With the new normal of social claustrophobia and anxiety and a need to ‘boost your immune system’, many people will be looking for healing. Many people come on Yoga and Detox retreats hoping for miraculous healing. And indeed many are looking for the quickest, most effective and cheapest approach with the least amount of personal demands. As a consequence, there is a dilution of some of our deepest original philosophies of life and of the life of the mind. Yoga and Ayurveda are such systems of thought which are in so many ways about taking responsibility for our own minds and not expecting salvation from the outside. The salvation must come from within.

Meditation is the management of the mind. It seeks to gently over time refine the mind. This can only happen over time through the wisdom of experience. If we can understand the mind as an entity which is capable of being observed through awareness and shaped through practice we will be able to discard what is unnecessary for our forward movement. It is the attachment to thoughts that bring about an unwanted experience. In this way we can understand that ‘healing’ is not our greatest need but rather a learning of how to digest our thoughts and emotions and how to direct them towards greater peace and prosperity.

“Ahara”, meaning food in Ayurveda is understood far more broadly as being anything that you ingest with your six senses. The mind in Ayurveda is considered a sense organ just like the eyes, ears, nose, mouth and skin. And just as anything you eat needs to be digested into easily assimilated nutrients, delivered to your tissues and cells and the waste eliminated, so too must the ‘food’ taken in with your mind (your thoughts and emotions) be digested, assimilated and eliminated. And, just as our physical diet must contain suitable foods for our body to digest, assimilate and heal, so must our mental diet. If we repeatedly pollute the mental atmosphere with ‘wrong’ thinking, then is it any wonder that healing becomes necessary?

The journey towards true and authentic healing and ultimately wholeness is a multifaceted journey. On the one hand, the body is able to recover from just about any ailment once a light is shone on the problem and the correct steps have been taken to heal. And, on the other hand, once we shine a light on what it is exactly that we are both feeling and thinking, we will be able to see not only the effects on our physical body, but we will be able to see the effects on our day to day reality. We will be able to see how we are the architects of our own life and how others are the architects of theirs and how we interact with one another based on these unseen aspects of ourselves. It is we ourselves who create various disorders in our bodies, emotional, psychological, mental and spiritual selves. And this is important because without prescribing a too austere life where no fun is to be had at all, we need to look at our whole life. Where we might be ‘consuming’ unhealthy ‘foods’. What are our day to day practices? What films are we watching, what conversations are we engaging in? Do we have toxic thoughts?

A good start is a cleanse so that your body can itself remove physical disturbances created by incorrect eating and then as the body becomes more whole, one can become more in tune with the awareness within. It is impossible to separate our mind from our body be that emotional or psychological so when we heal one aspect, we begin to heal the other aspects. The deeper disturbances created by incorrect thoughts and feelings can then be observed and rerouted. We are constantly creating or re-enforcing neural pathways through our thinking and feelings and we have become unaware of the patterns that are playing out in our lives. The moment we are aware of our patterns, is the moment that we can create new neural pathways and therefore begin the journey of bringing new and more conscious experiences into our lives.

It is our lifestyle which we constantly pay attention to that ultimately heals. Therefore, an overall system that incorporates exercise such as yoga and Pilates, breathing practices, relaxation, mental cultivation to include meditation, a healthy environment and positive relationships, is the ideal way for change to happen. We may not need to heal so much through difficult times, but perhaps we can, through the practise of a healthy lifestyle, develop spiritual strength to remain calm, centred and alert, bringing the deeper insights into our waking life. This is where a Deep Cleansing Juice Detox Retreat would come very much in handy as this is where the transformation begins.