Saturday, February 21, 2015

A Beautiful Cleanse

Cleanse is a beautiful word. I love the vision and feeling it evokes. When I think about a physical cleanse, it's an image of water rushing through pipes where my body is a long wide pipe, open from both top and bottom.  No ends, just water gushing from the universe into me with force and flowing on & out rapidly.

I have been thinking a lot about cleansing at a deeper level through my recent dietary "restrictions" (I'll explain in a moment).  I got the flu and had other health challenges 10 days into it the first time, so I'm doing it again, re-setting the clock on the two-week cleanse. Today is day 3. I made vegan chai yesterday, this time with coconut milk and coconut sugar. It's quite nice actually.

The foundation of this cleanse is learning new things, and practice letting go as a path to freedom. While this letting go of the old ways brings up feelings of loss and restriction for me, ultimately it is allowing me to expand my self-awareness, which can only bring greater freedom and choice.  These are the lessons I need to learn to evolve as a human being.  Some qualities to cultivate along this path - curiosity / eagerness to learn, humility at not knowing, acceptance of oneself as an imperfect and attached/addicted human being, willingness to try again with beginners mind after getting things wrong.

Some of the more physical and practical things I'm learning -
  • Because of eating much fewer foods and food groups, I was feeling hungrier and emptier a lot of the time. So to supplement, I was scavenging for snacks and sides that would fill me up, and via their absence I noticed all the usual go-to's that I was NOT eating [chai/cappuccinos/mochas (dairy, caffeine, sugar), crackers (processed) and cheese (dairy), not adding yogurt (dairy) to indian meals, chips/cheetos (processed, dairy), chocolate/desserty things (sugar, dairy)].  So basically, a lot of dairy and sugar was making up my snacks / fillers, and now I am eating nuts, seeds, rice cakes, fruit (more protein and fiber). A real shift in my nutritional balance. 
  • I feel highly attuned to how everything lands inside my body - from food to feelings. I notice every headache (or absence of), every stomach hurt (or lack of), and when my heart feels full of joyous overwhelm, or heavy and contracted from sadness. I can better respond to all these sensations and feelings, and I have become more mindful of how I respond. Basically, I'm not eating my feelings as much. Emotional cleansing.
  • During the hardcore cleanse period I didn't eat out at all - this means that I didn't spend money on eating out. Financial health boost, and spending cleanse!
  • Not eating out also means that I know every single ingredient that I consume, having read nutrition labels carefully or having prepared everything myself from whole, unprocessed foods. Having that much intimacy with food preparation and careful consumption makes me treasure my body's insides more, I have more respect for the organs and internal processes.

On a deeper level, this feels like fasting. It feels so, so hard in some moments (not all the time though). I have strong cravings, so much that I can even convince myself that it's okay to have a little tiny something (chai / chocolate...) outside the guidelines. But then I feel like I would be cheating myself, I would miss the opportunity to practice restraint and simply witness my strong attachments/addictions. Yes there are addictions. Although caffeine and sugar are certainly addictive, there are also attachments to the idea of how we eat and drink. I like to read a nice book as I sip a hot, creamy, caffeinated drink. I like to eat dessert after a meal, it feels like it "completes" it. I am witnessing all my weaknesses, and know that God wants to strengthen me inside out. This is a small container of two weeks within which I practice sitting with my feelings of loss and my cravings and I rage at my restrictions, and I still maintain the fast. Breaking it feels like crossing a sacred line.  

What I'm holding to as an anchor this time, is words from Gina Sharpe, teacher at and cofounder of NY Insight Meditation Center: renunciation as freedom.



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