It’s week three of the six days per week, six-week yoga project that I’m doing at my local studio Power Living. If you didn’t catch my last two posts, check them out in my health and wellness section.
This week’s theme is ‘get real’. It’s time to look at which areas of life that we are making excuses, where we’re hiding, and any aspects of life where we’re ready to come clean. The project this week involves six days of yoga and daily 20-minute meditations, as well as a five-day cleanse. The intention is to create a sense of lightness and to reduce toxicity in the system. This means removing sugar, caffeine, alcohol, meat and white flour from the diet and replacing with green leafy vegetables, fresh fruit, fish, whole grains such as quinoa, and staples like brown rice. I will also keep chicken in my diet as well as some organic pea protein powder. I am using Amazonia cacao and coconut for inclusion in smoothies. I have also paid a visit to the markets this morning to stock up on affordable, fresh, locally grown organic produce.
Another key fixture in my home is aromatherapy oils. At the moment I am loving Springfields Orange and Sanctuary scents. When they waft through the house it brings a sense of uplift, joy and calm.
It’s amazing how much what we put into our bodies impacts how we think and feel on a daily basis – yet we don’t realize it and tend to ‘top up’ low energy levels with sugar, caffeine and highly processed foods. I am as guilty at this as anyone – I love eating dark chocolate in the evenings, morning coffee and have lately also taken to coffee after lunch.
I am definitely going to miss that, but it’s going to have to go – at least for now! Whenever I am feeling healthy and full of energy, I am happiest in life but I find that my reactions to certain situations often lead me to negative habit patterns. For example, when I get too busy and finally relax, totally exhausted, it’s too easy to reach for comforting things that will produce an immediate reward (such as chocolate or wine!). Or when I am really busy and have a moment’s break, but need to get back into it shortly, a caffeine fix seems to do the trick.
These things are fine in moderation, but where is the point where these habits are controlling us? Is it at the point where we attempt to stop doing them and just give in because it’s too easy? Or when we realize we’re getting caffeine headaches when we stop drinking coffee? Giving it all a break every now and then is, I think, an integral part of wellbeing. I love indulging as much as the next person, and life would be boring without it. But indulging and really enjoying the luxury is different to having something and then feeling guilty about it, and I think the guilt stems from never knowing where these boundaries lie with us. If we figure them out every now and then through periods of self-restraint and self-discipline, then perhaps we can truly enjoy the moments when we are enjoying the finer things in life.
What do you think about cleansing? Is it key to wellbeing, or totally unnecessary?
PS. Please note that I am not affiliated with any of the above – it’s just what I’m loving right now!
