Editor’s Note: This is 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.
I first met Master Healer Dr. Pankaj Naram 23 years ago. I was taken by his enthusiasm and his wisdom of ancient secrets. When I heard his story, that his master lived to 124 years old, and he himself wanted to live up to 134 years, I thought, “That’s my man.” I knew I wanted to learn, apply and understand this deep wisdom and share it with the world. So I observed Dr. Naram, learned from him and ever since have tried to apply the deep wisdom of longevity, high performance and high energy to every situation in life.
This morning, I was thinking about this as I went to my yoga class. There are so many asanas (postures), but nowadays people are so busy, so I asked the beautiful yoga teacher a question: As an experienced yoga master, which postures you would suggest for Detox and longevity and youth of the body?
She gave a magnificent answer. “If I had to choose one posture for Detox,” she said, “I would choose twisting exercises, because they release toxins. And if I had to choose a posture that makes you live longer and increase your youth, I’d pick one where all organs and also hormonal glands like thyroid are involved. For this, there is only one magic posture: the shoulder stand. It’s a miracle what it does.”
I was super excited to hear this. Since childhood, I have had a thyroid problem. And now, I’ve been told about one exercise where all organs are involved, and on top of that it’s also a fountain of youth. Wham! Who doesn’t want that? So I immediately decided and made a commitment with myself that I will do these two postures every day. I keep you posted on how it works for me.
After the class, the yoga master and I had a great conversation about life. She told me she finds it so frustrating that people often don’t want to change. They are stuck in their comfort zones and every day repeat the same things and expect a change in their well-being. That’s called insanity, as Einstein used to say. When I asked her what she thinks what people nowadays miss the most, she gave me a beautiful answer. She said, “People nowadays lack the wisdom of their heart.”
I am currently writing a book about the happiness of the heart. Maybe it’s because this is my topic, but her answer made me happy and at the same time made me think think. More than ever before, humans have the responsibility to learn how to be a real human by heart. Think about it: how often do we forget the happiness of our heart and just make decisions based on our logic? We don’t take the time to go deeper inside and discover the treasures of real humanity. I’d like to think that more people are realizing that in our technology-filled world driven by the rational mind, we are missing more and more the wisdom in our daily life.
Of course, we all believe we know everything, and it’s always easy as a professiona to give advice to others. But it’s different if you go through the process yourself. Only then do you have to apply all the knowledge. I believe that only when you apply your knowledge in moments when you are threatened or out of balance does what you know become true knowledge—or inner wisdom, as I like to call it.
For me, today is such a day. How many times have I said this to my patients:
The seventh day of a detox reboot releases lots of emotional toxins. It’s a day where often “old emotional stuff” comes up. Still, I thought that since I have spent so many year doing power rituals, meditation and mindfulness, this wouldn’t happen to me. Wrong! Arrogance is what I would call this.
It hit me when I woke up in the morning. Many of us feel lonely in certain moments. But this morning, I didn’t feel lonely. I felt abandoned. Yes, abandoned by all and the whole world. I know it sounds weird, but those were my honest feelings. First, I felt this deep self-pity inside, and a voice telling me, “No one understands me or is there for me”. Thinking like this definitely made the feelings worse for me.
But then, I started to do some breathing exercises and forgiveness meditation, and released it all. Forgiveness is a very powerful tool to release old emotions and set yourself free. It was an amazing experience, and it showed me that emotional issues can hit anyone any moment—no matter how much deep inner work you have done before.
My detox reboot journey is for sure a very deep one and is very interesting for me. Today I also had to drink medicated ghee again. Only now, my body is much more used to it and somehow I have even started to like it. It’s really all about what information we give to our brain. Our brain can’t differentiate between reality and what we tell it in our self-talks, and after a short time it will take the self-talk as reality. Isn’t that scary? So we better be more aware of our self-talk!
Join Suyogi on her journey by reading her daily blog posts, and using the hashtag #SuyogisDetoxJourney on social media.