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Q. To me it seems so unnatural to put water up your nose, or to wash out your stomach and bowels.
A. Unusual yes, unnatural no. From the yogi’s point of view, smoking cigarettes, eating junk food, late nights of mind numbingly bad television, modern cities and their pollution, sleeping on thick spring mattresses, sitting in chairs at computers all day, working in chemical factories and getting stuck in traffic jams, are all pretty unnatural activities for the human body. What’s natural and what’s unnatural all depends on where you are at. Yoga says, that like medicine which may be a bit distasteful or which may at first seem unnatural, when you are sick, unusual methods may be necessary to heal oneself.
The Hatha Yoga cleansing techniques are all just non-medicinal ways of maintaining the body and overcoming illness. The ancient yogic methods are really the most natural ways to help the bodily systems heal themselves. All you need is some water and some salt! They cleanse all the orifices and improve the function of the 6 senses. Note that we include 6 senses. Yoga cleansing is not just for flesh and blood but also for the mind, the sixth sense. These cleansing techniques are really very simple and commonsense ways of keeping every organ and function of the body working to its best possible potential.
We service our cars by washing and polishing the outside to keep the paintwork in good condition so that the bodywork does not rust and so that they look good. We might get the radiator flushed of rust, or the engine scraped out of carbon deposits. We wipe down the kitchen benches daily and clean out the cupboards when they get a build up of dirt inside. What’s the difference with our bodies? We wash the outside of our bodies regularly for both hygiene and appearance, well why not the inside? Just like servicing the car’s air filter, we should clean our nose filters. Just as decarbonising the engine helps it to work more efficiently, we should keep our digestive system in peak condition so that it helps the fuel (that is food) burn better and the wastes to be eliminated more quickly. Even more important than our cars and our kitchens, are the vehicles we spend our whole day in – that is our human bodies.
These yoga cleansing methods may seem weird or funny to many people, but this is only because in modern Western culture, most people have been conditioned to think that anything inside the body is odd and distasteful. Most people are fairly ignorant of their own body’s functions. These days, when it comes to medical repairs after years of personal neglect, people prefer to have an anaesthetic and have someone else do the “dirty work”.
One mechanism of the mucous lining is to cleanse itself through swallowing the build up, but what sort of germs were your throat and stomach designed to cope with? Modern 20th century living has all manner of germs and pollutants which we really shouldn’t be breathing in and trapping internally in the first place. Some of the smog chemicals city people inhale all day are plainly cancerous and some are renowned killers in only just tiny quantities.
Our environment nowadays is far from what the “respiratory designer” had in mind It is certainly no crime against nature to help the body’s cleansing processes along a bit. In addition to the body, what about that vehicle of thought and feeling, that is, the mind? What sort of methods can be employed for brain washing? (Meaning brain cleansing rather than mental indoctrination). And this is where the processes of meditation come into it. For millennia, the Yogis have thought nothing of using self induced methods to fix up their own body and mind. They had a great understanding of the internal functions well before the X-Ray machine and the scalpel were invented. They knew about anatomy and physiology by doing these and other certain practices upon themselves. They learnt through experimentation and through meditative insight (in-sight, that is, looking within). And over the centuries they have preserved this knowledge, these clever ways of preventing physical and mental breakdown, even up until today, so that it can be passed on to us and our descendants.
Q. I think that actually doing Neti sounds disgusting but I would like to do it for the benefits. How can I get over my mental resistance?
A. This is a common conflict. The intellect says “Yeah, that’s a great idea” but the feelings in the stomach are disgusted at the thought of it. The best way is to read all the literature about it so as to strengthen your rational argument for doing it, and then be carefully guided by a qualified person who will take into account your fears and nervousness and prove to you in about 3 minutes just how simple and easy it really is. Your irrational feelings will then be won over by a truly positive experience.
Q. I enjoy doing the simple Neti but what’s the point, really, of doing all those weird advanced methods like Urine Neti, or Sutra Neti?
A. The more advanced forms of Neti are both specific therapeutic practices in a physical sense, as well as being advanced spiritual techniques, the primary purpose of which was to help awaken the higher mental faculties.
Such practices have been preserved by the yogic masters and passed on to their disciples for thousands of years. Remember too, that for many centuries, they were kept secret. It is only in the last 100 years or so that these things have become known around the Western world. These rarer techniques supersensitise the sinus passages, and stimulate higher sensory functions in the brain and the mind. That’s really why all yoga practices exist, for higher productivity in the art and disciplines of meditation. They are not really for sinusitis, hayfever, allergies or asthma! The yogis didn’t have those things thousands of years ago. They used these methods to purify themselves to the ultimate degree, so that their body and mind were more highly developed instruments for investigation of consciousness and perception of knowledge. That’s how they gained their wisdom. This is also what all the scriptures say: that Yoga is to purify the body, to purify the mind, to evolve the nervous system, to enter into deeper meditation, so as to evolve the consciousness. But along the way there are all sorts of amazing health benefits. But if you’re not drawn to that at this stage, don’t worry, don’t do them. Maybe one day your spirit will wish to soar beyond your present human limits into the super-human realms of urine up your nose!
Q. Isn’t running water through your nose dangerous, after all, the nose wasn’t designed to take in water?
A. Jala Neti is in no way a dangerous practice. When properly instructed and done according to tradition, it will bestow only benefits. However, if misused or abused, at best, it will not work in the reputed way, or at worst, it can lead to minor side effects such as headaches, colds, nasal infections, earaches. Water in the nose is not unusual. Remember the way you feel after a good swim in the surf? A good flushing of the nose with salt water is a good thing. Stage 1 of Jala Neti is no more than that – a flush out of the frontal nose passages, except that the water is warm, 4 times less salty and you are in control – not like when you get dumped in the surf and come up spluttering half drowned! That’s what people are afraid of when they first hear about saline nasal cleansing – their memories of nearly drowning at the beach. But its nothing like that. Admittedly there are certain internal nasal orifices in which the salty water should not go. It may take a few attempts to get the head angle correct so that this does not happen, but the results of a few bad attempts are not serious.
Q. How does Jala Neti actually work? How does running warm, salty water through your nose fix up so many problems?
A. Without being too anatomical or medical about it, the basic elements involved with Jala Neti, and all saline cleansing techniques for that matter, is that the warmth and salinity of the water is the same as the body’s own metabolism so that there is no tendency for rejection. You can use warm isotonic saline in any part of the body for health benefits. The exact proportion of salt used is very important for this reason. Some people are worried about the salt. They think it might clog up their arteries! They ask, “Can it be done without the salt?” The answer is no. Salty water is a great body cleanser. It is used to flush out old mucus secretions which have trapped dirt and germs from the activities of everyday life. The normal function of the body’s mucous lining within the upper respiratory tract is to do that very thing, to trap dirt and germs. Normally sniffing, blowing, coughing, sneezing and swallowing can clear out gross particles which become trapped in the mucous lining, but by washing the nasal passages with saline water, a complete clean out is done more effectively and is better at preventing the rubbish passing further into the system if the ”first stage filters” get blocked and overloaded. In a healthy person who eats well, breathes well and lives in a clean environment, the mucous lining should be able to cope alone and cleanse itself on a regular basis. But for a mouth breather, or one who eats bad food, or one who works in a dirty city or factory, the dirt and germs build up causing all manner of malfunctions in the nose, sinus passages, eyes, ears, throat, chest. Also, unconsciously they swallow this dirt-laden mucus and then have stomach problems, and on it goes, right through the system.
There’s a yoga aphorism which says, “Breathing through your mouth is as natural as eating through your nose”. Many people under-estimate the importance of proper nose breathing and these are the people who wonder why they are sick so often. Once the associated functions of the nose become healthy through regular practise of Jala Neti, many ailments can clear up. In this author’s opinion, mouth breathing would have to be the single most health destructive habit existing in the world today.
Let’s just look at that. We breathe about 12 - 16 times per minute. That’s a lot of breaths per day, and a lot of breaths per year. If that most basic function is out of kilter with what nature has designed for our bodies, and we continue to do that year after year, then we have surely created an ever-present potent force for destruction of our natural well being.
In addition to the physical effects of Jala Neti, the mental or psychological benefits of the practice can be attributed to the more subtle effects which Neti has upon the brain, coming from the balancing of the nostril breath. Within the olfactory regions, there are very fine sensors which detect the ionic conditions of incoming and outgoing air. The ionic state is closely related to the pranic effect and also to the triggers of sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. Just like when a hot and dry wind blows for several days, your mind can go a bit crazy because of the predominance of positive ions. Conversely, a cool sea breeze, which is higher in negative ions, can counteract this and set you normal again. Jala Neti is often described like a refreshing swim in the surf.
A lot more research needs to be done by science to fully understand these effects upon the human mind. Whether you study it and can prove such claims is not important – it never the less works, just as the yogis have described.
Q. Can Neti be done too often?
A. Yes. The correct frequency is determined by a person’s particular problems and particular needs, but for most people, in most situations, once or twice a day, first thing in the morning and/or in the evening is sufficient on a regular basis. In some therapeutic situations, three or four times a day may be recommended, but this would not be continued indefinitely.
Q. I have done a similar thing for many years. I take water from a bowl in my hand and sniff It up my nose. Is It like that?
A. No, not at all. We know that many people have tried this. Some say their grandmothers or grandfathers used to do it. Some use cold water and some use warm. Some use salt and some do not. But those methods can’t possibly work as well as Jala Neti. It also runs the risk of leaving water up the sinus passages which will be irritated for some time afterwards. They do say it works in clearing the nose and helps prevent colds, and it may somewhat, but after these people have tried Jala Neti, they are always impressed at how much easier, safer and more effective it is.
Q. Should the amount of salt ever be changed, for instance if you get a cold?
A. Not generally. The proportion of salt the yogis have been recommending for thousands of years is called normal saline – the same ratio as human blood. Too little salt will actually sting the nose, as will too much.
There is a mixture which ENT surgeons prescribe called buffered hypertonic saline which is much saltier and this is beneficial for persistent nasal conditions. For the general user, and for preventative nasal health, always use: One level teaspoon of salt per half a litre of water or 0.9%.
Q. Can anything other than a proper Neti Pot be used?
A. Well, we have heard of other devices being tried – such as tea pots, invalid feeders, modified baby bottles, modified tomato sauce bottles, cooking funnels, the bowl and sniffing method, someone even improvised with a length of garden hose?!?!? But quite frankly, why bother? You could get a tea leaf stuck up your nose! Also all these other things may have odd smells or tastes which will spoil the experience. There is no simpler method than a well designed Neti Pot. | |