Oleation: a slippery slope

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.