The word for fasting i.e. Upavasa, means to move near to the Supreme and to overcome helplessness. The practice of fasting, could have originated as part of the offering that one could give God for getting a boon fulfilled. The festival of Janmashtami is characterised with keeping fast by devotees.
Nirjal Fast or Upavasa for Lord Krishna
Ardent followers of Lord Krishna celebrate Janmashtami by keeping 'Nirjal' fasts. This kind of fasting involves not having even a single drop of water during the entire day. People feel keeping nirjal or waterless fasts will help them get closer to God. Devotees also keep 'Phalahar Vrat' having milk and fruits during the fast. Devotees observe strict discipline while fasting. They refrain from having cereals and salt on the day of the festival . They also feel keeping such fast is the only thing that they can offer God. Fasting is accompanied by singing of devotional songs and mantra chanting.
Popular Dishes made during Janmashtami Fast
Devotees make various dishes during the fast. They have milk and milk products during the fast. This because Lord Krishna was particularly fond of milk and butter. Sweet dishes are also made and had during janmashtami fast. Kheer, Pedhas are popular sweets that devotees have. People do not include salt in their meals during the fast. Devotees fasting on janmashtami break the fast at midnight after the birth of Lord Krishna. They break their fast with Prasad of the Lord.
Scientific Reason Behind Fasting:
"Humans live on one-quarter of what they eat; on the other three-quarters lives their doctor." - Egyptian pyramid inscription, 3800 B.C.
"Very few people know what real health is, because most are occupied with killing themselves slowly." - Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Ph.D., Hungarian-born American biochemist; Nobel Prize in physiology and medical science.
"Very few people know what real health is, because most are occupied with killing themselves slowly." - Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Ph.D., Hungarian-born American biochemist; Nobel Prize in physiology and medical science.
Fasting - an "operation without surgery"
"Fasting is, without any doubt, the most effective biological method of treatment... it is the 'operation without surgery'... it is a cure involving exudation, reattunement, redirection, loosening up and purified relaxation. While fasting, the patient improves her or his physical health and gains much. But he or she will have neglected the most important thing if the hunger for spiritual nourishment that manifests itself during fasting is not satisfied." said Otto Buchinger, Sr., M.D., Germany's great, self-described "fasting therapist," who founded the most famous of several renowned, European Buchinger Kliniks in 1952.
"Fasting is, without any doubt, the most effective biological method of treatment... it is the 'operation without surgery'... it is a cure involving exudation, reattunement, redirection, loosening up and purified relaxation. While fasting, the patient improves her or his physical health and gains much. But he or she will have neglected the most important thing if the hunger for spiritual nourishment that manifests itself during fasting is not satisfied." said Otto Buchinger, Sr., M.D., Germany's great, self-described "fasting therapist," who founded the most famous of several renowned, European Buchinger Kliniks in 1952.
During fasting, your body will "autolyze", or self-digest, its most inferior and impure materials and metabolic wastes, including: fat deposits, abcesses, dead and dying cells, bumps and protuberances, damaged tissue, calluses, furuncles (small skin abscesses, or boils), morbid accumulations, growths, and amazingly, various kinds of neoplasms (abnormal growths of tissue, or tumors).For perhaps the first time in your entire life, fasting affords a physiological rest to the digestive, assimilative and protective organs of your body.
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