In a message dated 98-11-04 16:46:42 EST, you write:

<< Aaron - could you say a bit more about this distinction? I recently went
 on a fast and overdid it on the mini tramoline. the result was exhaustion,
 nausea, bags and dark circles under the eyes. I also lost weight on the
 fast. I obviously overdid it and I'm still recovering. I wanted to provoke
 a detox process but I think my body is not handling it properly. so your
 distinction between "increasing immune function" versus 'stimulate immune
 function" caught my eye. >>

Lucia,

I'm not sure if I can, but I'll try ;).

Be forewarned, however, it might turn into an essay ;)

There is a very fine line between healing and hurting one's self or others.

For example, let's say you are giving a person a massage and you find a spot
that requires attention.  Rubbing the spot gently is excruciating and
emotionally the person can only handle so much without losing it mentally.
The tension occured gradually over years, and now you are trying to take it
out at a faster pace that it accumulated.  As you rub gently the tension
begins to release on it's own, as the person handles the sensation, and
breathes accordingly.  Eventually you reach a point where the person is
exhausted and needs to rest so that the healing can be complete.  That would
be a healing encounter.  The person has been relieved of some burden.  It is
like removing a thorn from a lion's foot. Later, perhaps in a couple days, the
person will feel prepared to go through it again.  They gained leverage and
are in an improved and stronger condition.

At the same time, if you were overly ambitious in your desire to relieve this
person's tension, you could massage very hard, more than the person could
handle emotionally and still breathe.  They scream, "you are hurting me",
crying, as too much happened all at once for them to handle.  You overstep
their boundaries and injure them physically, a bruise perhaps, and
psychologically, perhaps, in that they now have to recover emotionally from
this sudden trauma.  In this case, you have hurt them, or, they have been
hurt.  Now they not only have to heal from the tension, they have to heal from
the injury, and they now require greater rest.  Chances are they might decide
not to deal with the tension because of this unpleasant experience and defeat
themselves even further.  They are weaker and have more baggage to work
through...

It is kind of like giving your child a helping push as he/she tries to start
off on his/her new bike, or pushing them so hard that they crash.

If a person is not in a place of leverage to handle an event, then they can be
defeated by it.

Maybe that didn't explain it...

How about this:

You have cancer.  Rather than try chemotherapy, you lock yourself in a room
for two weeks with comedy movies and laugh constantly.  At the end of the two
weeks you are miraculously healed.

Or, you have cancer and you take every drug imaginable.  Your immune system
tries to heal you from these poisons, at the same time it is trying to deal
with the cancer.  Your actions out-leverage your immune system and you defeat
yourself.  You die, or at best, you recover slowly over the course of many
years, perhaps never regaining your previous strength.

Or, you go and swim with dolphins daily for six months and are miraculously
healed!

Find positive things that make you feel great, and then make sure that there
is enough stress/exercise in your life to develop you and keep you fit.

Ask any starving third-world child who has not eaten for days, but still has
to walk many miles for some reason, and they will probably explain it better
than I, but it sounds like what you did was to put yourself in a state of
nutritional deprivation and then overwork yourself tremendously given that
circumstance.   You asked your body to expend energy to heal, cannibalize your
own tissues for nutrients, and perform exercise.  Just as any athlete can
become depleted of something during an event, you became depleted, or
overworked, otherwise, you would have just continued to feel better and
better.

Maybe if you had just fasted and slept it would have worked successfully and
you could have reintroduced food, and then exercise, and never 'lost ground'.

Maybe you did induce some form of detox that became a temporary burden to your
organs.  In that case, you now have to recover but perhaps the 'stuff' is all
gone.

The question to ask yourself is if detox could have occured on it's own over
the next couple months, would you have been better off eating a fully-
nourishing, raw organic diet while exercising for the next two months?  That
way, your body would have had the nutrition to heal and develop your body and
at the same time, detox slowly without overburdening the organs and causing
them undue stress from sudden auto-toxification.  Now, instead, you have to
recover from the weight-loss, tissue loss, muscle loss, etc., injury to your
kidneys or other organs that may have occured due to over-stress, etc.

That is what I mean by increasing immune function rather than stimulating it
through some harmful way.  Try fully nourishing your body, stretching,
walking, hiking, and sleeping well, and getting whatever pure water you need.
Do this daily.  Walk a little more as you become stronger.  You are now
asserting yourself positively in your LIFE.  Your body will begin to reflect
this positive LIFE that you are having.  Then, with that perspective, look
back on this fasting experience.  Lucia's body is forced to go without food
for a long period of time, and then Lucia's body is forced to work hard
causing her to become exhausted.  The latter sounds like slavery or some form
of imprisonment/punishment that we might read about in a history book, or hear
on 20/20 about some third world country.

Remember that each moment of each day is conditioning us.  Let's say you have
a child and for several days you deprive him of food and then make him jump up
and down on a trampoline until he is exhausted.  That is the kind of
conditioning that can close him to life or traumatize him.  Or, you take a
child and make sure that he is always fed well, allowing him to fast himself
for a little bit when it becomes entirely clear to him that he'd rather just
rest and not eat.  Encourage him to exercise freely, but do not force him to
overdo it, and love him constantly.  You can see the difference.  Think of
yourself as that innocent child and treat yourself accordingly.  Humans are
fragile creatures.

Or, imagine two plants.  Place them both in the same soil.  Water them, love
them, and care for them equally.  When they are both doing well, take one out
of it's pot and deprive it of water and soil for several days.  Then re-plant
it in the same soil.  Which plant is now in a better position to survive the
coming water shortage?

Note: if the one plant was in horrible soil to begin with, you might want to
remove it from the soil and replant it immediately in new soil.  It might go
through some shock, but over-time, hopefully, it would regain it's strength.
Sometimes we can heal from shock/stress, and sometimes, we never do.

If you are already eating great food, then I would continue to eat great food
and let detox happen at a slow pace that your body will brilliantly take care
of on it's own.

When you wake up one day and don't feel like eating, don't eat, rest, or do
what you want to do, and then eat as soon as you want.  Let your body direct
your mind, and make sure that your mind is centered in your heart, so that
each action is right and loving.

I hope that was helpful in some way ;)

aaron