Don't Make These Fasting Mistakes, Actionable Ayurveda with Salila#7

Welcome to Actionable Ayurveda with Salila, your go-to podcast for diving deep into the timeless wisdom of Ayurveda. I am Salila Sukumaran, your host and guide on this transformative journey. With a lineage rooted in Ayurvedic practices, I am here to empower you to thrive and flourish through the ancient principles of Ayurveda. So today, our gathering, we are going to talk about Langana. Langana is a very important healing therapy in Ayurveda. Langana is fasting, and in the West we have something called intermittent fasting, time-restricted fasting, autophagy, which are all buzzwords right now. For Ayurveda, fasting has been a very normal, common therapeutic intervention as a way of reducing bulk in the body. What is the deeper meaning of fasting? Based on Ayurveda, fasting is not just for physical reduction, physical reduction of bulk. Fasting is also for emotional reduction of bulk. So think of that as lightening of the mind, making the mind more energized, taking care of heavier emotions, taking care of emotions or thoughts or what we call as ruminating. Fasting will help with that. Get off— getting off the cycle of ruminating and becoming a more lighter, more centered, more balanced person. Fasting will also help with spiritual growth. The other word for fasting which exactly means spiritual growth is upasana. That is a completely different kind of fasting. As Ayurveda does is therapy. Is healing, whereas Upasana, meaning asana is sitting. All the yogis here know what asana is. Upasana meaning sitting close, sitting close to God, sitting close to a spiritual presence. So taking fasting as a vow of piety, as a vow of reduction in the overwhelming attachment to pleasing our senses, our ears, our eyes, our mouth, which is one of the strongest senses, right? We want to taste things constantly. And when we are living a mindless life, usually we are consuming a lot from our eyes, from our ears, from our mouth, from our touch, from our senses. We are sort of inviting the universe in. So the way our human body is, it's almost like we are filtering the universe through our body and then excreting through the elimination that is visible and elimination that is invisible. There could be negative thoughts which are our invisible subtle mind excretions, right? There are people who speak in ways that feels like that did not come from a high consciousness, that came from a place that is not something that is life-giving, right? So we are filtering this universe, we are eating and consuming this universe through this body, and sometimes our consumption crosses a threshold. So 'pasana' is a way to immediately cut that back, reduce that to zero by staying mindfully and intentionally away from any kind of stimulation of the senses and staying focused on God, So that we renew our system and then go back out in the world to mindfully again consume only as much as we require. Because unless we made these breaks and realize the importance of that peace and that centeredness within us, so that our own internal soul can then start to communicate and make its presence felt, we would not know We would probably spend our whatever 100 years of life we have in simple consumption of the external into the internal. So fasting is a way of turning that tide around, turning that flow around, and saying from— by fasting, by doing— I am going to now reverse that flow and make it from inside to the outside. Because when I consume I process and I eliminate. Literally, the word sharira means— the word for the body in Sanskrit, sharira, means that which consumes and eliminates. We are basically crap-making machines throughout. When we fast, we are reversing that flow and we are saying, what is coming from inside of me, I am now going to express that as love, as life-giving energy out into the world. That is the deeper meaning of fasting. In Ayurveda, when we have an abundance of kapha, when we have an imbalance of kapha, naturally we will do fasting. So who are the kapha body types? Kapha body types are people who are well-rounded, who have developed musculature, people who love to eat, whose digestions are a little bit slower, who tend to put on weight, who are thoughtful, who are loving, who we consider as our rock, who are stable. They have a lot of energy, they can go, go, go throughout the day. They have a lot to give. They are the healthiest of all the body types. But when we have a Kapha imbalance, a Kapha Vikriti, what happens is we put on excess weight. A Kapha Vikriti can happen to any of the body types. It can happen to a Vata body type, a skinny person. It can happen to a Pitta body type, an athletic person, a Pitta dominant, fire energy prominent person, Kapha imbalance will look like overweight, weight gain, sudden weight gain, weight gain in the wrong parts of the body. A Vata person with a big stomach, an overhanging belly, right? It can happen in the mind where the emotions become dense and low, depression, anxiety. It can happen in the consciousness where you are a dense consciousness now, you're not operating from a Satvik intelligence, you are more from a Tamasik intelligence. So you are arrogant, you are greedy, egoistical. I don't mean you personally, but you know, all of us, we are operating from a state, a lower state, an imbalanced state of greed, of possessiveness, jealousy, arrogance, narcissism. All these are lower states of being. So when we do cleansing and fasting, we are actually lightening all these states and we are becoming more Sattvic, which is why we are going to talk about the 3 ways of fasting that I do with my clients. Now, I'm not a physician, so I don't do fasting the way an Ayurveda physician would do fasting. However, I also do fasting therapeutically based on how householders do fasting. So most householders would fast once every 15 days or so. You probably already heard about 8 fasting. This is a good day to either reduce our food intake. So instead of doing 3 meals a day, we can say that I'm going to do only 2 meals a day, or I am going to do only 1 meal a day. That is fasting. We can say that, okay, I used to have 5 different kinds of food groups. I am going to have only 1 food group during this day. So it could be I'm just going to have fruit. I'm just going to have some steamed veggies. I'm just going to have some grains, or I'm going to just have some lentil soup. Usually that is unusual. People stick to either just water, just fruit, just grains, or a mix of grains and lentils, like a runny slurry of khichdi. We could also start our fasting by saying that I normally eat about 15 mouthfuls of food in a meal, I'm going to reduce that to just 5 mouthfuls. That is also fasting. It could be fasting saying that I today I am only going to do certain things. I'm not going to watch TV. I'm not going to watch any of my devices. We are reducing consumption. So fasting can be any reduction of consumption. You could very well say that I am going to not read any fashion magazines. I've not been doing that for nearly 10 years, 15 years now. So I have reduced the consumption of something, and that would also mean as fasting. If you are a dharma follower and you follow Hari, you follow Vishnu, you follow Krishna, adashis are good days to fast. Because these days we believe that If you fast, because we are taking away that some of that consumption from the body, the body may get negatively affected. So they are done best on days where it's auspicious. So the body won't get hurt. We won't inadvertently make any mistakes and hurt the body because sometimes we all go gung-ho and we say, okay, let's, let me do this. I'm not going to eat a thing. I remember the first time I fasted, I had headaches. I had like, who's crazy enough to fast? Who even does fasting, right? That was like 20, 25 years ago when I did it. My first day of fasting. So it's best to do it on an auspicious day. So you start it by lighting a lamp, praying to the gods, preparing our food mindfully, meditatively, and then consuming that gratefully. Then we become healthier instead of becoming sick. The other day is Ashtami. If you're a Devi worshipper, if you're a Shakti worshipper like me, then you would do it on a Ashtami Tithi. It comes once every month, so those days are auspicious to do. If you are a bhakta of both the Devi and Vishnu or Krishna, go ahead and do it twice a week, 3 times a month. That would also be fine. Many women in Indian culture do the fortnightly fasting where they will pray and have 1 meal or 2 meals. 1 meal might be usually a simple grain-based meal, and the next meal would be Everything. Annually fasting is important. So we do our annual fastings around Navaratra. I would say biannually, but most of us are now keeping Navaratra fast in the fall. So the 9 days of fasting is what Hindus do. I'm not very sure what the Muslims do or Lent fasting. I'm not very sure of the details on that. But if you are following a religion, if you have a fasting culture, that's best way to also do fasting. And doing fasting with other people helps us stay on track, helps us feel confident, and we feel encouraged by watching others also fast. So usually these are done by a large population all at once. So all the neighbors will be fasting, so we won't feel bad that we are also fasting, right? Then there is the cleanse fast for detoxing. This is done by the physicians in a certain way, and there is a certain way that I do as a therapeutic intervention with my clients. Intel. The way we do this is we would first do a cleaning up of the diet. We reduce consumption, we stop eating any kind of packaged food, any kind of takeout, any kind of stale food, overly spicy, oily food. And then after doing about 2 weeks of that, we would then do a time-restricted fasting of about 8 hours. So we look at the peak daylight time, which is like the 8 hours of peak daylight. So with the solar noon, 4 hours before the solar noon, and 4 hours after the solar noon. And this varies for every region. And in that peak daylight 8 hours, we decide, do you want to start the day with one meal? Do you want to end the day with one meal? Do you want to do two meals, or do you want to do three meals? There is no hard and fast rule. It all depends on the person, their willpower. I've seen that if you force somebody to do something that they are not 100% on board, usually it backfires. Usually they are unhappy and their body does not gain a lot of healing through that. So we do a cleanse fast for detox, and once we've fasted for 24 to 48 hours, then we do a virechana, then we do purgations, then we do cleanses. So that could be either with the Triphala decoction or with castor oil or Abhipatti churna. But we do a purgation to remove any of the ama that might get collected into the gut, into the alimentary canal. Whenever we do fasting, what we are doing is we talked about we are lightening, right? So what is this lightening? This lightening is an increase of Vata. When there is an imbalance of Vata, when there is an increase of Vata, naturally there's going to be dryness. There's going to be constipation. When we notice extreme dryness, constipation, and anxiety in a human body, we know that the fast did not go well. So if you fast and you wake up the next day with very dry skin, with lots of racing thoughts and feeling overwhelmed, then your fasting was not a success. We should feel the Sattva settling in our mind, we should feel light and energized in the body, we should feel happy. That's when we know that the fast worked. People do juice fasting, people do water fasting, people do monomial fasting. This is all available to us. We, when we think of fasting, we think of starving. That's not the correct way to look at fasting. Fasting means nourishing. Reducing consumption, mindless consumption, and nourishing our internal intelligence. That's what is fasting. Where we go wrong in the Western world, in the modern world, is we think of fasting as starving, and then we overdo that starvation and Vata increases. So this backfires for people who are already weak, who are extremely Vata imbalanced, who are skinny, who are recovering from illness, who are going through menopause, perimenopause, children who are going through puberty, we do not fast. I've seen YouTube videos of like 14-year-olds, 16-year-olds saying that I have gone into autophagy. That is horrible. They are destroying the tissues. So when our Agni is burning up, our digestive fire is burning up, and it is waiting for food to arrive, and we do not nourish it at the right time, what happens is it will start to eat the tissues, it will start to eat our 'Datus' and when it starts to eat the 'Datus' that is when the 'Darya' happens, it means that our body is losing its vital resources of energy and the body is weakening. From there the next step is death. We do it long enough, we will die. So if we don't have food in the body, we know we will die, right? So Based on Ayurvedic wisdom, fasting is about carefully nourishing our body within a certain time frame without torturing the body. For a normal daily eating, many of us will say that, oh, I'm on an intermittent fasting diet. I wake up at 6 in the morning, but then I don't eat till 12 noon, and then I have another meal at 5, and that's it. And they I'll see people who are on this schedule for many years, and then they'll say things like— I've seen like really healthy men get on this schedule thinking that this is the best schedule to lose weight. They don't lose weight, they start developing acidity, gastritis, and then they start to lose their vitality. They start to lose their drive, they start to lose their that you know, that manliness, that edge. Their hormones start to get imbalanced, their testosterone levels start dropping, their body starts to hold on to more fat thinking that it is in a starvation situation. So this kind of a fasting is wrong. It's best to work with a practitioner and see whether—

how—

whether you are in a state where now we should reel back a little bit and start eating. I've literally told male clients to start eating breakfast in the morning because their intermittent fasting is not working. Because they come from good health, they may be able to carry this on for several years, but it will backfire. For women in perimenopausal, menopausal stage, doing that kind of intermittent fasting where we are in 18 hours of fasting overnight plus eating a very late meal in the daytime will definitely push us into accelerated aging very fast. How do we know fast is backfire? Lack of vitality, lack of happiness. A healthy person is happy, energized, purposeful, has a peaceful mind. An unhealthy person is anxious, irritable, unhappy, starts to lose their luster, their magnetism, their drive for life. How do we know a fast went well? When we wake up the next morning, our body feels energized. We feel like exercising. We feel like enjoying our meal. We slow down. We want to enjoy every morsel. We want to connect with other people. We feel positive about our future. Even if a situation comes up where we are slightly nervous, we start to think of what's under my control. What can I do right now to mitigate this situation? We're not like, oh my God, I need to call everybody and make a big hoo-ha. We start to Slowly come back into our own strength center, we start to come into our own stability, we become like Shiva. The symbolism of Shiva, of the Shivalinga, is central for Hindu Dharma because it is the symbol of stability. While you are arising through Samsara, while you are arising through Shakti, which is the dance of chaos, you are staying stable. By fasting, we are constantly coming into our Shiva. We are constantly coming into our silence. We are constantly coming into our stable centeredness. Exercise and fasting. Many of my Western clients are like, "Ooh, I'm now fasting. My body is now into, you know, it's burning its fat reserves. Why don't I throw in a nice workout session and increase that?" Nowhere in Ayurveda have I seen a single reference of exercise and fasting. In fact, when we fast, We take it easy, we rest, we may sleep or not sleep depending on how vata we are, but we are staying inward, we are not taxing our body, we are not doing any kind of exercise. At the most we will walk, but that too I'm very careful, it comes with a lot of disclaimers like please don't stretch your body too much, don't push your body too much, fasting itself is a big strain on the body, and we do not know. We all have— we all can play with that margin of error to such a degree, so much, that after a point, if we hit that point of no return, it's difficult to bring the body back. Based on Ayurveda, I would never say we should stretch our body beyond a certain limit. Once we start eating normally, then we can go ahead and exercise as much as we like. Our body will handle it. Madanji is asking, what are some ways to ensure the fast doesn't go wrong? Follow the tradition. We all have a fasting tradition from our grandparents, from our elders. We can first talk to them, however they do fasting. That will be helpful. Around 11-ish, 11-ish, I will have some kind of a grain-based meal. So it could be a maand, it could be a vireti, it could be a mung bean, akhufaba. At 5 o'clock, I will have a proper meal with everything, all the food groups—vegetables, grains, the lentils. I will even have a dessert. I'll have something fried. Why? Because I'm a vata body type, and when we do fasting, we are increasing vata, we are increasing dryness in the body. So we need to have lots of oil, lots of ghee. We can eat fried things with that meal. My plate looks like a wedding feast. I prepare a feast for myself. Every time we fast, we have to feast. And when we do fasting like that, we don't feel depleted, we feel nourished. When I do my Navaratra fasting, my body gets so much more healthier. I eat so much better than my normal days. So I have a question.

I mean, I, I agree with you. This is what I do, but I do have fatty liver, genetic fatty liver. It comes and goes. So sometimes if I increase my oil or ghee consumption, I feel it. I feel it right away. I'm so sensitive. I feel every little drop thing happening in my body. My doctors, they go crazy. So what to do? Because I do the Navratri too, and at the same time, you know, It's just my stomach kind of going crazy and at the same time I'm so dry.

When you're doing that fasting, do you notice that your body isn't happy if you have ghee? It's happy, just sometimes.

No, so the ghee is very tricky too for me. I use, I try to take not more than 2, 2 spoon, tablespoon a day. That's a maximum I go. I don't beyond that. Yeah. They're not healthy. Say what?

That's a normal day for you, right? 2 tablespoons.

And I use all the good oils like peanut, coconut, olive oil.

Yeah. Yeah. So when you do fasting, you're not eating. So that 2 tablespoons you can have with your meal, that one meal.

Yeah. But like Navratri fast, I do the cleansing, like all the Navratri food and everything. Otherwise, I'll usually— I used to fast before much more, but since I became more Vata dominated with at this age, I find it very hard to go completely not eating grains or something like heavier.

We have to eat grains. That's the way Ayurvedic fasting happens. That's the way we fast in homes. I see that, you know, sometimes people will eat just vegetables, just fruit. Those are all very drying. We have to eat grains. I only learned the fasting as a kid.

I started with that. We were brought up in Ayodhya, so Ram Nami, Ekadashi, and all these ones, but we would eat once after the puja. So this is how I was brought up. So we always ate one meal for sure, you know. Yeah. But now at this point, I find it even like not eating at all, I want to eat so much more because my vata is so strong. So it's very hard for me to find a balance.

And at the same time, I know, I have a feeling I'm getting arthritis. You're getting, you know, so that's not a good fasting. That's a good sign. Thank you for sharing that. I don't know what to do at this point. So you have to have more fats. You, you have to have— start the day with them on an empty stomach.

Okay, I'm going to start that. Yeah, I only have that at the puja, after puja, you know, in the month.

Every morning we do puja and on the empty stomach we have panchamritam. It's about a glass of panchamritam and then that will keep us going for about you know, 11, sometimes 1, and then we'll have a little grain water with that, with a little, you know, ghee with that. So maand, we'll drink a little maand or a little aquafaba, and then we break our fast. We'll do our puja at 5 o'clock or so, and then we'll have a proper big feast.

Okay, yeah, but that was in Ayodhya. I can't do this here. It gets harder. I'll remember to follow that again. Thank you. Absolutely.

Excuse me, even I have a question. Like, whenever I have bhagur, doesn't suit me at all. I mean, when I have, I have a feeling of heatedness in my body, and acidity also increases because I'm acidic in nature. So I'm working on it. I've stopped having chilies, coffee, tea. I've stopped having all this. We are having dale juice these days because Delhi is quite hot these days. So I don't know, this gourd thing has never, whether in winters or summers, I feel very acidic after having gourd.

Yeah, you're showing signs of Pitta imbalance. It'll be helpful to work with a practitioner because you've come to a threshold, you come to that very— you don't have a lot to play around with. Your body immediately gets Pitta imbalanced. And constant acidity is eroding the, you know, your esophageal walls. So that is not going to be good for you. So it's good to talk to a practitioner. Feel free to reach out. It's best to do a cleanse of some sort. So all that ama which is collected in your body will get cleansed out. Yeah.

No, I'm taking Ayurvedic treatment from, they are giving me that Kerala-based medicines. Yeah. Yeah. They are giving me those medicines, and I go all the way from Delhi to Gurgaon to show her because I'm much better now. From 60, I was having severe acidity issues. Okay. I always had this problem from very childhood, but in between I was fine. But now I'm close to 60, it has again come up badly. I can't have anything spicy, heavy, baharka khana also I can't have much, you know, I can't have Don't eat out much.

Yeah, so that come to that point of nearly that point of no return, you're probably standing at that edge where things are, you know, as we get older, these things become more and more difficult to manage. Best for you would be a panchakarma. You're taking medicines, but when, when did you start taking the treatment?

So it's been now 3-4 months I'm taking medicine because it was severe acidity. Severe means I used to feel in my esophagus also. And he said, you have erosions in your esophagus because of this acidity, Vata and Pitta, both, both of them, because I used to have gastric issues also.

Right. See, so when you told me your first sentences itself, I told you your esophagus will be affected, right? Because it sounded like you— that's how sensitive your body is now. So it was just a matter of time before you would have had this kind of gastritis. Best for you is to go do a panchakarma because we all have so many years to live and these daily conditions reduce our lifespan. Money can always be made. Money is nothing if we don't have life, right? And you know, especially us Indian women, we learn to live with a lot of these digestive issues thinking, "No problem, it's okay," right? So many lovely women in their 50s, 60s have just lived with this for decades, and we don't understand that what's happening is that our life is getting shaved off on the other end. So go to Kerala, go do a Panchakarma, reach out to me. I will refer you to great centers. I have amazing centers within your budget point. There are many people in our, you know, WhatsApp group who have reached out, you know, who had chronic issues. They've gone to centers, come back healed. Okay. So it doesn't make sense because if you're doing it for 3 months and still you're at a place where you can't have a good jaggery, it means that it's— you're taking that stair-step method. You're slowly climbing up and getting healthy. We need to get on a rocket ship and get to health as soon as possible. We can only do that through Panchakarma. As an outpatient, only so much can be done. If you were in your 30s, you were in your 20s, I would say, Do keep doing, do the outpatient as long as you're healing, you'll slowly get there. And then after a certain point, your body will become very, the energies will release, your body will heal itself. But with us, once we are in a perimenopausal, menopausal stage, the ability of the body to get back to health is not so optimal. Okay, thank you so much.

Thanks. I'll definitely get Yes, DM me and I'll refer you.

And my clients get treated like VIPs and you know, you don't have to pay me anything. This is something I do to help because so many people come to me and say, oh, I went to a center and I came back even more sicker than before. So this is why I started this because I want you to get to the right physicians and heal because anybody who passes out of a BAMS can put up a placard saying I am a Panchakarma expert because everybody gets taught Panchakarma. That doesn't make somebody a Panchakarma expert. You have to study with a senior physician for at least 10 years. You have to apprentice before you can say I am, I can do Panchakarma. An expert is somebody who's like in their 50s at least. Okay, thank you.

Thanks, Salila Sukumaran. I have a question.

Okay, so 2 weeks ago, when every time I would wake up, I had body pain. I would step and my feet were hurting like crazy. Every different parts of my body was hurting. Now, it's— I start eating, making amla chutney. I start eating a lot of amla. And then I notice I have less pain and less pain and less pain.

I go to poo every day.

I clean myself every day. No problem. I just don't know what's happening. Is it onset of arthritis or what is happening?

Maybe you can help me with this. It sounds like Vata, and Amla is a very good medicine. Amla will take care of any of these kind of issues, small, you know, Vata issues. So unless I looked at an intake form, I would not be able to exactly say what's going on, right? So reach out to me. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Usually our perimenopausal stage is a high Vata stage, so we will have these little aches and pains, and when we correct ourselves, our body becomes healthy.

Yeah. I'm, I'm feeling better and better all the time, but I'm just scared that if it is the onset of arthritic or just arthritis, if I can take care of it already before it gets worse, why not?

Yeah. Yeah. A cleanse is the best, you know. It's like you come and spring clean your home and that's it. We don't have to worry. It takes care of everything.

Will you be doing a group cleanse in the fall, right around the fall time? I'm thinking of doing a group cleanse this June because I know I can't because I'll be traveling and everything. So it will be very hard, you know.

Yes. I only got like about 9 people asking me and I don't want to put my energy unless there were enough people. So I'm going to put some energy behind that, make some posts and see how the response is. Yeah, if it works.

Otherwise, we'll see.

Thank you. Absolutely.

And you are kind. I want you to know. Oh, thank you. It's nice to have kind people around.

Yeah. You know, kindness is healing. I have— I love talking to people, so I encourage everybody to talk to me. Some people talk to me and say they got healed. So I'm like, God bless you. That is what needs to happen, you know, because I want to work with people who are really sick. Whom I can help. If a conversation will heal somebody, God bless you. That's, that's perfect. I appreciate that. Thank you.

Definitely. So much positivity.

Thank you, dear. Madanji is asking, is there a particular way to break the fast the next day? So when we say fasting, we calculate the hours in the night as fasting. So when I say I'm fasting, I'm fasting from the time I closed my eyes and I went to sleep, right? So I wake up at, let's say I went to sleep at 10 and I wake up at 6 in the morning. That is 8 hours of fasting. Now I'm going to break that fast with a little panchamrit, and then just the discipline of not eating 3 full meals, like a nice breakfast and a lunch and a dinner. That itself is fasting. Now, I could go one step beyond that and say, I'm a great yogi, I'm just going to drink water. For me to build up my body to be okay with that kind of a fasting, I will have to either be in satsang with a group of people who are all doing the same thing, or I would need several months of gentle reduced eating food careful with my body, managing my vata, and then going into a total water fast or a juice fast or something like that. I will never go cold turkey 24-hour fasting. I still don't do cold turkey 24-hour fasting because I'm perimenopausal. I'm already a vata-pitta body type. If I do that, I'm going to hurt my body. So fasting is not that easy. It's always good to talk to a practitioner. Whether that practitioner is your next-door vaidya or somebody like me, to figure out what will help you. So there's no one way to break that fast. Okay. I want to benefit from fasting, but for the same reason, I start craving all sorts of food items more when I decide to fast and end up giving. How should I approach this? Madhanji is asking. Like we said, it's not just about giving up everything. The moment we think the word fasting, we think starving. It's not that. You can start with, I am going to drop all desserts from my day. I'm going to drop all processed foods. I am not going to have any food from restaurants for this entire month. That is also a fasting. It's about curbing our unconscious habits and developing intention around the act of nourishing our body. So anything that increases our willpower, is fasting. We can't go from 0 to 100, right? If I've never fasted, I cannot go to a complete 24-hour starvation. I'm going to fail, and then I'm going to reinforce the thought that I don't have willpower. But if I do something small, if I take a baby step, then I will improve that willpower muscle. So try and do those gentle fasts first. Build yourself up, develop stamina to fast, and then do fasting. Does that help, Madhunji?

Absolutely, and thank you so much for answering that. Just one last thing that I had on mind— how often should one fast? Like, or is there like, you know, if let's say somebody decides to fast every week, is that too often and not recommended?

Absolutely. Whatever we do culturally In our dharmic, like Jainism, Hinduism, Buddhism, it's a fortnightly fasting. Every week is too much. Fortnightly fasting is good for householders. I didn't see any saffron-wearing yogis in this group, so yogis are completely different people. They can do as much intermittent fasting or daily fasting, water fasting, wind fasting, fire fasting. They can do whatever they want to do. They have a completely different way of living. We householders have children, we have work, we have to cook for everybody. We are mothers. 99% of the people in my community are women. So we will not do more frequently than a fortnightly fasting. Perfect.

Thank you for that.

Absolutely. Payal Waliya is asking, does intermittent fasting help in fertility? Yes, but it has to be done intentionally. Has to be part of a cleanse program, then it'll help with the fertility. But fertility is— you have to first look at the root cause of why infertility is happening and then see whether fasting is something that'll help. Because sometimes overconsumption can create a kapha condition in the body. And kapha condition, weight gain, hormonal imbalance, lower emotions, Denseness in consciousness, all that can lead to infertility. So how are we fasting? Are we fasting by reducing consumption of things? Maybe, you know, let's assume this young lady who is feeling challenged by infertility, she has a habit of reading many fashion magazines that constantly tell her that there is this skinny body that she needs to have, and she's constantly berating herself and feeling low, her moods are always low, she's unhappy with her body, naturally her body is going to start getting infertile because she's not appreciating the body. So something as simple as gratitude for the body will create better health in the body. And I have examples of wonderful women who have gotten pregnant after a decade of infertility by simply shifting their mindset. And I'll share the story and the testimonial and the baby picture, of course anonymized, in our webinar group. I'm so happy for this lovely young lady who came to one of my courses last year, and she recently, like 2 days ago, she sent me a message saying she gave birth to a healthy little baby boy. And this is somebody who for a decade thought she could not get pregnant, like her body was not built for pregnancy. That's what she thought. Excuse me, ma'am. Yes, ma'am.

Actually, uh-huh, my, my age is 42 and I'm trying for conception since last 2 years. Last year I had a miscarriage also. Yeah. And I have a problem of low AMH. Yeah. So everyone which I went to, they told me that time is very less, you have to go for IVF. But still, I, I, you know, I trusted my body and I conceived naturally last year, but it did not Eventually it had miscarried at 5 weeks. So does the diet can help in my fertility issue?

What is your AMH level, if I may ask?

It was 0.36, ma'am, last year. After that, I have not tested again.

Okay, so doing an Ayurvedic cleanse is definitely going to help your egg quality, but the egg count is what something for you to look more closely into. And I would say my, my gut sense is, Nepile, you would benefit from IVF because it's been a year and our reserves drop exponentially, and the count you have just told me is on the lower end. So I want you to not be dejected but to Take help from modern advances as well and use Ayurveda to improve your chances of holding that conception, of having a womb that is at its optimal best health and a pregnancy that is viable. So it's possible. If you met 3 gynecologists and they've said IVF, take it seriously.

Okay, ma'am, will panchakarma help in my case? Yeah, it will help.

Yes, Panchakarma cannot improve our AMH levels because AMH levels are depending on the egg reserves, but the quality of the eggs that are already in the reserve— IVF means they are going to extract your eggs, right? That quality of eggs will improve exponentially because it will fertility tissue.

Because when I went to Ayurvedic practitioner, she told me that you have conceived once, so you can again conceive naturally. You can try for around 6 months, and then if it doesn't happen, then you can go for the artificial methods.

It's, you know, you have to ultimately, you have to take all these inputs that you're receiving from different people, sit with it, pray, and then go based on your gut. The baby who's meant to come to you will come to you. You just have to find the right way.

Right, ma'am. Thank you so much, ma'am.

Yeah, and Panchakarma is a tricky thing. Not everybody knows how to do Panchakarma, which is why I say come to me, You will not pay a penny extra. I will send you to an amazing place that is actually doing Panchakarma. Ma'am, where is that? In Kerala. You'll have to go to Kerala because that's where— I'm sure there are other places who do authentic Panchakarmas. I don't know them, and I'm always looking for amazing places, amazing physicians. The ones that I know are in Kerala, and They are on all budget points and there is no compromise in quality or the physician. One of the top physician does, he offers at a very reasonable rate.

Okay, ma'am, I will look into it, ma'am.

Thank you so much for your advice. Absolutely. Okay, thanks so much. Sandeep Ji is saying he has tried a 24-hour water fast and is good as long as he drinks water every 2 hours. Is a weekly frequency an overkill? I have not tried regularly. I'm in my late 40s. Sandeep Ji, I'm guessing you are a man. If you're a man, you can do all this. Your body will be okay. Talk to a practitioner though, just to make sure that there are no underlying health issues. But if you were a woman in your late 40s, this would be a complete no, no, no, absolutely hell to the no. This is amazing. This is a good initiative.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Salila.