The basic concept behind body detoxes is that we're removing accumulated toxins and debris allowing our bodily functions to retain, or regain, their healthy equilibrium. It's similar to how we periodically swap out the old, dirty oil in our vehicles for fresh, clean oil. This process, and the benefits, is generally understood when it comes to our vehicles, but only vaguely understood when it comes to our bodies. Even less understood, at least in the Western world, are emotional and psychological detoxes yet, for many, the massive benefits from them are life-changing.

Detoxing reflects the more holistic Eastern world approach to health and well-being while the Western approach is more focused on symptoms without really addressing the underlying causes of those symptoms. One chases, and swats, mosquitos while the other puts the effort into removing the swamps those mosquitos are coming from. Of course, if you're paid per mosquito this is a good business model but, from an individuals perspective, the holistic approach makes a lot more sense.

We're similar to a phone/laptop in that the accumulation of too many files and programs overwhelm and interfere with our core operating systems ability to function properly. Be it physiological, psychological and/or emotional detoxing the basic principle is the same; remove the accumulated baggage -empty out the trash - and see what, if any, problems/symptoms remain. When we experience the difference we get that less is more.

If we understand the various detoxes - the processes and benefits - we can decide if detoxing, of one type or another, is something we want to do.

Emotional Detoxes

If we define ‘therapy’ as ‘that which organically improves our sense of well-being’ then all detoxes are therapeutic, to one degree or another. Indeed, a proper body detox is invariably also a mild psychological and emotional detox as we’re necessarily changing some of our deeply ingrained habits; eating everyday for example.

This change in the structure - or hierarchy - of our motivations/habits breaks up the rigidity of that status quo generating a flexibility - potential for easy further change - that previously didn’t exist. Technically, therapy doesn’t make the change/improvements, it just provides the conditions required for positive change to occur. An individual already has the inner resources- the mechanisms - to change what's required. What they often don’t have are the conditions that allow those processes to occur.

“When a flower doesn't bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.” Alexander den Heijer

Ultimately, everyone seeks to be happy. Who is seeking to be sad and unhappy? We're happy when we feel happy therefore we're ultimately seeking those relevant, delightful feelings. The feelings that are primarily relevant come from emotional satisfaction. If our emotional motivations are purring, we're purring. Therefore emotional detoxes remove the build up of motivations that are competing against, and suppressing, our ability to be emotionally satisfied. While we obviously have other innate motivations to satisfy - survival and ego motivations, for example - what's relevant when it comes to our level of happiness is our emotional well-being. Beyond competing innate motivations/instincts we accumulate secondary motivations from our culture, family, schooling etc and it's the build up of these acquired motivations that can make us motivationally confused - we don't really know what we want - as we've become disconnected from our actual motivations.

Our goal is not to find love, and joy, but to remove all barriers which are preventing us from receiving it.” Rumi

As we can go directly to the relevant feelings we actually want, why wouldn't we? Many do, others simply don't know it's possible and are busy ticking emotionally irrelevant boxes. Detoxing, especially emotional detoxing, demonstrates it is possible when we remove that which is interfering with our capacity to be emotionally well nourished.

When we’re feeling something, we’re feeling something. If we can control those somethings we’re controlling what we’re feeling and if we’re controlling what we’re feeling we’re controlling our level of happiness.

All therapy accepts this as obvious. Again, we're feeling something so it's rather obvious we need to change those somethings if we want to change what we're feeling.Those somethings, both pleasant and unpleasant, collect in our 'cup' and we're experiencing/tasting the resulting cocktail. Thus, the Eastern approach is to firstly empty our cup if what we're currently experiencing/tasting/feeling isn't satisfactory.

The objective of all therapy is to remove/minimise those painful somethings and add in/ increase pleasant somethings. By doing this we're improving the resulting taste/ our level of happiness. Of course, if we don't want to make the changes organically we can plop a pill in our 'cup' to hopefully mask what is currently in there. An emotional detox is a very effective way to organically make the changes required.

‘When I was 5 years old my mother always told me that happiness is the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment and I told them they didn’t understand life’. John Lennon

The main difference between therapies is regarding how they seek to change those somethings and more distinctly where in our operating sequence those changes are made.

Nowadays we know those somethings to be bio chemicals/ neurotransmitters - and aside from purely physiological feelings - stubbing our toe/ being ill, for example - bio chemicals largely flow from our motivations. If we suddenly have everything we want, and there's no significant contradictions between those wants/motivations, we’re going to feel great, we going to be very happy. If, on the other hand, we’re struggling to satisfy our motivations - needs and wants - we’re going to feel dissatisfied/unhappy. This, happiness on one hand, and unhappiness on the other, is not a coincidence. It's not a mystery.

At base the formula for happiness is straightforward; Satisfied motivation ‘purr’ - release pleasant bio chemical flavours into our ‘cup’ - whilst dissatisfied motivations ‘claw’ - pour ugly flavours into our ‘cup’. We’re consuming/tasting the resulting cocktail.

Frustration, for example, is an ugly flavour similar to anger yet they're not exactly the same. Ideally, we don’t want either of those flavours in our cup as they make for an ugly cocktail. Love is a very similar flavour to joy - our emotions thrive on both - but they’re not exactly the same and nor are their sources the same. Ideally, we want a lot of love and joy in our cup. What is a joyless life? What is love without joy in the mix? Therefore, the first priority is increasing our capacity to experience joy. Extremes aside, it's not reality causing us distress, it's our expectations of reality. It's our thwarted motivations generating pain within. Clear out the motivational overgrowth and see what pain remains. When we experience the massive difference we get it. Less is much more.

Have a lot of love and joy in our life and the rest is just logistics.

Clearly, if our level of happiness, if what we’re currently feeling/tasting, is not as we want then we’re well advised to empty our cup of those accumulated stale, ugly flavours. Pour that stale stuff out to make space for fresh, pleasant flavours of our choosing. While that part of the formula is straightforward, there's a bit more to it as joy needs space to flow into. Explaining what is meant by 'joy needs space to flow into' will clog up this page so, for now, what’s relevant is that detoxing/deleting our overgrown motivations effectively empties the stale flavours out of our cup. Simultaneously, we're making space for the delightful flavours we actually want. But wait, there's more; the space generated has itself a quality all of it’s own. Less is more.

These benefits compound which is why emotional detoxes are a transformational type of therapy as opposed to the much more common incremental types of therapy. We’re not sorting through our motivational trash can trying to untangle what might be valuable from what obviously isn’t, we’re just emptying it. Knots deleted don't have to be untangled. Contradictions deleted don't have to be resolved. Motivations deleted don't have to be satisfied. It’s ok, our hardwired motivations - our actual motivations we were born with - aren’t going anywhere so we return to ourselves. With that overgrowth pruned back, life is simplified, joy/ light is now getting into our emotional core and it purrs. 'Magically', we feel great, but it's not magic.

If we feel we lack nothing, we feel we have everything we want. If we feel we have everything we want we are, by definition, on a very high level of happiness - we’re supping a delightful cocktail.

Thus, less is more, in the sense that the fewer motivations we have inside us demanding satisfaction the easier it is to only have purring motivations therefore just pleasant flavours in our cup along with plenty of space. Happy days. We get this if we experience it to be so, but can’t really get it otherwise as we’re typically deeming our existing array of motivations as being us. We're taking ownership of, and protecting, motivations even if they're negative and contradicting each other. As we haven't being different, we assume we just are as we are. We keep to the same recipe - keep pouring ourselves the same cocktail - even when that taste is substandard. We're lacking the flexibility to change our recipe, thus change what we're experiencing/tasting.

“Repetition, over time, cements symptoms as identity”

Dr Mary Jo Peebles. Clinical Psychologist and Author

Explaining emotional detoxes continues here.

Body Detoxes

As our bodies are composed of trillions of cells, a proper body detox is actually a cellular detox.

The good news is our cells have their own cleaning and healing mechanism - called autophagy- which switches on, and ramps up to high intensity, when we fast.

Though inconvenient, the reality is our bodies can't be in consumption/ normal operating mode and in cleaning and healing mode at the same time. Similar to how we can't be cooking in our kitchen and cleaning it simultaneously. It's only when that relentless avalanche of food stops that our bodies can, and do, switch over to cleaning and healing mode. How our cells clean themselves is a relatively recent discovery made by Japanese cell biologist Yoshinori Ohsumi. His pioneering work in this field led to him been awarded the 2016 noble prize.

While traditional detoxes all revolved around fasting, they didn't know why fasting was key as they obviously couldn't know the inner mechanisms involved. The recent rise we see in the popularity of bodily detoxing is primarily because we now understand why we need to fast to detox. Detoxing occasionally is no longer 'weird', it's the obvious thing to do if we understand the science behind it. We change the oil in our vehicles because we understand the probable longterm costs from not doing so, yet most of us overlook changing our own 'oil', preferring instead to battle the consequences in the future.

That we need to fast in order to switch our cells over to cleaning and healing mode may seem a poor maintenance system for our cells to have, but we didn't evolve in a world of supermarkets and corners stores. The abundance we deem normal has only existed for a handful of generations whereas our ancestors, down through a million years, lived precarious hand to mouth lives. Days, or even weeks, with no food was woven into the fabric of their lives and obviously we evolved for that reality not this one.

Our bodies store fat so we have a back up energy source to get us through the lean times. Given we have this secondary energy source, it makes sense our cells would do their backlogged cleaning, and healing, work during those times our primary 'kitchen'/'factory' isn't being used. Indeed, we don't just burn stored fat when we fast - ketosis - we also burn a lot of the trash that has accumulated in our cells for energy, with only the stuff which is too toxic to burn being escorted out of our bodies.

Autophagy is an amazingly sophisticated mechanism and while it's always operating to some degree in the background, that low intensity is typically not enough, was never 'designed' to be enough, and it generally isn't enough for life in our increasingly polluted world. Of course, many live to a ripe old age never missing a meal in their lives but, with rare exceptions, they also lived clean, quite austere lives. The cleaning their system got was enough, but for us it may not be and why wouldn't we do a deep clean now and again?

While intermittent fasting - extending our daily no food window - is one way we can increase autophagy activity, it's nowhere near as effective as multiple day fasts. The primary reason for this is that autophagy doesn't start to ramp up it's intensity until at least 18 hours after our last food. Additionally, many of the benefits we see after a few days fasting; significantly increased human growth hormone and stem cell production for example, cannot be accessed via intermittent fasting.

As, for most people, fasting no longer occurs naturally, to access the benefits we get via fasting, we need to deliberately fast occasionally. Detoxing/fasting once a year is ideal, once every two years is good, and even once every five years is a lot better than going decades without. When we know how to detox properly, and get over the initial psychological hurdles, we can easily do them at home in the future.

This page contains the core information, but there's also numerous you tube videos that do a very good job of explaining the science behind it. We've also added links to some of the best presentations.

About Us

We're a husband-and-wife team. New Zealand/ Indonesian.

Nui is a qualified midwife, and nurse, with experience working at detoxing retreats in Ubud Bali. She's into Yoga and intends to offer Yoga classes alongside detoxes in the future.

Craig largely subscribes to the pragmatic NLP - neuro linguistic programming - model of human behaviour/ mid stream therapy. However, he strongly believes upstream therapy -detoxing - is much more effective, and easier, than any midstream therapy.

Having lived, and studied, in India for a number of years Craig is a proponent of back to basics, holistic therapy/healing.

As of November 26, we're just starting this venture and it's not something we expect to be a thriving business straight away. We just start somewhere, see what happens, and build slowly over the years. Craig is just helping Nui establish this detoxing/yoga business.