Content warning: this one goes into disordered eating and food restriction in some detail. Skip if you need to.

I mentioned in last week's newsletter about fainting on the steelworks floor - never a good idea. But over the course of about 4 years, I started fainting more and more often. My heart rate dropped and my blood pressure was lower than recommended. I was also a size 18 (UK sizes - adjust for whatever system you use!!). But it took a doctor telling me I most likely had an eating disorder to have me look for help.

And it just wasn't there - because I was, by the standards of the early 00's, fat. Looking back now, I think I really wasn't, I was pretty healthy, but that's life.

So when I start thinking about food at all, I need to be careful, because it doesn't take too much to send me right back to the nightmare where I claimed to be eating 40g porridge - made with water of course - for breakfast and was actually eating more like 20g. Critically weighed every single morning…

So when I read ideas for rituals that include fasting, I look for the reasons behind the fasting and see if the same end result can be gained by a different route. Most of the time, it can be. It takes more work usually - being lightheaded from hunger does help people have fantastic experiences and visions and gets them more susceptible to suggestions etc - but with discipline, practice and training, you can get yourself into a similar headspace without the fasting.

​This is one way I adapt modern practices to suit me, my limitations and my needs. Another is, I rarely need to sit or stand for extended periods of time for a ritual. I keep them short, practical and efficient… Far easier than longwinded…

Now there's a major place for theatre in public rituals - I will never move away from that!! But mine are mostly private. And Brigid's as much an engineer as I am, so she understands where I'm coming from.

Bríd libh

Órlagh

Check out the links below:

​Brigid's Forge School​

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