Get happy in Paris! All you need is London! This is how airlines advertise their destinations. Looking at the appetizing advertisement, it is easy to want to escape from the daily routine, although we have no business in Paris and London at all. Often we don’t notice how advertising has shaped the need and our real needs are overlooked in the media noise. Real needs support natural body processes and create daily routines from which there is no need to escape.
The article was originally published on the portal alkeemia.ee on 04.03.2017 under the title “Spring body cleansing according to Ayurvedic principles”
How do we distinguish the needs that come from within us from the needs that are put into us from the outside? The answer is simple – to live slowly, caringly and lovingly, so that this is also expressed in the attitude towards your body. Hurrying leads faster, unfortunately, only in one direction – to the grave.
The human being is a homeostatic organism, and this means that our body processes work naturally and naturally, if we are not confused by what is going on in our heads.
Vacation
Sleep and rest are necessary for the body’s natural cleansing process. While we sleep, the wise forces of nature work in our body and collect the waste products of metabolism to be expelled in the morning. When we are up at night, we disrupt this process and cause waste products, undigested food residues – toxins to be deposited in the body. If this happens over a long period of time, health problems can result.
After sleep, the best rest for the body and mind is meditation. The easiest way to meditate is to sit for a few minutes with your eyes closed in silence in a comfortable resting position without a goal. Allow yourself to just be without doing anything. Sitting quietly and focusing on ourselves in this way reveals our true needs. Nature is a great body-mind balancer. Being in nature calms the mind and helps us distinguish real needs from information noise.
The human body, including the metabolism, automatically works like clockwork when the human lifestyle is habitual and in harmony with nature. This way of life means a daily routine: eating and sleeping at specific times of the day, cleaning in the morning and moderate exercise. Any deviation from the routine causes stress on the body. Metabolism is sensitive to stress and therefore it is important to reduce stress. Stress can be reduced by introducing more regularity into life, reducing stimuli and intensity of living. Stimuli are both physical and mental activities, including using a computer and watching television, and any information that comes from outside our body. To calm the nervous system, it is very good to do a simple breathing technique – alternating breathing, or Nadi Shodana pranayama, where you breathe with one side of the nose at a time and change the side of the nose after inhaling and before exhaling, when the lungs are full of air. Breathing takes place in rhythm out-in with the left side of the nose and then out-in with the right side of the nose, etc. The background of stress and anxiety in life is significantly reduced if you do this kind of breathing every day for 5 minutes or even better 2 x 5 minutes. Nadi Shodana pranayama can also be done as an introduction to meditation, because it is easier to sit quietly after such breathing.
Look at the pot
Normal metabolism means regular and trouble-free digestion. This is indicated by DAILY and effortless discharge before breakfast. The excretory product of normal digestive activity is a mass with the shape and consistency of a ripe banana in one piece and without an unpleasant smell. Normal stool smells neutral like soil.
Indigestion can be caused by an irregular lifestyle, stress, poor diet, or a side effect of medication, and should be addressed as soon as possible.
Looking at the toilet bowl after using it is a very good habit to prevent more serious health problems. Chronically out of order digestion causes various ailments: food intolerance, allergies, indigestion, lack of nutrients, vitamins or minerals, excess weight, etc. and indicates that undigested food residues – poisons – have been deposited in the digestive tract.
When ailments arise or as soon as you look at the toilet bowl at the usual time in the morning and do not see a “ripe banana”, you MUST change your lifestyle to a more regular one, relieve stress by reducing stimuli and review your diet and exercise habits. Nutrition is a very broad topic, and let it be said here that you definitely can’t go wrong if you eat clean, additive-free, industrially unprocessed, locally grown, freshly prepared simple food. Each person can make their own choices.
Cleansing the body
Always ask yourself why you want to cleanse your body? Where does this idea come from? Why has the body become “black”? Is it the body’s need or the mind’s need for change? There is no need to do separate body cleansing if you live a calm, natural life. If, however, it seems that the digestion is out of order and the digestive system has accumulated toxins from an irregular life and unhealthy diet for a long time, then you can undergo a body-friendly cleansing course. A simple, effective and body-friendly way for adults to cleanse their digestive system is to regularly consume small amounts of turmeric powder over a long period of time. To do this, take 1/5 teaspoon (do not exceed the amount) of turmeric powder twice a day before breakfast and dinner with the same amount of honey and a little warm water. Do this for at least 3-4 months. Turmeric acts on the digestive system like a cleaning brush on a toilet bowl.
Drinking ginger tea daily also gently cleanses the body and at the same time slightly increases the appetite. A good appetite is a sign of a strong digestive fire and it means that the digestion copes with the food eaten (of course in moderate amounts) and no or little waste-poisons are produced.
Since each organism is unique and the causes of health problems are different, it is not plausible that one “miracle drug” will help everyone in the same way. Unnatural, fast, intensive and exaggerated ways of cleansing the body must be treated with common sense. Cleansing the body is a very individual procedure, which is recommended to be done under supervision. What suits one person may worsen the health condition of another and cause complications.
People who live their daily lives full of obligations and have families, children, jobs, etc., should avoid any kind of intensive cleansing of the body, including complete fasting from food, especially during the cold season. Fasting according to Christian traditions before Easter, giving up meat and dairy products is a great rest for the body. Various bowel cleansings, short-term diets to reduce weight or for some other purpose, and full fasting have a reducing and cooling effect on the body structure. Therefore, they are not suitable for people who are thin or who already have stress or instability in their lives. All kinds of intensive body procedures have a stressful effect on the body, weaken immunity and are simply the next stimulus for the mind in an already stimulating life. After a quick cleanse, one experiences lightness and accompanying emotional instability, where a temporary intense feeling of well-being alternates with negative emotions. The stability of body processes is disturbed, and therefore body ailments may be activated instead. Therefore, it is important to perform such procedures under professional supervision. After the “quick cleanse”, the digestive fire must be lit again, and then it is a favorable time to renew, rejuvenate the organism and change behavior, because if you go back to your usual environment, way of life and diet, which in its inappropriateness has been the cause of health problems, you will soon be faced with the same problem again and the body is needlessly exhausted.
The most effective and surest way to overcome chronic health problems is to slowly and lovingly change your behavior and thinking habits over a long period of time and gently support the cleansing and renewal of the body with, for example, herbal therapy and mono-diet. A mono-diet means eating one food or similar foods at one meal or day, such as only vegetables or only grains. However, the most important thing is to create a calm and balanced environment for the natural cleansing and healing of the body.
Harmful habits should also be given up slowly and with self-forgiveness, because quick giving up causes stress and in turn puts the body and mind out of balance.
Body and mind
It is worth remembering that the body and the mind form one whole, but unfortunately they have different “interests”. The body wants a habitual, safe and stable rhythm of life – a routine. But the mind constantly wants new things, more stimuli and quickly gets tired of what it has. The entire advertising industry is built on this phenomenon. The mind turns to where the louder voice is coming from or where there are more colorful flashes. Unfortunately, this means that the mind is not always at the service of the body. One must be aware of the special nature of the mind and direct one’s attention gently and consistently to the needs of the body.
It is often said that all troubles come from wrong or negative thinking. But how to change thinking? It is difficult to do this with the same tools with which thinking itself operates. A sure and pleasant way is to change your thinking through pleasant body practices. By making small, gentle positive changes in the way you treat your body, you can make your thinking more positive and your outlook on life more loving, because body and mind are one whole.
Love as a healer
At this point it is good to remember that the feeling of love is the greatest healer. A person is a social being and receives both his positive feelings and negative impulses by interacting with other people. By being gentle and loving with oneself and avoiding sudden or extreme body procedures, a person is also gentle and loving with those around them. By being slow, gentle and loving with our bodies, we create more slowness, tenderness and love around us. It’s nice to create a feeling of slowness, care and love with your loved ones in a simple time together.
It’s nice to create silence – be it media silence, silence from emotions or city noise, pleasant calm music, massage, etc. With a loving attitude towards ourselves and by forming and following natural habits, each of us can also contribute to the purification and healthy metabolism of our home planet. Through greater personal peace and balance, we create greater peace and balance in our family, community, humanity, and Mother Earth as a whole, because all human-caused damage to our planet can be treated as the result of habits and sudden flashes of the human body that are not inherent in the human body. May there be more peace, love and sanity!
