On Fasting & Feasting - A Healing Journey (Part Two)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to part two of this blog on fasting and feasting. You can find part one here. It’s interesting that the fasting part sounds terrible while the feasting sounds wonderful, but in reality the fasting can have wonderful aspects and the feasting can include much suffering. 

In part one, I shared about how for many years I experienced a mind-body state that was something akin to a pseudo-hypoglycaemia. I say ‘pseudo’ because I’m not sure that my blood levels actually dropped below the clinical levels that ordinarily define hypoglycemia, but I would experience the classical symptoms, such as trembling, sweating, difficulty concentrating, and irritability. All these symptoms would be experienced when I went without food for as little as two hours and would resolve soon after eating.

Because of these unpleasant physical and emotional experiences, I developed a strong fear of getting hungry and would subsequently try to avoid leaving the house without having eaten something and would always endeavour to bring emergency snacks with me when I went out. 

Arriving in Plum Village in 2014, I came with the simple hope of managing stress, but little did I know that I was to begin a healing journey around food. A journey that is still unfolding today. 

In Plum Village, there are three set meal times each day and if you weren’t there at the scheduled times or if you came late and the food was gone, you wouldn’t be able to simply pop into the kitchen and make yourself something. The kitchen of a monastery is second only to the meditation hall itself in terms of respect as a practice space. 

When the bell was invited for meal times it would have been rare for me not to be one of the first people in the dining hall. Yet, in a futile attempt at managing people’s perception of me, I would try not to be the first in the queue. 

Exercise time in the daily schedule of Plum Village is often at 5pm followed by dinner at 6pm. For exercise there was often a group practice offered, such as Chi Gung. I remember joining these and experiencing frustration and thinly veiled anger if the person leading an exercise would go over the allotted time and continue after the dinner bell had been invited. Initially, I felt obliged to stay until the end of the session. While my body would stay, my mind would become very resentful and my thoughts about the person leading would centre around their perceived lack of consideration of the needs of the group. I soon learned that if I stayed at the back of the group then I could quietly leave when the bell was invited. If someone invited me to go for a walk before dinner, I would subtly gauge the time and distance to ensure that I wasn't too far from the dining hall at 6pm. 

I once believed this relationship to food was hard wired into my body–something I’d have to live with for the rest of my days–but over time it slowly began to change. It’s likely that there were multiple reasons for this. For example, having dinner at set times would be helpful in reducing my anxiety around food security. Just having the confidence that food would be available at regular times is likely to have calmed my nervous system. Practising mindfulness and living in a practice centre like Plum Village would have helped reduce chronic stress and the associated release of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones not only mimic the symptoms of hypoglycemia but also affect insulin sensitivity, which plays a role in maintaining blood glucose levels. 

With time and the support of the practice, I went from being hyper-conscious of the availability of food–needing to eat every two hours–to feeling quite comfortable eating only two meals per day with no snacks in between. This is a change of seismic proportions, and the conditions of living in Plum Village played a significant role. 

Emotional eating is an additional element of the complex picture. In Plum Village, the unprocessed nature of the food, its relative inaccessibility outside of mealtimes, and the fulfillment of being part of a community and doing something deeply meaningful were all important aspects. In my last year in the Village, the only times that I would eat an evening meal were if I was emotionally stressed, or if the food on offer was particularly appealing–such as freshly baked bread made by one of the brothers or dauphinoise potato, a specialty of a particular brother.

Longer periods of fasting for inexperienced practitioners on retreat in Plum Village are actively discouraged, and there are good reasons for this. I remember the first short fast that I tried some months after arriving. I finished my last meal at 6:30pm on day one, didn’t eat on day two, and had planned to have breakfast at 7:30am on day three. Roughly thirty-six hours without food–not very long in the grand scheme of things. I don’t recall much about day two, but the morning of day three is clearly etched in my memory. I barely made it through sitting meditation, feeling weak and unsteady, verging on the brink of collapse. I recall only just making it back to my room afterwards. Once there, I quickly ate some fruit and fell upon the bed, waiting desperately for the unpleasant feelings to pass. Suffice to say, I didn’t try this again for quite a while.

The belief that fasting can be beneficial to the human body is an idea that I held onto, and in the years to follow, I read widely on the subject and tried to learn as much as I could. During this time, I slowly undertook some shorter fasts. These went well, and I gradually developed my capacity for going without food. In 2018, I felt ready to undertake another longer fast. This time, a seven-day one.

The external conditions for this fast were excellent, as it took place during the autumn lazy period in Plum Village—a handful of weeks when the hamlet closes after the last retreats of a vibrant summer schedule have finished. The autumn lazy period in Plum Village is a particularly wonderful time, when a deep peace and silence slowly descend upon the hamlet, like a collective exhale. The last of the guests and volunteers have made their way home, the intensity of the mid-year heat has begun to dissipate, and the fig and plum trees are still heavy with their sweet fruit. It has always seemed peculiar to me that in some places in the world, people are starving, while in others, delicious food falls from the trees, uneaten. 

In preparation for this fast, I had eaten well in the months leading up to it; reducing my intake of refined foods, as well as increasing the amounts of raw, nutrient-dense foods. I was confident–on reflection, this was the confidence of someone who had little idea of what he was about to embark upon.

As I shared before, water fasting for me is a real journey. My lasting memory of this first extended fast is the seemingly endless nights, as if my mind were telling me, “Hey Mark, you don’t have the time to sleep; you have important things to do, like find me some food!” But I survived these trials, more convinced than ever that there were benefits to be experienced. 

In the autumn of 2019, I fasted again. This time, I introduced silence as a way of deepening the spiritual aspects of the fast. While preparation is never perfect, I had learned a lot from my previous experience. I had completely cleared my schedule to allow myself to rest more fully and introduced vegetable juicing as part of the preparation, with the aim of being in the best nutritional pre-fast state that I could be.

Again, the nights felt interminable and I was very weak. As I often experience when I am unwell–or when something is happening that I don’t much like–my mind searches for a cause. Normally it searches externally: What have I consumed or been in contact with? Who or what is the cause of my suffering? Where can I place the blame? It’s been a slow realisation that my mind is more often than not the biggest reason for my suffering.

It was interesting that, after the 2019 fast, while going through the re-feeding phase—a joy that I will share more about later—I found that something had changed profoundly. After twenty years of being a vegetarian, I had suddenly become a vegan. This was not something I had intended to do. While the seed of compassion for all beings had always been something I wanted to nourish and develop, this was the start of noticing unexpected changes as a result of the fasting.

In 2020, I returned home to Ireland, a year of upheaval for so many around the world. The conditions never seemed quite right for fasting again—until I returned to Plum Village in October 2023 for a year. By the end of that stay, I was ready to fast once more—and this one would prove to be a doozie. I’ll share more about this in the third part of this blog series on fasting and feasting next month.

Please take care - Water fasting can pose serious health risks, especially without medical supervision. If you have any medical conditions or take medications, consult a healthcare provider before attempting an extended fast, as it may lead to dangerous complications.

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