Editor’s Note: This is the first article in a month
long series following be&behappy Co-Founder Suyogi Gessner as she experiences a pancha karma detox in India. Check back daily for her latest videos and blog posts, and follow her journey on social media with the hashtag #SuyogisDetoxJourney.
Today I woke up very early, at 5am, and started to do some detox yoga. When you are going through a deep detox, it’s important to make your body flexible again, and a great way to do this is through yoga. Yoga is all about combining breath and movement to try to achieve a union of both.
I started with surya namaskar (also called sun solutions), which is like a full body workout. You wake up all your organs, muscles and deep tissues, and increase your circulation and flexibility. Then, I started to do some pranayama exercises, which are breathing exercises. I also did the fire breath today—a great breathing exercise that enhances your metabolism and is also good against belly fat.
Whenever I do yoga or breathing, I put on some relaxing music. The brain always reacts to sounds. A great brain hack is to choose a particular sound for certain activities. The brain supports you with more focus, clarity and you go much easier into de-stress mode. Hormones like serotonin and dopamine are also getting produced, which increases your productivity—and of course, your happiness levels.
During my treatments today, I was oiled so much that it felt like I was swimming. The idea is to loosen all the toxins and make your body lubricant and juicy again. After the oiling process comes the boiling process. For this, you have to go in a wooden box with only your head sticking out. You get locked up, and then the steam starts. But this isn’t a normal kind of steam; it’s a killer steam that makes you feel like you’re a live chicken getting ready to be turned into chicken broth. (I’m a vegetarian, but that was the only picture that I had in my mind during my boiling session!). They put a cold towel on your head and cover every little hole to make sure the steam all stays in the box—and on your body.
Sweating is a natural detox, and after the oiling this treatment is a great way to increase the release of toxins through your skin. But although I knew the treatment would be worth the discomfort, once I saw the timer was put on 15 minutes, my mind went crazy. I started counting the seconds. I was feeling already so hot after 2 minutes that I thought there was no way I would survive 13 more. And what did I do? I looked for an escape. My body immediately went into stress mode. Fight or flight was the name of the game. My breathing increased, and I felt like a living river—so much water coming out from my pores! Add to that the feeling that I was trapped in a wooden box. Who on Earth wants this? I asked myself.
But then, I decided to use my knowledge—thank God I remembered the right stuff at the right time, for once!—and did a breathing exercise to calm down stress, adrenaline and cortisol on the spot. It goes like this: You breathe in through your nose and count until 5. Then, you hold your breath and count until 2 and breath out through your nose as you count until 6. It
Always works. This is a great technique to use it in any stressful or fearful situation, whenever you need to get through a situation where you feel uncomfortable, or when you need to give your best and are super nervous. Try it out. If it helps in a wooden box at a high temperature, it will surely work for your next presentation. If you do this type of breathing on a regular base for just 2 minutes, the results are stunning.
So here I was, finally stress-free and finished with the wooden box treatment. But then, after the oiling and boiling, came the inner oiling.
I had to drink 15 spoons of medicated ghee again. The dose has been slowly increasing since I first started my pancha karma. You have no idea what that does to you! You get the taste of it, and it makes you feel like vomiting. But the hope that it will increase the results later made me smile and go through the process like a real Warrior.
Pancha karma is a very deep detox. If you’re going through a normal detox, you don’t need to be scared that you will go through all this creepy stuff. We created an amazing combination of body and mind detox that you can use whether you’ve done many detoxes or have never detoxed before. Our goal is to help you increase your energy and effectiveness, and find a way to connect to your true inner intelligence.
Join Suyogi on her journey by reading her daily blog posts, and using the hashtag #SuyogisDetoxJourney on social media.
