Article on Fasting and Yoga by John McWhorter

The following article was written by John McWhorter in 2007 after he interviewed a number of Australia’s leading Yoga authorities on the relationship between yoga and fasting.

John interviewed me after I had just completed a 35 day juice fast around the time of the birth of my son in 2007. Earlier this year I completed a 56 day juice fast. I cannot emphasise enough the value of a properly performed fast or modified fast to your mental and physical health as well as to your yoga practice. However, it is also important to state that you should not attempt any sort of fast unless you have been properly instructed by a respected authority on yoga, physiology, diet and fasting. Any sort of diet especially a fasting diet, including a diet of just fruit and vegetables is potentially dangerous unless it is balanced with a correct breathing practice, which ideally involves a relatively advanced practice of pranayama (breath control) and meditation where the total amount of breathing (minute ventilation) is reduced. We will be presenting more on fasting and diet at a later date. In the mean time a whole chapter of yogic nutrition and the relationship to breathing is in our book ‘Applied Anatomy and Physiology of Yoga’, which is available for purchase as a downloadable pdf file (2009 edition) or as a hardcopy book (2007 version) at www.anatomy.yogasynergy.com .

John McWorter is a regular practitioner of YogaSynergy. He is also a yoga teacher and an accomplished writer. Thank you John for letting us publish your article. It is our great pleasure to present it on the YogaSynergy website. You can read the article by clicking HERE. 

Simon Borg-Olivier (Director YogaSynergy), 16^th June 2009