Use these 10 detox practices to increase energy and give your excretory organs a holiday.
Years of exposure to pollution and chemicals, bad eating habits and a sedentary lifestyle can eventually overload the body and impair its natural healing ability. Many different channels of elimination including the skin, liver, gallbladder, lymphatic system, lungs, kidney, bladder and the gastrointestinal tract, all play an important part in keeping the body clean. Try any one of the following practices to help clear the mind, boost the immune system and improve skin tone and energy. 10 DETOX PRACTICES TO INCREASE ENERGY
- 1-day fruit and veggie cleanse – On waking, drink the juice of half a lemon in a glass of warm water. Breakfast should include any fruit except bananas and citrus. Mid-morning, take a cup of herb tea or freshly squeezed fruit juice diluted with water. Lunch, a vegetable salad with any or all of the following: celery, onions, cabbage, carrots, beetroot, broccoli and cauliflower. Dinner consists of a mixed vegetable salad followed by fruit salad. Drink peppermint or camomile tea as a nightcap. Drink 1 to 2 litres of water throughout the day. Extend this programme to 3 days if you feel your body can handle it.
- Air bath – Give your skin a break and bath in fresh air, walking around naked for 15 minutes will assist the skin’s ability to eliminate toxins. Avoid midday sun.
- Skin brushing stimulates the lymphatic system and clears the skin of dead cells, use a pure bristle brush begin at the feet and move towards the heart. Brush the upper body with long downward strokes. Do this before a shower or bath.
- Colon cleanse – colonic irrigation washes out undigested foods, waste products and build up by gently flushing the colon with up to 10 litres of water. Although Dr Bernard Jensen, author of Tissue Cleansing through Bowel Management gives clear instructions on a DIY version, there are qualified colonic therapists that will do professional irrigations for you. Alternatively buy an enema pump from the chemist and give yourself a coffee or wheat grass enema.
- Deep breathing – An amazing amount of waste is excreted by the lungs, do a round of deep breathing making sure the out-breath is longer than the in-breath. Try breathing with your hands stretched up towards the sky. Practice gentle movement using the breath, move on the in-breath and rest on the out-breath
- Cleansing Bath – Fill the bathtub with hot, unchlorinated water. (if chlorinated water is used, add 2 tablespoons of Hydrogen Peroxide). Add 2 cups of baking soda to neutralize the acids resulting from toxins. Then add 2 cups of Epsom salts to help draw toxins out of the body. If you have eczema or any other skin condition use half a cup of oatmeal wrapped in a muslin cloth instead of Epsom salts. Soak in the tub for 1/2 hour and drink hot green tea.
- Massage – have an aromatherapy or lymphatic drainage massage, add juniper, cypress and lemon to a morning bath and rose and camomile to an evening bath. Both are detoxifying and aid digestion.
- Sauna – An excellent skin cleanse, make sure you use one that doesn’t treat the wood with toxic disinfectants, keep the temperature bearable and try and stay in the sauna for up to 45 minutes.
- Make a cleansing tea with dandelion root, licorice root and ginger root. Linseed and psyllium husks sprinkled on fruit or muesli or taken with water will increase bowel activity. To absorb toxins in the bowel take four tablespoons of Bentonite clay powder mixed into a paint-like solution, followed by 2 glasses of spring water.
Tip: Why not go on a detox retreat in South Africa to help you undergo a thorough cleanse?
