The Importance of Detoxification
In all holistic healing sciences on the planet, the NUMBER ONE key to good health is DIET. Combined with exercise and proper full breathing, a healthy, vital diet will keep us strong within our bodies and radiant without. These practices are also natural, everyday ways to detoxify.
Additionally, we must consider our hygiene practices and the products we use on our body, skin, and hair. Most of us may think that the skin and hair care products we use are primarily for cleansing and moisturizing. However, we have to remember that our hair and skin ingest nutrients. They eat also! Thus, if it is best for us to put high quality, natural, organic foods inside our body, we should apply the same logic to the outside of our body by using natural, wild-crafted, organic hair and skin care products.
More on organic beauty products here
Although we specialize in natural, wild crafted, organic, vegan hair and skin care products, remember one of the Spokes in the Wheel of the Morrocco Method is a healthy, vibrant lifestyle fueled by the foods we ingest in our daily diet. These foods are of the utmost importance. In fact, what we eat is primarily responsible for the beauty of our Crowning Glory.
EatingMoreWater Foods
There are water foods and there are denser foods that contain little or no water at all. Our body is 70% water like our Planet Earth and our lymph system actually has a higher percentage of water than our blood: 80%. The food we eat should reflect similar percentages. That is, a healthy diet is one that is 70 to 80 percent water in its solid to liquid proportions. If we eat like this we will naturally detoxify. So, look at the proportion between water versus solid content to get a good barometer of how you are detoxing in your daily eating habits. If the percentages of water and water foods drop, and you eat more foods that are solid and dense with lower water content, the less detoxing action shall occur.
As our lymph system works to clean and detox our body of chemicals and toxins, it only makes sense that foods with higher water content are necessary to aid in detoxing wastes from the body. The key points to keep in mind are:
1. Eat a diet high in green vegetables and fruits. These have the most water and are definitely the healthiest choice to detox and live a healthy lifestyle.
2. Drink plenty of liquids, including quality spring or purified (rather than tap) water, natural fruit and vegetable juices, and herbal teas rich in antioxidants.
3. Never drink sodas or chemical-based drinks of any kind. They poison the system, making your body sluggish and more toxic. Even worse than sugar-based drinks, or the ones filled with artificial saccharin or nutriaand. Avoid ones that are sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup.
4. Fish and poultry are OK in moderation.
5. Red meats are meant to be eaten in very moderate amounts. If you look around the planet, you will notice that in areas where red meat is the dominant food, life expectancy is shorter.
Exercise!
For our lymph system to do its job of detoxing most effectively, we need to activate and cleanse it with exercise and movement. Unlike blood, which has our heart to pump blood throughout our system, our lymph system has no such device. Hence, it is through movement and exercise that we detox and eliminate toxins from the lymph system. Generally, just a half hour of leisurely walking in the morning, after lunch, and in the evening will do the job. If this is too much to start with, try once each day and gradually build up to twice and hopefully three times each day to see maximum benefits.
Running and jogging are not recommended here and are not necessary for a good detoxing program. Proper breath is our greatest source of strength and best ally for detoxing our system. Keeping the breath nice and even during your walks will do the trick. If you want to be more adventurous, try yoga, chi quong, martial arts, or any low- impact aerobics exercise that does not leave you winded are all excellent for health on a daily basis.
Throughout this book, I have shared with you some of the breathing exercises that we at Morrocco Method International practice and recommend to our clients. Here, we want to share with you the greatest breathing exercise you can do. It is quite basic and simple.
The Breathing Exercise:
The formula is a ratio of 1 count breathing in, 4 counts for holding, and 2 counts for breathing out. For example, you can breathe in for a count of 5, hold the breath for a count of 20, and then breathe out for a count of 10. If this is done three times per day, this exercise alone is scientifically proven to be the most beneficial and healthy detoxing method known to man. So, when you wake up in the morning, sit up straight and breathe in for a count that is comfortable for you to start?say 4 seconds. Then hold for 16 seconds, and breathe out for a count of 8 seconds. Mid-day or after work, repeat this process. Finally, just before going to bed, repeat this simple breathing technique. Do this three times a day in sessions of 3 to 10.
HairRevolution and Detoxing
With these factors in place, we return now to what we ingest through our skin and hair. To elaborate more fully, anything that we apply to our skin and scalp will be ingested through our pores, enter our blood stream, and travel throughout the entire body. Our body and hair care products can, therefore, also aid in detoxing by not only adding healthy nutrients for our body to ingest, but also by cleansing and keep our skin and hair health so that they can also aid in the overall detox process. We guarantee that ALL of our MorroccoMethod International products do just that!
On the other hand, when you use hair and skin care products like shampoos, styling gels, cosmetics, and deodorants that contain manufactured chemicals, or put your hair through damaging chemical processes like dying, bleaching, perming, or straightening, a huge amount of toxins settle into your glands over time. And when our bodies can no longer naturally detox these chemicals, toxins, and wastes from our glands, the build-up will lead to stagnation, putrification, and eventually life-threatening diseases, as carcinogens and other toxic waste compromise your immune system and causes collapses in health. Now that you know how important it is to detox and avoid toxic chemicals as much as you can, I invite you to take a look at how Morrocco Method International products work to keep your system cleansed and healthy.
Hair and Skin Products
In HairRevolution, the purpose of using Morrocco Method shampoos and conditioners based on the Five Elements is to aid the body in not ingesting the same ingredient day in and day out. If you use the same shampoo for years, your body will develop an immune reaction to it and compromise your ability to detox properly. This is why I recommend alternating shampoos that have botanicals associated with Fire, Earth, Air, Water and Chi or Ether elements. The constant change allows the body to ingest the healthy nutrients of the Five Elements while also being cleansed. The more we aid our detoxing system, instead of taxing it, the more we create natural, healthy ways to eliminate toxins.
Zen Detox A Deeper Way to Detoxify Your Crowning Glory
Detoxing as described above is a normal, healthy, every day way in which your body casts off what it cannot use or does not need. But depending how far down the road you have gone eating poorly and using toxic body and hair products, a switch over to healthier products might not be enough to do the job alone.You might need to go a litte bit deeper and amp up your detoxing efforts with a more rigorous and powerful detox plan. As one of my passions is Ayurveda, I would like to further explain these points from an Ayurvedic point of view.
Experts in the deep healing tradition of Tibetan Ayurveda, explains that there are four levels of healing in this powerful version of traditional Ayurveda. These levels have to do with greater and lesser levels of how to address any physical, mental, or emotional condition we face. Just like I have outlined above, The first and most important level of treatment has to do with lifestyle changes: proper diet, exercise, relaxation, and hygiene. If we make the effort to live a lifestyle based on the five elements, 95% of all of our problems would just go away. It is as simple as that.
So for our hair, the proper nutrition we ingest, the proper products we cleanse with and the various exercises we give it and our scalp by massaging and brushing can do quite a lot to return our Crowning Glory to its natural, vibrant, luxurious state. Conversely, if we eat processed and toxic foods, and lather all kinds of poisonous chemicals onto our heads, why wouldn`t we expect our hair to thin, frizz, develop split ends, and look dull and lifeless.
When these conditions occur, returning to proper diet and using all-natural, organic hair care products daily won`t work alone. Years of abuse have taken their toll. We cannot expect quick or overnight results. This is where a deeper level of detoxification, the second level Tibetan Ayurvedic healing comes in. And this more rigorous detoxification is the deeper work that is needed in our HairRevolution if we are to ever regain the vibrant, lustrous head of hair and scalp we all can achieve.
There are a number of books on nutrition that will convince you to change your diet in the direction I suggest at the start of this chapter. My suggestion is that you look on books that espouse a more vegan or vegetarian diet. Seek out books on raw food, Macrobiotic, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) diets and Ayurveda. All of these systems have daily nourishment and detox programs when it comes to your eating habits.
Stay tuned for part 3 when you will learn about the importance of daily brushing and massagin of the scalp.