Monthly Five Day Scientific Fasting and Meditation Retreat

430 East Street,Lenox MA 01240

21 March, 2021

Description

Monthly Five Day Scientific Fasting and Meditation Retreat – Reclaim Clarity and Rebuild Self Immune System Every week Sunday - Friday EVERY WEEK SUNDAY - FRIDAY Meditation and Fasting have been practiced together for thousands of years in Asia. This week, we shall do the same, practicing different forms of meditation as we set out on a healthy fasting journey. Why Meditation with Fasting? Fasting is a physical cleansing. Meditation is a cleansing of the mind. From birth, we are conditioned by society along specific guidelines, whose limited perspectives can narrow and confuse the mind. Just as shown in this picture. Meditation, as Paul Puddicombe said in his new book “The Headspace Guide to Meditation and Mindfulness”, creates mindspace, enabling us to see with clarity from a wider perspective. While striving and achieving are inherent to our nature, meditation enables us to realize that our most lasting happiness and joy is not found in the goals we set for ourselves. This realization helps us to live a life of ease, confidence and freedom in the face of life’s obstacles, heartbreaks and inevitable setbacks. Between meals morning and afternoon, we will practice the Standing Post Meditation. One of the most potent of all meditations, Standing Post not only calms our mind, it tones our muscles from head to toe, opens our chest, and strengthens our kidneys. With respect to just muscle toning alone, 15 minutes of Standing Post Meditation is the equivalent of one hour of Aerobic exercise. Other meditations will include: Sitting meditation and chair meditation. A combination of Vipassana (mindfulness) meditation and Sheng Zhen healing meditation. Sheng Zhen healing meditation is very age-friendly, with simple, graceful movements that activate healing energy throughout the body. Vipassana meditation is designed to allow the mind to escape its habitually chaotic, mindless, flow by training it to be fully present to each arising moment, beginning with the ever- arising movement of the breath throughout the otherwise stilled body. The practice has been compared to taming a wild elephant by tying it to a post. At first the elephant constantly fights against its restriction, but gradually it comes to accept it, so that even if the rope is untied from the post the elephant does not wander off. So too, as mindfulness develops, you do not feel yourself to be controlling the mind, so much as settling into a relaxed, but alert, awareness, called “bare awareness,” whether such bare awareness remains fully with the breath or on the thoughts or feelings that inevitably still arise. Done as a daily practice, Vipassana eases our worries and anxieties. Our heart becomes settled as our mind, habitually attuned to each arising moment, gains a liberating clarity. Apply new discoveries in the science of happiness by exploring seven science-based habits of well-being: relationships, caring, flow, wellness, positive mindset, spiritual engagement and meaning, and strengths and virtues. In particular, we explore the intimate relationship between physical and psychological well-being, with a focus on the impact of exercise, circadian rhythms, and nutrition, including the exciting new discovery of psychobiotics. Learn about the remarkable parallels between the new science and ancient wisdom on well-being in a setting that encourages self-exploration and critical inquiry. Participants will walk away with concrete tools to cultivate one or more of these happiness habits and explore how to use these habits in personal life, professions, and communities.