Give your daily ration to your cat 😉 .
And seriously, … It’s good to have a day filled with calm. Your emotional approach to starvation is important. If you get irritated or angry about it, it won’t be starving yourself, but simply not eating. You need a conscious decision and an inner agreement to abstain from food. Even if you cannot take a day off work, you are able to make good use of an ekadashi day. Plan it in advance and prepare yourself.
As a reminder, I will say that during a hunger strike you give up food and drink only water.
You start on the day before the ekadashi day. On that day, you eat your last and light meal around 5 p.m. The next day, you drink only water. People who are bothered by the cold drink warm water. And I encourage starvation in warm seasons and fasting in cold seasons.
Eat the first meal in the morning, the next day after ekadashi. Keep it light.
How to persevere in hunger? If the hunger pangs are very annoying and you are unable to think of anything else but food, then … break the hunger fast. It is your choice and cannot be a torment. However, if you are struggling with feelings of hunger and have a strong resolve to carry it out then you can do the following things:
- Observe what is happening in your body. What do you feel? Stomach tightness, pain, weakness. Look at it. Such attentiveness can reduce difficult feelings.
- Engage in something that doesn’t require a lot of physical effort. Work helps to distract you from constantly focusing on thoughts of food. Go for a walk, lie in a hammock or just take a nap. In difficult moments, think about how much good you are doing for your body.
- Rather avoid cooking for others during this time. The smells will irritate you further. Do things you enjoy. The kind that make you feel good.
- And, importantly, there must be stool. If there isn’t, do an enema.
- Eventually cook a vegetable broth without salt and drink it in small portions.
- And the best thing is to like the state. I like to feel the hunger and observe what happens in the body then. Twice a month I allow my body a breather from chewing, digesting, processing and assimilating.
Does this mean that nothing happens? But it does. And with each such respite from eating, my body feels better and better. And food takes on a different dimension. Because, after all, you don’t live to eat. You only eat to live. And to live well and in health.
I wish you fruitful one-day hunger pangs.
Dorota Nature of Life
