Axis Yoga Teacher Training students have the opportunity to apply their Ayurvedic lessons to their own lives. Many students, like this one, decide to complete the Pancha Karma cleanse to experience its effects on the body, mind and consciousness. While it is not a simple cleanse, students generally have a positive report on their overall experience. This student describes many challenges as well as the benefits ultimately received.

Looking back on this experiment, I’m not sure that I would do it again though I’m glad that I went through it.  I noticed a lot of things while going through this process.  I felt like the ghee really got gunked up in my arteries.  I noticed that when I flossed and some blood came out it was reddish/orange in color with a yellow oily substance surrounding it.  I have never noticed this at any point of my life, year or season, and while the reason given was that  I had too much pitta, I really feel that I just had too much ghee in my circulatory system, especially since overall I was feeling a calming of pitta during that time.  I felt my areas of chronic injury really get aching again.  Luckily I knew to recognize it as a healing crisis and I could tell that it was my body’s way of releasing parts of the injury and my body’s way of retracing it to let it go, though it was fairly painful.  The dull ache was gone in my abdomen and was replaced with a distinct muscular pain in the psoas area.  Though after getting massage work on it, I’m still unsure if it’s a problem with one or both areas.  I had substantial headaches every day, which I’m guessing could have been my withdrawal of sugar, coffee, or who knows what other food item.  My balance was almost non-existent towards the end of the cleanse, I felt malnourished, and really tired.

My emotions were a bit on a roller coaster.  I went out to eat breakfast because I was staying at a lower elevation over the weekend so that I didn’t have to do some much driving.  I ordered oatmeal at a vegan restaurant and they brought me ground up nuts and seeds.  I ate part of it so that I would have something in my stomach but felt like sobbing because I let myself down on the nuts and seeds end.  The sorrow that I felt over eating nuts, was not one that I’m accustomed to.  I had some mornings where I woke up glowing, and some afternoons where I was tired and cranky.  I spent a lot of time alone for a few reasons, one being that I just moved here and don’t know that many people, though a big realization was that doing something like this can be very isolating.  Most social situations were out since I didn’t know if I had the willpower to turn down anything that wasn’t kitchari, water, or herbal tea.  I started going around to social things at the end just to have some company, though it still felt socially awkward to deny people when they would kindly offer me something to eat or drink.