A week later the day for the long await Kriyas (yogic cleansing exercises) arrived. Seeing as the goal of all yoga teaching is how to concentrate the mind, how to discover its hidden facets, and how to awaken the inner spiritual faculties a serious of cleansing exercises assist nature in removing waste products....
There are six - nasal cleansing (Neti), abdominal churning (Nauli), upper digestive tract cleaning (Dhauti), colon cleansing (Basti), cleansing of the lungs (Kapalabhati) and steady gazing (Tratak).
As the entire class was doing the cleansing together thankfully we were giving Basti a miss (I made some life long friendships on the course but experience someone else's colon cleanse would be taking it a bit too far). We already practiced Kapalabhati and Tratak daily which left Neti, Nauli and Dhauti. I must admit this is the part of the course I had actually been dreading. You see Neti involved me inserting a catheter into my right nostril, right down and back through to my mouth. And that's not all....when I felt it on the back of my tongue I had to draw the catheter out through my mouth and then do the same again with the left nostril.
If you think that's gross then Dhauti is even better....I had to swallow a piece of gauze 3inches thick and 15 ft long. Dip it into tepid salt water. Place one end of the cloth into my mouth and begin to chew and swallow the line little by little. Then slowly take it out...along with all the phlegm with it. Eeewww. But that's not the end of the cleansing session. Dhauti has not one but two parts to it's cleansing process - the other being water purification of the stomach. I had to quickly drink 8 glasses of lukewarm salt water. Press my stomach with my left hand and put the fingers of my right hand down my throat and vomit the water back.
So picture, if you will, 170 people standing on the bank of a lake all basically throwing up at certain points as we pulled the gauze out of our stomachs, chucked up salt water and wiped snot from our noses...
The thing is I was pretty disappointed with it all. I couldn't throw up any salt water no mater how much I drank and I could only get the catheter up one nostril (due to my previous lifestyle choices) and I not as much phlegm came out with the gauze. Least not as much as I'd expected. You see I'd hoped to expel all of the impure elements in my body in one fail swoop. Not a little bit here, a little bit there. I was convinced there was more left to cleanse. There was no way my body only had that limited amount. I'd flippin abused it mentally and physically for years. If this was all that was left I would've carried on (joke).
It wasn't until about an hour later when I was seething with bitter disappointment at what was now a terrible cleansing performance - so much so that I went into full on self loathing mode - that it dawned on me maybe the cleanse had been more effective than I thought. And perhaps, just maybe, my expectations had been too high. Cue Meatloaf.
A few hours later, during the Bhagavad Gita and anatomy lectures, I was over come with tiredness. So much so I had to actually lie down on my yoga matt. Fully passed out. Then I had yoga and that's when the flood gates opened. So I left the class and watched the sun set and literally sobbed my heart out. For hours. Mani came over - I could barely see him through the tears and my puffy eyes (which now resembled the eyes of a heavy weight boxer after a match). He was really sweet. Told me I was release a lot of old stuff (clearly), probably from past lives (would make sense as I had no idea why I was crying and so sad) and it was all part of my spiritual journey. 'Aahh the rocky and unpredictable road of spirituality' I thought as I recalled Jesus being in the desert for 40 days. And there's me sobbing after a few cleansing techniques. Least I didn't have to go without food and water for 40 days while the devil banged on in my ear constantly!
Joking aside it was pretty intense experience. The thing is I wasn't alone. Thankfully I'd met some fantastic people on the course, we'd all really bonded so I sought solace with Marni, Anika, Helen, Harini, Jenna, Lindsay, Veronica, Kate, Giselle and Benny. The gang.. .all of which could fully appreciate where I was coming from having either gone through it themselves or were in the midst's of doing so.
The following day I felt pretty shaky - thankfully it was our day off for the week so I hung around the ashram, spoke to my family, drank chai and replied to emails....bit later on I was telling someone about what happened when they looked directly at my face and told me it had had opened up - so every cloud and all that....
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