Well-being

Why Fasting Is Rarely Only About Food

A look at fasting traditions that pair the abstention from food with an abstention from something else entirely.

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By Kabir Sen7 min readpremium
Why Fasting Is Rarely Only About Food

Many fasting traditions, read carefully, ask for more than the absence of food.

Alongside dietary restriction, older instructions often include a parallel abstention: from gossip, from anger, from certain kinds of speech, from specific habits of attention. The fast from food is frequently the visible half of a fast that is otherwise invisible.

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