By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas

For Christians, they should abstain from eating meat on Ash Wednesday, Good Friday and on other Fridays of lent.
For Muslims, I think they fast for about a month. I don’t really know much about their fasting but it is only at daytime. They would eat and drink, I think after the sun sets, up to the next morning before daylight. In a way, it appears to be reversing night and day.
I can only talk about the Ananda Marga Yoga practice of fasting.
When I was in UP Baguio I was fasting four times a month. That meant not eating anything. No drinking of anything. Not even a droplet of water. It would run for about 36 hours. After dinner you abstain from anything, also during the day after and then the next night. Then you break the fast the next morning. And, oh! Heaven!
What do we get from it? In the physical plane, it is the ultimate cleansing process. There is a system of breaking the fast. You start by sipping kalamansi or lemon juice with just a pinch of salt. No sugar or anything else so its effect will not become acidic. After slowly sipping about one-fourth of the glass, your systems slowly get reactivated. Then you can slowly eat a fresh banana as you drink. The banana serves as dish washing sponge. Consume about two bananas as you drink about two glasses or more of the kalamansi juice with salt. Don’t drink or eat anything more for a while. After a few minutes, you will feel your tummy reacting and then the urge to go to the CR. When the content of your tummy comes out its like a toilet bowl being flushed out with all the “dirt of the centuries.” What a great relief.
Then your normal energy starts coming back as you eat a meal. Food tastes the greatest after fasting. Naturally!
When you fully regain your energy, you will feel as if you were fully recharged. It is like a sluggish car engine that got newly tuned up. There is that new zest for life. As if you have become turbo-charged.
And meditation becomes really good. You feel so peaceful. There is now a deeper meaning to the practice. You feel a deeper connection with your spirit, or God, if you will.
You will also have better control of yourself especially over your weaknesses. For every fasting day, with all the determination required and struggle or the suffering you have to go through, you develop mental as well as spiritual strength.
Does it lighten your karmic load? I think so. After a fast, you don’t just feel physically stronger. You spiritually feel lighter or generally better. More spiritual than before.
Then I went down to Diliman for the College of Law to study full time while determined to start and be in business, also full time. Naturally, I was not good doing both. My fasting days decreased to just two days a month and then to once in a while. How I wish my condition will improve so I could fast. Even for just one day a month. The health benefits would be immense.
Being celibates, Aananda Marga monks must fast four days a month so there would be no excess energy to control.**