1. If you’re thinking about trying some holistic health solutions, you may want to stay at home (or go on a relaxing getaway) and enjoy a juice diet. A juice fast is basically a restricted diet or a partial fast which relieves your body of the necessary work of normal digestion, so that a great deal of healing can take place. The best juices for these reinvigorating diets are greens with somewhat mild veggies mixed with some of your favorite fruits to make them tasty. In most cases, people who are in good health shouldn’t have any issues going on a juice diet for five to ten days, but if you happen to be under a doctor’s care – for whatever reason, it’s highly recommended that you consult your physician first. It’s also important to remember that there are several conditions – such as anorexia, diabetes, hypoglycemia, breastfeeding and pregnancy which make an unsupervised fast or juice-fasting completely inadvisable.

2. Do some serious sweating. Relax for 30 to 45 minutes in a really hot sauna or steam room (stay clear of steam rooms that have a noticeable chlorine smell in the steam), or go to an extreme yoga workout, or submerge yourself a very hot bath – just find a way of making yourself really sweat. Deep sweating assists the skin, your most significant organ of detoxification, with doing its job properly.

3. Start bouncing. Get your hands on a mini-trampoline and do some bouncing. The exercise in itself will be good for you, but a mini-tram also supposedly targets particular areas of the lymphatic system, helping it do its normal clean up functions too. The body’s lymphatic system doesn’t have a pump like the heart does, so it can use a bit of assistance. Most gyms usually have mini-trams, so when you go to work out, do your 5-minute warm-up while bouncing!

4. As soon as you wake up in the morning, scrape your tongue before doing anything else. Everybody’s body goes through a substantial amount of detoxing during sleep, and that rather unpleasant film on your tongue when you climb out of bed (In Ayurveda it’s called ama – metabolic debris) should be thoroughly cleaned off before you even think about having a drink of water or a cup of tea. The majority of dental care aisles at major health food stores – and most drugstores, usually sell very reasonably priced tongue scrapers.

5. Make regular use of a Neti pot. For quite some time, the yogis have been recommending “sinus bathing” as a crucial aspect of truly enlightened hygiene, and if you’d like to experience this sensation yourself, you can usually buy a Neti pot (exquisite ceramic ones and inexpensive plastic models) at most major health food outlets. You fill it with a warm saline solution and, following the instructions to the letter, allow the water to flow deeply into one nostril and then directly out the other; then repeat the process with the other side. For most people, this isn’t really a very pleasant sensation, but it certainly clears your head right up.

6. Buy a “dry body brush.” Right before you take a bath or shower, use this extraordinary dry body brush (ask someone at your local health food outlet; it’s a brush that has a removable handle, and it’s specifically intended to be used only on dry skin) to buff your skin, always beginning with the feet first. Then slowly work your way up, making upward strokes on the thighs and calves, strokes from your fingertips to your shoulders on your arms, and fairly gentle circular motions all around your chest, abdomen, and hips; this brush isn’t to be used on your face. By removing dead skin cells through gentle massaging, your skin will be warmed and energized, helping your skin to detox easily.

7. Colonics and Enemas. These are included because they’re commonly considered to be standard detox practices – and many, many people believe in them. Individuals in these circles generally say that people have some kind of toxic build-up – a toxic residue if you will, in the recesses of the colon which needs to be cleaned out.

8. Take a trip to someplace quite and clean. By “quite and clean,” I mean a spot where the air is untainted by civilization (in the mountains perhaps), and where electro-magnetic radiation is almost non-existent. There might be some people who will get frustrated that they can’t get any cell phone service, but it’s really wonderful to get away from it all. If you can take a trip for even just one weekend each season, it’ll make all the difference in the world for your sense of wellbeing.

9. Eat raw foods and make an effort to think loving thoughts. Okay, it’s two recommendations, but just by eating a diet high in raw foods, which is plant-based, even without any kind of fasting or juice dieting, you’ll make incredible headway in your detoxification efforts and quickly eliminate your sugar addiction. If at any time you find yourself experiencing a “detox crisis” – headaches, fatigue – just rest, eat sparingly, and allow it to slowly pass, or if you want to slow down the detox process to a more comfortable rate, then rest and start eating a lot more cooked food. Your thoughts during this process are of the utmost importance: make them loving, to everyone in the world, your body and yourself. This way, you detox not only your body, but the built-up negativity from the deepest recesses of your being.

10. Follow the 80/20 rule. To understand what the 80/20 rule is all about we need to understand that our body is made up of both acid and alkaline and when these two become out of balance, chaos reigns! All foods need to be alkaline, acidic or neutral, with by far the largest amounts being made up of alkaline forming foods. In this case 80% should be alkaline and the acid forming foods should represent 20%. This is a long way from the average North American diet, unfortunately.

Alkaline-based foods are largely vegetables and fruits and some nuts, while acid-based foods include animal protein, starch, sugar, alcohol, dairy and some grains. For some reason it has become traditional to serve vegetables as “a side” and in very much smaller portions, whereas according to the 80/20 rule it should be the other way around. Give it a try: 80% alkaline forming food and 20 % acid food, and experience what holistic nutrition can do for you!

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