To Your Health: Spring Cleanse

Last weekend, we hosted the Spring Detox Yoga Retreat at Little Renaissance.  We had a hearty group willing to drink green, orange, and magenta concoctions, willing to stretch and stretch some more, and willing to brave the wicked coastal spring rainstorms for a mid-morning walk.  We didn’t last too long out in the elements and quickly made our way back to the house, wet but happy to have been out in the unpredictable Washington coast  beach weather.

Spring is the perfect time to detox!  What does one do at a Spring Cleanse Detox Yoga weekend?  Read on and discover what a detox retreat is all about.

1. A Spring Cleanse Detox Yoga weekend includes Meditative Walks.  We did not score high on this one.  Though we really tried, the rain and wind made for a very short non-meditative walk.
2. The weekend’s Yoga Sessions included twists, inversions, restorative poses, and fire poses.  Fire poses -such as horse pose, chair pose, and lion pose- stoke up internal heat and get energy flowing.
   

   Yoga

3. We practiced Pranayama (breathing) Exercises, which included Breath of Fire, Alternate Nostril Breathing, Bhastrika (bellows breathing), Kapalabhati (shining skull breathing!), and Uddiyana Bandha (abdominal lift breathing).  The breathing exercises are incredibly powerful and helpful with cleansing the body of toxins.
4. I led the group in Guided Visualizations (yoga nidra), where we focused on cultivating a meditative/clear  mind.
5. In lieu of Guided Journaling, everyone took a Nap because the intensity of detoxifying foods, juicing, the yoga postures, and the breathing exercises had us all feeling very tired!
6. We did serve coffee in addition to herbal teas, but refrained from the following:  alcohol, gluten (except for the cranberry scones on Sunday morning), dairy and sugar.  I know what you are thinking:  Coffee???  They had coffee at a detox retreat??  Trust me, if we didn’t serve coffee, I am not sure anyone would have attended this weekend retreat!
7. We ate foods that have detoxifying and cleansing qualities such as arugula, avocado, beets, quinoa, almonds, walnuts, cranberries, flax (and other various seeds), carrots, asparagus, fruit galore (see the juicing recipes below), cinnamon, garlic, onions, cucumbers, celery, chard, kale, lentils, dark chocolate (tiny bit of sugar, 72% chocolate–yes, good for you!), and lentils.
8. We drank freshly juiced organic drinks, both fruit and vegetable juices, which were delicious!

Here are the four juiced drinks we enjoyed during our retreat, as well as a recipe for Vegan Protein Balls.  I “eyed” the quantities of ingredients for each drink, so you will have to be curious and exploratory and try these out! Play with the portions until you get the perfect tasting power drink.

For weeks before the retreat, I experienced with these drinks.  The only one I wrote quantities down for was the Greenie because if Greenie was too intense, I couldn’t drink it and then Rick would feel compelled to drink all of his Greenie plus my full glass of Greenie because he can’t stand anything going to waste!  The intense Greenies that I could not drink were a deep fir-tree green and intense enough to make Rick’s stomach gurgle for hours!  I was determined to figure out a way to make Greenie work.  I tried and tried with Greenie until I found a way to make it delicious!

GREENIE (serves 8 people)

• 6 Oranges (peeled)

• 6 Cucumbers  (washed but not peeled)

• 4-6 celery stalks

• 3 bunches of chard  (clean carefully and use the stalks)

• 4-5 limes  (peeled)

Place all of the above ingredients in a Juicer.  (You probably can use a VitaMix.  I don’t have one, so I used my JuiceMan).

 

CLEANSING CRANBERRY BLISS

• Apples

• Lemon

Juice the ingredients above and then transfer to a blender and add:

• Bag of Frozen Cranberries (you might need to add a little water if too thick)

• Honey

• Nutmeg

• Cinnamon

 

 

PERRY HILL

• Celery

• Carrots (main ingredient!)

• Ginger  (peel before juicing it)

• Lime  (peel before juicing)

juice the ingredients above and then transfer to a blender and add:

• Pineapple (I cut it and froze it one day before using it for this drink)

 

LITIBU 

(Juice the first two ingredients and then transfer to a blender and add the frozen fruits below and the bananas.)

• Oranges   (main ingredient)

• Grapefruit  (only one or two)

• mango (cut up mangoes and freeze them until you are ready to use them in this drink)

• strawberries (but up and freeze them until you are ready to use them in this drink)

• bananas (not frozen)….  and a note to my retreat participants:  Rick forgot to add the bananas so your Litibu was sans bananas.

 

Vegan PROTEIN BALLS 

I had this list of ingredients from when I first had these in Sayulita, Mexico last Christmas, but I didn’t know how much of each ingredient to put in them.  I just experimented and came up with Pure Magic!  Use lots of dates!

You can explore and add chocolate chips, cocoa powder, and/or unsweetened coconut flakes, or  add spirulina powder or protein powder.  Limitless possibilities.

Mix the ingredients and form into small walnut-sized balls.  Refrigerate.

• Flaxseed

• Amaranth

• Almonds

• Sesame

• Chia Seeds
  

• Cranberries (I used dried cranberries)
  

• Raisins

• Peanut Butter (chunky)–not too much as a little goes a long ways in terms of taste.  You can experiment and do almond butter.
  

• Honey

• Coconut Butter
  

• Cinnamon

• Mineral Salt

• Dates  (main ingredient!)
  

• Sunflower Seeds
  

• Love  (the best ingredient of the bunch: the More the Better)