The Healing Crisis And Retracing

Categories: Fasting
Sources: How And When To Be Your Own Doctor

Certain unpleasant somatics that occur while fasting (or while on a

healing diet) may not be dangerous or "bad." Two types, the healing

crisis, and retracing, are almost inevitable. A well-educated faster

should welcome these discomforts when they happen. The healing

crisis (but not retracing) also occurs on a healing diet.



The healing crisis can seem a big surprise to a faster who has been

progressing wo derfully. Suddenly, usually after a few days of

noticeably increased well-being, they suddenly experience a set of

severe symptoms and feel just awful. This is not a setback, not

something to be upset or disappointed about, but a healing crisis,

actually a positive sign



Healing crises always occur after a period of marked improvement. As

the vital force builds up during the healing process, the body

decides it now has obtained enough energy to throw off some

accumulated toxins, and forcefully pushes them out through a typical

and usually previously used route of secondary elimination, such as

the nose, lungs, stomach, intestines, skin, or perhaps produces a

flu-like experience with fever chills, sweat, aches and pains, etc.

Though unpleasant, this experience is to be encouraged; the body has

merely accelerated its elimination process. Do not attempt to

suppress any of these symptoms, don't even try to moderate fever,

which is the body's effective way to burn out a virus or bacteria

infection, unless it is a dangerously high fever (over 102 degree

Fahrenheit). Fever can be lowered without drugs by putting the

person into a cool/cold bath, or using cold towel wraps and cold

water sponge baths. The good news is that healing crises usually do

not last long, and when they are past you feel better than you did

before the crisis.



Asthmatics seem to have the worst crises. I have had asthmatics

bring up a quart of obnoxious mucous from their lungs every night

for weeks. They have stayed awake all night for three nights

continuously coughing and choking on the material that was being

eliminated. After that clearing-out process they were able to breath

much more freely. Likewise I have had people who have had sinusitis

have nothing but non-stop pussy discharge from their sinuses for

three weeks. Some of this would run down the throat and cause

nausea. All I could say to encourage the sufferer was that it needed

to come out and to please stand aside and let the body work its

magic. These fasters were not grateful until the sinus problem that

had plagued them since childhood disappeared.



The interesting thing about healing crises are that the symptoms

produced retrace earlier complaints; they are almost never something

entirely unknown to the patient. Usually they are old, familiar

somatics, often complaints that haven't bothered the faster for many

years. The reason the symptom is familiar but is not currently a

problem is because as the body degenerates it loses vital force;

with less vital force it loses the ability to create such acute

detoxification episodes in non-life-threatening secondary

elimination routes. The degenerated body makes less violent efforts

to cleanse, efforts that aren't as uncomfortable. The negative side

of this is that instead of creating acute discomfort in peripheral

systems, the toxemia goes to more vital organs where it hastens the

formation of life-threatening conditions.



There is a very normal and typical progress for each person's fatal

illness. Their ultimate disease starts out in childhood or

adolescence as acute inflammations of skin-like organs, viral or

bacterial infections of the same. Then, as vital force weakens,

secondary eliminations are shifted to more vital organs. Allergies

or colds stop happening so frequently; the person becomes rheumatic,

arthritic or experience weakness in joints, tendons, ligaments, or

to have back pains, or to have digestive upsets. These new symptoms

are more constant but usually less acute. Ultimately, vital organs

begin to malfunction, and serious disease develop. But a hygienist

sees the beginning of fatal diseases such as cancer in adolescent

infections and allergies.



Retracing is generally seen only on water fasts, not on extended

cleansing diets. The body begins to repair itself by healing

conditions in the reverse order to that which they occurred

originally. This means that the body would first direct healing

toward the lungs if the most recently serious illness was an attack

of pneumonia six months previously. In this case you would expect to

quickly and intensely experience a mini-case of pneumonia while the

body eliminates residues in the lungs that were not completely

discharged at the time. Next the body might take you through a

period of depression that you had experienced five years in the

past. The faster may be profoundly depressed for a few days and come

out of it feeling much better. You could then reexperience

sensation-states like those caused by recreational drugs you had

playfully experimented with ten years previously along with the

"trippiness" if it were a hallucinogen, speediness if it was "speed"

or the dopiness if it was heroin. Retracing further, the faster

might then experience something similar to a raging attack of

tonsillitis which you vaguely remember having when you were five

years old, but fortunately this time it passes in three days (or

maybe six hours), instead of three weeks. This is retracing.



Please do not be surprised or alarmed if it happens to you on a

fast, and immediately throw out the baby with the bath water

thinking that you are doing the wrong thing because all those old

illnesses are coming back to haunt you. It is the body's magnificent

healing effort working on your behalf, and for doing it your body

deserves lots of "well done", "good body" thoughts rather than

gnashing of teeth and thinking what did I do to deserve this. The

body won't tell you what you did to deserve this, but it knows and

is trying its darndest to undo it.