but the things you do for love

This blog is pretty random. Sometimes I wax poetic, sometimes I babble on about food or music or whatever little ol’ thing happens to be consuming large parts of my attention at any given moment. It’s basically just an outlet for reflection; an excuse to write. Generally, I don’t get too terribly personal. This isn’t one of those times. So, reading public (and judging by the overwhelming pool of comments on my blog, by “reading public” I mean basically “me”), if you’re squeamish, think your shit don’t stink, or are prone to spit out such statements as: “Oh, DUDE. OverSHARE!”, then you probably wanna’ just click right here, and check back next week or sometime when there’s some less revealing content up here, mmmkay? Ah-HA! Haven’t thought about those little suckers since 1997, have you? (Come on, we both know you clicked…how could you resist?)

So the topic of “what to do with my labor day weekend” was a vexing one. Being a woman of many (many) interests, I naturally had quite a few ideas, ranging from silent meditation or yoga retreats to visits to friends and/or family, to a spur of the moment trip to Burning Man, solo camping, jaunt to Tassajara, or a weekend at home cleaning the pad and enjoying my fair (though oft foggy) city. Now being a go-along-get-along kind of a girl has some advantages. I knew that I would have a great time doing any of these things. Really. Any one of them, and probably countless others. It also has its disadvantages: decision making. Tough. Certain factors served to narrow my options considerably, thank goodness. Factor number one: I’m broke. This alone made cross-country jaunts, meditation and yoga retreats, and Tassajara (which was booked solid anyway) slightly less feasible. Factor number two: I’m trying my damndest to heal this little body of mine, which made Burning Man a hard sell. My priorities were this: get organized at home, get out of town, be kind to my belly, get some nature, get a lot of sleep, have some quiet time to unplug, unwind, do yoga, envision my future, read, write…on the cheap. Now just about this time my angel of a friend Ashlee mentioned that her parents house in Carmel (which I’ve visited on several occasions) would be empty this weekend and that I would be welcome to stay there. YES, I thought. My very own personal retreat. A weekend of hermitude. On my schedule. And on my budget.

And so I decided. I would spend Saturday (as much of it as I needed with not the least bit of stress or worry about how long it took) to do all the little things (like laundry) that I haven’t had time to do in the past 2 weeks of manic working. I would do this “necessary maintenance”, and I would go to the farmer’s market to stock up on delicious green things. Which I would bring with me to Carmel and turn into delicious green juice, because on the “be kind to my belly” front, I decided that for these three days, I would give the old digestive system a break. More or less a total break. So starting Saturday morning, I began a 3 day cleanse and juice fast.

Seriously!? Yes, seriously. And don’t look at me with that tone of voice. It is generally accepted that a human body can go without food for three weeks without any danger at all. In fact, many people believe that fasting has enormous health benefits. I know you’ve heard it before, but in this world where millions are dying of starvation, our number one killers are diseases of abundance. Heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, and even cancer are hugely diet related. Now don’t misunderstand me: I’m not saying (obviously) that we shouldn’t eat. It’s one of my favorite pasttimes, but it’s hard to deny that most of us eat too much, too often. For me personally, having an inflammatory digestive disease means that I pretty much feel everything I put in, and generally not in the most pleasant ways. In recent months I’ve started to put a lot of time and energy into the preparation of and thought behind what and how I eat - to use food as my medicine. I love it, and it’s a lot of work. Frankly, I just wanted a little break from it all. The consumption, the preparation, the ramifications. I wanted to stop. To cleanse. To see how it feels, physically and emotionally, not to eat for a few days. With this disease my body has become the petri dish for my experiments in healing. This particular experiment just attracted slightly fewer fruit flies…

So how does it feel to fast for 3 days, you ask? What did you do? And what do you mean “cleanse”? Where you tired? Hungry? Bored?

OK. On one hand, I definitely do not think that I could have done this fast in my apartment in SF, surrounded by all of the trappings of my day to day life, roomate, food, etc. Maybe some of you could. Probably it would teach you an enormous amount about your relationship with food and meals. For me, it was very helpful to be in a solitary space apart. Yes, I was tired. The first few days of any fast are, from what I understand, not the most pleasant. Your body releases lots of toxins, which you flush from your system by drinking massive amounts of water, sweating (I sat in the hot-tub for 30 minutes or so 3 times a day), and..um..colon cleansing. This toxic load leaving my body made me feel achy and stiff by the second day. I was weak, slightly nauseaus and had little energy. Detox symptoms can be even more extreme - ranging from headaches to full-on flu symptoms.

I’ll be honest, I had a pretty romantic vision of this solitary retreat. I pictured a schedule not unlike those I kept while on retreat in India: rising with the sun, doing yoga on the deck, taking long hikes and maximizing my free hours with lots of reflection and writing. I was looking forward to it. The reality was much more modest. I soaked, read, slept, wrote a bit, watched a movie…I wasn’t really hungry, though, not like I’d expected to be. In fact, I realized that the little pang that I generally recognize as hunger isn’t usually hunger at all. It has much more to do with habit. Hunger is a much deeper feeling. I doesn’t actually come three times a day like clockwork.

I had planned to make and drink wheatgrass twice a day and green juice (celery, cucumber, pea and sunflower sprouts) three times a day, in addition to detox tea and lots of purified water. I drank my juices on the first day, but felt queasy on the second day, threw up my wheatgrass shot, and ended up mostly sticking with tea and water from about mid-day-two on. I gave myself 2 enemas a day (the “colon cleansing” part of the fast), adding in some wheatgrass and aloe vera to repair my colon walls.

I didn’t have gads of energy on day three, but it was better than day two. Some friends stopped by to say hello and I made them a nice big salad. I have to say: I didn’t have a huge desire to eat it with them. My stomach felt pretty great, and I was enjoying having a break from the constant stomach pain, gas and bloating that I generally accept as an unfortunate but unavoidable part of my life. Again, I read, soaked, walked on the beach. I sunbathed on the deck and did some stretching. I sat in meditation for a while.

On Tuesday (day four) I awoke expecting hunger and excitment at the prospect of breaking my fast. Instead, I felt energized and not at all hungry. I decided to postpone my break-fast, and had a lovely and leisurly morning before packing up to head back to SF. Day four was a great day: the sun was shining and the drive back to the bay area was beautiful. I did, eventually, break my fast at around 4:30pm with some organic fruit, mostly because I’d only planned to do a 3 day fast and wanted to try to stick to that as closely as possible, but I suspect that I’d made it through the rough first few days and moved into the “feelin’ good, no hunger, lots of energy” phase of the fast. I could now see how people manage to fast for more extended periods.

“And?”, you ask, “What did you learn from this little experiment?” I learned that it feels really good to just stop every now and again. We consume so much all the time: it felt pretty incredible to just pause for a few days. To know that I don’t need as much (of many things) as I think I do. To get some distance from my often powerful voices of craving and from the torment of my distressed digestive tract. I learned to be gentle with myself. I learned that (while of course, I would not recommend it to anyone with a serious health condition who hadn’t first checked in with a doctor or trusted health advisor) for me, fasting is not as big of a deal as I thought it would be. In fact, it was sort of fun.