Detox is a buzz word these days and it means different things to different people. When we talk about detox, we are referring to the practices we do and actions we take to reduce or eliminate anything that keeps us from living our optimal, healthful and happiest lives.

To fully detox we need to address all of lifestyle and diet, including our social connections and work situation. Our “lifestyle” can’t be experienced in a vacuum, and we can’t just add mindfulness practices when we are alone first thing in the morning and then close the door on them as we step into the world of our day-to-day.

In our Reset and Renew Detox groups, we mostly cover the diet piece, although we bring in some lifestyle practices and mindfulness to round out the process. In this post we will focus on everything we can do outside of detoxing our diet. Here are some tips that we have learned along the way:

• Identify what is inflammatory to you and remove it from your daily life:
  • Turn the radio and/or tv off, especially when the news is upsetting. This doesn’t mean you will become out of touch with reality, it just means that you will give yourself the gift of controlling what information you let in, and when. You can set a time of day to look at your favorite publications online. This is especially important when sharing space with others (say during a car ride), when you have the option of choosing soothing or joyful music, silence, or conversation.
  • Being late/in a hurry can be very inflammatory. The stress I put myself through when I am late starts a very unhealthy cascade in my body. This is one of the places I am constantly working on in order to more fully show up for others, as well as a way to show up for myself. My mantra now is “leave early and go slow” rather than my usual pattern of “do as much as possible as fast as possible.”
  • Be mindful of how you communicate: once you say or express a thought/feeling/opinion, you can’t take it back. Reducing inflammation means making sure you are not inflammatory to others as well. I highly recommend the work of my friend and teacher, Alejandra Siroka at Language Alchemy. We can all do better at speaking with authenticity and communicating from the heart, while inspiring collaboration rather than disagreement.
  • Pay attention to limiting thoughts. Sending your cells toxic messages can take a toll: they will believe you! The first step is to be aware of when you do this, and then find a way to reverse the trend. A simple out-loud  “cancel, cancel” can help, and then refocus the thought to something positive that you want to materialize in your life.
  • The outside reflects the inside: take some time each day, or even each week, to take stock of your surroundings. Is every surface in your home taken up with stuff? Are your closets so packed that you can’t see what is in them? Does your fridge have biological experiments in leftover jars? Cleaning up, making your bed, and putting away things that are out of place have an immense impact on our wellbeing and clarity of thought. Clutter makes chaos, both in our environment and in our bodies.
  • To let go of clutter in the body, try time-restricted eating. Since we are not getting into the details of a detox diet in this post, we simply recommend eating your normal diet within a 10-12 hour window. If you have your first meal at 8am, have your last meal by 8pm, and slowly bring that down to 6pm. Water and tea is ok (no sugar of any kind or milk with your tea, though).
  • Take a break from people that bring you down. Distance from difficult relationships can allow for healing and for a different perspective.
  • Sleep. Let the body do its own clean up. Certain maintenance processes can only happen when we are completely relaxed and not getting outside stimulus, so make going to bed by no later than 11pm a priority. At our house we’ve had to put the wi-fi on a timer to help us along. This achieves 2 benefits: the first is we get to sleep earlier, the second being that there is no wi-fi going around when we don’t need it – more on issues with EMF later).

• Identify what gives you joy and do more of it: detoxing is both about what we let go of and what in put in place.

• Find something you love about yourself every day. We don’t tend to take care of something we don’t love, so be specific and either journal about it or just tell yourself out loud while laying in bed or looking in the mirror. Every meaningful change starts with love.

If you like this and want to learn more, come spend the evening with us on June 22nd, 2018! Details here: Relationship with Food, Body & Other