Do you know what it feels like to swallow a mouth full of
oil? Now I don’t mean oily food like French fries or fresh bread dipped in oil I
mean like go get a shot glass fill it with oil (in this case flax seed) and
throw it back like it was Cuervo Gold. (insert the sound of a shuttering head
shake here…). Well I do. Why might you ask, do I make it a habit of tasting
fine oils of the world in the manner? Nope. I’m simply a yogi, a yogi on a
wellness plan.
So 21 days of wellness, the first 21 days the Teacher Train that
I recently began. But wait, don’t I already teach yoga, yes, but I initial
training was a long time ago and I have been itching to be a student again for
a few years, also I never registered with Yoga Alliance and I’d also like to go
on for an advanced 500hr certification. But enough about me, on to the oil. The
wellness plan that I’m on is based in Ayurvedic medicine, the sister science of
yoga and a thousands of years old tradition of keeping the body balanced. One of
the largest keys to keeping the body balanced from an Ayurvedic stand point is
through your diet. But Ayurveda doesn’t want to just throw you off the deep
end, nor does it want to start giving you medicine that your body isn’t
prepared to absorb. So, to begin with you start observing yourself, then you
start editing out certain foods and behaviors, then go you willingly jump into
the deep end; you go on a 5 day mono-diet or cleanse.
Since Ayurveda views food as medicine there are a few foods
that they found have a neutralizing effect on most body types. So for 5 days
you eat nothing but this balancing blend of basmati rice, splint yellow mung
dal and a very specific spice blend. And if that doesn’t sound like fun (this
is where the oil comes in) for 2 days beginning the diet you have to oleate the
GI tract, as in, drink a shot glass full of flax seed oil. So if that wasn’t
enough here’s a little tale about my first oleation:
First things first the training that I’m going to is 3 hours
away from where I live, so I’m basically couch surfing my way through this
program. On this particular occasion I was staying in a family member’s vacant
studio apartment, might I emphasize vacant. The first hiccup in the oleation
process was ghee or clarified butter, this is what you traditionally oleate the
body with but because I was in a vacant studio apartment I didn’t have a pan to
melt butter in; separating the milk proteins from the pure oil which is
essentially what ghee is, the oil part of butter. Now because I’ve made ghee in
the past and know how utterly simple it is I refuse on principle to pay $8 for
a pint of it at the store and beside Trader Joes didn’t have it anyway, but
they did have flax seed oil which is an acceptable substitute.
The morning of the oleation: first thing you do is take your
herbs and let those herbs do their work in your stomach for about 20 minutes. My
herbs that morning seemed to be in overdrive and about 10 minutes after I took
them I was ready for breakfast but nope, the oil must be taken on an empty stomach
as well so 10 grumbly minutes later I marched into the empty kitchen open up
the flax seed oil after a good shake, took a whiff and realized there was not a
spoon to be found in the place, least of all a Tablespoon. Luckily, or perhaps
unluckily, I had a plastic soup spoon from takeout the night before. If you’ve
never done a side by side comparison of a plastic spoon to an actual table
spoon I’ll just tell you, you have fit 3 plastic spoons into a table spoon. I was
supposed to take 2 tablespoons of this stuff. But I’m tough, I’m a yogi so I poured
my first shot into the spoon and gulped, before I lost my nerve I tried to get
one more down but my gag reflex kicked in and I only got about half of that spoonful in
(insert full body shiver). As I began to pace around the apartment like a cat
with peanut butter on its tongue my partner went in for his 2 table spoons. He
remarks before oiling up his mouth, “it smells like paint varnish.” He got 3
down before joining me in the mini-studio-walk-a-thon. After a few minutes we
walked back to the kitchen, my partner picked up the bottle of flax oil and told
me as a matter of fact flax seed oil it the same thing as linseed oil which is
used in varnishing and in treating dry wooden furniture also that he works with
linseed oil so much in his job that he really did feel like he was “downing paint
varnish.” Pour guy but enough science just give me the bottle before I lose my
nerve. After watching him swiftly down his 3 spoonfuls I decide I can’t do that
particular method again and decide just to take a big gulp and whatever I get
down is what I get down. Know I appreciate my partner for many things, one of
which being his Venus fly trap mind, anything he reads he instantly retains,
which I find fascinating, but I wasn’t a little distracted by the thick, particle
filled oil that was currently dripping down my throat and chin to care too much
that an average size person’s gulp is one ounce (something he read about staying
properly hydrating on long distance runs). But what it meant was that in one
gulp I had thrown back my 2 tables spoon and could continue on to my walking
marathon of the vacant Pilser studio apartment.
So what does oleation have to do with yoga? A lot really, not
just the Ayurveda stuff but trust and about being open enough to see just what
your body can do. I may not be wise enough in the Ayurvedic tradition but I trust
that this process has worked for thousands of years and helped thousands of
people. And no I didn’t think I would be able to drink oil without projectile vomiting
all over the place but I did and I have little flax seedy burps for the rest of
the day to remind be to be proud of all the cool things my body can do.
