I've heard your story many times, Hannah, but each iteration reveals a new facet, like a sparkling gem. I treasure those moments I had to speak with you and Martin, learning about mitochondria and the spiritual depths of healing.
I’m currently conducting a review of fasting across religious history, especially among mystic and visionary figures such as Joan of Arc and Catherine of Siena, who practiced rigorous fasting. Some might argue there’s a narrow threshold where the “mystic” edges into the “manic.”
Alongside the historical record, I’m also surveying contemporary scholarship on how fasting’s metabolic, neuropsychiatric, and bioenergetic effects show up today, particularly in Muslim, Eastern Orthodox Christian, and Catholic monastic settings, where fasting structures much of the calendar year. Often, these fasting traditions occur in the winter/early spring, a time also associated with transitions from depression to mania in the northern hemisphere.
Although I don't know as much detail about Ayurveda, I've practiced yogic asanas for many years, I appreciate prāṇa and its ways of helping to physically restore energy flow in the body through breath and movement.
I loved our inspiring conversations at the 2024 retreat! I also want to hear more about your fasting review and reflections on mysticism and mania. We need to connect again soon.
Greatly enjoyed and appreciated this lens. Approaching psychosis through a metabolic lens is fascinating, and I am interested to learn more about antipsychotics and energy resistance.
Beautiful and so relatable. As a child, my energetic sensitivity and intuition terrified me. Metabolic therapies has allowed me the space to dive into understanding and appreciating it from a whole new perspective instead and help my daughter not be afraid of the same things. This intertwining of spirit and science is powerful. So grateful for all the work being done in metabolism and energy and blessed to be a part of this community.
Well done Hannah! Another moving, poignant post full of the hard won wisdom of lived experience and deep reflection. I really enjoyed your sharing Satyam Chetanaya in particular - and how yogi's throughout history had to maneuver breaks with 'consensus' reality - revealing that the first person experience of the world has always been highly individual, unique and idiosyncratic. May the journey continue! :)
I am so grateful to have you as a friend who understands this journey in all its richness and multidimensionality. I also appreciate how you kindly correct me when I talk about “losing touch with reality,” reframing it instead as losing touch with “consensus reality.” It is important to honor that there are realities beyond ordinary awareness, ones that can offer different perspectives and ways of experiencing truth.
Very inspiring perspective. I can use the analogy of manual car where we use different gears to apply different resistance and when we are in neutral, we can press the pedal, but there's no resistance, so we don't move although the engine is spinning.
Also, if we stay with the first gear when the rpm exceeds certain threshold, we're not going faster, because we are keeping the same resistance, so we need to switch gear and move to the second, where we have less resistance and go faster.
Therefore, if the engine works well (our cells efficiently transform food and oxygen into energy), then we need to make sure to apply the right gear for that energy to be channelled and utilized, without too much dissipation
PS: I'm Italian and I always had a manual car, but I know in the US manual cars are not common at all. I hope the analogy still resonates 🙂
I particularly connected with this section: "As our modern world becomes increasingly interested in the therapeutic potential of altered states through psychedelics, I wonder: what if we have misunderstood the altered states that arise organically?"
I absolutely love that you're bringing attention to the potential of using endogenous ways to nurture altered states. I don't mean to put down clinically supervised exogenous modalities (I live in a hot bed where such practices were developed and currently take place, esp. for those with PTSD) ***but***I haven't read a take on the endogenous route so articulately and meaningfully written until I read your article.
I also appreciate your sharing how meditation has helped you, how it remains a linchpin, and I hope you don't mind my sharing the following info.:
Last month, Metabolic Mind Fresh Start Award winner Oliver Seligman started leading a free, live, 15-minute guided meditation on his YouTube channel "Living Better with Bipolar" on Saturdays.
I gave it a try, and I found myself benefitting from it more than I had expected it would! After the close of the meditation, Oliver gives fellow meditators the chance to ask him a few questions via the chat section.
Anyway, thanks again for another original, inspiring, and refreshingly authentic take on your experiences with bipolar, healing, and energy.....and much, much more! I appreciate the lovely images and videos too!
Thank you so much for your kind words, Dyane. They really mean a lot to me! Oliver is wonderful. I didn't know he was offering a live meditation on "Living Better with Bipolar" on Saturdays. That's lovely! I appreciate you spreading the word. I will also share with some people who I think will be interested.
As the mother of a son who shared Hannah's experience of recovering from pyschotic manias with metabolic therapies, I deeply appreciate this essay. So many incredible lines, but this one really took my breath away: “Experientially, in mania, it felt as though I had too little energy resistance. As if a tsunami of energy were sweeping me away. I felt like I was made of very little matter, more like a rapidly flowing current on the verge of combustion. My soul was trying to leap from my body."
I was wondering if the ketogenic diets offer a stability towards over abundance and disregulated mental energy upswing - does is it also helps with low energy - a unipolar depression in this case. Brain can use glucose and ketone but not fatty acid. I had some reading about Dr Walter Kempner used rice diet that treats type II diabetes, a rather counter intuitive case. Is there a MoA for rice diet here for the brain as well?
This is a compelling account, particularly in how it reclaims lived experience.
At the same time, metabolic framing captures one layer of the system, and when it becomes a total explanation it can reproduce the same reductionism it seeks to move beyond.
In your description, sleep disruption and circadian instability appear central rather than peripheral. Recognising these as state conditions also opens a different sense of agency — not in forcing change, but in working with the conditions that support regulation and integration over time.
So much love here! Grateful for this beautiful community.
I've heard your story many times, Hannah, but each iteration reveals a new facet, like a sparkling gem. I treasure those moments I had to speak with you and Martin, learning about mitochondria and the spiritual depths of healing.
I’m currently conducting a review of fasting across religious history, especially among mystic and visionary figures such as Joan of Arc and Catherine of Siena, who practiced rigorous fasting. Some might argue there’s a narrow threshold where the “mystic” edges into the “manic.”
Alongside the historical record, I’m also surveying contemporary scholarship on how fasting’s metabolic, neuropsychiatric, and bioenergetic effects show up today, particularly in Muslim, Eastern Orthodox Christian, and Catholic monastic settings, where fasting structures much of the calendar year. Often, these fasting traditions occur in the winter/early spring, a time also associated with transitions from depression to mania in the northern hemisphere.
Although I don't know as much detail about Ayurveda, I've practiced yogic asanas for many years, I appreciate prāṇa and its ways of helping to physically restore energy flow in the body through breath and movement.
I loved our inspiring conversations at the 2024 retreat! I also want to hear more about your fasting review and reflections on mysticism and mania. We need to connect again soon.
Your sories and updates on research gives me so much hope! Thank you.
Absolutley brilliant and beautiful. Thrilled to learn about the Energy and Healing Institute. ❤️
Greatly enjoyed and appreciated this lens. Approaching psychosis through a metabolic lens is fascinating, and I am interested to learn more about antipsychotics and energy resistance.
As always, an excellent read.
Beautiful and so relatable. As a child, my energetic sensitivity and intuition terrified me. Metabolic therapies has allowed me the space to dive into understanding and appreciating it from a whole new perspective instead and help my daughter not be afraid of the same things. This intertwining of spirit and science is powerful. So grateful for all the work being done in metabolism and energy and blessed to be a part of this community.
Grateful you are part of this community, Kristina. Thank you for all your powerful advocacy work!
Well done Hannah! Another moving, poignant post full of the hard won wisdom of lived experience and deep reflection. I really enjoyed your sharing Satyam Chetanaya in particular - and how yogi's throughout history had to maneuver breaks with 'consensus' reality - revealing that the first person experience of the world has always been highly individual, unique and idiosyncratic. May the journey continue! :)
I am so grateful to have you as a friend who understands this journey in all its richness and multidimensionality. I also appreciate how you kindly correct me when I talk about “losing touch with reality,” reframing it instead as losing touch with “consensus reality.” It is important to honor that there are realities beyond ordinary awareness, ones that can offer different perspectives and ways of experiencing truth.
Ditto my friend! :)
Terrific, Hannah. Really great contribution. Thank you.
Very inspiring perspective. I can use the analogy of manual car where we use different gears to apply different resistance and when we are in neutral, we can press the pedal, but there's no resistance, so we don't move although the engine is spinning.
Also, if we stay with the first gear when the rpm exceeds certain threshold, we're not going faster, because we are keeping the same resistance, so we need to switch gear and move to the second, where we have less resistance and go faster.
Therefore, if the engine works well (our cells efficiently transform food and oxygen into energy), then we need to make sure to apply the right gear for that energy to be channelled and utilized, without too much dissipation
PS: I'm Italian and I always had a manual car, but I know in the US manual cars are not common at all. I hope the analogy still resonates 🙂
Beautifully written, Hannah!
I particularly connected with this section: "As our modern world becomes increasingly interested in the therapeutic potential of altered states through psychedelics, I wonder: what if we have misunderstood the altered states that arise organically?"
I absolutely love that you're bringing attention to the potential of using endogenous ways to nurture altered states. I don't mean to put down clinically supervised exogenous modalities (I live in a hot bed where such practices were developed and currently take place, esp. for those with PTSD) ***but***I haven't read a take on the endogenous route so articulately and meaningfully written until I read your article.
I also appreciate your sharing how meditation has helped you, how it remains a linchpin, and I hope you don't mind my sharing the following info.:
Last month, Metabolic Mind Fresh Start Award winner Oliver Seligman started leading a free, live, 15-minute guided meditation on his YouTube channel "Living Better with Bipolar" on Saturdays.
I gave it a try, and I found myself benefitting from it more than I had expected it would! After the close of the meditation, Oliver gives fellow meditators the chance to ask him a few questions via the chat section.
Anyway, thanks again for another original, inspiring, and refreshingly authentic take on your experiences with bipolar, healing, and energy.....and much, much more! I appreciate the lovely images and videos too!
Thank you so much for your kind words, Dyane. They really mean a lot to me! Oliver is wonderful. I didn't know he was offering a live meditation on "Living Better with Bipolar" on Saturdays. That's lovely! I appreciate you spreading the word. I will also share with some people who I think will be interested.
As the mother of a son who shared Hannah's experience of recovering from pyschotic manias with metabolic therapies, I deeply appreciate this essay. So many incredible lines, but this one really took my breath away: “Experientially, in mania, it felt as though I had too little energy resistance. As if a tsunami of energy were sweeping me away. I felt like I was made of very little matter, more like a rapidly flowing current on the verge of combustion. My soul was trying to leap from my body."
I was wondering if the ketogenic diets offer a stability towards over abundance and disregulated mental energy upswing - does is it also helps with low energy - a unipolar depression in this case. Brain can use glucose and ketone but not fatty acid. I had some reading about Dr Walter Kempner used rice diet that treats type II diabetes, a rather counter intuitive case. Is there a MoA for rice diet here for the brain as well?
This is a compelling account, particularly in how it reclaims lived experience.
At the same time, metabolic framing captures one layer of the system, and when it becomes a total explanation it can reproduce the same reductionism it seeks to move beyond.
In your description, sleep disruption and circadian instability appear central rather than peripheral. Recognising these as state conditions also opens a different sense of agency — not in forcing change, but in working with the conditions that support regulation and integration over time.