Fragment from the book Welcome Yôga by Edgardo Caramella

Chapter on Organic Cleansing Techniques (Kriyás)

Nature has distributed remedies everywhere.

PLINY THE ELDER

Talking about organic cleansing implicitly means affirming that we need to eliminate waste and toxins from our organism in some way.

Until the beginning of the industrial era, man only had to face the natural aggressions of the external environment. Toxic fruits, poisonous mushrooms, plants that produced allergies, microbes, bacteria, poisonous animals, etc., were its main enemies. But today, as a consequence of progress and great industrialization, the human being is increasingly disturbed in his biological balance, by his life habits and also by the chemical invasion of the environment that surrounds him, which does not stop increasing.

Since we cannot change the world, the most intelligent, feasible and effective thing is to change ourselves.

In ancient times, the yôgis developed a series of very effective techniques, called kriyás, to stimulate organic detoxification.

In our body there is an accumulation of undesirable substances, either due to the entry of foreign substances or due to the excessive accumulation of toxins. Toxins are waste products from cellular metabolism. A part of them comes from the wear and tear of the organism in its biological life; others are generated as a consequence of the degradation and transformation of food substances. In small quantities, their presence is perfectly normal since the organism is prepared to get rid of them.

This clearly shows us that we must adapt our diet to our needs, since, if we eat more than we can burn, the body is faced with an excess of substances that it does not know what to do with.

Scientists affirm that each person consumes an average of three kilos per year of additives, such as colorants, emulsifiers, stabilizers, preservatives, etc., which are currently present in almost all foods. But we not only assimilate toxins through the digestive tract; harmful substances also reach us through the skin, which is extremely permeable. When we breathe, we incorporate tobacco smoke, hydrocarbon gases and many other substances that are present in the air even if we ignore it.

It seems a polar wave is coming. Yesterday winter began. Today it rained, the sun came out, it got cloudy, it was cold, it was nice. A lot of diversity throughout the same day. If my decisions / plans had depended on the weather, I would have been a kite at the total mercy of stimuli. And if I had ignored my surroundings, I would definitely have had a bad time.

July, which is approaching, brings multiple themes, such as the weather today. It is my turn to write about freedom and discipline; Meanwhile, the furious wind of the beginning of winter blows, gets between the trees and to that clear climate of unease, which is sometimes experienced on Sundays, is added that of the restlessness of the wind, of what can apparently be, in the same way, kind and hostile.

I feel before this subject as one who sits before a small fire that shelters. In part it was because of this sometimes unthinkable duo —freedom and discipline— that years ago, one day, I decided that I wanted to teach the DeRose Method. It was the combination of those two things that I didn't know it was possible to put together. I call discipline, in my case, the ability to build anything: paint a picture, run a school, write a book of poems, sustain a bond, train something consistently (beyond the weather). I call discipline the sum of little bricks that give existence to what we want to carry out. And freedom, the way we build it. Without that reaching the point of subduing us. Being able to build, create, carry out projects, relationships, life itself without it being at our expense. It seems obvious, but it is not. That is why it often happens to us that, even doing what we like, something is not being as we wanted. And not because everything has to be as we want, far from it. But sometimes we have that clear feeling of being aware of more, that what we want to do so much is occupying places that belong to other things, even that it has lost its course and overflows everywhere.

I thought that freedom and discipline permeate the way we train in schools, but also our way of teaching, working and building. Not because we always do well, but because it is a variable that we take into account when making decisions, I would almost say when doing anything.

Discipline brings us the possibility of building. Freedom, to establish a bond with what we are creating, whether individually or collectively; a loving, considerate, powerful, channeled and therefore lasting bond. I don't know if you've ever wondered how freedom and discipline coexist in you, but know that they are a great duo and, when they go hand in hand in a project, they unleash unexpected potential.

—I was breathless!

How many times do we hear that phrase in the face of a surprising situation or one that generates emotion and stress? A kind of popular saying that is repeated without taking into account the great truth it contains. The expression highlights a vital and organic process discovered thousands of years ago in an intuitive way: the relationship between emotion and breathing.

In the face of a contingency, emotionality shoots up. A wave of energy is released and the organism transforms it and uses it to respond to the stimuli that generate primary emotions: anger or fear. These are not the only ones, there are other varieties of emotions that derive from these two main ones and with which we deal with on a daily basis.

The automatic reading that our organism makes is that survival is at risk and we will need all the strength to perform two immediate physical actions linked to those emotions: basically, fight or flee. This is the synthesis of the well-known process called stress, that physiological reaction of the organism that brings into play various defense mechanisms to face a situation perceived as threatening or of increased demand.

What I am most interested in highlighting about this resource, which has automatically been occupied in keeping us alive for millennia, is the link that exists between breathing and emotion.

Since ancient times, human beings have found in breathing a key to managing their emotions and conquering more objectivity in decision-making. A mechanism to feel more free and self-sufficient.

Philosophical schools, religions, martial arts and other disciplines incorporated techniques and capitalized on that power. Respect for the power of air became present in almost all mythologies, in the form of attributes of deities and grandiose stories.

In Hindu mythology, Parjánya, a figure who represented the hurricane in Vedic times; in ancient Greece, Aeolus, the lord of the winds in the Odyssey and protector of Ulysses; in the Mayan empire, Kukulcán, a divinity friendly to men, who administered the winds; in Norse mythology, Njörd, god of the sea and wind, invoked in storms. And these are just a few examples.

Among the Hindus it is mentioned that we are born with a credit of breaths to consume during life. If we spend them breathing in a hurry, our life time will be shorter. With this belief they strengthen the idea that we should always breathe slowly, deeply, completely and consciously.

With its advances, science supports the claims of ancient philosophies about the need to manage breathing and use it as the baton with which we can conduct our organic harmony.

However -as Professor DeRose explains in the book Respira, the new science of a forgotten art when interviewed by the author, James Nestor-, the most important thing is not only the air: it is the energy, the prána. A force that we can define as any type of energy that manifests itself biologically. An immeasurable source of power that enhances our evolution and allows us to perceive the world and its phenomena with greater objectivity and clarity.

Maybe it's time to observe how you are breathing. Don't forget that every time you breathe in, an opportunity begins.