This content was created by Josh Trent. This content was uploaded by Josh Trent. This is a YouTube video titled "Exploring Fasting, Spirituality & Trauma with Dave Asprey | Wellness Force #Podcast" featuring a conversation between Josh Trent and Dave Asprey. The discussion, recorded on March 19, 2021, delves into topics such as fasting, spirituality, trauma, and personal development, with insights into the physical and emotional aspects of fasting, as well as personal anecdotes from both speakers.
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A lot of times, people, they approach this fasting from like, I want to lose weight. I want to shed love handles. You did this in 2008. You hired this shaman that took you to a cave. You were dealing with a lot of health problems, sinusitis being one of them. I've talked about my chronic sinusitis that I had for the majority of my life as well. So we share that. But outside of Sedona, which is a magical, wonderful place, take us there to the cave. You were afraid of loneliness. You were afraid of starvation. You were really not well. Like, you weren't doing well at the time, which is, I think, why most people try to go to alternative practices like fasting and spiritual development. So what was the genesis of you even getting to the cave to learn about fasting from a shaman?
Well, I had realized that I lost a ton of the £300 I had to lose. But I learned early on, if you don't eat every two or three hours, your body will go into starvation mode, and then you'll get fat. So I don't want to be fat. I'd been fat my whole life. I like, I'm done with that. And I also had this other program running that said I know that whenever I don't eat often I get hypoglyce. I act like a jerk, and I don't want to act like a jerk anymore. So I was afraid of going a little bit hungry because I would be less in charge of myself and because it would somehow make me die. And I also knew that I was afraid of being alone. And when I was lonely, I'd eat. So I'm like, all right, I think I'll just take this on. So I will ask the shaman to leave me in a cave for four days with no people and no food. And then I can be as hypoglybishy as I want, and I'll just have to deal with it. And that's definitely, you know, you can call that a vision quest. In fact, that was how I found the connection to do that. And it was a pretty intense experience. And I used the book to write about the spiritual side of fasting as well as the physical side of it. But what a lot of people have messed up in their head is they'll try to use the spiritual practice of fasting, even intermittent fasting, but they'll do it in the middle of a workday. So there's such a thing as a working fast, which is something you do for more energy, high performance, and anti aging and then there's something that's a spiritual fast, which is something you do for personal development. And they're just fundamentally different. But until you do a longer fast with rest, relaxation, meditation, journaling, and introspection, you're not gonna see it. So I see a lot of people trying fasting, and then it doesn't work. And they say, I couldn't do this regularly. Cause it sucks when you do intermittent fasting. Right. It doesn't have to suck. I have the benefit. Bulletproof Diet was one of the early books talking about intermittent fasting. People lost a million pounds on the bulletproof diet, which uses intermittent fasting shocking replacement.
I would assume it's more by now than a million pounds. Yeah.
Oh, it probably is, yes. Yeah. I don't have the total book count for that book, but it's probably several million pounds. But a million is very conservative. And it's one of those things where I know intermittent fasting works, but I also see this trap that I've been in several times. And there's a fasting trap, there's a vegan trap, there's a keto trap, and there's an exercise trap. And they're all from the same basic human behavior, which is, you know, what? If something's good, more is better.
Huge question that I'm feeling for you. For so many people watching and listening that have had trap trauma, capital T or lowercase T. Right. In trauma, you've talked about before, you received healing, about the cord being wrapped around your neck at birth. Remember you mentioned that on multiple shows. So trauma can happen in this lifetime or others for people that are in the awareness that they've dealt with or are currently dealing with some type of trauma, which is to be human. What is the emotional and also the physical intelligence that you can provide us to begin the fasting journey? Specifically for people that have dealt with trauma.
Well, anyone alive has dealt with trauma of some sort. And I. My company, 40 years is then the neuroscience company. People come and spend five days doing intense neurofeedback with personal development. And you always run into trauma when you do that. And what's funny is, in fastest way, I found a study that says 15% of the average person's thoughts are about food every single day. So if you turn off your hunger. Wow, you get 15% more of your thoughts back.
If you're Italian, it's a lot more.
Fair point. Right. That's an average person, but we're talking about above average for Italians, right? Yeah, there you go. But if that's for food. The fear F word is much stronger than food. Is it half your thoughts? Is it two thirds of your thoughts are about fear. The running thoughts, the angry voices in your head, the inner critic, all that kind of stuff. That's all fear. Nothing but fear. And when you're dealing with willpower, well, if most of your thoughts are hunger and fear, and what's left is those are nice legs over there, there's a little bit left for personal development, self improvement. And the other F word, which is friend, which is our lowest priority one. But you need to be an active, giving member of your community if you want to be fully satisfied. And mitochondria are wired to work together. That's why we have cheese and yogurt and kombucha and herds of deer and forests and all these things, because we are wired to do that. But you're not going to do that if you're afraid and hungry. And that's just the basic condition of all life, not just humans. So when we're dealing with trauma, for a lot of people, there's food trauma. So your parents said, oh, my God, you didn't eat. It's a big deal. In fact, a lot of kids control their parents with food because the. We have mirror neurons. If someone else is hungry, we feel hungry. And then hunger equals death. And so this is why a lot of parents force their kids to eat breakfast when they don't want to. Right. Like, and our house is a little bit different. My kids eat a very healthy diet. They eat the bulletproof diet, and they don't eat bad fats, et cetera. But one time, my son, when he was, I don't know, maybe six or seven, he was like, daddy, I'm just not going to eat this broccoli. And my kids actually like broccoli. But, you know, this is a power play kids go through. And I was like, oh, that's awesome. You want to join me in an intermittent fast? You won't die without food for at least 60 days. So I'll fast with you. This is great. Let's just put our food away and let's go do something else. And he just looked at me like, I need to eat this broccoli.
Never have given two choices leaning towards the one you want. That's great.
Yeah. But either choice was okay. But there is no trauma around hunger in the house. And like, oh, did you forget your lunch? And you left it at home? Enjoy your fast, because next time you won't forget your lunch. But we're not going to drive it there because you're not going to starve if you don't have food. And the teacher, like, are you serious? Like, yeah, like, our kids don't forget their lunches anymore. It's great. But that just. It's just okay, it's normal and it's safe to have an empty stomach and that. It's not a problem.
Is there a way you walk people through that understanding, both somatically, mentally, I guess you could even say mitochondrially, if that's a thing.
A lot of it is cognitive understanding of just, look, there's a mismatch between a feeling and a thought. Right? So if you know you won't die for 60 days, at least, without food, but you feel like you're going to die if you don't, if you skip breakfast, clearly the feeling is wrong. So what's happening here is if you believe that all of your feelings are a reflection of reality, or more accurately, if you tell yourself a story to justify all of your feelings, then you realize, I'm gonna have to work on the story. And when I'm dealing with the deeper stuff, from a neuroscience perspective, that's one thing. We have a whole reset process people go through. But from a somatic perspective, understand there's two different states that most people have mixed up around hunger. One of them is cravings. And most people only have cravings. They never even get to feel hunger. I didn't know there was a difference. And then there's actual hunger. And a craving is, if I don't eat soon, I'm going to die. Like, I have to have it. It's intense now. They can be caused biologically. You can eat foods that cause cravings. In fact, many, if not most cravings are caused by eating the wrong stuff. And then you have hunger, which is that mild. Yeah, it's probably about time to eat. But it'll be okay if I do or don'. Sam.
