Thankfully, it’s almost that time of year. Time to bid a fond farewell to the remaining short, cold, grey days of winter and fully embrace the most anticipated season of the year, spring. The time of rebirth and renewal, when nature blossoms and grows with inspiring visual beauty and fine fresh fragrance - is just around the corner.
Sunny days, a bundle of daffodils, open windows and the return of the corner farmers market will soon replace thick down coats, dry air and heavy wintertime foods. Often, these are the foods that have given us comfort over the past months – filling our homes with savory scents and our bodies with hearty goodness. But the season of hibernation is coming to a close, naturally making it the perfect time to prepare our bodies and our minds for a fresh start.
One of the best ways to accomplish this is by introducing cleansing foods - healthy nourishment, into your daily diet to re-charge and to repair. Cleansing helps flush out unwelcome toxins our bodies have stored over time, leaving us feeling lighter, energized and more vibrant.
Here are 5 ideas to get you started:
1) Green Veggie Juicing: A great way to flood your cells with the vitamins and nutrients your body loves, and craves. A combo of spinach, kale, celery, green apple and ginger will get you hooked.
2) Gentle Cleansing: Give your body a rest from processed, refined and fatty foods. Whether you choose herbal teas, nourishing broths, light raw foods or veggie juices, you’re giving your overworked digestive system a much-needed break.
3) Balance: Ayurvedic medicine tells us that spring is a time to alkalize our bodies, suggesting bitter foods and herbs such as rhubarb, bitter melon, Romaine lettuce, spinach, chard and fresh Turmeric root. Enjoyable as well as medicinally effective, these foods will help to clear out problematic allergy-creating mucus.
4) Chlorophyll-Rich Foods: Healthy greens such as parsley, cabbage, sea veggies, asparagus and turnip greens will help fertilize our intestinal tract, cleanse our liver and combat a disease-causing, overly-acidic, internal environment.
5) Herbal Teas: Satisfying and gently cleansing ginger, stinging nettle and lemon teas are good choices this time of year. Ayurvedic practice suggests sipping potassium-rich dandelion root tea will help us gently cleanse our body’s lymphatic system.
In The Yoga of Eating: Transcending Diets and Dogma to Nourish the Natural Self, Charles Eisenstein writes: “…the greatest challenges and benefits of fasting are psycho-spiritual. Fasting has dimensions far beyond what we usually label the physical, and it cleanses more than just the body. Because eating is such a convenient distraction, fasting puts us face to face with ourselves…Fasting is a meditation of the body.”
Whatever you decide, enjoy the opportunity spring gives you to begin anew.
More information can be found about Cherie at www.cherielester.com or at www.facebook.com/cherielesterhealing .
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