Yula talks about her personal approach to fasting for health & Wellbeing

What is your Koh Phangan story?
It is a very long story but in short, we lived in Ecuador for ten years and an old friend came and told us about Thailand. He said it’s a really good place, and we could work with him, I was and still am a designer. My husband and I listened to his advice and decided to move from Ecuador to Phangan four years ago.

You have recently done a sixty eight day fast, why did you decide to do this?
It was not the first time, the first time was twenty years ago. I had asthma so I was trying to cure this. The first time I did it for twenty one days, I now do it twice every year for thirty days but this most recent time was the longest one. I have not had asthma now for eight or nine years.
I healed myself but I think the warm climate may also help?

Where did you get the idea from?
There is a scientist who worked on this special technique of fasting, he was was studying and experimenting for forty years. I got the idea from one of my doctors to try this.
The scientist even healed  insane people with this technique. He tried his technique on insane people as in the Soviet Union this was the biggest group of people you can try things on but they actually became normal and healed other diseases they had as well. So I read the book and that’s how it started, and I really like it.

Talk us through the usual thirty days from start to end…
It’s not easy to start this because your mind tells you that you shouldn’t be fasting. For the first one or two days your body wants food, but when you past the third day it becomes really easy.
It depends on the person, some people get it on the third day and some at the end of the first week but your body starts working the other way and switches to its other mode. It starts to eat its own reserves, so this day is the most terrible, you feel like you’re going to throw up and you can’t stand.

Then you feel amazing, like you have wings! It helps to detect your inner diseases that doctors cannot find so when this happens the first week is hard as you feel all the things that are wrong with you. Some people get scared and stop but you need to go through this. I had a migraine so I healed this with the fasting, the doctor couldn’t help. I got problems with my stomach also.
I had one friend and the doctors in Russia told her she had cancer and they gave her two years to live, it was cervical cancer. But now she has three children and it has been eight years after my friend started practising to fast twice a year for thirty days.

How do feel at the end and how do you get back into eating?
You start slowly, have small portions and liquid because during the whole period it is only water. The best is spring water straight from the spring.
The first week after fasting you start just liquid porridge. The next week you slowly start to put vegetables into your diet but not fruit.

It is always different and it all depends on the diseases you have in your body, I could say that mentally you feel much better than when you eat, your mind is clear, you are not nervous, when you eat you cannot get the same feeling.
Last year I started really practising with healthy food, in October last year my weight was 93 kilos and now it is 51. It is all about healthy food, I don’t do sports or gymnastics, it’s always about eating the right food. Healthy food for me is everything you want except sugar, carbohydrates, no potatoes or bananas. Everything else is fine, even meat.

What would you say to people who are interested in trying this for the first time?
So the idea is just to try, you cannot describe it. Once you try you realise it is either for you or not for you. It is good for people who are active and also if you are not but actually when you’re fasting, during this time it’s better to have an activity, you can carry on as normal. The more active your life is the better, even if you are not active and you want to fast it is better to do something.

During this time of fasting the idea is that once your body starts to get to work in its other mode and ‘eat itself’ it slowly starts to clean itself out, and it starts with the bad cells out first. Starting with your blood system then in the second and third week the muscles and bones,then near the end it gets to your nervous system of the brain.

Do you do this on your own and do you find the community of Phangan is supportive?
I usually do it with my husband who is the best supporter, it is best to do alone or with the closest person to you.
Sometimes the community don’t understand, they think you are stupid and don’t support you, it is better to just do your thing. My social life is normal and I can still visit friends, my real ones. You can always just not tell people that you are fasting!

What do you love about Koh Phangan?
The thing is that Koh Phangan was a good life school for me. But most of the people are happy living here in a kind of vegetative way of living, not wanting or striving for something.

I am leaving soon and at the end of my time I have come to realise why I have been here, at one point in my life I lost my way, so I had to be here to find it. I have realised what my main purpose is in my life. I realised that I didn’t live my life correctly and I was fortunate to come here and reconsider my life.

What is your main purpose?
I am going back to Ecuador to make my plans into reality. I have many ideas for my future life but I don’t want to say as when you tell it it sometimes doesn’t happen so it is better to keep it inside.