Tips for Detox: Detox Your Body With Yoga

'Yoga to Detox Your Body: Deep Body Cleansing Yoga Exercise'

Extract from Kundalini Yoga

Kundalini Yoga is a powerful tool for cleansing both body and mind. The Kundalini Yoga exercise described below is excellent for cleansing your body of toxins and helps you to detoxify your entire system.  It can be added at the end of any Kriya - a cleansing technique - and should be done prior to the final relaxation period. This pose is officially a part of Kundalini Yoga Warrior Kriya, which is an advanced kriya that I will publish in the future, and it uses a powerful breathing technique to help purge and cleanse the system.  As with all yoga techniques, don’t overdo this exercise and build up your capacity slowly. This particular exercise will be part of the following 3 free e-books here on Mastery of Meditation, as it is a Hatha Yoga pose, a Kundalini Yoga exercise as well as a yoga breathing technique: Free Hatha Yoga Poses, Online Kundalini Yoga Exercises & Free Yoga Breathing Exercises E-book. One last thought before I jump into the details of this terrific pose.  I was once attending a yoga camp in upstate NY, where a Hatha Yoga teacher was teaching the class.  She asked us to do this pose and afterwards commented that she could immediately tell the Kundalini Yoga students apart from the rest, because they are absolutely not shy and seem to have no social inhibitions when asked to do yoga exercises that are a odd, weird, crazy or even downright embarrassing. I tell my students exactly that when I ask them to do any technique which is strange or embarrassing.  I remind them they are Kundalini Yoga students and Kundalini Yogis are fearless and have no inhibitions.  We do whatever is necessary to make spiritual progress.  So remember this if you feel uncomfortable doing the exercise below.  It is cleansing your system of garbage and toxins, don’t worry about how it looks, don’t hold back, just go for it! If you are not a Kundalini Yogi, feel free to add this exercise at the end of your yoga session or exercise routine to help cleanse your body of released toxins.

Yoga Exercise to Cleanse & Detox Your Body

Illustration #1 Detox Yoga Dog BOF

Illustration #2 Detox Yoga Dog BOF

Yoga Exercise to Cleanse & Detox the Body:

a. Instructions for practicing Detoxifying 'Panting Dog Breath of Fire':

• Yes the pose is called 'Panting Dog Breath of Fire'! 
• As illustrated above, sit up on your heels in Rock pose (also called Hero Pose), except lean forward slightly.  Rest your hands on your knees as shown. 
• Open your mouth wide and stick your tongue out as far as it will go.  Now begin to pant like a dog.  Remember what I said above and don’t hold back.  You are a Kundalini Yogi, just stick your tongue out and pant like a dog.  All the breathing should be taking place through the mouth. 
• Emphasize the exhalation, and with every exhalation your stomach should be contracting in towards your spine sharply (similar to Kapalbhati Yoga Pranayama in this way).  The pace should be fast, just like a tired dog panting. 
• If you feel a metallic taste emerging on the back of your tongue, this is toxic heavy metals being release and cleansed from deep within your tissue, keep going!

b. Duration for Detoxifying 'Panting Dog Breath of Fire':

• 1 - 5 minutes.  If 1 minute is too much you can start with 15 seconds and build up from there as well.

c. Benefits of Detoxifying 'Panting Dog Breath of Fire':

• Detoxifies and cleanses your system of garbage, toxins and heavy metals.
• Strengthens and tones your abdominal muscles.
• Builds your respiratory capacity.
• Promotes good health and longevity.

d. Practice Tips for Detoxifying 'Panting Dog Breath of Fire':

• Like I mentioned above, you can add this exercise at the end of any Kundalini Yoga Kriya.  It helps your system purge itself of any toxins that have been released into the blood stream as a result of the Kriya.
• After doing this cleansing exercise, I also recommend drinking plenty of water once your yoga session is completed, to further help wash out any released toxins.
• Given the amount of pollution in our air and water, we can’t afford not to incorporate 'Panting Dog Breath of Fire' into our routine from time to time.  It really will help cleanse and detoxify your entire system.

Tips for Detox: Detox Your Mind, Detox Your Body

Detox Your Mind, Detox Your Body

When it comes to learning how to detox your body, one of the most common mistakes it seems people make is forgetting to take their whole body into account.  We are all integrated and holistic beings with a physical body, emotional body, mental body and spiritual energy.  If any one or a combination of these aspects of “us” is out of balance or storing ‘toxins’ in various forms, then it affects the rest of the aspects of us.

So, for the sake of this article, let’s assume that you are wanting to do a body detox and lose some weight or cleanse your colon or what ever you have in mind for your physical cleansing aspect.  If you only focused on that one aspect of your detox, you would not get nearly the results you had hoped for.  For example, what people find is that when they are trying to lose weight with a detox diet, if there are other factors that are inhibiting their cleanse, the weight will not come off.  Then, what happens is you will end up blaming the supplements or the diet itself, when the real problem might be that you are not addressing other core toxic issues in one of these other aspects mentioned.

Addressing Your Mental Detox

Toxic emotional and mental thoughts are also a problem.

A big part of what keeps our bodies holding onto all sorts of toxins is that energetically we don’t know how to release them.  Your body is only the physical structure that is a manifestation or symbol of your emotional, mental and spiritual self.  What you are holding in those other areas will show up in your physical body.  So, in order to really do a thorough body cleanse, you will need to address these issues at some point.  It doesn’t have to mean a bunch of sessions with a therapist or counselor to address your past.  It may involve this if you think that this is an area you could use help with, but it need not.

The whole point is that you are one symbiotic and holistic body.  There are other factors at work than just your diet as a reason why you are accumulating toxins in your cells and tissues.  If your body is functioning at its optimum level, then much of this toxic debris and waste will be naturally flushed through your body’s natural elimination means.  This happens through your breathing (your lungs are a big source of toxic elimination), your sweat by way of exercise and through body elimination processes (urine and stools).  The only reason that your body may be more sluggish in eliminating a build-up of toxins in your colon is because one or all of these aspects of the body detox are not being fully addressed.

PRESERVING MENTAL HEALTH FOR A LONG AND HEALTHY LIFE

PRESERVING MENTAL HEALTH FOR A LONG AND HEALTHY LIFE 

'Avoid Nightmares with Conscious Work'

New York Times, July 27, 2010 

Western Medicine and Therapists are beginning to realize the immense benefits of ancient yogic techniques and to integrate them in their own practice. Emerging techniques such as "Mastery Dreams" are directly derived from yoga practices such as 'Psychic Sleep' (Yoga Nidra) or "Detached Awareness of the Inner Space of Consciousness" (Chidakasha Dharana) and are used to resolve past trauma and unresolved subconscious material which continuously affect us on the conscious level through our fears, preventing us from enjoying a carefree life.  Unlike the dream state where awareness is lost, during these techniques the practitioner is able to directly access the level of the unconscious mind and through the practice of detachment and desensitization he/ she is able to neutralize all the mental impressions stored there.  Once the emotional content of memories, suppressed fears and desires is removed it stops the resulting ingrained negative behaviors and patterns from affecting the sufferer in his daily life.  For more, read below.

Nightmares resulting from traumatic events usually fade over time, as the haunting images and terrifying plots become less intense. The dreams may also naturally evolve into what some specialists call “mastery dreams,” in which the dreamer has found a way to ease the pain or horror — say, confronting a rapist or saving someone from a fire. But when that does not happen of its own accord, many therapists use behavioral interventions to reduce nightmares or guide the waking patient toward having a mastery dream — using the conscious mind to control the wild ways of the unconscious. Some of these techniques have been in use for years. In one treatment, known as lucid dreaming, patients are taught to become aware that they are dreaming while the dream is in progress. In another, called in vivo desensitization, they are exposed while awake to what may be haunting them in their sleep — for example, a live snake, caged and harmless — until the fear subsides. Both techniques have been researched extensively. More recently, therapists and other experts have been using a technique called dream incubation, first researched in the early 1990s by Deirdre Barrett, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School. And Hollywood has just produced its own spin on lucid dreaming and the idea of controlling dreams, with the release earlier this month of “Inception,” a thriller whose plot swirls through the darkest layers of the dream world. As Dr. Barrett wrote in an online review of “Inception,” for the International Association for the Study of Dreams, “I love the idea of millions of action film fans the world over leaving theaters asking each other if they’re ever had a dream in which they knew they were dreaming — or whipping out their smartphones and Googling to find out if you really can learn to influence dream content.” Using dream incubation for problem solving, Dr. Barrett, the author of “The Committee of Sleep,” which expanded on her initial research, asks patients to write down a problem as a brief phrase or sentence and place the note next to the bed. Then she tells them to review the problem for a few minutes before going to bed, and once in bed, visualize the problem as a concrete image, if possible.