What Is A Breatharian Diet? Couple Goes Without Eating Food, Drinking Water

Food is no longer an option for married "breatharian" couple Akahi Ricardo and Camila Castillo. The duo said they practice a diet of consuming only the "universe's energy."

The couple, who have a 5-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son, haven't eaten more than their thrice weekly piece of fruit or vegetable broth for nine years straight.

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"Humans can easily be without food — as long as they are connected to the energy that exists in all things and through breathing," Castillo told The Sun Friday.

Breatharianism is a practice where an individual frees themselves from food. Instead, breatharian's will utilize aspects within the universe — including light, energy, and air — to survive.

The couple said they've discovered the benefits to dismissing food from their lives, including the money they've saved over time from not eating. While Castillo was pregnant with her son, she survived off "light" only. Likewise, she claims to feel it "healthier" because of it.

"Since breatharianism, I feel healthier and happier that I’ve ever done before," Castillo said. "When I was younger, my weight fluctuated but now after having two children, my body bounced back to its natural shape immediately. I never suffer from PMS symptoms anymore and I feel more emotionally stable."

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Castillo has launched a program to help women, in particular, live a healthy breatharian lifestyle called Pranic Women Program (PWP). PWP is a four week online video course that will provide women with useful information on how to live off of light, ultimately creating the "best version" of themselves.

"It's time to take back our own power to bring our focus back to our center and reactivate our naturally vibrant state of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health to align ourselves with a new and refreshed source of energy," she said in a January promotional video for the program. "The energy of the universe, that is limitless, infinite and exists in abundance within each one of us."

Castillo and Ricardo travel worldwide as pranic breatharian teachers to educate people on the importance of utilizing the universe's resources to sustain themselves through the Breatharian School, a program they had created.

Although studies have shown that brief periods of fasting can be beneficial to one's health, ignoring food altogether still sounds unusual. Therefore, this begs the question: how is this possible?

In 1901, inventor Nikola Tesla made an argument in favor of a breatharian lifestyle within his book, "Talking with Planets."

"My idea is that the development of life must lead to forms of existence that will be possible without nourishment and which will not be shackled by consequent limitations," Tesla wrote. "Why should a living being not be able to obtain all the energy it needs for the performance of its life functions from the environment, instead of through consumption of food, and transforming, by a complicated process, the energy of chemical combinations into life-sustaining energy?"

While arguments as Tesla's can be made for breatharianism, at some point, it's natural to crave food as Castillo and Ricardo do three times a week.

In previous years, famous breatharians have been caught sneaking food. Most recently, Hira Ratan Manek — a well-known breatharian — was caught eating in a restaurant during the filming of the documentary "Eat the Sun," a movie that looks into the spiritual and physical benefits of sungazing.

Surprisingly, actress Michelle Pfeiffer claimed to have practiced Breatharianism, according to USA Today. She fell into the "cult" when she first moved to Hollywood at 20 years old.

"They were very controlling. I wasn't living with them, but I was there a lot and they were always telling me I needed to come more," Pfeiffer said. "I had to pay for all the time I was there, so it was financially very draining."

Peter Horton, the actresses first husband, helped to reel her out of her breatharian practices.

"We were talking with an ex-Moonie and he was describing the psychological manipulation, and I just clicked," she added. "I was in one — a "cult.'"

One of the biggest advocates for a breatharianism is Australian breatharian Jasmuheen, who was originally born as Ellen Greve. Jasmuheen has written a number of bestsellers on breatharianism, including "Pranic Nourishment: Living on Light." She is also considered to be the leader of the dietary practice.

"Are we being nourished? We sure are," Jasmuheen said on her YouTube channel. "Everybody needs some sort of physical system nourishment...there are different sources — so much choice in the world now, especially as consciousness continues to change."

At this time, there have been a small number of deaths that are directly associated with Jasmuheen's leadership and written publications, according to BBC. The publication also notes that while breatharianism has cult-like tendencies, it doesn't cleanly categorize as a cult.

Michelle Shirley, who represented the Cult Information Centre at the time of BBC's article, distinguished the difference between cults and Jasmuheen's teachings.

"A cult uses coercive teaching. We don't have any evidence that that is being used here, or that it isn't being used," Shirley told BBC in 1999. "Jasmuheen is a spiritual teacher who spreads her words through the Internet and her books. So it is not an organization that you join, it is more fluid than that."