ABOUT US
Detach is a small business originated in Winnipeg Manitoba, Canada. Our goal is to provide content and products that promote mindfulness, spirituality, and good health.
Our portfolio of products are sure to make you detach, so you can face life with renewed strength, focus, and praise.
The Inspiration.
Detach is built with a purpose to motivate people and positively impact peoples mental, physical, and spiritual wellbeing through our relationships built, services provided, and portfolio of health products.
Detach is owned and operated by two Winnipeg locals, Dr. Nitan Arora, a chiropractor and business man, along with health and fitness coach Jacob Normore.
Fasting…?
Our belief in holistic health and wellness means that our bodies are connected with our mind and spirit.
As a result, physical fasting does not happen in isolation.
Fasting is a way to care for both aspects of one’s existence, a purposeful focus on our health and vigor through physical actions.
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We're committed to creating a healthy planet. 1% of our Revenue Sales are donated to environmental causes.
CREATING HEALTHY HABITS
Our Values.
Mindfulness
"Through fasting, we learn to feast upon the present moment, savoring each breath and embracing the profound clarity that arises when the body is light and the mind is anchored in mindful awareness— reminding ourselves to bring our attention back to our intentions." - Jack Kornfield
Education
Fasting is not merely a physical practice but also a spiritual and mental journey. We delve into the history, philosophy, and various approaches to fasting and asceticism, offering a holistic understanding of these practices. We encourage dialogue, share personal experiences, and connect like-minded individuals to create a space for learning, growth, and mutual support.
Social Impact
We believe that every individual has the power to create change, and we strive to empower and inspire our community. Through our platform, we aim to provide access to valuable resources, foster meaningful connections, and support initiatives that address social challenges.
Early great philosophers, thinkers, and healers advocated fasting for health and healing therapy. Hippocrates, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and Galen all praised fasting.
Fasting is rooted in a developed and well-articulated philosophical or theological system. Such a system provides the rationale or justification for ascetic activity. It is helpful to consider the objectives for Fasting from the perspective of these systems, whether theistic or nontheistic.
Forms & Objectives of Fasting
Viewed cross-culturally, a given ascetic form may have different, even opposite objectives.
“The same sun which melts wax hardens clay. And the same gospel which melts some person to repentance hardens other in their sins.”
It’s important to note, at Detach, our views do not involve a denigration of this world, the material realm, or the body. people are confused thinking that our nature, our body, our sexuality, our flesh, is bad and we must “cleanse”.
None of these are bad, just bad to the extent in which we lose ourselves in them.
When we forget our humanity and higher purpose.
Overcome the Vices, Develop the Virtues.
The Training of Virtue
The object of Fasting, according to Epictetus, is the freedom of the sage who acts without hindrance in choice and in refusal. It is, therefore, principally a training of the will. If one is fond of pleasure, loath to work, or hot-tempered, he must, "to train himself" (ἀσκήσεως ἔνεκα), turn to a behavior directly contrary to the dictates of those urges. Similarly, indulgence in drinking, eating, and sensual love must be counteracted by a training in the opposite direction.
“When it comes to fasting, remember that it is not the deprivation of food that restricts you, but the attachment to it.”
(Epicetus)
(ἐπίκτητος)
From the early 8th century BC, Olympic athletes competed in the nude.
The word asceticism is derived from the Greek noun askēsis, meaning "exercise, practice, training." The Greek athlete, for example, subjected himself to systematic exercise or training in order to attain a goal of physical fitness.
In time, however, the word began to assume philosophical, spiritual, and ethical implications: one could "exercise" and "train" not only the body in the pursuit of a physical goal but also—systematically and rigorously—the will, the mind, and the soul so as to attain a more virtuous life or a higher spiritual state.
“Inner Fasting/Asceticism”
Consisting essentially of spiritual rather than just physical discipline.
Such asceticism involves not detachment from or renunciation of any specific worldly pleasure but rather detachment from or renunciation of the world per se.
Fasting is reflected in the biblical attitude of being "in the world, but not of it," or in the Bhagavadgītā's "renunciation in action, rather than renunciation of action."
Fasting involves detachment from the world itself, rather than specific worldly pleasures. It emphasizes being present in the world without being consumed or defined by it.
Ascetic practices are not usually regarded as virtuous as such, merely a means towards a mind-body transformation, or a purification of the body which enables connection with the Divine and the cultivation of inner peace.
It aims to achieve freedom from compulsions and temptations, bringing about peacefulness of mind and an increase in clarity and power of thought.
Virtually all theistic traditions develop a mystical movement wherein the individual, through an ascetic program, seeks a personal union with the deity. This desire for personal experience of God may be seen as a reaction against doctrinal abstraction or ethical formalism.
Even theistic traditions such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, in which the gap between creator and creature is perceived to be unbridgeable, have produced ascetics in pursuit of such mystic union.
Because the mystic seeks to bridge the gap between man and God, the effort has often been perceived as audacious from the perspective of theistic orthodoxy.
Mystics in a theistic tradition, therefore, make it clear that the state of apparent union with the deity is only momentary and, at best, a foretaste of that salvation yet to come.
The Ṣūfī, like many mystics in theism, does not claim to be equal to God, but rather to be extinguished or lost in him.
In nontheistic traditions this thirst for the ultimate through mystical experience takes on varied forms.
It is frequently a quest for the true or essential self, which is perceived to be the foundation of all creation.
In nontheistic systems these practices function mechanistically to overcome the negative consequences of evil deeds, whereas in theistic the tradition is performed in order to warrant the forgiveness of a personal god.
Because its objective is merely forgiveness, in theistic systems asceticism as a form of penance (turning away from wrong doing) has enjoyed a less problematic rationale than has asceticism as a way of achieving salvation itself.
This perspective sees asceticism as a way to earn or merit forgiveness and reconciliation with God. It implies a belief that one can achieve salvation or atonement through one's own efforts or good works, including ascetic practices.
We need to be careful if we attain this nontheistic perspective...
We cannot let our Fast be reduced to a habit without heart.
Desire, by its very nature, can yield nothing but suffering. Desire springs from a lack and consists in a dissatisfaction.
When it meets with hindrances, it produces nothing but frustration, because it cannot attain its object; when it does attain its object, it produces nothing but boredom, because desire ceases with fulfillment and leaves one with an undesired object.
Since desire necessarily involves dissatisfaction, frustration, and boredom, the only escape is by the annihilation of all desire.
"Desire is a contract with suffering."
(Buddha)
Despite the fact that all religions condemn extreme forms of asceticism, pathological excesses have appeared in every tradition. Examples are multiple, from the recluses who avoid all human contact to the individuals who receive ecstatic pleasure from the most aberrant forms of self-inflicted pain.
Yogic meditation, Christian monasticism, and Zen technique exemplify the major advances made by asceticism, both Eastern and Western, in self-understanding and the effort to lift repression and make the unconscious conscious. The psychological heart of asceticism seems to lie in a reaction against the purely theoretical, the doctrinal, or the abstract.
Above all, the ascetic wishes to know through experience.
We are both this divine eternal transcendent essence, & the finite shell our death and ignorance inhabits.
"In fasting, we confess we are not home yet, but not homeless"
(Ronald Rolheiser)
Fasting can be seen as a spiritual practice that reminds us of our longing for our true home with God while also affirming our belongingness to God's presence even in our temporary earthly existence.
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali
Al-Ghazali was a prominent Persian Islamic theologian, philosopher, and jurist who lived from 1058 to 1111. His works have had a significant influence on Islamic philosophy and spirituality. Al-Ghazali wrote extensively on various aspects of Islamic theology, mysticism, ethics, and jurisprudence, including discussions on fasting and controlling the senses.
He highlights the transformative power of fasting as a means of self-discipline, self-control, and spiritual purification.
Theologian, Sufi Mystic, Writer, Preacher, Philosopher, Muslim, Polymath
Theologian, Sufi Mystic, Writer, Preacher, Philosopher, Muslim, Polymath
One day, as he opened his mouth to teach, nothing came out. Not a word!
God had made it impossible for him to teach, and easier for him to leave his old life and begin polishing his own heart.
According to Al-Ghazali, fasting should not be limited to refraining from food and drink, but by restraining the senses, particularly in relation to excessive indulgence and harmful actions. He encourages individuals to be mindful of their thoughts, words, and actions throughout the fasting period and beyond. By exercising control over the senses and cultivating virtuous behavior, fasting enables individuals to purify their hearts, strengthen their willpower, and foster a heightened sense of mindfulness and closeness to God.
Daoism adds another dimension to the understanding of fasting in the Jain and Islamic traditions through the the idea of “fasting of the heart-mind.”
This means it’s not just the body that goes through the detoxing, but it also detoxes the soul, as people learn to control their five senses during fasting.
“You hear not with the ears, but with the mind, not with the mind, but with your soul.”
The word ‘heart’, in this context, is translated from the Chinese word ‘Xin’ (心) which could be translated as ‘mind’, because the ancient Chinese believed that the heart was the center of human cognition.
Thus, the ‘fasting of the heart’ is actually the ‘fasting of the mind’.
(Confucius)
We aim to find common ground in the shared themes of spiritual transformation, inner purification, and the quest for divine knowledge.
In addition to cultivating patience, contentment and empathy for those suffering from hunger, fasting is an invitation to leave one’s ego behind.
In Islamic mysticism, the ego is compared to an insatiable animal.
Withdrawing physical food deprives the "commanding soul", the nafs al-'ammara, of some of its fuel and puts a stop to its schemes.
“The sage battles his own ego, the fool battles everyone else’s.”
(Sufi proverb)
Fasting helps us to discover and correct these negative thought structures and selfish tendencies we desire, which contain all sorts of qualities, capacities, and potential.
The Sufis call this muhasaba, a form of self-accounting.
If one is fond of pleasure, loath to work, or hot-tempered, he must, "to train himself" (ἀσκήσεως ἔνεκα), turn to a behavior directly contrary to the dictates of those urges. Similarly, indulgence in drinking, eating, and sensual love must be counteracted by a training in the opposite direction.
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Why are you fasting?
What will be different after your fast?
How will you be a better person from this?
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When are you going to Fast?
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remember why you started
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Tell us about your experience, let us reward you for your consistency, join our programs, and be a part of our community!
