cleansing – VedaMinn

The Ayurvedic Kitchari Cleanse, active portion, is officially over and I’ve been in “rejuvenation” for over a week. This cleanse has had its challenges. I really felt my air and space energy go off the rails, which manifested as everything from an over engaged gut to a disengaged gut to fatigue to spacey-ness to insomnia to whatever else you can come up with.

During the active phase all went swimmingly well Sunday through Wednesday. Then I felt all my systems going from hyperactive to totally inactive within about a five-hour span. After that I had difficulty finding the Kitchari particularly palatable. I stuck with it with the exception of the last day, when I switched to just rice with ghee to get me through the day.

A little cleansing sabotage

I started the rejuvenation phase pretty valiantly and carefully but then Halloween arrived. You can guess how that went. Sigh.

Damn you Sugar!

https://youtu.be/CsbYx6hevoQ

Me in the days after Halloween

I’m finally feeling like myself

Today, Wednesday, a week and a half after I started the rejuvenation phase, is the first day I’ve felt myself since the Wednesday of the active phase. I feel like my body is finally waking up and letting go. Moving is easier, I’m able to make better food and activity choices and I’m starting to feel like myself again. And, most happily, my sleep completely went from total insomnia to absolutely “no problem” with the turnover away from daylight savings time.

I wish I could report on exactly what happened, but I can only guess. I am quite confident that my air and space energy were really out of whack before I started the cleanse. That tends to happen to me in fall and spring. This time around, the weather during the cleanse didn’t help things and really contributed to my energetic imbalance. I also am wondering if my more solid earth energies were more set in place and resistant to change (due to the damp weather), blocking the wind energy and filling the space energy.

Uh oh

Many of you are probably rolling your eyes and thinking “There she goes again. Woo Woo!”.

The girl on the left is reminiscent of (but way cuter than) me trying to get through Zumba classes the last few weeks!

That’s ok, I totally understand. This approach is based upon Ayurveda and sounded a little “out there” to me too until I began actually recognizing, feeling, and working with the energy. Now it’s just sort-of the way it is for me. I see no reason why the forces that have such an obvious impact on all other carbon based life forms would, for some strange reason, have absolutely no effect on human beings (of which I am one).

A few simple guidelines helped

Fortunately, I did my best to work with what was present and I followed a few simple rules to get me through the difficulties

I maintained my daily meditation practice even if I felt crummy. Sometimes I cut sessions short but I did my best to not skip them. This created a little space within with which I could function.
I avoided blame and shame around these difficulties. When I look at the echinacea trying to survive the crazy weather I see no indication that it is blaming itself for not looking so hot or for just taking it easy.
Within the space I created by maintaining a meditation practice I tried (and still do) to cultivate compassion for all sentient beings, including those with whom I very much disagree (like the current occupant of the white house). This compassion extends to myself. I am, after all, not chopped liver! I’m a carbon based sentient life form, not unlike all others.

I wouldn’t think of reprimanding my echinacea for being in such a gnarly state, so I won’t do it to myself.

The Chyavanprash

I introduced you to Chyavanprash jam in the last post and have been using it regularly through rejuvenation. I added a teaspoon to hot water for a tasty chai tea-like beverage. I added it to boiled milk (after the milk has cooled a bit—the jam has honey in it and you don’t want to cook honey) which was super yummy. It was a great pre-bedtime beverage. Ayurveda suggests we cook our fruit before eating it so I cooked up some sliced apples in unsweetened cherry juice and added Chyavanprash and cinnamon. This was also very tasty. I will be buying more of this concoction. I suspect it will help me manage sweet cravings.

Apples cooked in tart cherry juice with cinnamon and Chyavanprash is quite tasty. Cherry juice is a great anti-oxidant and is anti-inflamatory. I drank a lot of it when I was recovering from knee replacement surgery a few years ago. I think it really helped with inflammation and gut health.

Not the best of times but not the worst of times

As you can imagine, this has been a punch in the gut, what the hell is going on, few weeks for me. But, I’m back and, despite the difficulties, happy with the cleansing process. Based on past experience, I’ll begin to see the results of the process in the upcoming weeks as my body/mind is able to settle down and let go of the past, and stay anchored in the present. I am reminded again that, sometimes I need to walk though a lot of muck to arrive at the meadow. I think I’m on my way to the meadow now.

November community gathering

The November Kindred Spirits gathering will happen Thursday November 21 at St. Peder’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, 4600 E. 42nd St., Minneapolis, MN 55406, from 7 to 8:30 p.m.

In this session, we’ll explore how compassion for ourselves and others fills the spaces we’ve created and helps us thrive physically, emotionally, and spiritually, allowing us to contribute to the common good during times of intense upheaval.

I’m on day fourteen of a fourteen day heavy metals detoxification dietary cleanse. After this phase of my cleansing ritual I will shift into an Ayurvedic-style digestive cleanse—a Kitchari cleanse. More about that later.

I know many folks out in internet-land are curious about and/or interested in dietary cleanses. Many have, like me, experimented with different approaches to cleansing while others view cleansing as a crazy woo-woo ritual that they would never engage in but about which they have many opinions. Since there is interest in this subject, I thought I’d use my platform to describe and explore my approach to cleansing and to document my experience, with cleansing this time around. Please use the comment area (at the bottom of the page) to ask questions or comment.

The regimen

My cleanse regimen this fall consists of two weeks of heavy metal cleansing and one week of a “digestive” Ayurvedic cleanse. I’ve already written about why I detox in the fall and spring and I can’t stress enough the importance of this seasonal approach. My suggestion is that if you are tempted to start a cleanse in the middle of winter or summer, JUST SAY NO. Detoxing then is totally out of sync with the natural processes and has the potential of doing more harm than good. My first wayward experiment, explained in my last post, is a good example of problems with this approach.

The heavy metal cleanse I follow is a simple do-at-home detoxification routine. I learned about it in the book Radical Healing by Rudolph Ballentine. He is the guy (now a Swami, apparently) who wrote the seminal book on holistic nutrition, Diet and Nutrition back in the 80s. That book is still, in my humble opinion, one of the best nutrition books out there. Rudy was way ahead of his time with that book. Anyhow, this cleanse is for detoxing the day-to-day level of metals we are exposed to. It is not intended for more serious cases of heavy metal poisoning.

This is the book from which I got this cleanse. Despite it’s overwhelming size it is a very handy reference book for those interested in integrative health and healing.
This is a book by the same author. If you read one nutrition book in your life, I recommend you read this one. I inherited the original one on the left from my mother and I don’t really know why I bought a second copy. Maybe I figured it was so good I needed two. I refer to this book over and over.

The (relatively) easy part

This heavy metal detox involves maintaining a relatively clean diet and adding a quarter of a cup (packed) of cilantro to a meal each day for two weeks. The cilantro can be chopped or not (although you do need to chew it), mixed with a salad, or soup, or smoothie or, if you are into it, can be just eaten plain. I think the cilantro should be eaten all at once, not spread over the day to do its job properly but I’m not sure if that is necessary. That’s the easy part.

A quarter of a cup of cilantro once a day provides chelation.

The not-so-easy part

Now the less-easy part. Twice a day for the entire two weeks consume one tablespoon of bentonite clay suspended into a glass of water, followed by a glass of plain water. I buy my clay at the Seward Coop in Minneapolis and you can purchase it online or probably find it at any number of natural foods stores.

How its supposed to work

Here’s the logic behind this regimen. Cilantro is a chelator of heavy metals so when we eat the cilantro, heavy metals are drawn out of our cells, which is good. But if we don’t drink the clay solution, the metals hang around in our system and are not fully excreted. Drinking the solution manages the necessary excretion of these toxins. The clay does a good job of cleaning up the metal mess and is a good detoxifier in and of itself.

The additional glass of water is important. It helps to disperse the clay. Essentially, the cleanse combines several stages into one (often other more complex cleanses do the chelating and elimination processes in several stages). The benefit of this approach is that it is simple and easy.

What it feels like

When undergoing a cleanse, how I feel varies from day to day. Some days I feel very good and others I feel crummy. That’s pretty normal when detoxing metals. The process of removing toxins takes a toll on our bodies but I imagine the burden of living with heavy metals, clinking around in my cells, puts a much larger strain on our bodies, particularly on the nervous system.

Day one of my cleanse was Friday, October 4. On Monday October 7 I awoke feeling super great. My joints felt looser and my mood was high. By that early evening I felt horrible. I was head achy, joint achy, and totally fatigued—exhausted. I knew the detox was kicking in. By the next morning I felt fine. I guess the toxins were being extracted and flushed.

The following Wednesday afternoon I picked up a cold. Often experts suggest you stop a cleanse if you get sick. However, I don’t think that would have been a good idea for me at this point. Detoxing heavy metals is a process that I think needs to play itself out. Stopping early could leave me feeling crappy since my body has released toxins into my system but not yet had a chance to fully flush them out. Since the cleanse didn’t limit my diet I felt I was getting the proper nutrients to manage a cold. I decided to continue. And now, I’m glad I did. I am still dealing with the detritus of the cold but I’m none the worse for wear.

This past Monday I started the day feeling crummy with headaches and joint aches again but by the end of the day felt fine. This leads me to wonder if the detox and flushing might happen in cycles.

Wednesday I was pretty tired early in the day but felt better by mid-day. I can’t tell if the fatigue was a result of the cleanse or the cold.

Things I’ve noticed this time around

If I prepare my clay concoction well in advance of drinking it, it is much easier to get down. Preparing it several hours in advance using hot water and leaving it sit allows many of the creepy lumps to dissolve, or at least become slimy rather that powdery. Believe it or not, after a day or two the clay just becomes a habit
I’ve added cilantro to a variety of foods: homemade chili was a great option, roasted root vegetables tossed with the cilantro was very tasty, I added the cilantro to a burrito, prepared a baked sweet potato with olive oil and cilantro, and prepared a fried ginger, onions, hot peppers, sesame, cilantro, and millet bowl (super tasty). I don’t drink smoothies (I think eating real solid food is a better idea for me) so I can’t attest to how cilantro would taste in one but I imagine it would be fine. In the past I’ve added it to salads and liked it. Often the taste of cilantro can be enhanced if you add lime to it.
Earlier in the cleanse, in week one, I noticed my teeth subtly hurt a little. It was sort of a rhythmic pulling, achy feeling, especially in my front teeth. It was something I’d never felt before. It went away eventually but occasionally I feel it again.
My appetite has decreased significantly. I noticed this by day two. I don’t crave sugar (which is good) and my appetite seems pretty stable. I recall this happening in past cleanses.
My joints have gone from feeling super good to very achy at times and back to super good.
Doing this cleanse is much easier now that I’m not going to an outside workplace every day (I KNOW the digestive cleanse will be way easier now). It really helps to have the time to pay attention to how I’m feeling as I’m doing this.
My sleep quality and quantity has varied but I think that is partially due to the cold. At this point my sleep seems ok but erratic, despite paying attention to sleep hygiene.

I’m considering adding one new step to this cleanse. Today is the last day of this cleanse but I think I’ll continue the clay into tomorrow. Having an extra day of flushing out the toxins seems like a good idea to me.

Next up…

Next time I write, I’ll introduce you to the Ayurvedic Kitchari Digestive Cleanse. It’s more than just a dietary cleanse. It’s designed to cleanse your entire “self”—mind body and spirit. I need to do some preparation for the Kitchari cleanse and have been buoyed by the arrival of two packages of Ayurvedic supplies. I’ll fill you in more on that next time.