PUT ON THE NEW SELF

🧠 Rewire Your Mind. ❤️ Renew Your Heart. 🔥 Transform Your Life.

March 3 - April 16, 2025 | A Lenten Journey with St. Hildegard

You know the drill—Lent rolls around, and suddenly you’re debating whether giving up chocolate again is the kind of "spiritual renewal" you need. Maybe you try a social media detox (but still check notifications). Or you start strong with fasting...until that mid-afternoon crash hits.

What if this year, instead of just subtracting things from your life, you added true renewal—for your mind, heart, and soul?

Enter Hildegard’s Fast: Renewal of Mind & Heart

St. Hildegard of Bingen, one of the four female Doctors of the Church, lived in the 12th century but her wisdom shines through the ages. Without a doubt, she was one of the biggest influencers of her time (including popes, monasteries, people at large) and the combination of her natural and supernatural gifts, as well as remedies, are perplexing, fascinating, and inspiring people until today. Her holistic approach supplies people living in the modern culture with ageless and tested advice.

Hildegard has written a whole book which is considered one of the first psychotherapeutic texts. Liber Vitae Meritorum, which translates to "Book of the Rewards of Life”. It is compiled of visions she received about forces of life given freely to us by the Holy Spirit and forces of death continually tempting us to give up our position of children of God. Written with remarkable visual clarity, it stands as one of the most subtle and fascinating works ever written on the relationship of various sins to their corresponding virtues. Divided into six parts, this compelling work focuses on our moral flaws, seemingly inherent in human consciousness, and the role of repentance and the virtues in re-establishing our union with God. It gives an insight into daily heart and mental talks and the resolutions to overcome your vices while relying on God’s strength. We will take those deeply seated habits, temptations, weaknesses under a magnifying glass and se what kind of responses she had seen in her visions. You bet, these will be corresponding with spiritual solutions and modern scientific findings.

This is not your average "give up coffee, feel miserable, and call it holiness" kind of fast. This is a start of deep, lasting transformation—a rewiring of your brain, habits, and spiritual outlook. Based on Ephesians 4:22-24, this Lenten journey will help you:

🔹 Break free from thought patterns that keep you stuck in anxiety, fear, overwhelm, overthinking, prolonged grief or spiritual stagnation, hard to break habits, chronic pessimism.

🔹 Rewire your limbic system—the emotional command center of your brain—through fasting, prayer, and the spoken Word. The limbic system is where your brain processes emotions, memories, and habits. It’s also where trauma, stress, and old wounds get stored—keeping you trapped in the same cycles of fear, discouragement, and overwhelm. It has been shown that regulating limbic system is helpful in reducing or completely resolving long Covid symptoms, food sensitivities, Lyme, chronic stress, anxiety and fatigue. Regulating nervous system increases physical and emotional health and resilience. By regulating the limbic system through neuroplasticity-based retraining, somatic practices, and nervous system regulation techniques, we can reduce inflammation, improve resilience, and restore balance to the body.

🔹 Align your body, soul, and spirit with the ancient wisdom of St. Hildegard’s 35 virtues and vices. We aim at deep rewiring—so that long after Lent, your brain naturally shifts toward peace, resilience, and healing.
✔ A balanced nervous system, free from chronic stress.
✔ Stronger faith and emotional resilience.
✔ Freedom from emotional exhaustion and burnout.
✔ A body, mind, and soul aligned with God’s healing grace.

By integrating Hildegard’s wisdom, we restore VIRIDITAS — the divine and natural vitality within us, making Lent a true season of rebirth and transformation.

🔹 Experience real neuroplastic renewal—where fasting, prayer, and spoken words literally reshape the chemistry of your brain (yes, science backs this up!). Neuropeptides (oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine, cortisol and more - you probably heard about them) carry emotional messages throughout the body, directly influencing immune function, stress response, mindset, and habit formation. Engaged prayer, adequate fasting, emphatic alms giving and heartfelt reception of sacraments can biologically reshape the brain and body.

🔹 Engage in a powerful community of participants ready to go beyond surface-level resolutions and step into authentic healing. No more fear of the past or future. Communal support via WhatsApp Group.

Battle for vitality

For 35 days, we’ll dive into the real battle—between virtue and vice, renewal and decay, divine order and chaos. You’ll receive:
📺 5-10 min daily videos on virtues, vices, and their impact on your emotions, habits, and brain chemistry.
🧠 Limbic system rewiring practices rooted in both modern neuroscience and ancient Christian wisdom will be included in weekly practices.
🙏 Bi-Weekly live Q&A sessions & prayer support—because real transformation happens in community.

Lent isn't about temporary sacrifices. It's about becoming new—from the inside out. Science confirms it, faith demands it, and Hildegard knew it long before modern psychology caught up.

This year, don’t just "give something up." Put on a new self.

Join us. Your renewal starts now.

If you suffer from a debilitating chronic disease, contact me to see if and what kind of fast is good for you.

What you get:

• FOUR Bi-weekly 1/2 hour long Q and A and PRAYER on Saturdays at 9 am PST - 9:30 am: March 8, 22, 29, April 12

• Daily 5 min video in your email , ending in 3h content) to help you break free from mental & spiritual clutter with an explanation on Hildegard’s take about vices and virtues teachings (considered early psychotherapy) and connections to neuroscientific discoveries about physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health

• 18 hours of video teachings and instructions

  • Discover Hildegard course - 4 videos

  • Hildegard’s Fast course - 2 videos

  • Heart Healing - Emotional and Mental Healing - 2 videos

  • Neuroscience to the Rescue of Your Soul - 1 video

  • Fasting Theology and Practice in the Church video - 1 video

  • Dr. Hertzka (main propagator of Hildegard’s sciences in 20th century) - 1 video

  • Lectio Divina course - 4 videos

  • Liturgy of the Hours course - 1 video

• Audio-visual meditations with Hildegard’s vision on Trinity and vision on Crucifixion and the Church - Eucharistic Healing from her first visionary book Scivias - Know the Ways

• Metanoia booklet - A Mindset Shift for the Kingdom and Eternal Life with Mind to Body and Body to Mind practices for the healing and renewal of your mind, brain and nervous system. Releasing emotional build up and effects of trauma, grief, loss, sinful addictions. Applying ancient wisdom of the Desert Fathers.

• Stations of the Cross booklet (first time in English) prayed daily by Dr. Hertzka, medical doctor who translated all Hildegard’s works, re-discovered, and brought Hildegard’s lifestyle and remedies with success into his practice, training many other doctors and practitioners in 20th century - will be sent on the First Friday of Lent

• Recipes 50 pages digital booklet with fasting rules, recipes and remedies

• Fasting Journal digital booklet

• Lectio Divina Journal digital booklet

• Seven Sorrows and Joys of St. Joseph booklet - Lectio Divina as Novena will correspond with Ember Days plant-based Liquid Fast March 11-15. Daily live prayer sessions with Lectio and prayer for healing will be held March 10 - 18 at 6pm PST leading to March 19 Feast of St. Joseph

BONUS:

Ember Days Plant-Based Liquid Fast - March 11-15 (with 2 prep days on march 9 and 10 and optional detoxifying remedy for 4-6 weeks)

This fast is optional and has two versions: complete liquid and liquid with some pureed veggies. Hildegard considered this fast second best healing remedy. Most people can undertake this fast but you need to consult with your medical professional if you have any chronic diseases or health issues.

Maybe you’ve heard about fasting mimicking diet where you consume plant-based liquids and very limited foods (10% of usual daily intake of calories) mainly in form of broths for 5 days and reap the harvest of cellular cleansing in your body and clarity of mind. Hildegard knew all about it 800 years ago and proposed 5-10 day long liquid fasts based on spelt & veggies broth, spelt coffee, herbs, spices and herbal fusions and teas. The fast has to be combined with movement, stretching, walking, and mostly, prayer, in a communal setting which we will provide online in a form of nine daily 30 min at 6pm PST live meetups for Lectio Divina based on Seven Sorrows and Joys of St. Joseph and prayer for healing, starting on March 10 and ending on March 18.

Quarterly celebrated Ember Days are perfect for liquid plant-based diet and Hildegard would advise everyone to fast this way minimum twice a year.

Instructor: Iwona Bednarz-Major

For some time now I was interested in holistic healing and cures integrating the natural and the supernatural. Having experience in anesthesiology and intensive care nursing and years of ministry especially focused on worship, healing, deliverance and transformation of the whole person, I am interested in deepening my understanding of modern medicine that is investigating previous centuries’ natural medicinal advances and is not afraid to reach to the wisdom of the saints instructed supernaturally by God on how to bring healing. I believe there are ways of healing that are waiting to be discovered and integrated into the current knowledge. I also believe that some of the old ways of healing have been forgotten and need to be reintegrated into the medical and health fields.

In March 2023 I passed an exam in St. Hildegard’s von Bingen Studium. Academic Theological Course and became “Second Degree Specialist in the St. Hildegard’s Sciences” issued by the Papal Faculty of Theology in Wroclaw where I studied theology before becoming a full-time missionary and having a family. I am continuing the studies this year to become Third (and final) Degree Specialist in the St. Hildegard’s Sciences focusing on the full application of Hildegard’s sciences about man, universe, and God including learning the diagnostic system for the spiritual and physical human condition and on harmonious integration of spirituality with a lifestyle that cures, heals and brings a human being closer to God. That’s 300+ hours of official lectures, studies plus additional personal countless days of praying, reading, studying, making meals, remedies etc. to gain experience.

Having an experience introducing Hildegards' mystical experiences, her prophetic and healing gifts, her natural medicine skills and knowledge, her apostolic fearlessness, her breakthrough in worship, music and arts, her leadership skills and dedication to building a community in my Lectio Divina and School of the Heart Courses that I have created for Stone to Flesh, in the past years I have now gained new knowledge from many experienced practitioners specializing in her sciences: theologians (biblical and dogmatic theologians), philosophers (medievalists, anthropologists), clergy (Benedictine spirituality and new evangelization focus, an exorcist and religious including St. Hildegards’ relics custodian Benedictine nun, musicians, medical doctors (family doctor, gynecologist, therapist, physiotherapist, pharmacologist), and from the oldest Hildegards’ health food and ingredients producer.

I am very eager to start sharing all insights I have gained and start practicing St. Hildegard’s lifestyle with other enthusiasts of her holistic health, well-being, and Benedictine spirituality.

Value and price:

Value: $599

Price: $150 per person = $3.33 per day (15% off for SOTH, FLOW, Hildegard Workshop alumni; 25% off for former registered Hildegard Fast participants)

THIS IS EDUCATIONAL INFORMATION ONLY AND IT IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR PROFESSIONAL MEDICAL ADVICE, DIAGNOSIS, TREATMENT, OR PREVENTION, OR FOR A PROFESSIONAL THERAPEUTIC RELATIONSHIP. ALWAYS SEEK PROFESSIONAL MEDICAL ADVICE IF YOU WANT TO EMBARK ON A FAST.