Oil Pulling-An Easy Good Habit
Sucking on oil? Yep, it feels as weird as it sounds. But the latest ancient Ayurvedic health practice to find its way to the mainstream has many of us doing things we’d never thought we’d do, like rinsing our mouths with oil as part of our morning ablutions.
Oil pulling, the practice of “swishing” oil around your mouth for up to 20 minutes, has been in use for thousands of years. But a slate of publicity purporting the practice’s teeth whitening and breath-freshening benefits piqued the curiosity of Western natural-health seekers.
For good reason, says John Doulliard, DC, founder and medical director of LifeSpa, an Ayurvedic medical center in Boulder, Colorado. “There’s a lot [to] suggest oil pulling may have some really profound broad-spectrum benefits,” he says.
In India people credit oil pulling with a range of cures, from reducing all manner of aches and pains to even reversing heart disease. And while these claims have yet to be proven, there is plenty of science that the mechanism behind the practice has merit, Doulliard says.
It’s well documented, for example, that ingesting certain kinds of oil has a chelating, or pulling effect on other oils and fat-soluble toxins, such as heavy metals and pesticides, drawing these substances from the fatty tissues of the body. (This practice forms the basis of Ayurvedic panchakarma cleansing programs.)
And studies have shown oil pulling to be as effective as medical-grade anti-plaque and anti-gingivitis treatments, and to be a potent cleanser for the soft tissues and mucosa of the mouth.“This incredible [medicine] people figured out thousands of years ago, we’re just proving the benefits of now,” Doulliard says.
How to do it
Blend together:
½ T of fresh, uncooked, cold-pressed sesame oil
½ T organic coconut oil
1/4 tsp. ground turmeric
Take about 1 tablespoon of this oil mixture and chew it, suck it through your teeth, and swish around your mouth, for 10 and up to 20 minutes each morning after brushing and flossing your teeth (and using a tongue scrapper, if you’ve already adopted some healthy Ayurvedic morning rituals). Spit out and rinse with water, but don’t rebrush. The slight oil coating is actually beneficial.
Chair Pose = Utkatasana
It might be surprising that the Sanskrit name Utkatasana is sometimes translated as Fierce Seat or Powerful Pose. The asana looks fairly straightforward and simple—you bend the knees as if preparing to sit on a chair. It looks so much like someone sitting on an imaginary chair that it’s commonly called Chair Pose.
But rather than let you relax back into a La-Z-Boy, Utkatasana requires you to support yourself in a standing squat. This action engages the muscles of your legs and back—and is arguably the single best movement for strengthening the thighs, both the quadriceps and the hamstrings, as well as the erector spinae muscles in the back. Leg-strengthening squats are workout staples at the gym, where people often do them while holding weights. Utkatasana is similarly strengthening but should generate less wear and tear on your joints over the long haul.
Supporting your weight in Utkatasana is challenging. It’s recommended for athletes involved in sports requiring strong legs, and it helps prevent a loss of muscle mass as you age. In some versions of Utkatasana, such as in Sun Salutation B in the Ashtanga practice, feet and knees are kept together and palms are pressed overhead. Other traditions keep the legs apart, which makes balancing easier, and the arms parallel, which puts less stress on the shoulders.
Stand in mountain pose. Inhale and raise your arms perpendicular to the floor. Either keep the arms parallel, palms facing inward, or join the palms.
Exhale and bend your knees, trying to take the thighs as nearly parallel to the floor as possible. The knees will project out over the feet, and the torso will lean slightly forward over the thighs until the front torso forms approximately a right angle with the tops of the thighs. Keep the inner thighs parallel to each other and press the heads of the thigh bones down toward the heels.
Firm your shoulder blades against the back. Take your tailbone down toward the floor and in toward your pubis to keep the lower back long.
Stay for 30 seconds to a minute. To come out of this pose straighten your knees with an inhalation, lifting strongly through the arms. Exhale and release your arms to your sides into Tadasana (mountain pose).
Prana and Apana
The great eighth-century yogi and philosopher Shankaracharya said, “Yoga asana is that in which meditation flows spontaneously and ceaselessly, not that which destroys happiness.” In other words, when yoga poses are well aligned, the breath flows right up the front of the spine into the spacious radiance of the body’s central axis. The experience is beautiful and sublime.
Realistically, our practices can rarely be called sublime. The mind and ego seem programmed to stay out of the central axis, making practice a superficial exercise in self-improvement rather than the precise observation of, and insight into, the nature of our bodies and minds.
An excellent way to counteract this tendency is to link the two basic internal patterns that control inhaling and exhaling. These are called prana (upward spreading breath) and apana (downward contracting breath). The prana controls inhaling; it is felt as an upward floating, branching, and flowering pattern. Its home is the core of the heart. The apana controls exhaling. It is the downward rooting flow, which contracts, or tones, into a seed point at the center of the pelvic floor. With each breath you take, prana and apana organize the movement of bones and muscles. Prana lengthens, or extends, the spine (as in a backbend) and brings the legs into internal rotation; apana rounds, or flexes, the spine (as in a forward bend) and rotates the legs externally.
The calmer you grow, the more you will see the reflection of the universe within you. Yogananda
