My friend Anne recently led me through a 2-week customized Ayurvedic cleanse. Anne is an Ayurvedic Practitioner,dear friend + the Campaign Manager for the Campaign For Confidence (doesn’t reading Campaign Manager just make you smile)! You can interact with her daily at the Campaign for Confidence Facebook page!
The goal was to re-balance and re-boot my digestive functioning. We talk all about it in this video!
As was discussed it the video, the cleanse included lots of warm, cooked foods made with healing spices and designed to be super-easy to digest. The cleanse also included the daily consumption of ghee, which is butter from which the milk fat solids and water have been removed. Ghee nourishes the body and feeds our tissues on every level, enhancing all three stages of the digestive process. Ghee is used in Ayurvedic cleansing because it bonds to fat-soluble toxins throughout the body and then carries them to the gastrointestinal tract where they can easily be eliminated.
About Ayurveda
Ayurveda is one of the world’s oldest medical systems that originated in India several thousand years ago and is defined as “knowledge of life.” This truly holistic healing system is the mother of many different healing modalities: nutritional therapy, herbalism, massage, aromatherapy and more.
Ayurveda is often referred to as the “science of self-healing” because through its teachings we become deeply in touch with our mind, body and spirit and are often able to recognize imbalances well before they manifest as anything recognizable by the Western disease model.
There are many different diagnostic tools that Ayurveda provides us with, including feeling pulse and observing faces, tongues and nails. When Lacy recently noticed that she had longitudinal ridges on her nails, she knew that she was experiencing a deeper imbalance and enlisted me to help her resolve it.
What Are Your Nails Saying?
Our nails are a by-product of bone tissue development so the health of our bones can be reflected in the health of our nails. When our bone tissue is sufficiently nourished our nails will be healthy and grow quickly. When our bone tissue is lacking in nourishment, our nails will grow slowly and can develop other physical symptoms. Typically, the bottom third of the nail (closest to the cuticle) will reflect our health within the last three months, the middle third of the nail reflects our health within the last six months, and the top third of the nail reflects the last twelve months, but of course this varies by our individual nail growth rate.
Moons
The moons (luna) are little whiter area often found at the base of our nails and are related to energy flow within our physical and mental body. When they are missing it can indicate a mental imbalance of some sort. When they are very small, it can indicate insufficient prana (life force energy). When they are very large, it can indicate hyper-metabolism and/or high pranic energy. If they are blue there may be an imbalance in the liver and if they are red there may be a cardiac disorder.
White Spots
Little white spots on the nails are often due to either a deficiency of calcium, magnesium or zinc or excess calcium in the organ associated with that finger (thumb = brain; index finger = lungs; middle Finger = intestines; ring finger = kidneys; pinky = heart).
Ridges
Both side-to-side and longitudinal ridges (from the base to the tip) indicate an imbalance in our digestive system that has led to the malabsorption of nutrients. As you know Lacy packs her body with tons healthy food but it doesn’t matter how many nutrients we are consuming if our body isn’t properly digesting, absorbing and assimilating the nutrients!
The Three Stages of Digestion
Digestion is the foundation of Ayurvedic medicine and the root cause of all disease is improper digestion. In order to be maximally healthy, each stage of the digestive process must be functioning correctly: 1) Hunger; 2) Digestion of Food & Assimilation of Nutrients and 3) Elimination of Waste Products. To learn more about these three stages, read Anne’s blogpost here.
Anne is leading a modified version of the cleanse that I did at the beginning of May. If this is resonating with you I'd love for you to join us. You can find out more here.
xo, Lacy
Ps. It feels important to note that I'm not getting paid to promote Anne or her cleanse. I believe in her + her work. She's been a tremendous gift in my life + health.
