Fasting the Mind: Spiritual Exercises for Psychic Detox

Stop planning, stop comparing, stop competing, stop thinking, and just breathe deeply for a minute. Our undivided attention is something we are rarely able to give for reasons ranging from digital overload to the cultural conditioning of equating busyness with purpose. Just as you might choose a fast from eating to detoxify the body, the best way to overcome this modern mental overload is to periodically fast the mind.

Drawing on the spiritual philosophies and meditative practices of classical yoga, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism, Jason Gregory explains how fasting the mind directly impacts your habits and way of being in the world to create peace and calmness in your life as well as allow you to build a firm psychological defense against the increasing bombardment of distractions in our world. Jason explains how overreliance on the rational mind causes imbalances in the autonomic nervous system, suppresses our natural spontaneity, feelings, and intuition. When we are unable to relax the mind deeply, we enter a destabilizing state of stress/anxiety and are unable to liberate the true Self from the impermanence and limitations of the material world. Sharing practices to help you empty your mind and gradually restore your natural rhythms, Jason shows how to give the mind time to truly relax from stimulation so it can repair itself and come back into equilibrium. He details simple practices that are easy to implement in daily life as well as the advanced techniques centered on seclusion from all worldly stimuli. He also offers methods for digital detox, ensuring a good night’s sleep, a major support for healing cognitive impairment and restoring a state of equanimity.

By fasting the mind we strip away the distractions and stresses of modern life and return to our original nature to become more consciously awake in every moment, allowing us to feel the real beauty of the world to live life more fully, authentically, and peacefully.