What Fasting Can Help You to Achieve

Fasting is as old as time itself – perhaps during our many thousands of years adapting to life here on this planet – we spent many days and weeks without much of anything to eat.

In between times of finding sources of food, there were lots of times when food was equally scarce. Then throughout the ages, our pattern of eating evolved to encompass fasting for spiritual reasons.

Of course these days we have come so far away from fasting for any reason and that is part of the contributing problem and why we are over our heads where our health, healing and connection with the earth is concerned.

What most of us have forgotten is we are intimately tied to the energy of this planet – she supports us, nourishes us, and is a part of who we have always been. Our spiritual existence, along with our water, food and healing herbs is aligned with the earth’s energy field.

So, this brings up two questions – what is fasting and why should we bother to do it?

Well, contrary to so many reports, articles and books on the subject – fasting is quite simply going without any food whatsoever for a period of time. During this time you do take in water and in my own recommendations, herbal teas for balance and healing of tissues and organs.

Fasting does not entail taking in any solid food of any kind – this is called eating. You can have a day however, where you take in a small or less then usual amount of food – this is referred to as restricting calories - but this is not fasting.

We can choose to fast for many reasons – most of which would (these days anyway) be related to health, weight loss and healing. The spin off from this is an improvement in health – often as a direct result of a reduction in inflammation in the body.

Our diets, lack of exercise, stress levels, use of medication and general disconnect from the energy of the world around us is what has contributed to the current state we find ourselves in.

Now more then ever there is a need (and a desire) to get back to ourselves (regain the health we have lost), who we are, really – the only way to do this is to reconnect on a spiritual level with our inner worlds.

And that is what fasting can help you achieve.

April

Baltimore Harbour

Transition Day 11 - We Did It!!

Another full 10 days Master Cleanse has been completed - and once again I feel a sense of accomplishment, but also that great inroads were made this time into my mind, life and these blocks that I have been working so hard to remove.

I even had another interesting dream last night, I was in a house and it was surrounded by cars, parked end to end. Someone was pulling into the front driveway of the house and I was around the back letting another person out. There was a convertible (very nice) parked at the back door, however it could not drive off because there were 3 other cars in front of it. I was going back into the house to find the drivers and ask them to move their cars. In the meantime, I was saying these words to myself - 'there has been no mistake', while the car that was ready to leave was blasting music - "It's all right now, baby, it's all right now".

I woke up just feeling this was such a positive dream and something (some part of myself) wanted me to be very clear that things were starting to move, but also that they were as they should be up to now. I am still feeling pretty pumped about the dream and of course the song has been going through my head all morning!

Today I am feeling good, although very tired. These past two nights I have not slept very well, loads of energy, loads of deep dreams, and I just feel this underlying sense of excitement that I am about to break through to some place I have never been before. As well, yesterday was a big detox day - a lot came up and moved through for me.

This morning I finally weighed myself, I am down 8 pounds - I no longer do these cleanses to lose weight as I am already at my ideal weight, and I find that within 2 weeks most of this will be back on. However, the neat thing about Master Cleanse is that when you need to lose excess weight, it comes off and I have even known very thin people to gain a few pounds. The innate wisdom of the body at work here.

Today is the juice day - for the next few hours I will be drinking only liquid juices to get my digestion going again preparing my body for some food. I have done this many times over the years and have it down to an exact science (read my book The Pagan Diet), so this day goes very well for us all. 

Then either late tonight or tomorrow, we will have some soft veggies etc and that is it - back to eating our normal healthy diet with our July Master Cleanse done and dusted. Just in time I might add for a big feast day late next week Lughnasadh.

This really is the easiest way to maintain weight, heal, shift and change anything you want in your life and if you have yet to try this out - you don't know what you are missing. Of course, you also have to be prepared for the new you that will emerge from all of this! The operative word here is YOU!

Happy Days,

April

Finally! Day 10

Well here we are now with less than 24 hours to go and on the 10th day of our July Master Cleanse. The detox can get hard during the last few hours mostly because I start to get impatient about transitions - I always want it to be smooth and to get back to eating gently, yet sometimes, I find that I rush myself.

So, tomorrow is transition day with just juices and smoothies, then late in the day or evening we often have some soft cooked root vegetables - of course this all tastes like manna from heaven! I can't wait to eat some food and to try all these jams that I have been making.

This time around I have been craving fruit and berries - perhaps because I am cooking them and the house has been full of all the fruit for jams. But I also am craving rice - when I am doing a MC, my sense of smell is so strong, and the fragrance of cooking basmati rice is enticing! 

Other than looking forward to eating and getting back to a normal day on/day off food and fast schedule, I am feeling pretty good. I meant to weigh myself today and forgot again - I guess it can't be that important because it has been the furthest thing from my mind with this July master cleanse. I have probably lost a little weight and gone down half a stone or so, but usually I don't lose too much and my weight is no longer a problem (thank God!).

And for some reason it is always at this point of a cleanse that I think back to my 40 day MC - perhaps I use it to draw strength and focus when it gets a little tough or maybe there are other connections that rise up to the surface. I haven't quite figured it out yet, but I will! LOL

Last night I had an interesting dream, if that is what it was - it was more like a visitation - a person whom I had not seen in my dreams for quite some years, but who used to come to me all the time, dropped in to say hello. The interesting part was that in my dreams of him many years ago he was always a boy, last night he extended his hand in greeting to me, as a young man and earnestly looked at me to see if I recognized him as he said his name - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Then he proceeded to inform me of where he was playing and the name of the Orchestra. 

Another breakthrough into some deeper part of myself as these cleanses prove once again they are more than capable of bringing body, mind and soul back together.  This has been one of the most worthwhile times of my entire life - I wouldn't change a thing.

Have a lovely day, see you on the other side!

April 

Onwards!

On The 6th Day....

Well here we are, already 6 days into our July cleanse and things are moving and shaking - at least from a change of mind/habit/thinking perspective and I feel really good. I have the usual symptoms of detox - coated tongue, some aches in joints, small bumps on my skin, however great energy, focus and concentration.

One thing I realized yesterday was that I completely forgot to weigh myself for this entire cleanse. When I first started doing these I was doing them to lose the excess weight that I was carrying around and to balance my hormones which had not come back after my last pregnancy.

Now, of course with the weight long gone - this part of the Master Cleanse, losing some weight, never even entered my mind! I am so used to going by how I feel and the way my jeans fit me that now I have a completely different mindset. And I must admit- it is refreshing to not have weight issues on my mind.

This brings up another subject that I don't think I mention too much here as I sort of take it for granted that you all know my recipe for MC is slightly different. I use my own herbal preparations for my Master Cleanse juice - which I credit for the incredible healing, repair and great health that myself and my family enjoy.

This time around I am drinking Work Through Fear Tea, Hormone Balance, Body Balance and some immune boosting herbs in my juice drink each day. Of course the brilliant thing about using herbs in this way - just with water, lemon juice, maple syrup and black pepper - is that there is nothing impeding the herbs from doing their fine tuning of our bodies.

Herbs are natures medicine - like a gift to us that grows from the garden, always standing at the ready to uplift, balance, heal and otherwise support us through each of these changes, shifts and detoxes as is necessary. What I love is that there are no side effects and they work so gently within the body tissues, an intelligence all of their own. 

Perhaps this is part of the reason why each time I do a MC, the shifts are profound and long lasting as well as serving to put me onto a higher path each time. This is something I will be doing for the rest of my life on a regular basis because of these reasons. 

Off to get going here with my day, will check in with you tomorrow, have a good one!

April

The early morning sunlight shining through the MC juice! JUICE ANGEL!!!

It Must Be The Water....

There are only two basic fundamental elements to changing your life as far as I am concerned - food/water and exercise/movement. Of course, the greater of these is the only one vital nutrient we as humans cannot live without - water. 

Water is the universal solvent which means that more substances dissolve into it than any other, making this fact alone the key reason why fasting works to remove weight and heal inflammation in the body. When you use water to clean your body and push embedded toxins up to the surface, the presence of water takes up the debris and safely removes it from the tissues. 

Water is also many other things for us as humans (66% of body tissues and up to 73% brain tissue) with so many properties and functions that entire university courses are taught on it.  As far as I am concerned this is the missing element in our food pyramids which of course prompted me to design my own!

The safest, easiest, most effective tool for weight loss, healing, shifting energy, cleansing and detoxing that you have within your reach, is water. But not just any water - do not drink the stuff that comes out of the tap, that is not water, this is a chemical compound and will not enable you to clean tissues effectively.

Find a source of clean pure water (I know this is not difficult to do especially in Ireland) and start using this well or spring for all your drinking, cooking, brushing teeth and so forth. If you can, drill a well or clean out a local spring. The next time you move house, look for a place with a functional well.

Over the years I have done each of these things to make every effort to always have clean water. I have even dreamed of water sprites taking to me as if the water is alive and of course when you take water from a well - it is living, just like the land it rises up from.

Fasting is done daily in every country all over the world, for various reasons, however, when you want to lose weight, heal, shift energy and otherwise move yourself into a better place, you must be mindful of the most important nutrient you will ever put into your body. 

Water is the stuff of life.

April

Sun in the leaves

I'm not fat, I'm toxic

Have you ever noticed that the first thing we become aware of around a person is their weight? And that our eyes are drawn to the parts of their bodies carrying the excess weight as fat? Why might this be so and should we look at this as significant in any way?

As a Medical Intuitive I always ask questions, I would consider myself an investigator of the body, mind and spirit in an effort to understand what is happening within and exactly why. So when I realized many years ago that my attention was constantly pulled in the direction of body fat - I started asking myself, why this was so and what was in this fat that was needing attention.

Body fat serves a couple of purposes and is not entirely a negative or bad thing in our lives. We need some fat around us for protection of internal organs, fat also acts as a storage place for toxins and some hormones  - what causes a problem is when there is too much of it.

Too much body fat and of course the fact that this fat gathers in specific places shows us where the toxins are and where there are toxins there is inflammation. This layer of embedded poisons within our bodies festers away until we are in a position to do something about it.

However, for the most part, I have not met anyone who is doing something about it mainly because we have forgotten how but, more importantly you cannot heal inflammation or lose body fat successfully or remove toxins or do anything worthwhile in your body using more toxins!

This leads me right back to the reason why I wanted to mention this topic today - the new anti-fat vaccine using a virus to alter hormone expression in the body tissues or the supplements and medication (yes I lump them together) to either suppress the appetite or change some internal function and the highly processed 'food' that you can purchase to control your calorie intake.

Each of these products are not only dangerous and capable of interfering with (damaging) delicate internal body processes - they are not even remotely dealing with the root of the problem - which is an excess of toxins stored in the body tissues  that has caused an inflammation. 

A toxin to me is any substance not benefiting our bodies, in fact it is any material that costs us something to ingest and digest it. Sadly there are far too many in our food, water and air these days that have to be dealt with on an on-going basis but, when they are regularly cleansed out of the body - we can cope. 

As long as we are mindful of what we are putting in and make an effort to keep water and food clean. Then you must cleanse your body regularly (it's like taking a bath on the inside) and pull out these toxins or you will become unwell, carry excess weight or otherwise be in an unhealthy state. 

By now you might be asking what does this tell us about those who eat rubbish and to excess and do not gain weight? In a nutshell this means that on an energetic basis, someone takes it on for them. The weight must go somewhere and it does exist, so we are not necessarily carrying all of our own baggage around, but that is a topic for another day!

If you are feeling heavy, overweight and are suffering from inflammation of any sort - much of this can be resolved far more easily then you ever imagined - clean water, a good diet and exercise. The gimmicks do not work and may make things far worse, stick with what is real.

Have a lovely day,

April

Is Working as a Therapist Making You FAT?

I have a little theory and most of the time it appears to be along the right lines as this is something that I have consistently observed not only in my life, but with many others are well. Working with 'energy' or just being around highly charged situations, in the healing professions is making us fat.

In my line of work I come across a lot of therapists. These might be people who are doing energy healing, seeing clients one on one as counsellors, massage therapists, nurses, hands on healers, psychics, mediums, life, drug and alcohol coaches, GP's and just about nearly everyone in between. 

People who spend a lot of time around others who are experiencing pain, crisis, wounded spirits, broken hearts and bodies, various stages of inflammation, illness and dysfunction. You name it - we deal with it and work very hard with others to try and sort it out.

What this means for those of us doing the energy work, giving the massage or helping to work through the pain, is that we are exposed to energy. Much of it heavy, dull and often dark - with spikes of fear, negativity and stress bouncing around a room for an hour or so at a time. 

Now this does not mean for one minute that we cannot deal with this energy or that humans are incapable of wading through the muck and coming out the other side intact. We certainly can and we are more than able for this work. 

However, when we do not prepare and care for our bodies in the correct way - spending time immersed in someone else's energy can add layers of toxins onto us which translates into weight. I am not kidding and I know that there are many of you out there who are right now nodding your head as the connections are made.

Start doing the energy work, call ourselves light workers, healers and therapists and in just a short amount of time watch the excess weight pile on. The number one thing that I have noticed is that the cravings are stronger, my body and energy field can start to feel foreign and dense and my own energy was not moving as well as it should do.

The problem here was that I was coming home from work feeling as if I needed a bath, and taking one but not realizing that I also needed to take a bath inside as well. That's right - washing, cleansing or cleaning our bodies on the inside as well as the outside is no longer a distant thought but an immediate necessity.

If you are working in any of these capacities and consider yourself a healer, counsellor, therapist, teacher of any sort - you must clean your body and energy field thoroughly or you will gain weight, increase toxins, and generally become unwell. This is a gradual build-up which needs to be cleaned up and takes time to remove. The only way to do this is with clean, chemical free water and healthy food. 

It has taken me years of working as a Medical Intuitive and Energy Therapist to recognize that when I fasted and cleansed on the inside, my health (body) and abilities responded on the outside. Try it for yourself and see!

Walk the talk,

April

3rd Day of Mini Cleanse

Today is my last day of this little cleanse that I am doing, and I am feeling great overall loads of energy and it seems that my dreams are back loud and clear because I was dreaming all night. All seemingly about projects and things that I should be doing or following through with some plans that I have made.

Perhaps this cleanse has been all about clearing things off of my 'to do' list, because that is what I seem to be doing quite a bit. And even the weather has not been as bad as was predicted so that has been a bonus as well because I have been able to get out into the garden and pull some weeds.

Today I am also busy cooking (go figure, while fasting LOL) and have made honey oat bread, fairy cakes for the kids and prepared a lamb tagine which will go into the slow cooker to cook overnight so that it is ready for breakfast in the morning.

I love my breakfast and always look forward to eating after a fast - the planning phase is probably far more fun than anything as I find that I dream up new ways of doing things and tasty recipes when winding down from my fast.

If you haven't yet tried to do a fast, I cannot say it enough - food, fast and feast has changed my life and the way I look at food (and even the way I look apparently as I was told last night that I looked about 25!). Order The Pagan Diet and get started on your journey to better health in a slim body!

Have a lovely day,

April

The Pagan Diet - Food, Fast & Feast! 

by April Danann, MSc, BSc (Hons), Dip MI, Dip NT

It's finally here!

My new book - The Pagan Diet is finally ready. For those of you who are interested in fasting, detoxing, Master Cleanses, losing weight or just getting your health back - this is the book for you. Inside you will find out how I go about living each day following my own inner guidance, choosing foods to heal and uplift as well as using day on/day off fasting to stay healthy and maintain my weight.

I go into detail on how I came eat this way, what it means to me to be exactly who I am and why this is important for the lives we are living. I have also included 3 full diaries from Master Cleanses that I have completed - for your information and motivation. 

The exact details on how to get started on a water fast for weight loss, health, spirituality and general living are in here to lead you through each step in this gentle process. Contact me for details on how to order your copy today. 

April