Cleanse Week!

If you’re following me, you know that I’ve just started a four-month journey through the Fall season. This week is the Fall Equinox, the first official day of Fall. Yay! And it’s also the week for our Ayurvedic cleanse. I have done many four-day cleanses, but never a nine-day before, and I’m excited to see if I’m able to make it all the way through. 

If you’d like to cleanse this week too, I have a couple of suggestions for you:

One-day cleanse: For one day drink cucumber-ginger juice. No other food, but herbal teas are fine. You can use honey or maple syrup as a sweetener. Try to do this cleanse on a day when you don’t have many responsibilities so you can rest and reflect. Take time to journal, go outside and sit under a tree, do some gentle stretching and meditate (I like the Insight Timer app). Try to continue with the suggestions from last week to wean off caffeine, sugar, alcohol, meat and heavy foods. 

Cucumber-ginger juice recipe: Peel a large cucumber and remove the seeds (you can eat the seeds if you like, and if you have a high speed blender they will pulverize). Peel a two-inch piece of ginger. Chop up the cucumber and ginger and place in a blender. Add the juice of ½ lemon, or more to taste. Add water as needed to blend and create a juice drink. 

Four-day home cleanse: Every morning you can make a mixture of basmati rice, yellow mung dal and spices called ​kitchari. Here is one recipe, and you can search for others. Eat this mixture as your meals throughout the day for four days in a row. You can supplement with vegetables from the Seasonal Food Guide and drink herbal teas sweetened with honey or maple syrup. Try to keep a quieter schedule those four days because you may feel a bit tired not eating your usual diet. It’s a good time to journal, practice yoga and meditate. And as my teacher likes to say, “Simplify, simplify, simplify.”

What a beautiful way to greet Autumn!