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Detoxify Your Body with Cleansing Yoga Poses
By
Patricia | April 20, 2009
While all Yoga poses are good for and are aimed at body detoxification, probably the Surya Namaskar (Sun Salutation – exercise) would rate the highest. Then again, there are several factors to take into consideration as far as detoxification goes.
First of all, Yoga – even the physical regimen – is concerned with a lot more than body detoxification. It helps enhance your powers of concentration, co-ordination, improves breathing, blood circulation, and tones up the muscles and internal organs. Keep in mind however that the practice of yoga poses alone does not suffice to achieve optimum detoxification. This calls for certain kriyas (cleansing techniques) pranayamas (breathing exercises) and a yoga diet.
The kriyas (cleansing techniques) are, basically, seven in number and are aimed specially at detoxification. They are as follows:
- Kapalabhatti (Skull Cleansing)
- Vaman Dhauti (Abdominal Cleansing through vomiting saline water)
- Jala Neti (Cleansing nasal passages with saline water)
- Sutra Neti (Cleansing nasal passages with a rubber catheter)
- Nauli (Stomach Churning)
- Basti (Rectal Enema)
- Trataka (Fixed gazing to generate tears)
Pranayamas (breathing exercises) contribute greatly to the detoxification process and are, again, seven in number. While all of them are very important and all have their own specific benefits, as far as detoxification goes, you don't have to practice all daily. The pranayamas (breathing exercises) are as follows:
- Anuloma-Viloma (Alternate Nostril Breathing)
- Ujjayi (Ocean Breath)
- Brahmari (Bee Breath)
- Sitali (Hissing Cooling Breath)
- Sitkari (Cooling Breath)
- Bhastrika (Bellows Breath)
- Suryabhedana (Right Nostril Breathing)
Yoga Diet
Your detoxification process is just not complete without a yoga diet. This means that your diet should be light, pure and predominantly vegetarian. In yogic parlance this is called a Sattvic diet and includes plenty of fresh salads and seasonal fruit, pulses, seasonal vegetables, yoghurt and fiber, especially from sprouts. It is also important that you steer clear of all stale, spicy, deep fried and junk / fast foods, cigarettes and alcohol including beer, wine and alcopops. It is equally important to eat on time; 3 – 4 light meals a day and at regular intervals would be ideal.
If practiced collectively, diligently and regularly, there is no reason why you should not achieve the desired results. You may even set yourself time targets to achieve these results and monitor your progress through regular stool, urine and perspiration analyses, as a lot of people do. In fact, quite a few yoga institutions have attached laboratories or are affiliated to clinical centers that carry out such tests to help practitioners ascertain their progress.