Detox & Reset Part 1: 4 essential parts to end the up-down cycle.

Image by Sean Hayes from Pixabay

There are four ways to detox and reset in a way that will cover, nourish, and sustain you energetically. These four practices aren’t short term fixes but a way of carving essential time in your day to take care of your most important asset - you.

Imagine your kitchen garbage can. Imagine that you never took it out. Or if you took it out once or twice a month. It would get pretty stinky. Your mind and body collects and absorbs a lot in a day, and because it’s your mind and body, it’s that much more important to take out the garbage daily. Otherwise, it accumulates into chronic stress, and the digestion of it becomes heavy and slow, and you feel exhausted, foggy, unclear, anxious, and irritable.

You know how just a simple bath before bedtime can increase your ability to fall asleep quickly (versus watching the news). Similarly, these practices will do that for you more deeply, and they will provide you with grounded energy, clarity of mind, and better health, including reduced inflammation and increased ability to relax.

While there are tons of practices out there, I’m going to boil it down to these top four that work together powerfully and offer a wealth of benefits to your mind and body, which I will cover over the next few weeks.

Here are the 4 essentials (I'll cover one each week).

1. Sat Kriya detox: When asked to choose one yoga/meditation practice, this is my go-to (which I’ll go into below). We’re focusing here on detox & reset, not what will give you the best workout or physical flexibility. I haven’t found a yoga/meditation practice as quick and effective as this one. Give yourself 10-30 minutes every morning for this. 
2. Abhyanga (toxin pulling): This is a super luxurious self-massage. If you’re thinking, but I’d rather go to a spa and let someone else work on me, you don’t have to stop doing that. This one is about your own gentle hands loving on you and working with your own energy while pulling the toxins out through your skin and grounding your energy. This practice is so luxurious and self-loving you won’t think you deserve it. But you do. Give yourself 30 min once or twice a week for this. This takes a lot less time than a spa massage. 
3. Body Intake: Intermittent Fasting. You need space in your day to process and function optimally. So does your body. Give it a digestive break, and you might find that your body becomes more tolerant of foods it hasn’t been as tolerant to. This allows your digestive system to take out the garbage in the most optimal way. 
4. Get it out: Journal and work with a coach so you don’t fall into the same patterns. Journaling allows your soul to reach you on a more conscious level. Coaching gets you moving forward faster and on a more conscious level. Having someone to lean into can give you the strength and courage to make lasting change. Detox and clearing is often accompanied by emotional movement, and it helps to work with a health or meditation coach to support you all the way through to the other side of it. 

This week: Sat Kriya

Ideally, do this in the morning before you do anything else (see last week’s article: What daily practice does for your daily grind on why). Sat Kriya will take over what you were clearing during sleep and give you more energy for your day. 

Second, this single exercise is both physically challenging and low impact. It’s yoga and meditation, it’s time flexible, and it comes with a juicy ending: savasana. In fact, my meditation group is just finishing their 40 day Sat Kriya practice this week, and they’ve elected to keep going with it. They describe the savasana at the end as

“...sinking into whipped cream, then eating it with strawberries dusted with Belgian chocolate to energize my day.” 

Benefits of Sat Kriya:

• Detoxes your mind and body
• Calms emotional disarray
• Balances your sexual and creative energies
• Strengthens digestion 
• Strengthens and grounds you into your sense of self
• Strengthens the heart through the navel pumping motion
• Moves the energy up the spine opening up the heart, expression, and connectedness 
• Strengthens your nervous system
• And it’s super flexible with time: it can be as short as 6 minutes and as long as 22 minutes (or an hour)

Here’s how to do it

First, warm up for 3-5 minutes (this is ideal): you can do some cat-cows, then go into downward dog, move between downward dog and plank, and then take a moment to slowly drop your pelvis down to the floor from plank into cobra or upward dog, and then into child's pose. OR… you can walk or run in place for a few minutes and stretch out your body as you’ve learned to do it. This warm-up eases the sitting still in the Sat Kriya position. 

The ideal position

• Sit in rock pose, meaning, sit on your heels. 
• Clasp the hands together with the index fingers together pointed up
• Raise the arms up, hugging the ears, and gently move the shoulders down away from the ears and back, creating some space between the shoulders and ears. 
• Close the eyes and gently roll them up to look at the third eye point (between the eyebrows, about a half inch up and half in in)

The meditation

• Say out loud Sat Nam (rhymes with but mom). On the Sat, firmly yet gently pull the navel center in towards the spine. On the Nam, release. 
• Continue for 3 to 11 minutes. And then go to The End (below).

The real: aka modifications

If rock pose isn’t working for you, you can…

• Place a cushion between your legs to raise your hips and take some weight off your ankles, or in between your thighs and shins to help your knees. 
• Sit on the floor in easy pose or cross-legged. 
• Sit in a chair without leaning back; spine is tall. Anchor both feet anchored to the floor with a 90 degree bend at the knees. 
• If sitting in any way doesn’t work for you today, lie on your back with knees bent and feet flat on the floor close to your butt. In this case, your arms will go straight up at a 90 degree angle from the heart center instead of over the head. 

If keeping the arms up is too hard on your nervous system, you can play in these two ways:

• Bring your arms down to your heart center, hands still together with the index fingers pointing up.
• Alternate your 11- minute practice this way: do it for 3 minutes, take a one-minute break (with your hands down on your lap), 3 minutes on, 1 minute off, 3 minutes on, totalling 11 minutes.

To End 

Inhale fully, then while maintaining that position, exhale completely and pull root lock (squeeze the pelvic floor in and up) as you suspend the breath at the bottom of the exhale while, for the next 10-15 seconds, you gently squeeze (or imagine that you are doing so) the muscles from the base of the spine up, moving the energy up the spine and out into your magnetic field. Then inhale, exhale, and bring the arms down and rest in savasana.

Savasana is an essential part of this practice. 

This is more important than the warmup. How to do it - 

• Rest on your back for an equal amount of time that you practiced the Sat Kriya to give your body time to integrate. 
• Set your chimer. 
• Remember to get up gently; be good to your nervous system. ❤️
• Total duration: 10 to 30 minutes (includes transition times)

For amazing results, do Sat Kriya daily.

Love, Savitree

P.S. - If you’d like more support with your practice and your goals to step into your next you, schedule a call with me.