional' i'm depressed' 'i'm weak' 'i shouldn't show this') or about the situation ('this is awful' 'this should be a different way'). when we don't attach any labels to our crying, we find that it just sort of rolls through us like a wave, and offers release and cleansing, and the thing that we are crying about generally lets go of us completely.

Aloha,

I've thought quite a bit about the "emotional opening up" that seems to come with fasting and cleansing. As I am in the middle of a 30 day cleanse right now, this dynamic is very present in my life.
When I ate SAD, I was a big-time emotional eater. Like many people, when I would get upset, depressed, angry, etc, I would eat highly fatty "comfort foods" to deaden the pain. I think that when we experience those emotions our brains send the "chemical signatures" of those emotions throughout our bodies and that's why we can really feel our emotions in our whole body, like when you're really happy and you just feel invigorated even if you haven't slept well the night before, etc. Well, I think that our body deals with those "negative emotion" chemicals in the same way that it deals with toxins that we ingest...after all, they're both chemicals that make us feel awful right? So, I've heard that the body tries to deal with toxins by surrounding them with fat. This makes sense of the whole comfort food concept for me, as my comfort foods of choice were always fatty. On my first fast last year, I noticed an intense emotional sensitivity. I felt like I was almost always on the verge of tears (or actually crying). It got quite unnerving at times. I started to wonder if, as I burned up my excess fat, these "negative emotional chemicals" were being released into my system. To me this totally makes sense. it would also explain why so many people fail on diets. They may be so positive at the beginning, but as soon as those sadness chemicals get released back into their system, they become depressed and reach for that old comfort food...and the cycle begins again. For those of us who do fasts or cleanses, who are committed to stick to it, we are faced with these pure emotions. These are emotions without the external context that created them the first time, so we are given a second chance to experience them without judging ourselves and to allow them to move through us and pass with all of the other toxins. It's always so easy to let happy positive emotions flow through me, but I've always tried to bury the negative ones (with either food or drugs). It's as if these emotions carry a message that must be spoken and if I don't let them speak, they will wait around for as long as it takes until they can speak their mind.

My current cleanse has emotionally kicked my butt a few times so far, but it's a welcome process. Last Friday I wept in the shower for 45 minutes until the water ran cold and I was late for work. It was triggered by thinking about my fathers alzheimer's, but ended up going so much deeper than that. For the first time, I didn't try to stop crying, I didn't worry about being late for work or showing up with puffy eyes. I just let it pass through me for as long as it took, without trying to do an investigation into what exact episode in my past caused it. I'm a different person now, so I don't think it would be helpful to dredge up all of the details about the context of the sadness. The message that I got was that this was a sadness that I needed to experience, I put it off before, now it's here again, just feel it and let it go... stay in the flow. The rest of that day I was in such a state of absolute calm...completely at peace.

I like the way you put it MauiButterfly...."when we don't attach any labels to our crying, we find that it just sort of rolls through us like a wave, and offers release and cleansing, and the thing that we are crying about generally lets go of us completely." That sums it up perfectly!

Aloha Nui Loa,

Greg

A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices. - William James

There is no pill that can be swallowed,
There is no guru, that can be followed, - Michael Franti (Pray For Grace)

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. - Albert Camus