15 Feb How to Detox Your Body
Let’s make this simple. Detoxing is a natural process that is designed to occur on a daily and seasonal basis. Here is how the daily detox rhythm works:
If you eat an early dinner (before 6 pm) and water fast for 13 hours, and get a good night’s sleep your body will go through a natural detox cycle.
The most simple, gentle way to detox on a daily basis:
- Eat a light dinner of soup or salad by 6 pm.
- Water fast between 6 pm and 7 am.
- Go to bed by 10 pm.
- Wake up by 6 am.
- Drink water when you rise.
- Vigorously exercise before breakfast.
- Eat mostly fresh, local plant-based foods.
Now, for those who want to experience a giant leap forward in their health, a complete change of diet and lifestyle is calling. Doing a deeper detox entails changing what you eat and how you live. The simple and gentle guidelines above are the baseline.
How to detox with the seasons
For a deeper detox, three more components will enable you to take a giant leap forward in your health. Seasonal detox is another natural rhythm that occurred each spring before the abundance of cheap nutrients. Nutrients are becoming cheaper in terms of dollars and nutrient value… even as they are becoming more abundant year round. To make up for the lack of a natural seasonal-imposed famine, we create our own through a natural, seasonal detox.
Top 3 strategies for a Natural Detox
There are many strategies for a natural detox, and the ones I choose I’ve seen work for hundreds of clients participating in my Yogidetox. I offer many strategies, but these are the 3, when used in combination, that I see the greatest and easiest success.
- a living liquid diet
- colon cleansing
- detox yoga & meditation
(1) A living liquid diet – an introduction to detox drinks
Your whole body is in a liquid medium – simply squeeze your arm to check it out. When we simplify our digestion by ingesting nutrients in liquid form, we save buckets of energy that normally goes to digestion. Living liquids include:
- fresh vegetable and fruit juices
- fresh vegetable and fruit smoothies
- fresh vegetable (& sometimes fruit) living soups
(occasionally nut and seed milks are used for those needing more fat during detox) - Spicy lemonade (or the master cleanse lemonade drink)
- Watery Kitchari (traditional Ayurvedic detox meal of cooked rice, mung beans and spices)
Once you realize your body is flexible and strong when you feel great, you want to enhance that flexibility and strength. Getting your nutrients (a.k.a. food) through a liquid medium starts to become a higher priority. You can have a liquid diet for a week or a lifetime.
(2) Colon Cleansing – get the waste out
Simple enough, the second strategy is to get the waste moving out. In Ayurveda, we have 5 main techniques (pancha karma means 5 cleansing actions). 2 of the five include moving waste out of the intestines. They include taking purgative herbs, such as Triphala or castor oil, and doing enemas (called bastis).
The philosophy goes like this: as you take pressure off digestion through eating a simple liquid diet, your body releases waste & toxins (ama). Where does this ama go? From your bodily cells, the ama is releases back into the blood stream, and from there, back into the digestive tract. Once in the digestive tract, we need to move it out. Your anus is the easiest and most natural gateway for release.
Colon cleansing through enemas, salt water flushing, or taking herbs such as triphala, greatly enhances your bodies ability to keep up with the waste that needs to move out. Because you’re eating mostly liquids, your peristalsis might be less active than normal.
(3) Detox Yoga and meditation
The third strategy in how to detox is to move and to sit still. Most vigorous short term exercise is beneficial for cleansing simply due to the increase in circulation. Detox yoga, however is much more effective than regular gym or outdoor exercise.
The reason detox yoga is a top detox strategy is that you are accessing every gland, muscle, and organ in your body. You are collaborating with your body to remove unwanted waste and unwanted toxins in a methodical, strategic and highly conscious way. Due to the conscious component of detox yoga, you literally feel what is happening during your detox. You’ll leave your practice craving that which will bring your detox through it’s full and natural cycle.
Meditation is also a top strategy because it’s the most effective way we have to detox the mind and emotions during a cleanse. Meditation gives the time and space for your awareness to completely focus on awareness itself. As this happens, the mental and emotional patterns begin to unwind. Your old habits and old thinking habits their grip on your awareness and you step deeper into your vibrant health and inner freedom.
Let me know your top 3 strategies for detoxing below!
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