Yoga isn’t just about poses and strength. At the crux of it, yoga is about maintaining a healthy balance in our bodies and souls. In addition to a good yoga regiment, we need to maintain a healthy diet to make sure we are fulfilling our bodies’ needs. Think of how much you eat and poop per day. Depending on your diet, your body can’t always expel all the waste you create in a day. All these digestive wastes that are left to linger in your intestinal system will turn toxic. These wastes can also turn into rotting matter, which will cause a myriad of issues such as decreased metabolism, halitosis, constipation and much more. Your body is essentially a vessel. What you put inside it is what’s going to power you through your daily life. When there’s so much waste bogging down your daily functioning, you can hardly reap the full benefits of yoga. That’s why it’s common for yogis to use cleansing methods like juice cleanses, smoothies, fasting, and plant-based diets in tandem with yoga. Doing yoga is a great way to offset the negative effects of intestinal waste, but you need to go a step further and cleanse if you want to enhance your yogic effects.
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What is a Colon Cleanse?
A common misconception many people have about colon cleanses is that it can be used to replace your body’s automatic response to waste. You’re constipating? Colon cleanse! Maybe your brain’s feeling a bit foggy? Colon cleanse it is! Your body already has a great system in place, but sometimes it needs a little extra lovin’ in the form of a reset button. A colon cleanse is a way to do that – give your body a chance to reset by helping you flush out toxins and rotting matter in your intestinal system. Pair that up with a stellar yoga practice and you’d be able to feel tip-top in no time.
How Do I Do A Colon Cleanse?
Some ancient yoga gurus advocate for intestinal cleansing methods like colon irrigation, enemas, raw food, and purging. Although these are fine methods for their time, we’ve since come a long way since intentionally making ourselves purge from raw food. Other methods like enemas or colon irrigation might turn you off colon cleansing because it sounds so extreme. I don’t know about you, but putting warm water up my bum for cleansing doesn’t make me want to do it, no matter what the health benefits are. Good thing is, there are so many other alternatives that can be used to supplement yoga AND cleanse at the same time. One interesting method is a tea cleanse.
#1 Intestinal Cleansing Yoga
Hatha yoga is a popular branch of yoga that has been refined over a couple of thousand years. It includes a physical cleansing process, which removes toxins, eliminates waste in your system, and dissolves the tension in your body. In addition to cleansing, you can also relieve several ailments you’ve been facing like, stomach problems, back problems, and migraines. Besides that, you can experience a full cleansing process called Shankarprakshalana in a Hatha yoga retreat. Under the guidance of a guru, you will undergo a complete cleansing from your nose to your anus. It involves certain twisting exercises like Trikonasana, Triyak Bujangasana after each glass of water to promote healthy bowel movements. You must also have certain meals after the Shankarprakshalana to keep your body pure, cleansed, and detoxified. 
#2 Colon Cleansing Products
Unfortunately, we don’t all have time to go to a Hatha retreat every time we need a colon cleanse. Fortunately, we don’t have to, nor do we have to resort to purging or enemas. Thanks to technological advancement, pharmacists and scientists managed to come up with a healthy range of trustworthy colon cleansing products and sell them readily in the market. Good colon cleansing products never promise a quick fix as the waste accumulated in our system can take quite a while to get rid of. Typically, these products offer a 7 to 15-day program to gently but efficiently cleanse your intestines. Besides that, many of the ingredients in these supplements make sense. For example, look out for senna, probiotics, and flaxseed extracts since they have been proven to promote intestinal health. There are a lot of counterfeit colon cleansing products that will promise you the world for a quick buck, so you’ve got to keep your eyes wide open and research. Be sure to only pick products that contain natural ingredients. You should also only buy products that are FDA-approved for good measure.
Have you ever done a colon cleanse? How did it affect your yoga practice?
