Preparations for ekadashi

  5 mins read
  August 12, 2023
  ekadashi health

Today is Ekadashi! You might already know the benefits of upavasa (fasting) or intermittent fasting (for gen-z), so I am going to share some of my findings / preparation tricks here.

Let’s take a divergence here and understand something different. Suppose you are a lower middle class person who owns a car, one fine day in a middle of nowhere your car doesn’t start (or stops).

• What will you do?
• Do you feel ashamed?

Any sane person will get it fixed (by himself or through a mechanic) or finds a workaround/hack to start and doesn’t feel ashamed.

Our body is like a car, which we can’t afford to buy a new one when the owned one fails. If something doesn’t start / stops there is no need to feel ashamed to use hacks / learn its working / get it fixed by a doctor. With this illustration in mind, let’s read ahead.

Ekadashi upavasa in a nutshell

In Bharatiya calendar system, the months are divided in two equal halves called paksha (poornima (full moon day) – krishna paksha -> amavasya (no moon day) – shukla paksha -> poornima). Ekadashi literally means 11th day of these pakshas and people fast on these days without food and water.

What are the requirements needed for ekadashi upavasa?

Physical requirements

• Empty stomach at the beginning of the day
• Sufficient water level in body

Mental requirements

• A strong resolve
• A proper plan to spend the day

Let’s see how to achieve these requirements

1. Empty stomach

Doing upavasa with a non-empty stomach has bad effects (gastric / constipation (as there is no water intake)) on the body. So it’s very important to empty the stomach in the beginning of the day of upavasa. Here are some ways to achieve it.

• Eat once on dashami (this is a must) : On dashami (day before ekasdashi) eat only once in afternoon. If it can’t be helped, eat some fruits / light breakfast stuff at night.
  • There are few people who delay their lunch to push their hunger. It’s natural to feel hungry so this not just stupid but can mess up the digestion on dashami which should be perfect.
• Follow good eating habbits : Digestion is an art which should be taught in early age which doesn’t happen due to negligent parents (and this negligency adds up over generations). Here are some things I learnt from parents, ayurvedic media content (text / reels)
  • Swallow only after food is fully chewed and mixed with saliva
    • People due to their work pressure / to not to keep others waiting, eat their food in hurry. I am lucky in this regard to have some people in my circle who eat aram se (with peace).
  • Don’t drink water just after eating the food.
    • This dilutes the stomach acids leading to slow / indigestion.
  • Don’t eat anything between meals
    • This wastes more energy on digestion (which might be unnecessary) and make you feel low on energy most part of the day
  • Do gandusha sufficient times after the meals
    • Gandusha means gargling (cleaning the mouth). Holding the water in and expanding and contracting the mouth quickly, cleans the mouth and teetg and and you will not have much cravings later. It’s said in few texts that one should do this (expansion and contraction) 16-32 times.
• Tricks for emptying the stomach
  • Few years back, I had a compulsion of awakening the digestive tract by drinking water to trigger the bowel movement in the morning. I have heard about other compulsions like smoking / chewing tobacco to do the same. But once you start with good food habbits, these will turn out as stupid means. But at times, we need to know some workarounds for this, here is one I found useful.
    • On ekadashi
      • Malasana - This is a yogasana where you sit as if you are using a indian style toilet and do deep breathing.
    • normal days
      • Drink warm water mixed with ghee
      • Drink warm milk

2. Sufficient water level in body

Keep yourself hydrated on dashami. Don’t over do it.

3. A strong resolve

A person volunatarily does something because of mix of the 3 paths

• Gnyana - He knows why he is doing it
• Bhakti - He has bhakti on something / someone which inspires him to do it
• Karma - He does it because he has to do it.

You pick a reason / path from above and try to be on that path (be a yogi of that path). A question may arise here - “strong resolve to be on any of the above path?”.

4. A proper plan to spend the day

On the day of upavasa, without a proper plan one can cause imbalance in their body. So usually it is adviced to

• Keep yourself calm
• Not take much physical stress
• Utilize time in adhyana / adhyApana.

With these findings, I wish that hari-vayu-guru bless you for your next upavAsa. Share your thoughts / ideas in the comments below.

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