Originally published in the Summer + Fall 2017 issue.
As a yogi, I find myself falling deeper and deeper down a rabbit hole of health and wellness along a path to expand my consciousness …
One day, while filming myself administering a coffee enema, I realized that I’d gone so far down this path that yoga— as weird as it may seem to some — was now one of the most normal aspects of my day.
“Too much information for me,” said my mom, and some others, when I posted the video on YouTube.
Guts gurgling in a supported bridge pose, I looked back to reflect on a number of attempts to clear the clutter from my physical being. Some were more successful than others — several short-lived stints of vegetarianism, and a seeming lifelong struggle with sobriety to name just a couple practices that have, as yet, notstuck with me.
Those were the aspects of tidying up that I was not yet ready for.
“Thanks for posting that!” said those who were ready for the enema information.
Think of that room or drawer in your house — or relationship in your life, for that matter — that you bristle at the thought of changing because it’s just not time. If you try to will yourself to address it, the chances that any sustained change you are able to eke out will be quote low.
The first step is getting still, clear enough to know what the right first step is for you.
No guru can do your work for you.
It may not be an enema of green coffee. For you, it might be a regular pranayama practice, or a gratitude journal, or substituting stevia for sugar — or whiskey — in your morning coffee.
Whether from the outside-in, or the inside-out, and from as many different directions as there are people on this planet, we start to tidy up a path. No matter where it originates, that path leads us deeper into the unknown and, in it, a peek at our pure presence. When we use a mindful health practice to tend to the physical, it calms the exterior so that we might plumb the as yet unknown depths of what’s inside of us.
I think we’re drawn to explore these practices because they start to clean us up — they “Polish the mirror so we can see clearer,” as Trevor Hall sings.
By firming our foundation, it necessarily motivates us to new heights.
When you’ve spent the morning drinking bone broth, juicing and shooting green coffee up your butt, it invites you to think twice about those habits that will take you back against the positive grain you’ve established for the day — perhaps a bit more mindful, and reciprocally less likely, about pouring booze in my belly or popping pills into my mouth later that night.
Eventually we’ve made enough of an investment in ourselves that we don’t want to defile our body-mind with unproductive choices. Naturally we start to expand on our own initial explorations of a path prescribed by others who have gone before us — non-harming, non-stealing, non-lusting, etc. Not because someoneor some book says we “should,” but because we genuinely desire to change for our own sake.
When that time comes the practices become naturally sustaining, buoying us up, accepting and ready to take the next natural step, prepared for the next challenge that awaits us.
What exploration are you prepared for, yogis?
Justin Kaliszewski is the founder of Outlaw Yoga — www.outlawyoga.com.
For more information on the health benefits of coffee enemas and juicing watch “The Beautiful Truth”, or visit www.gerson.org.
Photo by KBenfield Photography.
Justin Kaliszewski is an award-winning artist, avid adventurer, and the renowned creator and co-founder of OUTLAW Yoga. Justin is the author of “The Outlaw Protocol – how to live as an outlaw without becoming a criminal,” and the children’s picture book “The Adventures of Babu – from there to here.” He creates connection by delivering transformational yoga experiences across the country, and at the Outlaw Yoga Littleton studio. www.justinkaliszewski.com
