Every spring for the past four years I have done a different cleanse.  They usually last for about 3 weeks and always make me feel ready for the summer as well as reinforce a wellness lifestyle.  Last year I jumped into an Ayurvedic boot camp called the Colorado Cleanse and it completely changed my life.  I had just come out of a rough few years emotionally, which in turn took its toll on me mentally and physically.  It gave me the tools to quit some habits I’d been trying to break and inspired a vegan diet.  I had been a vegetarian for almost 15 years and then in 2011 began eating meat again.  To be clear, for me not eating meat was always about the animal’s quality of life, so it wasn’t really about my health or that I don’t still believe it all tastes amazing.  It’s nice to find out that vegan recipes taste just as great, if not better.

This year, I chose Kris Carr’s Crazy Sexy Diet, a 21 day adventure cleanse.  My sister and I did it together and bonus! she’s a fantastic cook, taking after my Italian mother and grandparents.  We grabbed recipes from the cleanse book, from Kris Carr’s website and her other awesome book Crazy Sexy Kitchen.  Kris has an inspiring story of her own and I highly suggest taking any of the advice she has bravely shared with the world.  Plus the chick is just cool.  She encourages a focus on your pH-balance by eating more alkaline foods than acidic with each meal.  During the 21 days we didn’t consume alcohol, caffeine, dairy, or gluten.  We drank green juice every morning for breakfast and each Friday we fasted by only drinking juices or smoothies, freshly made of course.  My sister also made us vegan/gf desserts for us once a week as a treat.  The raspberry cheesecake was my favorite and dessert isn’t even my thing to begin with, I’d take a pizza over dessert any day.

Daily meditation, skin brushing, asana practice and my Artist’s Way morning pages were all part of the deal.  Sometimes cutting out coffee gives me a headache for a few days, but this time around I was totally fine and by the second or third day was feeling SO much different than I had been since the lovely holiday season.  Clarity is always the first word that comes to mind when I’m cleansing.

I find a spring cleanse to be a fun excuse to “take care of you first” – from the inside out.  I appreciate how detoxing always brings to the surface any stories that have become deeply rooted and as Jessica Patterson taught me “Explore.  This requires tenacity, a commitment to show up and a willingness to sit with what arises.  This isn’t easy, transformation only occurs at the edge of an experience – where the familiar and habitual begins to break up and shift.”