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.