Sep 9

Sep 9 adventures with salty water

I spent today detoxing - the yoga way and now I feel pretty exhausted.

I'm sure you've heard of detoxes and maybe done a few yourself? But perhaps you haven't heard of Hatha Yoga Kriyas - it's er, pretty thorough.

It starts with drinking a lot of cups of warm salty water and doing exercises designed to move the water through your digestive tract.

And then eventually it starts to come out the other end - clearing the intestines as it goes.

Today it took me 2.5 litres before it started to pass through. That is a lot of salty water, and it made me feel pretty gross when it was filling me up like a human-size water balloon.

And well, I know this is a bit of a gross subject all round, but cleaning our insides is just as, if not more important than keeping our outsides clean.

I have to admit, it's pretty fascinating seeing what's been stored inside, and satisfying to get it out.

After another litre or so, and about 20 trips to the loo it's time to purge the stomach of any residual salt. This can be done by swallowing a piece of cotton and then regurgitating it.

But I opted for good old vomiting. Never pleasant. This involved drinking 1.5 litres of warm unsalted water. And then bringing it all up again.

There's no surrender like the surrender of vomiting!

Next step is nostril cleaning - pouring more warm salty water through my nostrils with a neti pot. Since I already do this at home a few times a week, that one was no big deal.

But today I agreed to take it one step further - another practice by passing a small piece of rubber through my nostril into my throat.

For some reason I thought this would be easy. But it was very uncomfortable. It was a first for me, so feeling that cord snaking its way through the nether regions of my nostrils was concerning.

But that wasn't the half of it. It eventually reappeared right at the back of my throat, and to grab it I had to stick two fingers down my throat in exactly the same way as if I wanted to induce vomiting.

Eventually I did manage to get a hold of it and pass it back and forth between my nostril and my mouth, and then all the way through my nostril and out my mouth.

Ergh, a bit gross, but once again pretty satisfying. My nostrils felt VERY clean, and I felt proud to have accomplished a new feat.

And then yoga nidra - or yogic sleep, in which you're not supposed to actually sleep, it's meant to be more like a deep, restorative meditation. But I was exhausted and apparently snored. Even with squeaky clean nostrils!

So that's that. And now I'm on baby food for the next few days while my system recovers.

It's not the first time I've done this cleanse, but every time I've really got to psyche myself into it. it's an ordeal.

Even just skipping dinner last night was a bit challenging. And it made me think about how cozy and comfortable we're always looking to remain in life, even when it isn't that good for us.

If I skipped dinner every night it would probably do me the world of good, but of course I won't, and whilst this would be a perfect opportunity to give up coffee I have zero motivation to do that either.

It's another one of my beloved daily rituals, and feel the happiness it brings me on a daily basis, outweighs the small downside to health a couple of cups is having. But then, there is the question of addiction. I do drink it every day with never a day's break... But that's what denial is for!

But, I guess that's life isn't it. The constant quest for balance between happiness and enjoyment, and health and improvement.

And the P.S. for today is that those little chicks are on my mind. I thought maybe I was being overly sentimental when I wrote that I felt an overwhelming sense of responsibility for them. I certainly didn't imagine they only had two days of life before it would end. And that's on me.

Life can be really wonderful one minute and really terrible the next.