Last night woke after four hours and couldn’t go back to sleep. After lying in bed for a while I meditated, which for the first time since beginning the fast, actually felt natural and good, not a chore. I don’t know whether my resistance to meditation and yoga during the first week of fasting has been because it feels contrived, given that my general state of consciousness during the day (as well as during the sleepless hours during the night) is one of a natural vipasanna anyway, or whether the problem is that meditating feels too much like doing something…
Overall, I’ve been averaging around five hours of sleep a night since Day Six, which is certainly well less than my usual amount. It’s interesting – I don’t feel tired as a result, like I’d ever be on the verge of falling asleep or even getting sleepy, but I do feel it in the body. I wonder what will happen over the coming days and weeks. It could be that five hours of sleep is perfectly adequate for me while deep fasting, and that I just need to adapt to the new biorhythm in order for it not to feel tiring. In the end, the fact that I don’t really feel so tired during the day that I could just drop off at any moment does seem to indicate that perhaps five hours might be enough.
Physically, I feel totally fine. No detox symptoms at all. Even the occasional aches in old running injuries has subsided. One new element, though: half the family is down with a summer cold, with a sore throat and runny nose. I sometimes feel an ever-so-slightest ‘extra’ sensation in my tonsils. I wouldn’t even call it soreness, it’s so minimal, but something is definitely working back there. Whether I’m fighting the family virus or whether it’s just a reaction to the polluted city air, I don’t know!
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