This is the perfect time of the year for a spring clean – both inside and out. But it’s not for everyone.

Before the festive season is in full flight, now is the perfect time to give your body a bit of break.

While there are many ways to ease the load on your digestion and other eliminative organs the best is through diet and lifestyle. There’s no point spending money on expensive programs promising a ‘detox’ if you’ve not got the basics covered.

What goes in must come out

Or at least we hope it does, so those toxins of daily life don’t linger in the body longer than necessary. Just like when the filter in a vacuum cleaner or swimming pool gets clogged up, it makes the device ineffective. In humans it’s our lymph, lungs, kidney, liver and skin that do the filtering. If they become burdened they’re less effective at detoxifying.

To clean our ‘’filters’ we need to give these organs less to process so they can catch up on basic maintenance. In an ideal world that means being somewhere with fresh air, clean water and pure food. As that’s unlikely to happen in everyday, city life there are other steps that can take to start the cleansing process.

The simplest place to begin a spring clean is by clearing your head – through meditation, abstaining from alcohol and creating more time for contemplation. Next, add to this by putting clean food (such as avoiding refined food and loading up on organic fruits and vegetables) into your body, taking gentle walks in nature and turning the computer off when not at work.

The state of our mind and nervous system when undergoing a spring clean is as important as what we put into our body when cleansing. If we are stressed the body prioritises the heart, lung, brain and muscles to get a little extra blood and nerve supply. So the last thing it wants to do is put energy into a big clean up. That’s why “detoxing” while in “survival mode” doesn’t go hand in hand.

Are you ready to start your spring clean?

For those who’ve found the time to slow down and are ready to begins a cleanse, read more on how to do a basic detox and some reasons to do a spring clean.

This article first appeared in the October 2012 City Natural Therapies newsletter. If you’d like to receive a monthly update with original articles, recipes and interesting links on health and wellbeing click the free newsletter sign up.

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