Bitters for the body. The Magnificat for the soul. A passage from bitterness into generous love.
Taste and see that the Lord is good.” - Psalm 34:8
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“Taste and see that the Lord is good.” - Psalm 34:8
From bitterness to generous love
Not all bitterness is chosen. It may begin with grief, betrayal, injustice, disappointment, or a wound that has never been fully released. You may have forgiven and still feel something tighten when the memory returns. The wound may explain the bitterness. It does not have to govern your future.
TASTE AND SEE is a fourteen-day journey integrating St. Hildegard’s wisdom, bitter foods and herbs, prayer, fasting, the Magnificat, and the restoration of the whole person: body, soul, and spirit.
You will move from amaritudo, the vice of bitterness, toward largitas, generosity, abundance, and largeness of soul.
Not by pretending the wound did not matter.
Not by forcing reconciliation.
Not by calling evil good.
But by refusing to allow what happened to continue shrinking the soul.
Bitters for the body. The Magnificat for the soul.
Generous love for the life ahead.
You will receive and access to the assets page with :
17 videos (7h)
Daily Guide with Scripture, Lectio Divina, Magnificat meditations, reflection questions, and a practical daily practice
TASTE AND SEE is an educational and spiritual-formation program. It does not provide medical diagnosis or treatment and does not create a practitioner–client relationship. Consult your healthcare practitioner before fasting or using herbs if you have a health condition, take medication, or are pregnant or nursing.
A Whole Person Approach
This journey isn’t just about food — it’s about body, soul, and spirit:
⚖ BODY: Detoxify, reset metabolism, and restore cellular vitality
🧠 SOUL: Calm emotions, clarify desires for goodness and truth
🔥 SPIRIT: Rest in the Holy Spirit, receive grace for virtue, and discover inner peace
Sometimes bitterness begins with something that should never have happened: a betrayal, an abandonment, abuse, neglect, injustice. A wound within your family, marriage, ministry, or Church.
You may have prayed about it. You may have genuinely forgiven. You may have continued serving, caring, working, believing, and still feel something tighten inside you when the memory returns. The mind says, “I have forgiven.” but the body braces, the emotions rise, the heart closes its fist again.
This does not necessarily mean that you are unwilling, faithless, or secretly vindictive. It may mean that a wound has left a deeper imprint than you knew how to carry. Bitterness can rise from hidden parts of mind, memories, emotions or even physical body. You can suffer from bitterness involuntarily. You can realize you don’t experience bitterness because something is wrong with you but because something was done to you and you are still carrying it. The wound may explain the bitterness. It does not have to own your future.
Hildegard of Bingen would have understood exactly why this is also the season for bitter herbs. She knew that bitterness of soul and bitterness of body are not separate conditions. The soul that has curdled around a wound, that has held grief until it became grievance, disappointment until it calcified into withholding, this soul shows in the body. Sluggish bile, congested liver, a gut that is stagnant, a body that has learned to hold rather than to grieve and release. She also knew the natural medicine. And the medicine is encoded in the name of the disease.
The bitters are botanicals that heal the organ the vice has congested. To receive the bitter willingly is to begin the passage from bitterness to generosity. The fast is the passage.
TASTE and SEE
The vice
amaritudo
bitterness
Grief that became grievance.
Disappointment that calcified into withholding.
The soul contracted around a wound and refusing to release it.
A body that reacts with sluggish bile, congested liver, a gut that is locked in.
the virtue
largitas
generosity
The soul made large.
Grace infused heart finally tasting freedom.
Abundant, soul giving freely from the overflow.
A body releasing what was holding tightly to. Bile flowing, clear liver, gut open.
Fourteen days with bitter herbs taken with intention. A body slowly releasing what it has been holding. A soul slowly learning that it can open its fist of fear, sense of injustice or moral injury without losing everything. This is not a detox from food only. It is a fast from unwelcome resentment that gradually settled and interferes with physiology, mentality and spirituality.
Every vice has a corresponding virtue. In the Liber Vitae Meritorum, the Book of the Merits of Life, Hildegard sets out thirty-five pairs: a vice and the virtue that heals it. The ninth pair is the one this fast is built on: BITTERNESS - GENEROSITY. What does it mean and look like to become generous toward your own heart in order to heal?
During TASTE AND SEE, you will learn how to work prudently with bitter foods and optional botanicals, without turning herbs into magic, exaggerating their effects, or forcing your body through an extreme protocol. We receive plants as creatures. We thank God for their properties. We use them with knowledge, moderation, and discretio - Hildegard’s principle of wise discernment.
BODY: Stop illness processes, detox and cleanse your body, and reset your metabolism. Heal your cells, tissues, and organs. Energize your body.
SOUL: Refocus your mind. Calm your emotions. Stimulate your desires for goodness, beauty, and truth
SPIRIT: Rest in the presence of the Holy Spirit. Receive power for virtuous life from Jesus. Receive love from the Father.
Who this is for?
This course is for you if you are tired of carrying the weight of hurt you were never supposed to hold alone. It is for you if any of this is true:
You have genuinely forgiven something and yet the bitterness keeps arising in the body, mind, emotions. You are not sure what to do with it.
You love the Church and you have been hurt by it. Both things are true at once.
You are in ministry or leadership and you have given more than you received for a very long time - your body, soul and spirit needs a break.
You are fascinated by Hildegard of Bingen but have not found a program that takes both her theology and her medicine seriously.
You want to learn about bitter herbs, the liver, digestive physiology, and bitter receptor science.
You need the Dormition Fast to be more than an another abstinance. You need it to be practical and personal formation.
You are a homeschooling mother, a parish leader, a missionary, a woman in Catholic healthcare or education - exhausted, and looking for something that addresses the whole person.
By the end you will have:
A clearer understanding of the difference between grief, anger, unforgiveness, resentment and bitterness
A practical introduction to Hildegard’s teaching on amaritudo and largitas
A safer, more informed understanding of bitter foods and botanicals
Daily practices for prayer, reflection, food, and embodied awareness
A deeper encounter with the Magnificat
Language for forgiveness that does not deny justice or erase boundaries
A plan for carrying the fruit of the fast into ordinary life
You may also begin noticing where you have been holding your breath, guarding against goodness, replaying an old trial, or giving a past injury more authority over your present than it deserves. Not everything will be resolved but something can begin to move.
Everything included:
✦ TASTE and SEE - 17 daily video teachings (7h), the daily guide and practice prompts:
science of the bitters
Hildegard's bitter herbs
the liver as seat of vitality and the gut-liver axis
the vagus nerve and mood
modern bitter herbs from various cultures
temperament and bitters tolerance
emotional bitterness resolutions leading to physical healing
roots of bitterness, healing of lingering unforgiveness
vice-virtue dynamic from amaritudo to largitas
worship, blessing and adoration as a weapon and a method for the heart desiring freedom from the consequences of abuse, neglect, betrayaL
TASTE AND SEE is an educational and spiritual-formation program. It does not provide medical diagnosis or treatment and does not create a practitioner–client relationship. Consult your healthcare practitioner before fasting or using herbs if you have a health condition, take medication, or are pregnant or nursing.
Instructor: Iwona Bednarz-Major
“Third Degree Specialist in the St. Hildegard’s Sciences” issued by the Papal Faculty of Theology in Wroclaw and St. Hildegard Center Dr. Alfreda Walkowska.
Guided by a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner and a certified Specialist in St. Hildegard’s Sciences, this journey integrates medieval wisdom, modern science, and Catholic spirituality without fear or superstition.
Not sure if this fast is for you? Contact Iwona
Want to dive deeper into personal healing? Try HARMONY in Sept-Dec’26
12-weeks+ transformation integrating functional lab testing, metabolic discernment, and Christian faith-rooted practices designed to bring the body, soul and spirit into ordered alignment.
13 Live Group Sessions & individual support for 4 + months