I’ve been really loving the short movement sequence shown in this video. It’s got a number of applications including stabilizing the hip joint, increasing range of motion in the hip, trunk stabilization and training for better throwing mechanics. I also find this sequence an ideal preparatory movement for classical standing asana in that it helps to awaken the movement patterns that really bring yogasana to life. Check it out!
I recently posted an article about our Spring Cleanse & Ayurvedic De-Tox in which I outlined some details of the program and some of the reasons we recommend it. And while the very proactive approach of doing a cleanse is a good idea for keeping ourselves healthy, it turns out that our bodies are doing their own cleansing every day on their own.
Our body has the ability to clean and repair its own tissues by employing specialized cells in our immune system called macrophages. This cellular cleansing process is called autophagy, and it is a process whereby the macrophages digest and remove old and dysfunctional proteins that build up inside other cells, as well as anything that our immune system identifies as foreign.
These macrophages are large white blood cells and they are concentrated in our lymph nodes. Their job is to perform phagocytosis – locating foreign bodies and biological debris, engulfing them and then breaking them down into a form that neutralizes them and allows them to be eliminated or assimilated. Phagocytosis helps keep pathogens, old or unhealthy tissue and other potential disease causing materials from lingering in our bodies so that they don’t have the chance to make us ill.
As I mentioned, this cycle of cleansing and repairing is going on on its own all the time, but there are actions we can take to facilitate it and help it to work better.
Here are 3 things that we can do to help keep the autophagic function of our immune system working its best.
There is a lot of research which shows that fasting helps improve the ability of the macrophages to do the job of cleaning and making way for new and healthier tissue. Intermittent fasting in particular has been shown to be effective in boosting autophagy.
Here are some suggestions on how to do intermittent fasting:
The 12-16 hour daily fast: I have found this to be the easiest way to fast on a regular basis. Finish your dinner by 7pm and do not have anything to eat again until 8am the next morning. This amounts to a 12-13 hour daily fast.
The 5/2 plan: Eat whatever your normal food intake is 5 days of the week, and on then on the other 2 days eat very small meals. An example would be to have your regular meals Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday and on Tuesday and Friday have only steamed vegetables or a light soup.
The 6/1 plan: Have whatever your regular meals are 6 days a week, and then completely fast from food the other day. This plan would work best for highly disciplined persons who is do not have a physically demanding job.
Bear in mind that if you decide to try one of these plans, there are CAUTIONS.
PLEASE DO NOT FAST IF YOU ARE:
*Pregnant
*Younger than 18
*Frail or elderly
*Undergoing chemotherapy or radiation
*Dealing with hormonal diseases that require medications
*Have a history of eating disorders
When we exercise appropriately we put our body into a controlled, beneficial state of stress. When muscles are challenged with resistance, like lifting weights or doing a plank posture, it causes tiny micro-tears in our tissues. These tears stimulate minor inflammation which then triggers a cycle of cleansing and repair by the microphages. The macrophages from the lymph system then go into action, both stimulating the process of inflammation and doing the clean up of waste products left behind after the inflammation resolves.
Inflammation generally occurs in the first 24-36 hours after exercise. It typically feels like soreness or fatigue from the exercise. After 24-36 hours the body begins to lay down new collagen to both repair the established tissue and regenerate healthy new tissue. During this cycle a crew of macrophage cleaners are busy releasing soluble substances in our lymph system to remove debris, thereby making the tissue repair, regeneration and growth possible.
When we sleep, our body and brain get the needed rest for recovery and rebuilding of tissue. During sleep the waste removal system of the brain, the glymphactic system, works to keep cellular debris from accumulating in the brain. The glymphatic system is a functional waste clearance pathway for the central nervous system. This pathway is composed of the cerebrospinal fluid housed in our spinal column and brain. The clearing of soluble proteins, waste products and excess extracellular fluid increases in this pathway during slow wave sleep.
In conclusion, our bodies have their own systems for “cleansing” the tissue and promoting tissue health. This system is greatly improved, as is our overall health when we avoid overeating, exercise regularly and appropriately and get enough quality sleep. And while eating right, exercising and sleeping enough are basic to human health, they’re not necessarily easy for everyone. Perhaps appreciating the amazing work our immune system does for us, day in day out, can inspire us to do our own part in keeping ourselves vibrant and well.
This short video gives guided instructions for learning some DNS principles and using early developmental movements as a warm up for any movement practice you choose. I like to use this sequence as preparatory sequence before doing classical yoga postures, but it could also be done before a gym workout, a run, a bike ride or a hike.
We’re hoping to offer more video sessions like this and we’d love your feedback. Let us know what you think!
Now that I’m wrapping up with several clients whom I’ve guided through our Spring Cleanse and Ayurvedic De-tox, and now that Tiffany and I have finished our own annual spring cleanse, I have a few thoughts that I’d like to share with you. First, I recognize that a lot of you are interested in the cleanse but you’re not sure if the program we offer is one that will fit your timeframe, commitments and/or lifestyle. Let me provide a few more details on our program so that you have a better idea of what you’d be getting into if you, should you decide to try it.
Our program generally takes about 2 weeks to complete, give or take a few days. For daily coffee drinkers I generally recommend tapering off in advance of starting the first week of the cleanse. If you count these days you’re reducing your coffee intake, then it can add a little extra time to the program. I also think it’s a good idea for people who drink alcohol regularly to stop for 2 or 3 days before beginning to make other changes to diet and lifestyle. It’s not essential, but even moderate drinkers can sometimes experience a bit of withdrawal from stopping all intake of alcohol and it’s good to get this out of the way before starting this process.
Ayurvedic cleansing is partly about taking as much pressure off the digestive system as possible so that it can do it’s job more efficiently. That job, to transform the food we eat into a form that we can easily assimilate and transform into healthy tissue, can be made more difficult in multiple ways. Eating too fast, eating inappropriate food, eating at the wrong time and eating under stress are just a few of many examples of behaviors that make it harder for our digestive system to transform our food in an optimal way.
Some of these examples, such as eating under stress, may be due to circumstances beyond our control. But others, such as our choice of food, are well within our control and provide opportunities to make choices that are more favorable to our digestive health, better for assimilation, and helpful for producing better quality tissue along with better health overall.
When we make good choices with diet and lifestyle, good digestion and good health tend to follow. But we don’t always make the best choices and our digestion may suffer as a result. When this happens we tend to have poor transformation of food, poor assimilation and may sometimes begin to accumulate toxicity in the digestive tract.
Let me pause here a moment as say that while the above scenario is far from optimal, it is typical for most of us. Life gets in the way of making good choices and as I said, sometimes things are beyond our control. So this formation and accumulation of toxicity in the G.I. tract is something we all tend to have to some extent or another. And when this toxicity sticks around long enough it will eventually be absorbed and follow the food path into our tissue where it can damage tissue health and cause disease.
Again, this accumulation of toxicity is going on to some extent in all of us. However, a proper cleanse is a way of clawing back some of the health we lose as a result of these accumulated toxins, and while I can only offer anecdotal evidence that it works, my experience and that of the clients I’ve guided through the cleanse is a sense of renewal and clarity. The body and mind feel cleaner, better lubricated and they begin to hum along like a well tuned machine (I’m not generally crazy about the machine analogy when discussing the human body but I’m hoping it speaks to you in this case).
In addition to eliminating various foods and beverages to take stress of the digestive system, our spring cleanse also helps eliminate the toxicity that has already made its way into the tissue. This is what makes it different from other popular cleanses or fasts. Our program goes this extra step and and I think that’s what makes it so effective.
Tiffany, myself and our clients have experienced quite a few specific positive changes as a result of doing the spring cleanse. One is less pain in our bodies. Last year a client who has some arthritic joints saw a dramatic reduction in arthritic pain. This year some minor hip/back pain I’d been having resolved during the cleanse. For some clients, minor aches and pains completely disappear.
Another positive change that we’ve noticed in ourselves and in our clients is an improvement in mental clarity. Nearly every person that we’ve guided through the spring cleanse has commented on feeling more clear mentally during and after the cleanse.
The cleanse has also proved helpful to clients with long standing digestive issues, and some of them have seen those issues significantly reduced or even eliminated during the cleanse. These are folks who have already tried making substantial changes to their diet in the past, such as eating a gluten free diet or eliminating dairy, without really seeing a signifiant change in their symptoms.
The dietary changes in our spring cleanse starts with an elimination of alcohol and caffeine and a short list of hard to digest foods. These changes can have a big impact on how we feel physically, but can sometimes be difficult psychologically (I know they sometimes are for me). I try to remind myself and my clients that however difficult some of these changes might be, they are only temporary and we needn’t feel that we must take on a major overhaul of our diet and lifestyle going forward – FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES! This is not the point of the cleanse anyway. This cleanse is about making short term changes that have specific intentions meant to have specific effects, and once those effects are achieved then we should feel very free to go back to our normal diet.
Still, longer term changes can and do happen and most clients will decide to continue with some of the changes they’ve made during the cleanse even after they finish. Last spring, for instance, one client decided not to go back to caffeine after her cleanse. She decided she didn’t need it and gave it up. I’m not sure I could ever do that but I fully support her choice and was impressed with her resolve.
I’d also like to emphasize that our spring cleanse is not about pain and suffering. You will be eating three squares a day and will be encouraged to avoid anything that creates a lot of stress for you. In the same way that the cleanse design is partly about taking stress off of your digestive system, it’s even more about taking stress off of you. This give you space to see yourself more objectively and gain some clarity – about your diet, your lifestyle, your body, your mind and your health in general. This space allows the foods, substances or behaviors that aren’t serving you to be brought into focus and it begins a process of letting some things go. Ideally this happens gradually, naturally, and without difficulty.
Still, for those of you who aren’t up for any or all of the above, there are some good ways of making smaller changes this spring that will still have a significant impact. Here are a few:
There’s still time to schedule your Spring Cleanse and Ayurvedic De-Tox. If you’re interested or have more questions, feel free to email me any time.
Happy Spring!
Ghee, or clarified butter, is commonly used in Indian cooking and especially Ayurvedic cooking. When made from good quality butter, especially butter from grass fed cows, ghee is loaded with fat soluble vitamins and beneficial fatty acids. And because ghee has a high smoke point, these nutrients aren’t destroyed in the cooking process.
From an ayurvedic perspective, ghee is considered a digestive in that it helps to improve absorption and assimilation of nutrients. Therefore ghee not only provides valuable nutrients on its own but makes the nutrients in our food more available to our tissue. Ghee is also used in ayurvedic medicine as an important carrier of herbs because helps to deliver these herbs and their effects to all of the tissues in the body.
When we make ghee, we are removing the moisture and milk solids from the butter. This includes the lactose and casein protein and therefore ghee is fine for people who are lactose intolerant or have a sensitivity to dairy sometimes caused by exposure to casein.
Ghee can have high concentrations of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) and butyrate. There is some scientific evidence to suggest that CLA my help reduce body fat, inflammation and blood pressure. One study suggested that CLA may also prevent the formation of cancer cells.
Butyrate or butyric acid is a fatty acid important to gut health. Our gut flora make butyrate as it is an source of nourishment to the cells in our colon. Some studies have suggested that butyrate may support healthy insulin levels and thus may help regulate blood glucose. Studies also suggest butyrate may help reduce inflammation in the digestive system and might therefore be helpful for individuals with ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s disease.
Best of all, ghee is delicious and when made properly has virtually an unlimited shelf life. It can be used in place of any other cooking oil when sautéing vegetables or pan frying fish or tofu, and it’s great spread on toast!