Should you discontinue with your work and rest or stay in bed during fasting? Not at all! It is advisable to continue with your usual activities, but perhaps avoid too strenuous physical or mental work.
Daily walks, even long ones for an hour or more, twice a day, are recommended; likewise all suitable exercises. Take a bath two or three times a week, but avoid water too cold or too hot. Dry brushing is recommended morning and evening followed by a shower or wet-towel rub. Plenty of fresh air is extremely important for the healing processes during the fast. For this reason the best time of the year to fast is spring or summer, when you can spend a great deal of time outdoors. Always sleep with an open window.
Fasting will bring about many physiological changes in your body. Increased elimination of toxins through urine, skin and lungs will take place. The body’s own healing forces will initiate great repair and health-restoring activity in many ways. These physiological changes may occasionally manifest themselves in certain discomforts such as headache, coated tongue, foul breath, dizziness, or even skin eruptions. These reactions should give no cause for concern. They are common symptoms of fasting and properly understood should not discourage anybody from continuing with the fast.
The first three or four days you will feel hungry, of course. But after that the hunger usually disappears. As a matter of fact, the unbelievable will happen: the longer you fast the less hungry you will feel! When finally the body has completed its repairing and restorative work, it will signal to you by a sudden and definite feeling of hunger that it needs food. This is the physiologically right time to start eating. Of course, in the case of juice fasts even during the first three or four days the patient hardly feels any hunger at all.
Your mental attitude during fasting is of paramount importance. Avoid negative influences. Do not listen to terrified relatives and friends who will warn you that you will pass out any moment. As I said before, nobody has ever died as a result of a few weeks of intentional fasting. Have confidence in what you are doing. Remember, you are not the first to try it—millions of people have done it successfully before you. Even animals fast instinctively when they are sick. But if you do not have complete faith in fasting and are not absolutely convinced of. its safety, you should not undertake fasting at all, at least not on your own.
If it makes you feel better do not call this measure a fast. Call it a liquid diet. After all, that is exactly what it is. I know you will be surprised at the results; so will your friends be, especially if you do not tell them you are fasting, but keep it secret. As for myself, I will never stop being amazed at the miraculous prophylactic and healing effects of this, the oldest—and, I dare say, most effective—therapeutic method known to man.
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