Mistress of Master Cleanse - Day 4

What a difference a day makes! I feel so much better today....still a little achy and snotty, but I have definitely turned a corner. I snapped the above pic this morning-- pleased to see that my usual morning "puffiness" has subsided substantially! My skin feels smooth and everything feels a little tighter and tinier.

I did a lot of thinking about yesterday's post concerning "letting go" and began meditating before bed and then again in the morning-- basically having a little convo with my body. It goes something like this:

Dear Body,

You have been my vessel of strength and stability for the last 36 years....You have healed broken bones; you have repaired the damage I have inflicted on you with years of wear, tear and abuse; you have brought me to the finish line of marathons; you have helped me stay in motion and have also taught me stillness; you have filled me with the endorphins of natural ecstasies that inspire me and flushed me of toxins that sicken me; you have renewed my spirit with energy and purpose....I give you permission to let go of negative energy, to shed the skin of excess and impulse. For all of this, I will embrace you, honor you and love you with healthy choices to the best of my ability.

I don't know whether it was a truce that me and the Bod came to or simply the cleanse catching up to me, but this morning I had a renewed sense of strength and vitality. When I got on the scale, a total of 5.2 pounds were gone! I was especially surprised since I went to bed last night without the salt water flush-- and the laxative tea didn't do anything except wake me up with cramps at 3am. No elimination, but still significant weight loss.

A lovely girl on one of the TAM Facebook pages has a blog that I just discovered-- and she writes about the power of connection and positive/negative energy as it relates to our bodies. Here is a paragraph from Sam's blog, writing about a spiritual guru named Babaji's philosophy:

Scientific studies have shown that every cell of the human body has 8 gigabytes of memory and we have 20 trillion cells in the human body. Babaji says that every time was think something negative - about yourself, friend or family member or even a bad childhood memory; sub-consciously we are storing the negative energy of the memory in our cells and when the negative energy is high enough, it manifests in our body as a disease. To me, this is fascinating-the mind-body relationship and just how our body is constantly listening to our mind. Of course we all know about placebo. Scientist are constantly blown away by the mind’s ability to heal itself just by believing it's getting the right treatment. ShivYog takes it a step further. It says we can heal ourself by believing we can.

How many times have we held in negative emotions only to have them erupt in a way that makes us physically sick or poisons our personalities for a period of time? How many times have we stood in front of the mirror and cursed our beautiful bodies for not being thin enough, toned enough, perfect enough? Sometimes I wonder if the healing truly begins when we reach a level of peace with our physicality....

Today for work I had to cover a press conference where they were serving a huge luncheon-- the smells of the food didn't necessarily make me want to eat something, but it got my tummy rumbling again. The good thing about the lemonade mix is that it usually puts the kibosh on the hunger pretty quickly. The best part of the day was the 15 minute massage I got as part of our fundraising drive-- all employees and volunteers got a free massage-- my achy body sooo needed it!

I found a great description of Day 4 on a Master Cleanse site:

Day 4 may bring a clearing on several fronts. Often, you begin to get over the physical symptoms of what people call “Healing Events” (although they are reported to come throughout the cleanse, at any time). You may also get over the psychological need for food (although you do often feel a little tweak of “want”, not of “need”). The psychological “need” for food isn’t always a centered thought. We think we need the worst kinds of foods. We are socially conditioned to think “I need meat”, or “Three squares per day”. These ideas are artifacts from old concepts we can now disprove to some degree or another.

Perhaps the greatest benefit from the Master Cleanse is the new-found recognition that you don’t have to stuff yourself. Or that a big, beautiful piece of broccoli can sustain like a nice breast of chicken. The social adaptation we have made to meat can be replaced with a new norm, a new paradigm.

I've been thinking a lot about my diet post-cleanse. The best part of the Master Cleanse is that it reformats your dietary hard drive. All of those bad cravings for fried, rich, fat-filled foods literally disappear! Today I have been thinking about this delicious mix I have for fresh baked gluten-free bread, roasted brussel sprouts (seriously!) and a chocolate banana smoothie!

I'm considering giving up meat for a while after the cleanse and permanently eliminating coffee from my daily routine. I'm convinced that the creamer I use is making me fat! (International Delights Irish Cream-- prolly not the best choice, eh?!) I have a new juicer that I haven't ever used, so that will definitely move into the regular rotation. I juiced some kale, apple, ginger and lemon a couple months ago--- it was amazing. The work that went into the actual juicing and the clean up was a pain in the butt, but so worth it. Why not swap out coffee for green juice?? Even JP seems on board!

More on diet ideas tomorrow...

Thanks for listening to my long diatribe today!

xxoo