Week 23 Challenge - Purification (Take 2)

This year I decided to challenge myself to reflect on various Yoga and Buddhist aspects throughout the year. The challenges come from a variety of places including readings in Deborah Adele's Yamas and Niyamas and Thich Nhat Hanh's Heart of the Buddha's Teaching and Happiness.

In Week 20, I did a challenge on purification. It dealt with small items in my day, but I knew I wanted to tackle the same challenge in regards to food. I do believe purifying my body on the inside is really important (since I tend to take in a lot of toxins in my food).

This week, I tried juicing as a challenge in purification. I decided to start each morning that way without intentionally changing anything else and see what I thought.

Taste? Yum! I made a variety of juices throughout the week, but all with the same theme. 1 green (romaine or spinach), 1 base fruit (apple or grapes) and 1 accent fruit (strawberries, nectarine, kiwi). I'd say the Kiwi/Grape/Romaine was my favorite, but the nectarine mixes were really good and they were all tasty.

Easy? Relatively. I bought some fruit at the beginning of the week. I bought organic as much as possible. Some of the fruit wasn't ideal for eating, but it was still great for juicing (resulting in less waste). I used greens from our garden. It didn't take long to make juice each morning and the clean-up was pretty simple.

Effects? I feel like I made some healthier choices in the rest of my day that might have been affected by the juice in the morning. With my breakfast, I tended to have 1 cup of coffee instead of 2. I craved salads a bit more throughout the week. I also craved juice later in the day as well.

I definitely think the juicing is a keeper. I plan to experiment with veggie juices as well at some point.