Today I feel like writing into a diary. About my last two weeks.
And I already did, I write daily into a notebook, my thoughts, feelings & experiences.
When I thought about what to write in my weekly newsletter (that I missed last week, I am so sorry!), I also felt like writing to you all as if you were my diary.
I don’t want to throw knowledge at you today.
I don’t want to give you tips or tricks, hacks or learnings, big to-do’s or suggestions. If I am honest, it starts being too much, all this improvement & helping things.
And I am guilty of it myself: I look for cool tips & tricks & health & psychology related things & interesting business stuffs & I have tons of ideas…
…but sometimes, I just don’t want to do any of what I read & see & get suggested, just live my life and do how I feel at any given moment.
And I also just want to be my very truest human being self, living my life. Sharing it with others, being vulnerable and maybe just make us all realize, that by living our life as aware as possible, we get to experience, learn and grow either way.
So here we go today, my diary-like entry to you all lovely subscribers. It’s gonna be about Endings & Beginnings, my second 108h fast & the power of our body to store memories & behaviours that I discovered during dancing.
Endings & Beginnings
Summer ended and fall started. At least for me.
Two weekends ago, felt like an ending of an epic summer. I started to learn two new dances this summer and went on several live dancing events & festivals.
Sometimes, I danced on five evenings in the week. No, not clubbing until 6 am in the morning.
Usually from 18:00 for ca. 3 hours. On my festival events much more and on the live-music events for 4-5hrs. It was couples dancing, Bugg & Fox and West Coast Swing. Sometimes Kizomba as well.
I got to know so many great people, a whole new community of humans I started to like, trust & feel safe in their personal spaces.
I learned to lean in, receive and follow and be guided by strangers. I even made a rather close friend, who seemed to have potential for more, but we also ended this option during the ending of my dancing summer 2025. So a new friend appeared!
The last four days on a weekend I decided to be very mindful about this ending of my summer, join all the last dancing events and feel into them, be grateful & happy about all I experienced and it was amazing.
I even choose a special dress for one occasion, the dress I did defend my PhD in, to signalize and emphasize the importance of this time for me.
It felt amazing. I felt like I could let it all go and a new chapter was opening.
I also felt no remorse, no sadness or grief, cos I knew that more dancing will come, I will keep on seeing the people, enjoying, but for now, that summer passed with great memories.
And guess what?! I felt my body was changing too. I felt a strange feeling in my lower body, one that appears once per month…
The next day, after my official summer-ending, I got my period. Yes, I said it: I got my period.
It’s something so normal for us women and if it correlates to what I want to share, I will share this part of my human-ness :).
And why this was so special is, because it came a week to early. & it never does. On the day that my regular group meditation classes started again! Just too many synchronicities :D
So I felt like everything was in alignment: my outer world, my mental and emotional world, my spiritual world and my physical world.
My body was ready for a reset & new start.
Since 6-7 months I am fasting for 24-72 hours at the onset of my period. I decided to do a bi-yearly 108 fast in spring this year the first time, and now that my period set in too early, I jumped into my fall-108hrs fast.
Leading to the next important part of my last two weeks:
Metabolic reset aka. 108 hrs fasting
108 hours of fasting is 4,5 days.
In my case this means no food. Just roiboosh tea, maybe some green tea sometimes and hot water with salt, black pepper & curcuma. I add cinnamon to my tea sometimes, or lemon juice. & I get electrolytes in regularly, Ca, Na & K. Thats it.
That’s crazy. Some say that to me.
Have I consulted with a doctor? Nope.
A nutritionist? Also nope.
Anyone?
Yes, with myself. And with people I trust about their body/health knowledge and who also have experience fasting. I sometimes do it together with them.
After my first 108 hrs fast in spring I had this huge craving for avocados with salt & herring. So I ate it 2-3 days afterwards. Breaking the fast with my mom’s chicken soup.
When I shared that with them, they laughed & never heard of that.
But I knew, and they do to, that the most important is, to listen to our own bodies.
This is something I am doing since a while already, listening to my body as much as I can, in all kind of occasions.
And I have to say that I am healthy. Barely get sick, no issues, no pills, no medications, nothing.
I also have accumulated some knowledge around food, nutrition, glucose & insulin stuffs, by far not exhaustive & surely not perfect, but I know my weak points when it comes to food (its usually sweets :D).
I had 0 sweet-cravings after my first 108h fast, for weeks or months, it was awesome!
Now for this one, as it came rather spontanous, the challenge was, how to make it work with a busy work-schedule & not as much time to rest as I wanted to have.
Plus dancing classes starting as well.
I made it work, I was slow, as could be expected as everything in my physical body calmed down, quieted and I was walking like a snail :D. My dog was confused :D.
I also had to feed my sisters cats, I am telling you: cat-food never smelled better :)!
My meditation sessions were much more intense and my focus was great, no energy-dips or weird tiredness. I was on top of everything, just slow.
My body felt fluffy, like I was floating around, being very aware of everything.
Because I am curious, I regularly checked what was happening in my body at which timespan of my fast, using ChatGPT and other proper sources.
It is fascinating what the body does, how it shifts & changes and what it uses when certain metabolic sources are not available.
To me this experience is of course a challenge, but I have to say, that I love it! Cos I know and feel that I do my body well with it. Very well.
I used to think that I am not very consistent or disciplined when it comes to food & cravings, but this shows me regularly that I can do it if I really want to.
And honestly: everything was so perfectly aligned that this aspect of it made me believe even more that it was the best timing possible to do it.
Now, would I recommend that to anyone? Hell, no. I know and am quite aware that its a bit extreme. And I wouldn’t do it if I were sick or unwell.
And lets just be honest: for some people fasting just doesnt seem to work, we are all different.
I can however tell you that its awesome to not have to do dishes, create trash, buy stuffs, floss my teeth, so much time to relax & ease into the day. Its awesome.
And usually this fasting experience always brings realizations with it for me. This time it was about the magical things our body stores for us, leading to the next part I wanted to share with you:
The magic of our bodies & dancing:
Our body stores food, nutrients, our DNA, water, poop, pee, toxins, cells, organs, tissues, bones, muscles etc.
It is an amazing piece of our physical-ness.
It also stores physical & mental & emotional trauma, generational patterns, dreams, memories, feelings… all these non-physical aspects of our lifes.
And no, this is no Woo-woo crap or bullshit spiritual-things. This IS a fact. All ancient cultures knew that & still know. Even animals know this.
Just recently the “Science” world discovered that fascia store trauma in our bodies. Fascia is this white, fibruous tissues that connect our organs and inner physical world.
Anyways, enough of that :)
When I went to my second dancing class of the week, I was at 72 hours of my fast. I was slow, felt light & fluffy.
It was a course where we went deep into the basic patterns and steps of the dance to improve our timing while dancing. So it was perfect cos it was a slow, deep class.
We got personal feedback as well form our teachers, so we know what to pat attention to and keep on improving.
I realized two things about my very own, deep psychology:
I don’t properly anchor my anchor step.
I don’t have a forward-pitch, but I lean backwards.
Now, what does that even mean? You don’t need to know any dancing terminology, because what it means was beyond the technicalities of the dancing for me.
The fact that I don’t anchor my anchor step means that I don’t properly put all my weight on one leg, so my leader can lead me back. Meaning, I don’t make myself heavy enough to be led.
Translated into my psychology this means: I don’t want to bee a burden for my dancing partner. I don’t want to bother him. I don’t want to be heavy…
Well… this is a general pattern in my life. I never wanted to be a burden for anyone, I still don’t want to be that.
And I know about this consciously. Because since a while already I am working on this aspect of myself, to learn to be comfortable and know that I am NOT a burden.
But I had no idea that my body is acting in that way during my dancing and that it basically subconsciously translates that into my physicality.
Amazing!
The second thing, the fact that I don’t have a proper forward-pitch means: I don’t dare to putt myself in the personal space of my leader. I don’t want to bother them. Ouch…
This is another thing I am working on and my body knows it.
It works against it, cos it doesn’t want to bother others.
The funny thing is, that if you look at dances like Fox/Foxtrott: these are suuuuuper close dances. You basically are hugging each other while dancing. And I have no problem with that.
Yet, in some cases my body signals differently to me.
There is much more nuances to all that of course: dance-dependant, partner-dependant, hygiene-dependant, feeling-dependant etc.
But I managed to realize during this fasting window and while dancing, that my body is so much more powerful than I thought & it knows so well about me & stores information that I thought I might have already worked through well enough.
It is all truly fascinating and I am glad about these last two weeks and all my human experiences during this time.
Much more than that happened, but I wrote enough by now and I cannot tell you how much I appreciate you reading my weekly newsletters.
I hope this diary-like version was not too weird for you.. and well, honestly, if it was, thats okay too :D
Cos I’d rather be myself & share truly from my heart and life, than put something together to force-educate you or be valuable through a To-Do-List or Tips-&Tricks about A,B, & C :)
I am sending you my love & care along and wish you a truly blessed & great day!
Love,
Daria