Spring Cleaning – Digestive Cleansing [Episode #471]

Hi Beauties! We are a couple of weeks into spring, so I thought this is the perfect time to talk about spring cleaning. Not for your house but for your Body, which is our Second Cornerstone of Solluna.

I’m excited to be diving into this topic, because it’s the time of year when we start thinking about getting in shape for swimsuit season, maybe shedding a couple of excess pounds, or just resetting our bodies after eating more heavily during the winter months.

Regardless of our goals, spring cleaning for our bodies is rooted in digestive cleansing. So in this podcast we focus on how to best support and cleanse our digestive systems – hitting that reset button just in time for spring!

Topics Covered In Spring Cleaning – Digestive Cleansing

#1. My take on the term “cleanse” and “cleansing”

#2. Why spring is the perfect time to work on digestive cleansing

#3. How cleansing, digestion and absorption are all interconnected

#4. My tips for digestive cleansing

#5. How to safely do a “cleanse” to kickstart your body

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Other Podcasts you may enjoy!:

• Rising through the Darkness
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• Elevate Your Mind with Drew Canole
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Additional Research Resources:

• Insights into digestion and absorption of major nutrients in humans
• The slowing of gastric emptying by four strong acids and three weak acids
• The Effects of Alcohol on the Pancreas

Transcript:

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

Kimberly: Hey Beauties, hope your May is off to a great start. Welcome back for our Monday solocast episode where our topic today is Spring Cleaning – Digestive Cleansing. This is a really, really powerful time of the year to take advantage of the shift in collective energy. We’re moving out of the stagnation of winter, the heaviness of winter, into a mode where our bodies naturally want to become lighter and we tend to eat cleaner and to be more aware of what we’re putting into our bodies. Our theme this month in the Solluna Circle is about letting go. And that can happen on many levels emotionally, physically, within our bodies. We’re also of course in a very interesting time where we’re quarantined at home, so we can hopefully put a little bit more effort and more time and thought into our self care.

Kimberly: So I thought this was a really great topic to introduce right now, or if you’ve been with me for a while, it’s not necessarily an introduction, but to go deeper and to really highlight this very important aspect of self care right now. We know that if we go with the seasonal flow, if we’re able to do more spring cleansing and more digestive cleansing, we will be healthier. We will be more energetic, our immune systems will be stronger. We’ll have less foreign matter in our bodies, which is of course top of mind for a lot of us right now, and we’re just going to feel great.

Fan Of The Week

Kimberly: Before we dive in though, I want to give a quick shout out as always to our beloved fan of the week. This week, her name is Sarah H-J-D-B-F, and she writes, “I love listening to Kimberly every week. She helps to ground and inspire me daily. I know she was put on this earth to make it a better place and impact people’s lives. And for that I’m so grateful. I know I can count on her words each week and truly think this is one of the best podcasts out there. Lots of love, Sarah.”

Kimberly: Wow, Sarah, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. That certainly warms me to hear that. I am so grateful that we’re connected in this community, on this journey together. I feel we’re all put on this earth for a reason and I feel really blessed to be connected to you and to be connected to this community. So thank you so much sister and huge virtual hug wherever you happen to be. And also for you beauties, for me to read your wonderful words, to be shouted out as the fan of the week, please leave us a review on iTunes, which is free and easy. Can take a minute or so out of your day, can literally be one sentence.

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Kimberly: But it’s really more about the energy exchange and giving that to the show. I give you guys, I want to give you everything. I want to keep the show going and growing. And so, thank you so much in advance. We all know how important reviews are these days. And while you’re at it, you can also be sure to subscribe to our show and that way you don’t miss out on any of the Monday interview podcasts or solo-casts or any of the Thursday Q&A community segments as well.

Solocast

Kimberly: All that being said, let’s dive into our topic today. I think this is a great, great time right now, right here we are in spring 2020, spring cleansing and digestive cleansing as well. You really can’t separate the two as far as I’m concerned. When we’re talking about springtime, it really does start with our energy. It starts with our bodies. We want to lighten the load, which in turn will increase our energy and our circulation. We know the cleaner the blood, the less susceptible, first of all, our bodies are to foreign pathogens and viruses.

Kimberly: We know that there’s better circulation getting all around, giving us that glow, giving us that magnetic energy, giving us great hair and all these things that we want that are indicative of true wellness and true energy. And of course that magnetic energy that comes out through glowing eyes, through bright eyes, through just really having the energy to go after our dreams and our purpose. And again, lightness and not being weighed down by all the heaviness and all the toxins and wastes in our system is really, really supportive of all of these goals.

Kimberly: Of course, it’s getting warmer and then there’s the aspect of, some of us have… Been getting questions about people that are putting on weight right now because they’re home quarantined and they’re just snacking a lot. And there’s the practicality of wanting to feel fit in your body. I totally understand that. But again, when we’re… Everything’s so interconnected when we talk about the cornerstones: food, body, emotional wellbeing, and spiritual growth. They work together. So if we can be lighter in our bodies, it really does impact how we feel in our minds and how we feel emotionally and vice versa. I’ve worked with so many people, I’ve experienced it myself.

Kimberly: When we hold on, when we have heavier emotions, we tend to hold onto more weight. It tends to be much harder for us to let go of weight because fat is such a protective element. It’s in our nerves. It makes up part of the makeup structure of our actual nerves in our body in the myelin sheath. And we know that letting go is an energy that takes place physically and emotionally and reverberates through our beings.

Kimberly: So, the very practical things we can do, I want to get into all of it. And again, I want to direct you guys over to the Solluna Circle program over at mysolluna.com. Sounds like a tongue twister, but it’s our online program where we get into the cornerstones with the theme every month, and this month the theme is letting go. So it pairs very, very well with this topic if you’re interested in a meditation for helping you let go as well as emotional food-based and body-based elements around this theme. That’s where I would certainly direct you guys as well.

My take on the term “cleanse” and “cleansing”

Kimberly: So, there’s a lot of confusion first of all around the term cleansing. I think that there’s different ways to cleanse but some people get very confused about it. So I just want to start off by saying that our bodies are designed to naturally detox and to naturally cleanse. If we didn’t, then we would just accrue all this matter. It would compile and we would never be able to live quite frankly. So we are designed to let go of waste. But we live in a world now that there is extra pollution and man made matter and just a lot is coming at us, different chemicals and products. We’re exposed to a lot of different things.

Why spring is the perfect time to work on digestive cleansing

Kimberly: So, this is a great time of year especially to focus on the letting go aspect, the cleansing process, not just what we’re putting in. And this has been a part of my philosophy since the beginning when I started to really understand my body more because I was so hyper fixated on what to put in, all these different diets, what I should be eating, the minutia of different nutrients, and I wasn’t as focused on the letting go part. And that’s where I think there’s a lot of misconception and that’s where we can actually gain a lot of progress. That’s the part we haven’t been focused on as much.

Kimberly: Remember, we’re not just what we eat and what we put in, but what we don’t eat is very important and who we don’t allow around our space. So there’s healthy relationships, but it’s just as important that we don’t spend a lot of time with negative people, for instance. So there’s that dichotomy. There’s the building up, the nurturing part, and then there is the cleansing part as well. That is very, very important.

How cleansing, digestion and absorption are all interconnected

Kimberly: So there’s different… This word cleansing gets tossed around a lot. There’s a lot of different products you can buy. There’s a lot of different programs, some with different powders, some with… There’s so much out there and I think that some of them that promise rapid weight loss, some of them that can be based in certain things can actually overtax our system and don’t necessarily work in alignment with our natural biology.

Kimberly: There’s always a quick way to lose weight. There’s always something you can buy. And I think we need to be really discerning, especially in this time, especially in grounding in and connecting more with our bodies, which is what this time can really give us to cleanse in a way that is nourishing and not jarring to the body. Because the last thing we want to do in removing toxins is to just shock the body or weaken our adrenals. Our systems are going through so much right now just with dealing with being quarantined; extra fear and uncertainty in what’s going on with COVID.

Kimberly: I’m going to be talking about some specific nurturing ways to cleanse after we get through this intro. So remember that we’re coming out of winter and remember that our highest teacher I’ve always said is Mother Nature. So we want to go with this natural rhythm, like Solluna is the sun and the moon, the circadian rhythm that happens every day between waking up and getting ready for bed and the junctures between evening routine, morning routine to step into our day. There’s a really beautiful harmony that we can start to establish in our lives the more we get into a sacred rhythm.

Kimberly: And this, what I’m talking about with spring cleansing, is getting into the sacred rhythm of the year where it’s natural in winter to bulk up a bit because we need the warmth, we need protection. We’re inside, it’s darker, and it’s the natural time right now to harness the energy of spring to help release some of this congestion, some of the excess mucus that may have built up in our system to really help expel stress. Letting go is about also letting go of expectations and plans.

Kimberly: I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because I’m about to give birth in just a few weeks. Here in the month of May is when our baby is due. And I think about my first birth and how rigid I was looking back on it. I had very specific plans with my midwife and my doula and the birth alter and the tub and my hypnobabies course. Reading all the item-made books and just being very, very, again, rigid I think is the best word for how I was going to birth.

Kimberly: And even though the signs point to that perhaps not being the best plan. Bubby was two weeks late, he was about nine pounds. My pelvis is narrow. There was a risk of shoulder dystocia, which my midwife was very concerned with as was my backup doctor. I didn’t really want to open up to that. So there was a much more rigid perspective of it. And now letting go has become such a practice for me since that, since the traumatic birth, since losing my mom, since going through some really big life changes. I think it’s really important to be flexible and to allow things to peel off that don’t serve us anymore. Rigidity is one of those things that don’t serve us anymore.

Kimberly: So I’ll check in with you after this birth. My only goal, I will say this, is to have a safe, healthy birth. I’m not attached to a birth plan. I don’t have everything super planned out as I did last time. I’m going to go with the flow. I have my intention for that and that however it specifically shakes out, I’m completely open to whether that is another C-section, which is what happened last time. This baby is measuring very, very large again, and we’ll see what happens. I got on a little tangent there.

Kimberly: Speaking about sacred rhythms and this idea of letting go, it’s very, very healthy to let go of all the things that don’t serve us. From a physical standpoint, that means really helping our lymphatic system, which is responsible for removing toxins and waste, giving it some extra support right now so that we have a more pure system so that we’re able to, again, let our body’s natural intelligence, whether it’s with circulation and digestion and helping to build healthy new tissue, rejuvenate damaged cells, can really function at its highest level. And that’s what giving our bodies, which are already cleansing, giving that boost to cleansing can really do when we support it in a deeper way.

Kimberly: So, one of the things, I want to read a study here now from the Advances in Physiology Education, the Advances in Physiological… Oh my God, sorry guys. This is like a tongue twister. Advances in Physiology Education Journal. Reading it, my pregnancy brain is jumbling the words. But it talks about how important the way your body digests and breaks down food is to the absorption process. So, when we’re talking about cleansing, we want to take a step back for a moment and talk about how important it is that we’re actually absorbing and being most efficient with how we’re taking food into our body, energy into our body so we don’t accrue as much waste in the first place.

My tips for digestive cleansing

Kimberly: This is why it’s really important to, and we’re going to get into some specific things here now, but it’s about really chewing well, taking digestive enzymes, making sure that we are in a good emotional state when we are eating, making sure that we control our environment. Watching violent movies while we’re eating right before bed isn’t the best thing energetically. And so, just thinking about our systems and all our senses and how everything really does impact digestion and cleansing and absorption is something I just want to touch on a little bit because, again, it’s like what we put in, there’s nurturing and then there’s letting go and cleansing.

Kimberly: And then it just goes deeper and deeper. We have to cleanse less toxins out if we digest better, if we’re absorbing better in the first place and of course if we are eating less toxic food, if there’s less toxins in our environment. So it just kind of goes around and around and around. And these are all aspects that we want to really look into. So we look at it from a very intelligent, more holistic standpoint so we get the best results.

Kimberly: So now I want to give some practical tips on how to really boost your system this spring. We just… when was it? May 1st of course was belting on the Celtic calendar, and this is the midway point to summer solstice. I love hearing about some of these traditions in different cultures and different celebrations. Belting is said to be when the veil between the worlds is thinnest, between us and the natural world; the natural spirits and the fairies and the beings of the forest. Whereas Salween, which is November 1st, right after Halloween, is said to be where the veil is thinnest between us and the spirit world.

Kimberly: So now we’re talking about more of the earth energy, Mother Nature going deep into the earth and really finding our deep connection with her. And again, this is why it’s such an exciting time to be focusing on digestive cleansing and really feeling into our bodies at this moment. Let me keep it here. Sorry, I wanted to see if the lighting was a little bit better for you guys. There we are. So I am doing this as a video as well. You guys can check it out over an IGTV on my handles @_kimberlysnyder. Some of us like to learn from an auditory standpoint, which of course is the power of this podcast. If you also like visual, if you like seeing closed captioning, we’ll also have this for you over an IGTV so you can check it out there as well.

Kimberly: So back to practical tips. The first one is really, I just want to go back to basics for a moment with the way that we start the day, the way that we really execute our morning routine. This goes back to sacred rhythms; winter to spring to summer to fall. Also, the way we start the day when we emerge from sleep and we go into the day and then we come out of the day through dusk and nightfall and then we go back to sleep. So, if we think about these rhythms, we want to support digestion at the key points in these rhythms.

Kimberly: In the morning is a really important time where our bodies haven’t eaten since the night before. So, I always think about this when I wake up. Sometimes I’m very hungry, especially now because I’m so pregnant and I need calories. I actually need fuel in the morning. But I think about how important it is the first few things that we actually put into our body. So, this morning routine is something I’ve been talking about for a long time. It has to do with hot water with lemon and GGS and SBO probiotics.

Kimberly: This is really important because we’re adding that earth element. We’re adding vitamin C, we’re adding rejuvenation into our bodies, which is all the energy, the prana that we need to start enacting deeper cleansing. The hot water with lemon. This heat element, this Agni, this fire is really important. I don’t suggest, especially as a student of Ayurveda, starting the day with something cold. A cold smoothie first thing in your body is never something that I have taught. It’s not something I profess. I still have always said we want that hot water with lemon. We want the heat to get into our belly first.

Kimberly: And then what the smoothie does. And I do drink mine more closer to room temperature so I don’t use really cold water. I do use frozen fruit, which is practical right now from a food storage perspective. But I definitely let it warm closer up to room temperature before I drink it. So I’ll put it out first thing. And sometimes if it’s still too cold for me, honestly I’ll eat a banana or I’ll have a bowl of berries until the smoothie feels good to me. I’ve never been really drawn to cold things though. That’s something that very much is very intuitive for me, is waiting till it’s a little bit warmer.

Kimberly: But the minerals and the vitality, the prana, the vitamins, the fiber that you get from the GGS is very, very powerful when we’re talking about cleansing and letting go. There’s also a high content of dark green leafy vegetables like spinach, kale and collards, which are very important for cleansing. They have a specific mix that size can’t just emulate with all these phytonutrients, all the synergistic co-factors in these foods that work together to make them blood cleaners, to make them… the fiber really does help to support your gut and to feed short chain fatty acids. And so, it’s a very important practice to introduce this fiber into your body on a regular basis. And the glowing green smoothie comes at that perfect junction when we’re going into our day.

Kimberly: Next practice is quite obvious, which is reducing alcohol and coffee. But I feel like I have to say it because it’s along our lines of not just what you put in, but also what you’re not putting in. Alcohol is such a… it’s an energy. In yoga they say it clouds your third eye. I’m not someone that’s all or nothing. When I’m not pregnant I definitely enjoy a really nice glass of wine myself. But in this period, if we’re giving some extra energy to our body, you may definitely want to try to cut back. I know a lot of people are drinking right now in quarantine and I get it. It’s a challenging time.

Kimberly: But if you can substitute some of those drinks with non-alcoholic elixirs, hot tea. Just find ways to shift your mood. Taking a hot bath, using essential oils, calling a friend, doing a meditation. It’s just going to be so much lighter on your body. Your liver has to metabolize all that alcohol. And so, the less of a load that we’re putting on our livers, it’s just going to be much better, much healthier for building fresh, clean, healthy blood and cellular tissue. And if you do drink coffee, I recommend that you enjoy it when you drink it. You try to get only organic. You definitely put organic products in it, whether that’s a coconut milk creamer or maybe just drink it black. We don’t want to put dairy or anything congestive in the coffee, especially first thing in the morning. And these are really great practices to have as well.

Kimberly: According to a 2019 study, which I will link to in the show notes, alcohol decreases the secretion of digestive enzymes from the pancreas and interferes with nutrient absorption by damaging cells in the stomach and intestines. We know that alcohol can be used in… we need to be discerning when we put it into our bodies. But no one’s ever claimed that alcohol is great for our health or beauty. So just keep that in mind. With the rhythm that we’re working to create right now with more letting go, I think it’s a very important point to bring up even though it may seem quite obvious.

Kimberly: Now, third, I’m going to call this out because I 100% wholeheartedly believe in it. I use it myself, are the supportive triad of supplements, SBO probiotics, Digestive Enzymes and Detoxy. Your body needs support if we’re going to take it to the next level. Food supports, and then our second cornerstone which is body, also encompasses supplements. I have always been drawn to supplements that work on a systemic level. Probiotics work on our whole system, on our whole immunity. Enzymes, as we were talking about earlier getting more absorption from your food, help you break down your food better and get more nutrition from it. And Detoxy helps to cleanse your system from more toxins so that you are lighter and you feel healthier. You’re releasing more. It’s oxygen and basically magnesium and vitamin C in the form of ASC2P which is very stable so it’s non-laxative and it’s very cleansing, very healthy for your system overall.

How to safely do a “cleanse” to kickstart your body

Kimberly: And then if you feel that you need an extra boost, especially right now because you are home and you have the time, you could also do one a day, lighter day, which I think is really a great practice where you just have a couple smoothies and maybe a soup, super light, super light in both fat and protein, and just let your body catch up. So this is a great thing to do. I do with clients sometimes. This is a great thing to do through spring.

Kimberly: You would start the day with hot water with lemon. You would have a GGS. You could have some fruit, you could have another GGS, and then you would have like a soup or something lighter for dinner. That’s also a great way to do a very healthy nutrient-rich day, but still giving yourself substance and fiber. The fiber is so important for ongoing cleansing. Remember that cleansing is a verb. It’s not a noun. So the fiber just helps to keep your system really cleansed and clean and functioning really well. And so, that’s something I highly recommend.

Kimberly: Remember that emotional wellbeing and spiritual growth are also our third and fourth cornerstone here at Solluna and they are very important when it comes to spring cleaning, lightness. Making sure that we’re processing our feelings right now and not pushing them down, which can really accrue and lead to things like bloating and inflammation. Spiritually we want to ground and connect. Right now I think life is so much about simplicity and peeling away layers and distractions, and I think that also includes simplifying all the products we think we need and the way that we’re cooking. Making everything just more simple and fresh.

Kimberly: And so, spiritually I know it felt really good to me lately just to sit outside my yard and to connect with Mother Nature. It’s very grounding, it’s very calming, it feels very, very healthy right now and it settles me in so I don’t feel imbalanced. I don’t feel that I crave chocolate as much, which is one of my go-to’s. It lets me let go of anxiety and stress. I kind of imagine it cycling through my body back into the earth. Remember that we also have free led meditations for you guys over at mysolluna.com. if you’re interested in doing a led meditation with me. We also do different ones every single month in the Solluna Circle program, which you can certainly check out.

Kimberly: I’m a huge fan of journaling and sometimes we hold things in our minds, in our head, and we don’t quite know how to share it or who to share it with. Journaling has been a very healing tool for me. It’s something I definitely recommend where you can be completely authentic and put it out on the paper and let it come out so you can start to digest it and maybe solutions come up or maybe there’s nothing to do, but it brings awareness around certain things. So, I will say that’s a great practice talking about spring cleansing. You want to clean out thoughts and thought patterns and anything that isn’t serving you anymore. And that’s really important besides what we’re eating and the supplements that we take. So I wanted to make sure to raise that as well.

Kimberly: Well, Beauties, thank you so much for tuning in. I hope that you incorporate some or all of these tips on spring cleansing, digestion cleansing, really creating more lightness in your body and in your life right now. I want you of course to feel your very best, to look your best, but most importantly to feel your best and to feel your true beauty, which is where you connect to your unique expression, your unique soul, to the beauty that you are already. We just need to uncover and unpack and that is our source of true confidence and true wisdom.

Kimberly: Thank you so much for tuning in. If you haven’t yet already downloaded our four cornerstones ebook, which is a great guide on getting started in this lifestyle, we will link to it over in the show notes as well at mysolluna.com. I love hearing from you so you can also ask your questions for the Thursday podcast right on the homepage of Solluna and we answer for every week on our Thursday show. I am also on Instagram. I’m doing a lot of comments over there these days and connecting with you guys. My handle’s @_kimberlysnyder.

Kimberly: We’ve got tons of resources: recipes, meditations, lots and lots of stuff. Check it out over there on the website. I send you so much love. I hope that you have a beautiful start to your month and that you feel really good. And if you don’t, remember that I’m here for you and we have this beautiful community and there’s lots of different ways that we can work to boost your energy and to help you rebalance. So, sending you lots and lots of love, and we will see you back here on Thursday. Till then take care. And again, from my heart to yours, sending you lots of love and gratitude.