Fasting Yoga: a self-experiment

Day 0: Fasting is great - says Franz S. Moesl

Fasting, says Franz S. Moesl, detoxifies the body, cleanses it from the inside, can make you euphoric and happy and, roughly summarized, is really great. And yoga, says Franz S. Moesl, should reduce stress, point the way to one's own center, solve mental problems and is also great. I sit on a blanket three meters from Franz S. Moesl, 29 other people around me, and can not judge with the best will. I have never tried either one or the other. But I will find out what the combination of fasting and yoga does. Here. Thanks to Franz S. Moesl. He is a yoga teacher and offers courses in which one strengthens his body and at the same time eats nothing. I'm curious how my civilization-filled body would handle this extreme situation of fasting and yoga. "We are talking to us," says Franz right at the beginning. He is 45 cm tall, his body narrow, his hair gray and rasping, ascetic, he looks like a picture-book monk from a Tibetan monastery. He comes from Wiesbach, somewhere on the flat land between Landshut and Rosenheim. He was taught yoga in Thailand and India. Let's see if this man gets me pollution-free with his fasting program.



Anyway, I did my homework. On the day of arrival ("discharge day") in the morning I still muesli with yogurt, but then only fruits and vegetables to me, apart from the cappuccino at a gas station. Now I'm sitting in a group of thirty grown people and getting a ball rolled up. He's been plodding around the room for a while, always around a candle that burns in the middle in a bowl full of pebbles. Whoever picks him up should introduce himself and formulate his expectations for the fasting week. So I get to know Christine from Berlin, Carmen from Dusseldorf, Carsten from Nordheide and Annette from Rotterdam and hear things like "finding a middle", "getting on the track" or "initiating a new phase of life". I finally mumble something about "let's see" and "let surprise" and roll the ball to Ute from Bremen.



Later, Franz gives a brief introduction to fasting and its effects. And then asks, "Who has not emptied his gut?" I'm not sure, that's a rather intimate question. But that seems to make sense: only an empty bowel does not promise hunger and protects against headaches and fatigue during fasting. So one hour later, after the first session of yoga, I stand in line at the delivery point of the Glauber's salt, which is supposed to make me inverted from the inside out. It works.

Day 1: Yoga at 6:30

Nobody believes me at home. At 6.30 am I stand in the yoga room, raise my arms and exhale consciously. "Morning Yoga with Sun Salutation" is the name of this event, I am tired and weak with diarrhea, thank you, Mr. Glauber. After one hour of yoga, however, I feel reasonably fresh, and physical dullness follows the mental one? with the anxious question: What will happen only in the next five days? Can I get that? Herbal tea is available for breakfast at eight. At noon at twelve, for coffee at five, for supper at seven, too. I usually take it with sweetener, but "normal" is not here. So pure. There is a tight daily program between the various tea ranges, yoga three times a day, and a hike in the afternoon. The first day has it all. The bluff on Rügen waves in low arches, we take all south of Sellin, then trudge for miles across the deep beach and back again. My stomach is still rumbling a bit. At the office they are just coming back from the canteen. I go to the café on the chic pier and order a yogic tea. I sit facing the cake buffet, a woman at the next table indicates my view wrong (or right?) And advises me to apple cheese, "are the famous here". From the other side the aroma of a tomato soup blows over to me. I have to go.



Day 2: Lenten soup and dreams of pies

I am tired. The morning yoga can me. I feel battered, have a hole in my stomach. My body is cold, my head is glowing for compensation. Essfantasien, primarily of pies and cheese, orbiting my brain. At 12 o'clock there is the first fasting soup. And it works like this: Vegetables are thrown unseasonably into a pot of water. Then the greens are taken out and served the brew. It tastes disgusting, a little like carrot, a bit like celery. The smell makes me choke, yet I eat two plates. But hiking is doing well today. We walk through the forest to a very beautiful lake, which lies mystically hidden in the woods.Afterwards on the cliffs, the panorama is breathtaking. Eight students continue along the steep coast to Binz, I'm there. At least eight kilometers today. I feel better now than in the morning. At about eight o'clock in the evening I have daydreams of youth hostel bread, of brown bread, beer ham and rosehip tea, I am convinced for minutes that a kitchen assistant in a white coat pushes in the corresponding car. Nobody comes. Today, I'm going to sleep in the evening at a quarter past nine. That happened to me last eleven, I think.

Day 3: Damaged calls

6:00 am: Early hike on the beach. Many of the participants will report afterwards, this was their highlight. I think beach walks are clearly overrated. At seven we do yoga on the water, next to four fishermen, who are silently taking their catch of the night out of the nets and not paying any attention to us. After the fasting soup, my brother calls: I have always been his role model, so he had just bought a can of asparagus, thrown away the asparagus and drunk the water. Then he laughs dirty. "No, just kidding," he says, "in fact, I've just eaten half Croque Madames, and you?" 6.30 pm: Evening Yoga. Franz sets the pace. "Knock your legs out," he says. That's how it always works. Then your legs are stretched, your feet are shaken. Crack my football legs. "Take a long breath and long out." Then we go to the quadruped stand, stretch the right arm and the left leg of us, "feel you in the diagonal". We practice the sequence sheet? Cat? Dog. I have a hard time emptying my mind after the bowel, concentrating only on my breath and not thinking about anything. "Let your thoughts go," says Franz in a monotone voice. I would like to. For my thoughts are all about food on this third day. I'm lying on my back now. "Put your weight in the ground." I think: schnitzel with fried potatoes. "Let yourself exhale." Roulades with red cabbage and dumplings. "Feel your weight." Potato salad with sausages and medium-hot mustard. "Take a long breath." Tortellini in spinach cream sauce, served with fresh olive ciabatta. "Feel how with each exhalation lowers your abdominal wall." Twice roasted pork sweet and sour. Pizza Funghi e Prosciutto. Doner. The occupied baguettes at the motorway service area Fuchsberg on the A20. "Feel yourself in your stomach." Indeed. Now I feel something in the middle of my stomach. The big emptiness.

Day 4: attraction for roaring teenagers

Early Yoga at 6.30 am: My hunger is gone, I have a lot more energy, but a bit of homesickness, even though Rügen is really sensational. And we are an attraction in the spectacular scenery of Sellin: Four times we do yoga on the Baltic Sea beach. Curious onlookers from the pier over, teenagers on the promenade roar something. We can not understand it. We rest in ourselves.

In the evening Franz gives tips for the construction days. This is sobering: My real life must wait for the day after tomorrow for a few more days, it seems. Steamed vegetables, spicy soups, raw vegetables ... In addition to the four liters of water that I drink now without any effort during the day.

Day 5: Everything will be fine

Sometimes you open your eyes and know that everything will be fine. Today is such a day. I feel for my empty stomach. Nothing has been grumbling for two days, he has flattened, palpable. I am really fit, I realize that. The yoga after it is easy today, it is as if a switch had turned? The movements are now flowing and no longer choppy, I breathe deeply and evenly. At noon, says Franz, we hike in the Zicker Mountains, about twelve kilometers from our hostel. I am full of urge to move and persuade Andreas, a taxi operator from the vicinity of Frankfurt, to go there by bicycle while the others travel by car. The hike itself is my highlight. What an incredible landscape!

My drug experiences are rather rudimentary, but that's what it must feel like when you expand your consciousness, when you perceive things more intensely than usual, the light, the wind, the colors, the smells. In the evening we let the yoga fail. There is only one final round. Again the ball rolls from one to the other. I say I'm fine. I feel the words. Actually: I am fine.

Day 6: The spirit has not opened

Two bowls are in the middle of the room, apples are in it. Soon I will bite into one of these, my first food for nearly a week. I have no desire for it. I could continue fasting. But on the other hand, I realized that I also love to eat. And every other fasting day shifts the two to three culinary barren days back. So I'm about to break the fast. But before that, Franz has set the reflection.

We lie on our mats, one last time. Our yoga master talks about how yoga can help "the inner strength to determine your own life", and that's necessary, because "life is over quickly, use time and enjoy it." By fasting the horizon widens, creativity blocks would be dissolved. We should seize the opportunity that the time after fasting now offers us. The chance to break patterns. Our eyes are closed, we breathe deeply and evenly. And reflect.

Amazed me that you can really get along without food, so long. That it can even do well, at least after a few days of inrush. That yoga makes me more articulate, supple, fitter. And how much time is always spent on eating in everyday life! Life is so much easier and more relaxed when all of these time-consuming agenda items just fall under the table. Something else I've learned: Probably not even at the annual convention of the German hotel chef German so much about food and recipes as the group fast. But my mind has not opened. After all, I have only a small nagged Central European mind. You do not have to understand everything. I certainly not. I fasted, I did yoga. I lost five pounds and immersed in a world that was previously as foreign to me as the middle Antarctic. Would I do it again? No idea. First of all, I bite into an apple. "May this apple reach your heart," says Franz, "so that you can find your way in life."

WHAT I EAT IN A DAY || SELF CARE, VEGAN KETO RECIPE BOOK, + YOGA #Vegan (March 2024).



Self-experiment, Schnitzel, Landshut, Rosenheim, Thailand, India, gas station, Berlin, Dusseldorf, Rotterdam, Bremen, Sellin, fasting, yoga