Do you realize that inner congestion may be limiting your life and slowly destroying your potential? Supporting deep cleansing of your body/mind is one of the most important health practices and yet is one that is least practiced and most frequently misunderstood. Here are six easy steps to reverse this trend and empower positive possibilities.
Why is cleansing important?
Cleansing enables us to:
- Enhance the flow of nutrients, air, water, electric and chemical messages
- Support healthy digestion and assimilation
- Optimize organ function
- Digest what is already within us before we add more
- Help support a healthy response to occasional inflammation
- Create high quality tissue instead of heavy congestive flesh
Prashanti's Satkona Cleanse
As so many people traipse confusingly and oft unrewardingly over the precarious terrains of endless forms of complicated cleanses, I offer here 6 basic core facets or angles of a safe, easy, restorative cleanse that will support your wellness. This can be used as a basis for practically any other cleanse.
- Consume half the calories
- Consume double the nutrition
- Minimize solid food after dark
- Be asleep by 9 pm
- Consume liver trophorestoratives and cleansing herbs (turmeric, liver-kidney formula, triphala and psyllium)
- Consciously breath/move every 4 hours
It may not be for everyone, but it is close to it. And as always, if you are not sure about something, it is good to get advice from a knowledgeable and skillful wellness guide.
Like what you're reading? For more information on cleansing and Ayurvedic healing, visit the Organic India website.
How to get started
In Sanskrit, satkona means six-angled or six-faceted, it is a name for a diamond, and it also refers to that facet of life which is the dance between wellness and disease. You need not necessarily do more than these six actions, and know that you can do this safely for a day, a week, and for some people, even for months in many situations. It is not a fierce cleanse though it is cleansing, and it is much more restorative than most other cleanses, especially for core organs including the liver, pancreas, spleen and kidneys.
Consuming half the calories mainly is about minimizing hard to digest, inflammatory, empty starchy calories from non-organic processed foods, especially genetically-new grains and toxin-laden meat from grain-fed animals in factory-farm scenarios. One can move toward consuming double the nutrition by adding copious deep greens, like collards, kale and blue-green algae smoothies, and colorful foods, like berries, to their diet. Superfoods like Chyawanaprash and Moringa can radically boost nutrition.
Minimizing solid food after dark, and being asleep by 9 pm, drastically supports optimal function in our liver, which is absolutely key to cleansing. These facets ensure that the liver can focus on detoxifying during the night.
Also essential to a cleanse is consuming liver trophorestoratives like Turmeric and those found in our Liver-Kidney Formula. A trophorestorative is an herb that has a special affinity and ability to not just cleanse and support, but to deeply feed and nourish a specific organ or type of tissue.
A simple way to cleanse the colon is to drink more fluids such as cleansing tea, eat less food, increase physical activity, breathe deeper, and use more Triphala and Psyllium. Notice that taking responsibility for your wellness in the form of using changes in lifestyle to galvanize a cleanse is often more effective than giving that responsibility to an herb or clinician.
Though Triphala can be used every day of our lives because it is such a balanced, empowering and non-habit forming formula, during a cleanse we can consume all the more, several times a day, for instance 2-3 caps or more 2 to 3 times per day. In the overall scheme of things Triphala is by far the numero uno cleansing ally as it can be used so safely and effectively and it has dozens of fantastically salubrious side-effects, like the promotion of healthy levels of blood sugars and lipids, increased levels of endogenous antioxidants and the systemic support of healthy response to occasional inflammation, to name a few.
Organic Psyllium is an effective colon cleanser when used correctly: add a tablespoon to a 16 ounce glass of warm water, stir well, drink immediately, and then chase it with another 16 ounce glass of warm water. Please do not use non-organic Psyllium, which, ironically, is one of the most toxic items you can place in your body, and also do not use cold water as this destroys digestive capacity, something you never want to do to yourself. During a colon cleanse you can take organic Psyllium two or three times a day. Depending on how much you are fasting during the cleanse, Psyllium also has the added benefit of making you feel more full and less hungry.
And finally, when our daily routine includes consciously breathing and moving every 4 hours this helps us to activate, empower and vivify ourselves and the fullness of our physiological functions, also optimizing the release of systemic congestion and the accumulation of deeply rewarding and fulfilling Life Force!
