I'm cleansing again this week, but this time for real. What I mean is, I'm not cheating...only drinking juices, gagging down daily fibers, and doing colemas ever day. I've been avoiding the colemas since I've been here. I have a love/hate relationship with them. Love, because the best feeling ever is getting all of this crap out of my body that's been weighing me down and plugging me up. (Did I mention I'm going to be very candid in this post? Stop now if you aren't up for it.) Seriously, who won't admit that one of the best feelings experienced by the physical body is having a very good bowel movement when it's very much needed. It's a fact of life.
The first time I did a colema (4 years ago) at this
retreat center where I'm spending the winter, I was ecstatic at the results from the first one. It was truly like having the best bowel movement you could ever imagine, but after doing a total of 11 throughout the week, it was unfathomable how light I felt...not just physically but emotionally as well. I felt like I was transformed to another dimension of health and well-being with the flattest tummy I'd ever experienced in my life...clean and empty and ready to take on the world. I had no idea it was even possible to feel that way.
My whole life I've struggled with digestive issues...constipation, bloating, gas, severe aches and pains. So, feeling discomfort in my stomach was definitely the norm for me. You can imagine how gratifying it was then, to feel the extreme opposite after my cleanse. It had lasting benefits for me, too. Before I had done the cleanse, I had been searching frantically for something that would help me have regular bowel movements. I had recently come upon a product I'd found on-line that did wonders for me. The only problem was I had to mix with water 2 scoop fulls of the worst tasting powder known to man and down it two times a day. It kept me regular, but was not a happy thing to look forward to. When I returned home after a week of cleansing in Costa Rica, I found that I was much more regular, and I never had to take that nasty powder again. Woohooo! So, you can see why a part of me loves the colemas.
Now, the hate....well, it's a colema. If you've never done one or an enema of any kind, your first reaction to it will give you a good indication of what's not to like. There's nothing really fun about the process...sticking a tube up your rectum and flushing water through your colon. Now comes the educational part of this post. What is a colema and how does it work?
A colema is somewhere between an enema that you can do yourself at home and a colonic that you go to a specialist for and who does the whole messy procedure for you. Here's the difference in a nut shell:
ENEMA:
This is an enema bag. You can get something similar at any pharmacy. It comes with instructions so you can take it home and do it yourself. It's very simple; not messy like you may think. You basically hang the bag or hold it up, lie on your side and let the water drip into your colon. Then you sit on the toilet to release it. The benefit is you can take it with you, do it at home, it's a very private affair...if you have issues with other people seeing you in strange vulnerable positions. The down side is it is a fairly small bag 1-5 quarts usually, and often one time won't do the trick, so you have to refill, lie down and start over. If you want to know more about how and why to do enemas and to find enema kits on-line,
click on this site.
COLONICS:
If you'd rather lie on a comfy doctor's bed with a smiling colon-therapist doing the dirty work for you, you're best to get a colonic. You will notice that this is done with a machine. It is very simple, very clean and best of all you don't have to do much of anything...no clean up or set up. Just lie there and pretend you're not weirded out by the whole thing. One thing to be aware of with colonics is that the water us pushed through your system with gentle pressure from the hose whereas with an enema or a colema, it is pure gravity that keeps the water moving. On one hand the pressure can be good because it tends to clean deeper and faster. You'll probably get way more out of your system if you only did only one colonic than if you did only one colema or enema. The precaution you want to take is to make sure you have a very very skilled colon-therapist. If you've heard controversy about bowel cleansing and that it has been known to tear away some of the colon lining and cause bleeding and other problems, it's probably due to a colonic that wasn't administered properly due to the pressure method.
COLEMAS:
Colemas are the method I have the most experience with and the ones I prefer. This picture is similar to the set up we have in Costa Rica. You could even buy one for yourself and do it out of your home if you wanted to.
Basically, you have a board that goes over the toilet bowl. You prop it up so that you can lie on your back with your feet resting on top of the toilet. There is a tank of water next to you (we use 5 gallons) that is attached to the hose that goes up through the hole in the board and into your rectum. There's a simple lever that you can use to let more water in or turn it off. The benefits: you don't have to keep getting up and refilling like with an enema; you can lie comfortably on a bed like with a colonic, but you also have the privacy of administering it to yourself; (We use private colema stations.) and it is a gentle drip system so it is easy on your colon. The down side, you have to set it up yourself which is minimal effort, and you have to clean up after yourself which is sometimes not very fun. If you plan on taking serious care of your bowel, though, getting your own board would be the most cost effective in the long run. The boards run between $200-$300 from what I've seen. Here's a
site that sells good boards and has lots of information on colemas.
There's so much more to say about cleansing, so don't be surprised if I post more on the topic. In the meantime, if you have any questions I can look into for you, let me know.
Happy Cleansing!
