Yoga and it’s Detoxing Potential

By: Jeanne Cummings
www.jeannecummings.com

Why do we keep coming back for more Yoga?  To look good?  To feel good?  Yoga tones our bodies, builds our frame, lengthens our muscles, and keeps the waistline slim.  It helps us find peace and calmness, which radiates out from the skin, the eyes, and the qualities we embody.  The oxygen we deeply breathe in nourishes our entire being.   For some of us, it's the pure physical challenge that keeps us coming back for more.   For others it's an artistic expression.  For many, it's time dedicated to connect to the light within, otherwise known as a force greater than our selves.  Perhaps it’s all three.  Or maybe your Doctor prescribed it to you.  Whichever the reason, when we are practicing on our mats we are cleansing the body as we twist, sweat, open, stretch and exhale the toxins away.   Oh, but are we? 



Yoga = Detox.  Plain and simple; a balanced yoga practice is one that is meditative and without distractions, in other words, moving into each pose with deep involvement.  And by balance, it is about a practice that incorporates a mix of it all: Vinyasa’s, twists, backbends, forward folds, side bends, arm balances, inversions, and pranayama.   Move through a balanced practice, with no food in the stomach, and afterward you’ll feel clean.  (On the inside that is.  A shower will finish the work off!)  But for some of us we avoid doing inversions and we’re not sure how we can twist any deeper, so a balanced practice is not taking place.  For others, we have a balanced practice and we still have plenty of room to realize it’s full detox potential.

Certain poses do more of the detoxing work than others, and in particular twisting, inversions and pranayama.  Five questions arrive here: 1) Do you know how to properly twist?  2) Are you using the opportunities to put your feet over your head?   3) Have you reached the point of “floating” your legs up for a safer practice?  4) Have you mastered floating your legs up and then incorporating backbends, twists, and arm variations?  5) Can you bend into full lotus in any inversion?  Traditional texts say that Padmasana destroys all diseases.  Feeling sluggish by chance?  Deep twisting poses and inversions helps to stimulate digestion.

We go to a yoga class and we look around when we’re supposed to be minding our own practice (wink).  Why do we look around?  One reason is because we want to “see” how others are getting into the pose and how to do it.  Another reason is we want to find out if we are alone – we want to “see” how many others are inverting and how many are not.   With focused workshops under your belt, you can be in a class and safely “listen and do” (or try) the pose without losing focus on your own journey.  Safely?  Yes… another advantage of workshops is to learn from an experienced teacher how to safely twist, invert, arm balance, backbend and move… how to safely detox the body.   Experienced teachers have already tested injuries out for you (another wink here) and through experience can help guide you to better take care of your spine and tender joints, an intersection where accidents and injuries can happen.

 And did you realize that us teachers started out just like you?  Well of course we did!  It is easy to remember when we could barely reach our own toes, an awakening within itself.   I’ll admit I was scared to death of doing a headstand!  A couple workshops got me comfortable to confidently invert without a wall being behind me.  A couple of workshops more and with patience in my corner, I’m balancing on my head with only two fingertips touching the ground and legs in full lotus.  

The answer to going deeper in one’s practice and learning how to cleanse the system in each and every class is signing up for more. Yes... Precisely that.

 Now this may sound like a sales pitch, and actually this article has been written to "guide" students of yoga to the up coming Spring Detox Yoga workshop to be held on April 20th, 2013.   Please know smoke is not being blown up your perineum.  It's the truth!  If you want to go deeper, you’ve got to commit.  You’ve got to sign up.  You’ve got to go for it. 

You’ll be glad you did!



Jeanne finished her 200 hour Yoga certification with an emphasis on Yoga philosophy, alignment, adjustment techniques, breath work, meditation, Sanskrit, anatomy, flow and sequencing. With the encouragement of her teacher Carolina, Jeanne has been fortunate to practice and study with some of the best-known teachers on both coastlines as well as in Texas. Jeanne has passionately studied and experimented with diet and body mechanics on her own since 1992. Expect to go deeper within your own body when in her class.