Purification: How To Go About A Principled Detoxification
After the Christmas Holidays folks often come to us to ask us what is the most efficient way to go about a cleanse or detoxification. Well, the answer is multi-faceted and a lot depends on what your present condition and goals are. If you want to drop a few pounds, you can probably stop reading now and go back to what you were doing formerly before you opened this article. The reason being is that you generally find whatever you lost, and so purification isn’t about losing anything. It is about gaining something … the letting go part will happen naturally.
Long before the germ theory became popular, ritual purification has been perpetuated culturally and religiously for as long as we’ve been around. Orthodox Jewish women will go to the Mikveh after the last show of their menses on a monthly basis to cleanse any last trace of “impure” blood from their being before once again engaging in intimacy with their spouses. Catholic folk engage in a mini-cleanse upon entering the sanctuary of the church by dipping their fingers into holy water and making the sign of the cross on their bodies. Christians will also go through “Lent” which also means cleansing the body of certain foods that are not wholly serving their spiritual well-being. Islamic individuals will use “wet” or “dry” cleanses with water, sand or earth after exposure to semen, menstral blood or vomit. Typically, though, ritual purification was in preparation for a particular spiritual event.
In modern day culture, we’re not so typically guided by spiritual leaders who tell us when to cleanse and for what reason we would want to undergo this process. We now have to develop this for ourselves. Obtaining autonomy and sovereignty is the name of the game and the only way to truly hook into why we want to purify our body, mind and soul is out of principle. If someone is suffering a lot of kidney discomfort and frequent urination, is it appropriate to do a kidney cleanse? If someone has a gall bladder full of stones, what would be the result of a gall bladder / liver cleanse? What happens if someone does a cleanse of these organs and they’re suffering constipation? Generally the body won’t let go of anything until it is wholly convinced that there is something pleasurable coming in to replace it and it is best to sort out those targeted complaints first before stressing the body any further.
So, let’s say your goal is to simply feel lighter in your body and that you’ve been noticing some congestion around your liver. Let’s say you have no other chief complaints. If you did, it would be recommended that you seek the professional advice of your own Heilkunstler Physician to obtain the necessary remediation to support your regimenal efforts around detox and organ support. Let’s say it is post Christmas, Passover, or EID and you had engaged in a few lovely little feasts with appetizers, wine and sweets for dessert over a number of days.
The first thing to ask is, “are the bowels moving?” This is critical to ask because, if they are not, anything you are trying to cleanse from the kidney and liver systems are going to be dumped into the blood stream, it will swim around a bit and then reinfect those organs again, because there is nowhere for them to go. If a person isn’t experiencing 1-3 fully formed snake-like bowel movements daily, then there is some work to be done on that front. For our patients we use an awesome herbal based product called “Experience” that we order wholesale from our distributor, just like the health food stores do. We can get it for you if you need. Some folks will also use Triphala”, or “Psyllium husks.” These products should be employed minimally and short-term until the body takes over it’s proper functionning. In some cases, if things have been awry for some time, we’ve needed to ramp up the bowel cleanse to include a series of colonics as the 5-7 lbs. of undigested matter in the gut often needs to be addressed before the body starts being able to receive nutrition optimally during the cleanse.
Next, the kidneys are more available to undergo their regimenal purification. We find that a Master’s Cleanse is highly beneficial for this for 2-3 days. First, lie on your tummy on a bed or floor and ask your spouse, relative or close friend to check for heat in either of your kidneys by placing their hand about half an inch above your skin just below the last rib of your rib cage. You will know if there is congestion in the “hotter” kidney. Also this kidney is generally slightly raised and more tender if gently palpated.
Start your Master’s Cleanse in the morning. Upon waking, preferably after a bowel movement, mix the following ingredients in a glass and drink down:
- 2 Tablespoons Fresh Lemon Juice
- 2 Tablespoons Rich Maple Syrup
- 1/10 Teaspoon Cayenne Pepper Powder – or to taste (as much as you can stand)
- 8 ounces (250 milliliters of Pure Water)
Drink 2-3 litres of pure water all day and supplement with herbal teas as needed in the colder months. In the evening, about 90 minutes before bed, it is recommended that you do a Salt Water Flush, using sea or himilayan salts. which will cause you to have the most amazing purifying bowel movements. If this isn’t the result, you may need a colonic to get things properly flowing before continuing.
After this protocol, check to see that the kidneys are cooler by repeating the test above. This will enable you to discern your success with the Master’s Cleanse protocol on the basis of observation and principle. If the kidney(s) is/are still hot, or it has switched sides, consider seeing your Heilkunst Practitioner for further support with remediation before continuing. If all is well, you can continue onto the Liver and Gall Bladder protocol for this cleanse.
At this juncture, you are looking for mostly cooked broths of vegetables with a concentration of green vegetables. Bitter green vegetables are stellar for cleansing the liver and gall system. You can make simple, beautiful soups starting with a base of organic coconut oil, onion and garlic. Add beef, turkey or lamb broth if you are an O or B blood type. Add organic brocolli, spinach, kale, collards, bok choi, zucchini, or anthing else on sale at your local organic market. Supplement with Milk Thistle and Chlorophyll and you’ll support the liver and drag out any heavy metals at the same time. You can stay on this part of the cleanse for all three meals as long as you feel comfortable. Any liver discomfort should alleviate within a couple of days. Don’t be surprised if you pass a couple of gall stones in the process.
Over the next few days, you can begin to re-introduce stir fried greens, organic ancient grains, and then more raw foods as you please. The whole idea is to consume pre-digested foods first. We are seeking to give the body a break at the front end, so it is more encouraged to eliminte the impurities at the “back end.” We know that there is lots in the news about Raw Food Diets and these protocols certainly have their medicinal application and we do recommend lots of local raw foods during summertime cleanses, however, based on Rudolf Steiner’s understanding he suggests, ” Suppose you [medic] are attempting curative treatment with siliceous substances; then put your patient for a while on a raw food diet [physic] and you will see how materially the effect of the silicon is increased because you are contributing further forces to its peripheral operation; you support its formative activity, its tendency to harmonize deformations.” I will try to translate into English as he goes on to say that over time the body will start to break down from the outside if the raw foods are taken daily, long term, due to the overly spherical Silicon forces bearing down on the human being. Over time, not enough radial forces will be generated internally through heat or the “building up” of the organism. The sclerotic, breaking down, forces from the outside will be engaged with over time and the body will start to look more skeletal as the soft tissues start to break down. The body eventually stops supporting it’s own skeleton and consciousness all together, and the soft tissues wither and the person unfortunately will die. They will literally perish from overwork as our physiology is not made to handle all that roughage long term.
On an encouraging note, during a proper cleanse, it feels delicious to use a natural brush for your skin before bathing. Employing a far-infared sauna to encourage your skin, the largest organ of detoxification, to breath and pull toxicity out onto the surface to be scrubbed with your towel is amazing. This will ease the primary functionning of the liver, kidneys and lymphatic system to do all the work for you as your body will be working hard to dump the toxicity it has held in abbeyance until now. Salt water hot tubs and cold water plunges at your local Scandanavian Spa can be outstanding to get your lymphatic system pulsating those impurities out of your mesenchymal layer. That is the sea water jelly layer you feel in between your skin and organs and lots of impurities can be stuck there. If you don’t have such a luxury close by, run a very warm to hot bath with epsom salts and then after 10-15 minutes stand up to a cold shower. We’ve also found that Bowen treatments from an acredited Bowtech Practitioner has been really helpful to folks undergoing cleanses. Call our office to speak with Carol-Ann, our office administrator, as she is training in this modality and will be able to advise you further.
A great book to read is Nourishing Wisdom, A New Understanding of Eating, by Marc David. He suggests, “you eat what you are!” He cites a story about a woman who gets a job at a vegetarian restaurant. In the short term, her health improved dramatically, however, over time things started to change for the worse. “Strangely enough, once her health improved and reached its peak, she slowly dropped back to her previous state even though her diet was unchanged and the weather was still warm. When she told me her story I was struck by one detail: She had not prepared a meal for herself in close to a year. In fact, her entire life-style for that time showed a strong deficiency in self-nourishing pursuits. She had little social life, took no time off from the restaurant, and had no creative outlets.” The author suggests that the client cook just one nourishing meal a day for herself and her results improved. The moral of the story is that eating and cleansing is a very emotional business and we are here to help … chances are we’ve had an experience or two in this area.
Another resource that we’ve found very helpful comes from a patient and very close colleague of ours who let go of 40 lbs. shortly after starting Heilkunst treatment and no, she has not found it again. Kylie Delfino is very outspoken about how she was helped to not only find her essential self through Heilkunst Medicine, in addition, en route she decided to thoroughly research Blood, Glandular and Ayervedic typologies to developing her own cleansing program. Kylie left her thriving marketing consulting firm to start her yoga and cleansing practice. The latter part of her business is called, The Nourished Self. Her program is stellar. We know because we followed her protocol and loved every minute of it. Take a look at her site for if you are looking for someone to take you shopping to the local health food store, teach you how to make beet soup or guide you through a cleanse, she is brilliant and enthusiastic to boot!
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