by Connie Hernandez, ND
TIME TO DETOX, shed those extra COVID pounds, and re-energize!
After a veeeery long year-and-a-half of COVID comfort foods and couch-potato screen time, perhaps it would finally be okay to start emerging from our burrows and greet a new dawn.
Spring is nature’s perfect time for removing the debris of winter. Outwardly we’re seized by an instinctive desire to clean house, reorganize, and maybe even do a little yard work.
That’s thoroughly understandable, very doable – and deeply satisfying!
But inner changes tend to raise a steeper barrier in our minds.
Diet change? Ugh. Exercise? Well – maybe. Meditation? Unh-huh.
Add all the usual social commitments and work deadlines, and there we go – a Perfect Storm of excuses for sticking with the status quo.
The secret of realizing our best intentions is to realize how very much better they’ll make us feel, and how much more manageable they are than we might be imagining.
The first rule is to decide how much of your life you want to commit to making changes, and how much time you can afford to spare. A day? A week? A month? One, two, or three days a week? A few hours?
Here’s a well-proven tip. When we can understand very clearly with our mind what’s needed, how to go about it, and what the positive results will be, we find it much easier to start making changes.
So a good first step is to load your brain with positive information – by reading and absorbing helpful info from a variety of sources, including books and videos.
Then ask yourself a few preliminary questions:
- What type of cleanse do you envision? Are you looking to detox your environment, your body, and/or your mind?
- What social and media connections are working for you? And what connections would better be severed?
- What mental habits do you wish to change?
- What habits are you wanting to develop, or be rid of?
When it comes to planning for change, journaling is your best friend. Try it – it doesn’t have to be fancy. No need to buy a fresh Moleskin journal. Just grab any old sheet of paper that’s handy and start scribbling about what you’d like to accomplish, and how and when you wish to go about it.
On mental and emotional levels, ceremonies can be a powerful aid.
The simplest kind of fire ceremony will do. Just write out what isn’t serving you, and ceremoniously offer it into the fire.
Looking to cut some deeper ties? Try connecting a picture of yourself to strong mental and emotional images of whatever has been holding you back. It’ll help you cut the strings.
There are, of course, numerous approaches to clearing the physical body.
- Dry skin brushing before showering.
- Alternate hot and cold showers (always ending with cold).
- (Both of these promote circulation and lymphatic flow.)
- Gentle rebounding on a mini-trampoline will get lymph moving and loosen your joints, muscles, and outlook.
- Infrared sauna activates the skin, our largest organ of detoxification, and helps us eliminate the environmental toxins stored in fat cells.
- Castor oil packs placed over the liver enhance it’s efficiency in clearing debris.
- As long as we’re talking detox, how about the most obvious organs of elimination: colon, kidneys and lungs?
- Constipation is incompatible with health, as is dehydration.
- And without proper breathing (nose breathing versus mouth breathing), the body can’t protect itself from airborne irritants and microbes.
The choices for dietary detox are many. They range from supervised water fasting to eliminating non-optimal foods, alcohol, and caffeine.
Fasting can take many forms, from intermittent daily fasting (skipping a meal, substituting cleansing foods, eating lightly), to gradually ramping down our food intake over a longer period, to a few days of intense juice fasting before returning to a healthy normal diet.
Nowadays we’re fortunate to have lots of natural resources close at hand for spring cleaning.
- Energy medicines, plant medicines, and detoxifying nutrients can be very helpful.
- Flower essences can address mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual issues.
- Homeopathic drainage protocols are oriented toward cleansing the body via the kidney, liver, and lymphatic systems.
- Colon cleanses include fibers, probiotics, antimicrobials, and gut wall stabilizers.
- Botanical and nutrient formulas support kidney, lung, and liver function, and aid lymphatic cleansing.
A detox approach can be as simple as a 10-day “Detox in a Box” that you’ll find at your health food store, or as complex as an individualized protocol for detoxing, recharging, and recreating a healthy lifestyle.
If you’d like to talk about a personalized cleansing program, just make an appointment to chat, and we’ll explore what might be best for you. Give us a call at 650-961-1660, use the convenient Contact Form to get in touch, or follow the link to: Consultations – Pacific Naturopathic. Thank you!