Recap of Week 1
Congratulations! The first week tends to be the hardest week of this cleanse and you have made it through intact. Take a moment to celebrate this success. Then take a deep breath and move your focus to the upcoming week. If you slipped up a bit during the first week, don’t dwell on this or use it as an excuse to discard the entire plan. Take this moment to recommit yourself to this cleanse. Remind yourself of all of the reasons why you signed up in the first place and write them all down-or, if you’ve already drawn up a contract with yourself per last week’s homework assignment, be sure to reread it.
If you haven’t already, take the time to visit the discussion forum in our Virtual Living Room and connect with the energy of the group. That’s where you can also access last week’s recorded calls. The following weeks will get easier physically; but mentally and emotionally we will need to continue to dig deep within ourselves to stay the course. The power of the group will help carry you through when the cleanse seems too difficult-so make sure you are tapping into and contributing to this energy on a consistent basis!
Before the first week of the cleanse, we discussed the importance of “discovering your power.” You probably had many opportunities to exercise your inner power muscles last week-by creating and implementing strategies for enduring the cravings you felt during the day, staying the course through uncomfortable detoxification symptoms, saying no to non-life-generating activities, and reaffirming your commitment when faced with temptations. As with a muscle in the body, the more you exercise your inner power, the stronger it will become. Cultivating your power in this way will bring many gifts-inspired thoughts and actions, confidence, vitality, joy, inner peace, and a magnetic attraction to people, environments, and experiences that serve your highest good.
Cultivating Your Power
Now that you recognize the power within you, begin putting your awareness into action by cultivating your power. In order to do this, you first need to recognize what helps you gain or lose power. Thoughts, actions, conversations, stories you tell yourself, the way you think and speak about others, the way you interface with the living world, the foods you eat, even the style of clothes you wear-all of these things carry an energy that affects your inner power. All of these things can either generate or deplete your power, open up or limit your life experience, depending on the turns they take.
An easy way to determine whether something you are doing, saying, or thinking is leeching or building your power is to pay attention to the way it makes you feel. How do you feel after having a negative conversation about a colleague or a family member? Is there an initial surge of energy and then a noticeable drop, similar to the way a candy bar or a cup of coffee might make you feel? Conversely, how do you feel when you offer someone a sincere compliment or take a moment to notice a beautiful sunset? How do you feel when you make a commitment to someone (or yourself) and fulfill it? Positive thoughts and actions will make you feel good, even powerful. But even their effects can be fleeting if they are not practiced frequently and with clear intention. With practice, the surge of power that comes with positive thoughts, words, and actions will feel deeper and last longer.
To begin cultivating your power, pay attention to the interactions, situations, conversations, and thoughts that you are engaging in on a daily basis. Every thought, word, and action is either helping you to build or drain your inner power. When it comes to energy, there is no such thing as neutral-only life-enhancing or life-deteriorating-so pay attention to the net result of all of your interactions with yourself and others. Use the 30 days of this cleanse to begin consciously engaging in situations that help you to cultivate your power and disengaging from situations that deplete it.
The Alkaline Reserve
By abstaining from acidic, energy-draining foods all day and flooding your body with alkalinity, you are building what is known as your “alkaline reserve.” You can think of your alkaline reserve as a bank account. Everything alkaline that you put into your body adds to your account and everything acidic takes away from it. This alkaline reserve exists on a biochemical, molecular level, and your body will tap into it when it finds itself in stressful situations.
You want to keep your alkaline reserve extremely strong and healthy, and in undertaking this cleanse, you are effectively investing in your alkalinity. Each day, you can ask yourself, Where is my alkaline reserve right now? Based on your answer, you can make adjustments. If you have slipped up and eaten something acidic, you can commit to eating an all-raw salad for dinner. Or if you find yourself in a stressful environment, you can consciously remove yourself from it and take some time for deep breathing or meditation. Or if you’ve spent most of your day in front of the computer screen under fluorescent lighting, you can make the decision to go for a nature walk and eschew all electronic gadgets for the rest of the day. Every moment of this cleanse is an opportunity to recover and build up your alkaline reserve.
Setting Boundaries
To protect your inner power, you need to set healthy boundaries and install a good, peaceful warrior at the gate. Your inner power and alkaline reserve are essential to your vitality and quality of life-and certainly well worth protecting with a gentle ferociousness! During this second week, and throughout the rest of the cleanse, you should feel yourself getting stronger and stronger every day. As you feel your power surge, use that momentum to make decisions in favor of greater strength, joy, and peace. Sometimes the need to enforce boundaries requires making tough decisions, but standing up for what is truly important for your health and well-being will always pay off in the long run-for all parties involved!
What’s Happening in Your Body During Week 2
You should be feeling much better this week. Detox symptoms that may have been prevalent in the first week should be yielding to positive results. Throughout this second week, you will probably notice the following:
- Your daily schedule feels more normal and stable. The cleansing rhythm of juicing until dinner may even start to feel really good to you.
- You are feeling tighter and leaner as your body is releasing waste from your cells.
- Your sleep may have been a bit off during the first week, but the quality of your sleep is improving.
- Simple, clean foods are tasting better and better. This is because your palate is reawakening to its natural state.
- As you are removing obstructions from your body, you are able to breathe more deeply and calmly.
If you’re not seeing weight loss at this point, it can be a sign that your body is actually using the new burst of life force energy it is receiving to repair and regenerate vital organs before it begins releasing waste from your body. Or, if you haven’t had adequate bowel cleansing, you may be holding the waste and hydration-which may actually tip the scale in the wrong direction! This, of course, is easily remedied by a well-administered colonic.
If your body is simply too busy repairing the vital organs to be releasing waste, it is a good thing. Don’t let the absence of immediate results on the scale discourage you from continuing the cleanse. Rest assured that when your body recovers its equilibrium, weight loss will come. What is important is that you not give up at this point. Do not allow the thought Maybe my body is just different and not responding to this cleanse to take root in your mind. Differences between individuals do occur, but only in the details. For example, some people find they do better with more fish and less starch, or vice versa, but removing waste for better health works for everyone. This is not the time to stop and question whether or not it is working for you-a week is not long enough to determine whether the weight is going to come off. Just keep at it and allow your body to do its work. Typically, a small percentage of cleansers do not lose weight in the early days or even weeks, but those who stick with the cleanse ultimately do. Weight loss is just around the corner, but you will never experience it if you resign now. Your body is hard at work, and we encourage you to honor it-and yourself, for creating the perfect environment for it to self-cleanse. Notice the positive changes you are experiencing and trust that weight loss will come as the body moves waste out of its system.
It is very important that you remain focused and alert throughout this week. After the novelty of the first week, avoid the boredom trap of subsequent weeks by staying connected with your peers in our Virtual Living Room discussion forum and revisiting the contract you made with yourself. This is the time to stay the course and continue learning, growing, and paying close attention to all of the changes that are happening within your body.
Practical Considerations This Week
It is important that you are as prepared for this week as you were for last week. Use the Pre-Cleanse Preparation Guide to make your shopping list and do your shopping ahead of time. Freeze soups and broths if that is helpful for you, and order anything in advance that you may need. Book your appointments for colonics (or plan when you will be able to do your enemas) and consider how you will fit your physical activity, sauna, and/or meditation in with this week’s schedule.
Also, use last week’s experience to make adjustments this week. Are you finding that you need food earlier in the day and sometimes get into an eating frenzy because you waited too long to eat? If this is the case, pack a bag of olives, cherry tomatoes, and carrots for the drive home from work or while picking up the kids. If you are meeting friends for drinks and know that a glass of wine will probably stoke your appetite, bring veggie snacks with you that will help you avoid the temptation to dig into the bread basket. Anticipate your appetites and cravings in various social settings and don’t be shy about whipping out your carrots, olives, or other cleanse-friendly snacks when the moment calls for it. Or just order a salad at the bar. Do whatever it takes to ensure your success in any situation.
Lifestyle Considerations
You may not be accustomed to focusing this much energy, attention, and resources on yourself, and therefore you may find aspects of this cleanse to be self-indulgent. If this is true of you, it’s especially important to understand that this is the level of care required for all of us to maintain vibrant health throughout our lifetimes. At first, it will feel new and require extra effort, but the goal is to incorporate these self-care strategies into the very fabric of your life, so that eventually they will become second nature to you.
You may be spending more of your food budget on organic produce, juices, and colonics than you’re accustomed to, but consider this: What is the best use of your budget? While you may be spending more on quality produce for juicing and raw salads, you are spending less by not eating lunch every day, dining out at restaurants here and there, and buying products that are harmful to your body. Moreover, what you are spending money on will yield long-term benefits for your health, and thus you can expect to spend a lot less on doctors, medications, and surgeries in the future.
Or look at it this way: You’re giving yourself the most powerful cleansing spa experience without going to a spa. There is no spa resort in the world that is more restorative than what we are doing right here-awakening and releasing all the obstruction that is blocking you from your achieving your goals. Right now, you are allocating time, energy, and resources directly to building your power, health, and long-term well-being. It’s impossible to overestimate the value of this!
Mental & Emotional Considerations
You will begin to see past the superficial layers of yourself and into the deeper workings of your body and your psyche. There is a concept called the ring-pass-not. This is the limit in spiritual, intellectual, or psychological power or consciousness beyond which an individual is unable to pass until he evokes from within the strength and the vision to carry himself over it. This limit is set by that individual’s own previous experiences and conditioning, and thus are illusions based on the past. For example, you may have a ring-pass-not around how fast and far you can run, or around how long you can go without eating dense, acidic foods. These ring-pass-nots are limits set by your perception of your own strength and ability. They refer to both tangible and intangible barriers, which are impassible only insofar as you accept them as such.
Use this week to figure out what your ring-pass-nots are and how you can begin to push against and beyond them. What limitations have you set in your life? What past experiences and conditions do they rest on, and how can you reset them now? This cleanse is about resetting patterns and breaking new ground in all aspects of your life.
Homework for Week 2
Commit to journaling every day this week write down your thoughts. Write about how you feel physically, mentally, and emotionally. How does all this compare to last week? Identify your ring-pass-nots and how you might start moving beyond them. You will be amazed to read these entries in the future, as your perspective will shift powerfully from week to week and cleanse to cleanse.