5 Detoxification Techniques to Enhance Mental, Emotional and Physical Health

The only cost you pay is a few minutes a day.

My doctor was examining my injured knees and was shocked at what he saw. He tried to dislocate my knee, a common technique to check for ligament injuries. I didn’t shriek in pain as he expected me to. Since my ligaments have degenerated in both my knees because of an accident, I should face difficulties in an activity as simple as walking, which I don’t. All because I have never given this injury enough attention or worry and write every day in my gratitude journal how grateful I am to my good health.

This intrigued my interest in the mind and body relationship, specifically the role our mind plays to heal our body. A lot of our physical pain results from emotions that manifest in various parts of our body.

Studies prove that increased stress is directly linked to physical pains such as headaches, acne, insomnia, digestive issues, blood pressure, and chronic pain amongst others.

Reading self-help makes us feel like life is supposed to be perfect and we should all end up fine. But the reality is far from this. We go through a plethora of stressful situations that make us feel anything but always happy.

We stress about school, relationships, work, and everything in between. Social media is a constant reminder of what’s not right in our life. And if none of this happens, then we have our monkey mind to deal with. It’s always jumping from one thought to another.

When I read The Wellness Sense by Om Swami, it stunned me about the amount of control our mind has over our body. If the mind has the power to give us pain, it also has the power to heal us. He lists techniques that you can do in the comfort of your room and require 5–10 minutes of your time, and in turn, detoxifies your body and mind.

Visualisation for Physical Health

Swami claims that visualisation has the power to treat, repair, heal, and even destroy cells. This is because the human body has 6 trillion living cells with energy — proton, neutron, and electron. Visualisation and empower and disempower our cells.

How to practice this

1. Sit cross-legged with your back straight
2. Take a few deep breaths
3. Visualise a ray of sunlight shining on you. Try to imagine warmth.
4. Visualise the sunlight making all cells in your body illuminate in white.
5. Visualise the cells around your ailment in red (e.g. if you have a cold, you will take my nose as the red area).
6. Visualise the sunlight purifying these cells red with its warmth, healing them.
7. Slowly see the red cells turn to white.

Visualisation is a great technique to not just get rid of physical ailments but also negative baggage of the past.

The Yogic Method to Erase Psychic Imprints

Think of the time you were quiet. What was your mind like? Did it go on a roller-coaster ride about the past and made you overthink? Did you think of a particular personal incident? The memories that our experiences leave are known as psychic imprints. Swami recommends that the easiest way to get rid of negative imprints is to replace them with positive images.

This method helps you get away from the negative experiences of your past. The foundation for this practice will be sitting still, concentration and visualisation.

How to practice this

1. Sit cross-legged with your back straight. Do deep breathing for a few minutes.
2. Recall a person or an incident that caused you grief.
3. Imagine releasing white light from the middle of your chest, also known as your heart chakra. This light is warm and is the light of compassion and forgiveness.
4. If this is a situation where you feel guilty, give this white light to yourself to forgive.
5. Try not to dwell in the negative thoughts, focussing on the light will help with this.
6. Clean those images you see and visualise yourself happy and smiling.
7. Take a few deep breaths before you end this practice.

This practice intends to forgive with compassion so you can get rid of the emotional baggage you’re carrying. You won’t feel supercharged in one day but stay at it, as most yogic practices take 28 days to show results and 6 months to be mastered

Intellectual Method to Erase Psychic Imprints

I’m guilty of this one. Sometimes I sit still and replay some moments from my life in my head. Then I think of what happened and what could have been done differently. Post that, I think of how different life would have been today had I taken different steps. Do you catch yourself overthinking about something similar?

“The mind tries to feel hate, anger, rejection, and failure to stay stimulated.”

— Om Swami

Here’s a technique to help you deal with painful thoughts from the past. You need a mirror or a voice recorder for this.

How to practice this

1. Stand in front of the mirror/ put on your voice recorder.
2. Recall the incident from the past.
3. Talk in detail about it. The smallest of details such as the colour of your clothes, what you ate that day — everything you can remember.
4. You may get triggered emotionally while recalling painful memories, but be brave and go on.
5. Take a few deep breaths to end it.

You need to do this 15–20 times for these memories to disappear, forever. As you talk every day, you will recall more details. The devil is in these details as these are your repressed thoughts. Keep talking. After doing this several times, you will heal.

Witness Meditation for Mental Health

An average human brain goes through approximately 60,000 thoughts per day. These thoughts also influence how we react to situations. Our response when we think of happy thoughts versus negative thoughts will be different even in the same situation. When our thoughts are not suppressed, they can support us. But if we suppress them, we become more reactive in nature.

Witness meditation is the simple method of learning not to react with your thoughts.

How to practice this

1. Sit cross-legged with your back straight. Take a few deep breaths.
2. Think of yourself, not as a doer but a witness.
3. Watch your thoughts. Do not accept, reject, or pursue them. Simply watch them.
4. Become a third party to your thoughts and stay indifferent while you observe what you think.

After this consistent practice, your thoughts will slow down. External scenarios only have the ability to trigger you internally when you don’t have control over your thoughts. When you witness your thoughts, you become less reactive. This helps you stay calm and stress-free.

Mindfulness Journal for Emotional Health

Whether you’re keeping a journal or writing as a meditation, it’s the same thing. What’s important is you’re having a relationship with your mind. — Natalie Goldberg

There is good and bad in all of us. Sometimes you want to say a nasty statement out of anger, but a part of you holds back because you’ll hurt the person you care about. Being mindful helps with our flow of thoughts so we don’t pursue negative emotions or events. It helps us choose a preferred response instead of an automatic response (e.g. yelling when angry).

How to practice this

Whenever you feel low, angry, or upset, keeping a journal about it helps. After an uneventful incident, write about the following things in your journal.

1. Episode: What happened? Put it in detail.
2. Cause: How did it start?
3. Degree: To what extent did the negative event empower you? If you did something you regret, make a note of that.
4. Future: If a similar situation arrives in the future, how will you react differently?

Writing a journal helps analyse, understand, and shape yourself better. Studies show that journaling has been found to boost your mood, reduce symptoms of depression and nervousness about an event (e.g. exams), reduce the negative emotions felt after undergoing traumatic experiences and can help improve your memory.

Takeaways

“If you do not lose a sense of the present moment, if you remain in control of your inner peace — nothing can provoke you.”

— Om Swami

Your thoughts have a significant impact on your mental and emotional health. Managing your thoughts helps you take control of your mind instead of the other way round. Repressed negative thoughts and events also manifest in the body and can cause physical and mental ailments, which is why we need to confront them.

To detox your mind and improve your mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing, use the following techniques:

1. Visualisation for physical health
2. The yogic method to erase psychic imprints
3. Intellectual method to erase psychic imprints
4. Witness meditation for mental health
5. Mindfulness journal for emotional health