Michelle Conaway

Well, today went well.  But the question whether to stay on the cleanse or get off was getting stronger and stronger.  My 23 year old daughter and my husband were both on the cleanse as well, for five and four days respectively, as of today.  They were ready to call it quits.  They felt that they were cleansed enough and were very proud that they had made it this far, as was I.  I knew I could make it for longer, but why?  That was the question I kept asking myself.

I stayed present.  I kept checking in with my body.  My body felt ready to eat, or was it just my mind?  I don’t know but at about 4:00 p.m. I found myself making the luscious wonderful vegetable soup that you are suppose to break the fast with.  I did this differently than I normally do.  I was content.  I made it slowly and paid attention to each vegetable that I cut, giving thanks that it was here.  Ironically, our vegetable garden outside had begun to bear wonderful fruits of squash, zucchini, tomatoes and green beans this week.  I had appreciatively pulled each vegetable off of it’s vine each day.  I had washed it and stored it and loved and appreciated it throughout the fast.  I was proud to have grown it and was proud to now be making a soup with clean food that I would break the fast with.

That evening, my husband, daughter and myself stood over the pot of steaming soup and savored it’s aroma.  We dipped our ladle in and sat at the table together with our steaming bowls of fresh vegetables and broth.  We took our spoons and yum, we ate deliberately and purposefully from our bowls.  The flavors were vibrant.  The appreciation for what we were eating was great.  And we enjoyed every minute of it.

I want to remember in the days ahead to savor the foods that I eat and be conscious of what I am feeding my body.  Just as I watch the thoughts that I allow to take root in my brain I want to watch the food and  chemicals that I allow myself to consume.

This fast has been good on so many levels.  My urge to say “I’m Starving” has diminished.  I know now that I am not starving when my belly rumbles and I am grateful for the abundance that is always so readily available in my life.  I feel in control of my thoughts and therefore in control of my body and spirit as well.  It is such a powerful feeling to be okay with what “is” in the world.  It is wonderful to know that I can master the art of joy in each moment and that it has nothing to do with what is going on “out there” or even how my body is feeling.  It only matters what is going on within my being.

My goal is to do this fast again in October.  Next time, I would like to shoot for ten days.  Why?  I’m not sure.  I feel that I would like the experiment of it.  I would like the challenge.  I would also like to see how my body responds to ten days on a fast.  I have read about so many people that have done it and have yielded great energy and clarity of mind afterwards.  I’m not sure if I really need a fast for ten days to gain clarity of mind but who knows, my mind could always use a little more clarity, couldn’t it?

One thing I have learned is that I need to pre-prep my kids meals next time.  The cooking of healthy meals for them each day was almost too much to bear.  I think if I could just heat things up it would be easier on myself and would elimanate a lot of the temptation and constant reminder of what good foods we usually eat.  I think if I cooked ahead of time and froze their meals, I would have a good running start.

Thank you all for reading and following me on this journey.  I have enjoyed writing this blog and posting about my experiences.  I have loved it so much that I think I will start a new category titled “A Mom’s Quest for Enlightenment”.  Ha!  What do you think about that????

May 19, 2011 Day Four

Day four was good.  I didn’t have any real problem with my thoughts or body sensations.  I felt light, energized and had a good attitude.  I wasn’t obsessed with food as I was on day three.  I was in a pretty neutral mood and feeling pretty good.  Yes, I could eat.  It’s not as if I had completely lost my appetite, but I was still able to feel concrete about my choice NOT to.

I did find myself wondering how long I wanted to remain on the fast.  Trying to predict my future wants and needs.  Hmmm.  Haven’t I practiced this before?  All I can KNOW for sure is whatever it is that I want or need NOW, in this moment.  But I found myself having that internal conversation in my head about the pros and con’s of staying on/getting off of the fast.  Trying to set up a finish line.  Trying to find my destination.  Telling myself things like, “You eat healthy most of the time anyway, you probably don’t need the full 10 days like most people.  Let’s get off tomorrow.” and “This fasting is just some hokey, hippy, health nut craziness.  You don’t really need this!  What are you doing?  Get off the cleanse TONIGHT!”

And then of course the fear tactic thoughts  like, “You should stay on the full 10 days or you won’t get the energy benefits of the cleanse.  Stay on the fast till day 10.” or “You really don’t get much out of it unless you can go ten days.  You’ll have wasted these days if you get off early.  Stay on it at least 7 days.”

I noticed these thoughts as they came and went though, without much attachment to them.  I realized that this cleansing for me is a journey and not a race or destination to “get to”.  I remembered to come back to now and make the choice now whether to stay on the cleanse or not.   To check in with myself and ask myself how I am doing in this moment . . and somehow I have still not eaten.

I am writing this post as I begin day 5.  I woke up at 3:30 a.m. with abundant energy and went ahead and got up to start the day.  I feel optimistic that I will make it through another day on this fast.  I will continue to choose in the present.  And for now I am choosing to remain on it.  But, there may be a moment in which my body says, EAT, and I will do that.  One of the best things I am getting out of this cleanse is to sync up with what my body is telling me.  I am really checking in with what my body needs in each moment and it feels very good.  I guess this is what it feels like to be aligning Mind, Body and Spirit.  What a gift to myself.

Day 5

I have told several people that I am on the Master Cleanse and they want to know more about it.  I thought I would post a links page that will give everyone the recipe for the lemonade and the general instructions for following the fast.

There are several fasts and cleanses out there, but I think this is the simplest, most straight forward cleanse.  It’s a sea salt water flush, morning and evening, at least 60 oz. of the lemonade drink per day and decaffeinated herbal tea if desired.  Most people subscribe to it for a minimum of 10 days and some of the marathon fasters can go as long as 45 days.  I don’t know yet if I can even hang with it for the minimum 10 days, but I think that no matter how long you stay on it, it is beneficial.  Even a one day break from digestion is good in my mind.

Here is the website that I have used for the recipe and general instructions.

mastercleansesecrets.com

This is a fascinating article on fasting:

http://www.falconblanco.com/health/fasting.htm

If you decide to try it, good luck!   If I find further resources that seem valuable I will update this post.

Welllll. . .I may have boasted about the ease of this cleanse a teensy bit too much yesterday.  Wow!  Day three did kick my booty for sure!  But, even though the temptation was almost insurmountable, I did NOT eat.

So, what happened?  What happened to my NOTICING but not ATTACHING onto thoughts?  What happened to ALLOWING whatever is happening to happen? I’m not completely sure, but I did notice around 1 p.m. that I began a downward spiral into being pissed off that I couldn’t have anything to eat, as if a gun were being pointed to my head.  Sometime when I was making lunch for the boys the thought “this looks good” coupled with the rumblings in my belly and the hint of a headache at the base of my neck turned things haywire in my brain.  “This looks good” turned to “It’s not fair that I have to cook this when I am fasting” to “Why do these darned kids have to eat anyway!”  I forgot to nip the thoughts in the bud at “this looks good”.

What I noticed as my thoughts began spiraling into a downward dive is that my body did as well.  I had aches and pains everywhere and I noticed that I was really focused on them.  I couldn’t seem to just allow them and go on, I had to get a little irritated, a little mad at everyone and a little sick of the fast.  I wanted to BLAME the fast!!!  I wanted to BLAME, period.  I forgot that this was a gift to myself.  I forgot that it was really healing my body.  I just wanted a bite of chicken, darn it!

Things simmered down a bit when I went to take myself a long hot bubble bath.  I took with me some herbal spearmint tea.  I soaked.  I allowed.  And, I felt much better.  I remembered the reasons for starting the fast.  I remembered that I love myself enough to abstain from food for a few days.   I thought about the benefits and how giving up would be having to start all over again.  I read anarticle about fasting and it’s benefits.  I re-motivated myself.  My thoughts simmered down.  I made peace with the fast again.

On day four, I plan to nip thoughts in the bud before I start following them down the seductive trail of despair.  I am a mom and my kids DO have the right to eat and they have the right to eat healthy meals.  I am the one that prepares them.  I MUST be around food during this fast.  That’s “what IS”.  That is what I am going to accept on Day four.  And my “thoughts” about “What Is” really mean nothing.  I AM doing this fast.  I AM giving this to myself as a gift.  My thoughts about it really have no relevance, so why follow them?

Day 4

Today was great!  I felt good and surprisingly, I didn’t feel very hungry.  I noticed I would begin to think about food but I would easily move my thinking to something else.  The body sensations were not bad.  I would notice rumblings in the abdominal area and I felt weak a couple of times but I didn’t resist them.  I allowed my belly to rumble and when I felt weak I drank some more lemonade for energy.  I pulled to the foreground of my mind the parts of my body that felt good, even great, and focused on that.  Very quickly, the symptoms that some would call adverse passed away as quickly as I noticed them.  Yea!

I cut my usual 3 1/2 to 4 mile evening walk down to about 3 miles. . . my 10 year old son that was walking with me had a sore throat and wanted to come home early. . . funny how an excuse to conserve my energy was conveniently provided.   I kept up with my daily duties and wasn’t tempted even one time to eat anything.  I even stayed up until midnight and watched a movie with my husband and read for a while before going to sleep. I felt energetic, wholesome and very healthy today.  Lighter, I would say, even though the scale says I lost only one pound as of bedtime.

I have tried the cleanse in the past.  A very long time ago, when I was in high school in fact, I did the cleanse with my late mother.  We lasted, I think, for three days.  It felt like an eternity to me then.  We quickly got off of it together on day four and made a soup with everything we had on hand.  It was the most delicious food I ever tasted at the time.  A raw green bean looked good to me that day.  Looking at a raw potato even looked divine.  I don’t know if I still lacked the maturity to realize what the cleanse was doing for me or if I was just doing it to please my mom, but I only lasted three days.

I tried it again about three years ago.  I lasted not even a day and by the end of day one, was cooking a big dinner for myself.  Don’t know what happened there.  Guess I needed to do the soul cleansing first.

In in case, I feel great now.  I can already feel the benefits of giving my body a break.  The energy that my body usually uses to digest the southern cooking that I love to create is being used to cleanse.  The creative energy that I so often channel into cooking is now being utilized for my writing and painting and of course, creating the best fasting lemonade EVER!!!  ha!

I am looking forward to day three.  I am not dreading it at all.  It is as much a test to the power of my thought patterns as it is a bodily cleanse.  For now, I am passing both with flying colors as far as I am concerned.  We’ll see what Day three brings.

Day Three