Intro­duc­tion to the Series

For the last 25 or so years, I’ve been explor­ing what used to be called “Human Poten­tial.†Begin­ning in the 60’s ther­a­pists, edu­ca­tors and mys­tics of all stripes began to gather together at places like Esalen to study and to pro­mote tech­niques and under­stand­ings the pushed the lim­its of what was possible.

I semi-fondly remem­ber attend­ing Encounter Week­ends in the late 60s, get­ting locked in and basi­cally ham­mered with direct, con­fronta­tional com­ments designed to get par­tic­i­pants to drop their defenses and sim­ply “be.†You don’t see much of this these days, as we’ve turned into a ‘nation of wimps’ who refuse to be pushed, let alone ‘ham­mered.’ Most peo­ple I see have the back­bone of a jel­ly­fish and the willpower of a hummingbird.

More and more, we see scowl­ing or blank faced peo­ple, walk­ing slowly and painfully along, cart­ing extra weight around—as a full belly is sub­sti­tuted for a full and mean­ing­ful life.

Nonethe­less, despite the chaos that is our world, I rec­og­nize that there are more and more peo­ple that are grow­ing weary of the same old ways of being. The west has the mar­ket locked on ver­ti­cal think­ing, i.e. that more or big­ger or higher is bet­ter. And yet, as time goes by, there is more crime, more pol­lu­tion, more crap to swal­low (and hold on to,) with an atten­dant almost total lack of real satisfaction.

I’m going to push you to ruth­lessly exam­ine your life—your voca­tion, your rela­tion­ships, your pur­pose for being, as well as the ease (or dis-ease) of your body, mind and spirit. I’ll be talk­ing about accu­mu­lated sludge, both phys­i­cal and men­tal, and how to begin to elim­i­nate said sludge.

Today, we’ll start with the basics—with your body and how you can work toward elim­i­nat­ing the tox­ins that lead to ill health.

An East­ern View of Real­ity and the Body

We’re going to begin by ground­ing and bal­anc­ing your body. While all of the ele­ments of our expe­ri­ence exist simul­ta­ne­ously, it is also true that there is a pro­gres­sive order to the uni­verse (the lin­ear model.) Human devel­op­ment, for exam­ple, goes through pre­dictable stages. Phys­i­cally, babies “just lie there,†then roll around, then crawl, then walk, then run. None, so far, have emerged from the womb and then won a marathon.

I’ve writ­ten about chakras else­where on the site, and there­fore, I’ll just pro­vide links to fur­ther expla­na­tions as that seems help­ful. The key to under­stand­ing the way ‘lin­ear­ity’ works is to remem­ber that, in our model, ‘higher’ does not mean bet­ter. Rather, each phase of growth builds upon the foun­da­tion of what came before.

Let’s also remem­ber that what I’m writ­ing about are sys­tems of thought regard­ing the body, (in this case Indian Chakra the­ory and Chi­nese merid­ian the­ory. I’m not mak­ing these the­o­ries ‘right’ and west­ern allo­pathic med­i­cine ‘wrong.’ I’m say­ing “Here is another way to look at phys­i­cal, men­tal, and spir­i­tual well-being.

The Root Chakra (located at the tip of the tail­bone, at the per­ineum) is the Chakra that gov­erns ground­ed­ness and issues of secu­rity. It there­fore has a lot to do with the legs, with sta­bil­ity, and with bal­ance. In human devel­op­ment terms, The Root Chakra “con­tains†our sense of belong­ing, our level of safety, and our feel­ings of secu­rity vs. abandonment.

As dif­fi­cul­ties emerge in our lives (and this is a char­ac­ter­is­tic of being alive) we are end­lessly given two choices:

Each learn­ing can be seen as cor­re­spond­ing to a Chakra. For exam­ple, the Third Chakra has to do with self-esteem. So, if I do not resolve a per­sonal chal­lenge (say a job loss), my self-esteem (Third Chakra) will suf­fer. This is felt as “a kick to the stom­ach,†and will ini­tially have a diges­tive component.

Now, if I deal with the issue, in a sense re-empowering my own sense of self (I “re-esteem†myself) then no fault, no foul. If I don’t deal with the issue, my body and spirit will then do some­thing to get my atten­tion, first cen­tered in the stom­ach region, and then mov­ing “downward.â€

The next thing to “go†will be our rela­tion­ships (Sec­ond Chakra) and finally, our sense of secu­rity (First Chakra). Par­en­thet­i­cally, this is the oppo­site of human growth:

The first three Chakras are the phys­i­cal ones, and are there­fore the focus of this sec­tion on the body.

As we go along, how­ever, you’ll see that estab­lish­ing a strong, healthy body, firmly grounded and ener­get­i­cally alive, is the ‘base’ upon which mind and spirit prac­tices are built. How­ever, notice the word ‘prac­tices.’ There is no such thing as a ‘non-physical’ prac­tice. So, as we clear and clean our bod­ies, minds and spir­its, we make the space for new, dif­fer­ent, clearer prac­tices – which of course are car­ried out by our bodies.

For exam­ple, the yoga prac­tices sug­gested for ground­ing the body, called “Restora­tive Prac­tices,†are pos­tures you will use for the rest of your life, not just dur­ing this ‘cleanse’ period. Med­i­ta­tion designed to open your heart and still your mind are essen­tial right now – and for the rest of your life.

Diges­tive Cleansing

I got the idea for this cleanse arti­cle because of a series on non-coincidental coin­ci­dences. First, my best friend called and reported a series of highly seri­ous med­ical prob­lems he’d had in 2006. Sec­ondly, Dar­bella and I gained a bit of weight in the last few months, and were both feel­ing slug­gish. I can’t remem­ber if I wrote about this in Into the Cen­tre at the time, but we did a low carb diet, much like the Med­i­fast diet, sev­eral years ago, and lost 20 pounds each. I gained back 7–8, and it’s resist­ing my half-hearted efforts to get rid of it.

And, of course, stuff shows up my e-mail, all the time. Lately, it’s been Ayurvedic diet infor­ma­tion. Lastly, clients con­tinue to report mal­adies, ill­nesses, emo­tional upset, and lack of focus. The last two friends I talked with both said, “I need Body­work to get rid of the guck inside.†This guck, I think, is both phys­ical and mental.

We believe the fol­low­ing:
Noth­ing will change until you do.

Digest­ing Digestion

I want to talk a lit­tle about the diges­tive tract, from an east­ern and west­ern per­spec­tive. Both shed light on how this aspect of our bod­ies con­tribute to our well-being or lack thereof.

In Chi­nese med­i­cine, accord­ing to the Five Ele­ment The­ory, the 12 merid­i­ans come in pairs –
Wood – Gall Blad­der & Liver
Fire – Heart & Small Intes­tine (Heart Pro­tec­tor and Triple Heater)
Earth – Spleen & Stom­ach
Water – Blad­der & Kid­ney
Metal – Large Intes­tine & Lung

The last, the Metal pair – are of inter­est to this part of our dis­cus­sion. Both the large Intes­tine (LI) and the Lungs (L) are respon­si­ble for elim­i­na­tion. In a sense, the pur­pose of the pair is to get the crap out of our lives. When the pair is clear, the ‘feel­ing’ is open and non-attached. When blocked, the ‘feel­ing’ is anx­i­ety, grief, sor­row, and anguish. Grasp­ing and cling­ing are ele­ments of block­age in the pair.

This is exactly the same char­ac­ter­is­tics as blocked energy in the Root Chakra.

From a west­ern per­spec­tive, the block­age is phys­i­cal, and is expressed in any dis­rup­tion of the elim­i­na­tion process. This includes con­sti­pa­tion, diar­rhea, and bowel con­di­tions like col­i­tis. Let’s remem­ber, just as a reminder, that ‘nor­mal’ is one soft bowel move­ment, min­i­mum, per day. For most, this is not the norm. Pres­sure from work, envi­ron­ment, and tox­ins present in food and our air, all com­bine with the per­va­sive sense of help­less­ness that’s endemic. All of this leads to a dis­rup­tion in the way the body elim­i­nates waste.

East­ern Cleanse Meets West­ern Herbals

It’s quite com­mon in Indian (Ayurvedic) Med­i­cine to sug­gest cleanses on a ‘sea­sonal cycle.’ In other words, we really need to do some­thing to calm, soothe and empty our sys­tems of tox­ins, and this is espe­cially so for those of us that live in four cli­mate coun­tries. Just like ‘spring clean­ing’ the house is a great idea, so is spring clean­ing our diges­tive tract.

A first, great, and sim­ple step, which is taken from Pan­chakarma treat­ment (Indian week-long cleanse, see below) is to buy a “Fleet enema,†dump the con­tents, go to a health food store and buy unfil­tered, unprocessed, raw sesame oil. Warm it to skin tem­per­a­ture (use the baby for­mula wrist temp. check), and fill the fleet tube. Lie on your left side, and get some kind soul to insert the tip and slowly squeeze in the oil. Hold it for 15 min­utes, while the same kind soul mas­sages your belly. (For an intro to belly and back mas­sage, check out our down­load­able prod­uct.) Expel the oil. This is a good way to begin the usage of a “dietary cleanse product.â€

This one has a good rep­u­ta­tion and guarantee.

Most of us do not have a week or so to head off to the local Ayurvedic Clinic, so I’d like to make a cou­ple of sug­ges­tions. First of all, cleanse kits are avail­able. You can also spend a bit of time with your local Health Food Store pro­pri­etor, and ask them for prod­ucts they recommend.

Diet for a Healthy Body

Fol­low the direc­tions care­fully. Most kits sug­gest a restricted diet. Recently, I read a report taken from a book called, The Ultra­Sim­ple Diet by Mark Hyman, MD. He says that most of us are quite ‘toxic,’ and this leads to aller­gies, being over­weight, slug­gish­ness, etc. He rec­om­mends a seven day diet restricted to ‘safe foods.’ (Read the book!)

He sug­gests elim­i­nat­ing the ‘usual sus­pects’: This means get­ting rid of bad foods that stim­u­late inflam­ma­tion. The long list includes white flour and sugar prod­ucts, high-fructose corn syrup, trans fats, addi­tives, preser­v­a­tives, pes­ti­cides, hor­mones, alco­hol, caf­feine, fast and fried foods — and, for the first week at least, red meat, too. Because they are poten­tial aller­gens, Dr. Hyman also has patients elim­i­nate dairy, gluten, eggs, corn, yeast, and peanuts the first seven days.

In any event, a cleanse com­bined with a change of diet is key.

Allow Your Stom­ach to have a Break

In Ayurvedic med­i­cine, we come in three body types. Fig­ur­ing out which you are, and eat­ing accord­ingly, is seen as essen­tial for long-term health. When it comes to clean­ing out our block­ages, calm­ing and rest­ing the stom­ach is essential.

Nat­u­rally, there’s an Ayurvedic food that’s per­fect for cre­at­ing this rested stom­ach state. It’s called Kitchari.

We make a fresh, daily batch of Kitchari, which is a mung bean and rice por­ridge. Here is my favourite recipe:

Get Your­self Touched

Mas­sage is essen­tial to help with the ‘flow’ of tox­ins from your body. It’s a good idea to find a mas­sage per­son who works quite deeply. Our Zen Body­work style is per­fect for help­ing with this kind of cleanse, as it’s deep, thor­ough, and aimed at ‘get­ting the gunk out,’ both emo­tion­ally and phys­i­cally. If you’re nearby, give us a call and we can talk—and in keep­ing with the Ayurvedic part of this, warm sesame oil with added herbs are used for this massage.

If you are nowhere near us, look in your phone book or Google mas­sage ther­a­pists, and look for men­tions of ‘deep tis­sue work.’

Emo­tions are There for a rea­son, and Need Release

Emo­tions will need cleans­ing too, and you may find that this work leads to phys­i­cal reactions—flu-like sen­sa­tions, headaches, mood­i­ness. This hap­pens as the tox­ins leave your body. A good ther­a­pist is in order at this time, and of course, we rec­om­mend our style of Zen Body­work Psy­chother­apy. You can read our Body­work sec­tion for ideas, and buy our Body­work CD-R to learn how to do sim­ple Body­work on others.

Foot­note:
“Pan­chakarma (the five actions or modal­i­ties) is a col­lec­tion of purifi­ca­tion tech­niques that Ayurveda pre­scribes for some dis­eases and for peri­odic cleans­ing. A course of Pan­chakarma typ­i­cally includes a short-term dietary pre­scrip­tion, mas­sage, herbs, and may include purga­tives, sweat baths, med­icated ene­mas, and nasal cleans­ing.
Ayurvedic mas­sage is a form of treat­ment for var­i­ous age related and other com­mon dis­or­ders. Some of the advan­tages which can be cited are pain relief, improved cir­cu­la­tion, stress relief, bet­ter sleep, flex­i­bil­ity, ath­letic per­for­mance and emo­tional ben­e­fits. Mas­sage ther­apy can soothe pain, relax stiff mus­cles, and reduce the swelling that accom­pa­nies arthri­tis. Advo­cates claim that, with Ayurvedic mas­sage, deep-seated tox­ins in the joints and tis­sues are loos­ened and released into the sys­tem for elim­i­na­tion through nat­ural toxin-release processes.
Link to Wikipediaâ€

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