Fasting and Research




Religio-Spiritual Fasting
By Randi Fredricks

Just as there are different reasons for fasting, there are several definitions. Len Sperry (2001) said fasting is used “as a means of weight loss, detoxification of the body for medical purposes, or as a spiritual practice. Done as a spiritual practice, fasting is defined as abstention from food for the purification of one’s motivation. All the great spiritual traditions recognize its merits” (p. 154). Sperry suggested that fasting can be an extraordinarily transformative spiritual practice, “More than any of the other spiritual practices, fasting can surface and uncover not only the obvious but also the more subtle cravings and desires that control one’s life.”

Across religions and spiritual traditions, the definition of fasting differs, as does the rigor. Catholicism’s Lenten fast calls for the avoidance of meat, but not food altogether. The Islamic fast during the month of Ramadan requires followers to avoid food and drink from sunrise to sunset. Similarly, the Judaic fast of Yom Kippur begins before sunset and ends after nightfall. Even among these religions, fasting has been practiced in extremes, including fasting for prolonged periods with only water.

In reference to the scope of fasting, it can be a discipline in itself or a means to access other rituals (Lansford, 2004). In shamanism, for example, fasting is often combined with other ascetic practices in order to heighten the experience. Roger Walsh (2004) explained this phenomenon, “Not content with the rigors of solitude, fasting, or cold alone, shamans sometimes combine all these . . . ” (p. 66).

Definitions of fasting tend to overlook its enormous power. Annemarie Colbin (1986) described its wide-reaching effects as follows:

Perhaps no where is the power of food more evident than when food
is abstained from. Entire religions have evolved from one man’s
fast, empires toppled, wars halted. For examples we need look no
further than Jesus, Muhammad, the Buddha, Gandhi. (p. 257)

To understand the function of fasting as a spiritual practice, it is useful to begin by defining religiousness and spirituality since fasting is strongly associated with both. In their analysis of religiousness and spirituality, Zinnbauer and Pargament (2005) pointed out that the same critical concepts can be applied to both. First, is the notion of significance, “a phenomenological construct that involves the experience of caring, attraction, or attachment” (p. 33). The second concept is that of search. Zinnbauer and Pargament suggested that search is a critical feature of both religiousness and spirituality:

The process of search involves the attempt to discover significance.
But the searching process does not end with discovery. Once people
find something significant in their lives, they attempt to hold on
to or conserve that significance. Although people are often
successful in their efforts to sustain significance, pressures
within the individual or within the individual’s world may prompt
the need for fundamental change. At times, when the process of
search involves transformation of the individual’s understanding
of or relationship to significance. (p. 34)

This description of transformation helps to explain the psychospiritual changes that occur as the result of an ongoing religious or spiritual practice.

The final construct in Zinnbauer and Pargament’s analysis is the idea of “the sacred” as a “substantive core” of both religiousness and spirituality (p. 34). The sacred refers to the concepts of “God, higher powers, transcendent beings, or other aspects of life that have been sanctified.” It is the individual’s quest for religious or spiritual significance within this sacred context that inspires them to partake in a spiritual discipline, such as fasting.

With respect to the differences between religiousness and spirituality, Zinnbauer and Pargament outlined two basic views. The traditional view sees the terms “religion” and “spirituality” being used interchangeably. The second perspective, developed around the 1980s, arose as spirituality began receiving more attention within psychology as an individualized form of expression. Zinnbauer and Pargament called the relationship between these two views “Institutional objective religion versus personal subjective spirituality” (p. 25). When considering fasting as a spiritual and religious practice, it is appropriate to treat both perspectives. While it is imperative to understand how the individual approaches fasting as a spiritual practice, it is equally important to acknowledge the long and rich history of fasting in organized religions.

There are several precepts that constitute the structure of a spiritual practice. Roger Walsh (2000) outlined seven types of spiritual practices with a transpersonal perspective:

  1. Transform your motivation: Reduce craving and find your soul’s desire
  2. Cultivate emotional wisdom: heal your heart and learn to love
  3. Live ethically: Feel good by doing good
  4. Concentrate and calm your mind
  5. Awaken your spiritual vision: See clearly and recognize the sacred in all things
  6. Cultivate spiritual intelligence: Develop wisdom and understand life
  7. Express spirit in action: Embrace generosity and the joy of service (p. vii-viii)
All of Walsh’s seven principles have been reported during the spiritual experience of fasting. For example, Native Americans fast in order to receive visions containing instructions on how to cultivate wisdom and live ethically. Shamans fast to awaken and sharpen their spiritual vision, cultivate spiritual intelligence, and heal others. In a number of religions, such as Judaism and Hinduism, adherents express spirit in action by fasting in support of others. In a similar act of service, hunger strikers undertake long and difficult fasts in order to create paradigm shifts. Fasting, like other spiritual customs, has the innate power to change the individual, their community, and the world.

Defining the behavioral characteristics of a spiritual practice can be complicated given that it can be a ritual, custom, celebration, and discipline. Sperry (2001) said, “Spiritual practices are focused activities which foster spiritual qualities which can result in a balanced and disciplined life” (p. 104). The spiritual practice becomes a ritual when it is repeated on a regular basis. From a psychosocial perspective, Janine Roberts (2003) identified rituals as “coevolved symbolic acts that include not only the ceremonial aspects of the actual presentation of the ritual, but the process of preparing for it” (p. 9). This definition highlights the importance of intention during the preparatory phase.

In an inquiry into the psychology of ritual, Bernard Spilka (2005) spoke of the ritualistic aspect of a spiritual practice, “Religious practice and prayer are basically forms of ritual. In order to understand these religiospiritual expressions from a social-scientific and behavioral perspective, one must first comprehend the nature of ritual” (p. 365). The goal of the ritual is to achieve some form of transformation; to experience a marked change for the better within a spiritual context. In essence, this is the definition of transformation when in occurs as the result of a spiritual practice.

Robert J. Nash (2001) coined the phrase “religio-spiritual” to explain the belief that—in some instances—religion and spirituality cannot be separated (p. 11). Nash believed that the search for meaning exists in all cultures, across all religions and spiritual practices. Because fasting has such a long history in world religions and as a personal spiritual discipline, it fits the construct of a religio-spiritual practice perhaps more than any other ritual.

In order to understand the religio-spiritual characteristics of fasting, it is useful to look at the broader context of asceticism, primarily because fasting is the most common ascetic activity (Lansford, 2004). Asceticism, also called “ascesis,” is the practice of rigorous self-denial and active self-restraint done as a spiritual discipline. The origins of asceticism are traced to prehistory; to primitive and archaic society (Kaelber, 2005). Virtually every major religion has engaged in asceticism including ancient pagan religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Native American religions.

According to theologian Walter O. Kaelber (2005), asceticism is still widely practiced today in such forms as “fasting, seclusion, infliction of pain, and even bodily mutilation” (p. 526). Other ascetic practices include sexual continence, self-imposed poverty and begging, and various other physical and mental activities. Self-inflicted physical acts tend to be more extreme and can include whipping, burning, and lacerating. Mental ascetical activities, such as meditation, are considered mild to moderate and are generally less painful.

Finding an agreed upon definition of asceticism can be challenging. Jerome Kroll (2005) in The Mystic Mind: The Psychology of Medieval Mystics and Ascetics said:

There is no universally accepted definition of asceticism. Viewed from
a cross-cultural perspective, ascetic practices have served as the
concrete and tangible expression of various philosophies found
universally, that worldly concerns at every level interfere with
transcendental experiences and with an appreciation of the true
nature of reality. (p. 17)

From a historical perspective, asceticism has been studied from different systems of psychology—both East and West. Scholars have examined ascetical behaviors in an attempt to better understand its relationship with the self and ego, the psyche and mind, and states of consciousness and liberation. Robert Assagioli (2007) offered a definition of asceticism, describing its broadness and function:

The word asceticism has acquired what I would regard as rather
pejorative connotations, because certain excesses on the part of some
ascetics, but etymologically it has a better, wider meaning than this.
In Greek, it simply means ‘exercise, discipline, training’, yet it
has become associated with harsh imposition and provocation. This is
the path that some Orientals have chosen, the more rigid Buddhists in
particular, and it is also the way of certain ascetic Christian
mystics, from the anchorites of Thebaid to St. Bernard who, when
traveling through Switzerland, would shut his eyes so that the beauty
of the lakes and the mountains would not distract him from his
meditations, and all the way down to the curate who had qualms
about smelling the rose. This is a way that readily arouses criticism
and rebellion - it seems isolationist, inhuman, almost blasphemous.
If we consider it impartially it can be a considerable short-cut, a
violent yet powerful means of reaching a Supreme Being, having firmly
severed all ties. Moreover it may be a necessary state, or at least a
useful one, along the path to detachment for those who are too easily
allured by the desires of the senses, and for those who are enslaved
to them and want to be released. (p. 243)

Of all ascetic activities, fasting is the most enduring, said to have been practiced in prehistoric times (Goscienski, 2005). In order to understand why humankind has so enthusiastically embraced fasting, one need look no further than its relationship with transpersonal psychology. Against such a backdrop, a better understanding emerges as to the variety of ways in which fasting has assisted adherents in realizing transformation.

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Randi Fredricks is a Naturopathic Psychotherapist with a Doctorate in Naturopathy and a Masters in Psychology. She sees clients at her office in San Jose, California. She can be reached at 800-957-5655 or you can contact her online. This article is an excerpt from Randi Fredricks' book Fasting: An Exceptional Human Experience. Copyright © 2009. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems.





















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