Before we go into the details of the nasal wash, let’s begin with a science lesson. The nostrils are the interface between your body and the atmosphere—they filter, clean, heat, and moisten the air you inhale. This is why yogis advocate breathing through the nose instead of the mouth.
The sensitive lining of the nostrils secretes mucus, which effectively traps dust, dirt, and other particles when it is moist. The mucus also contains antibodies, which help protect the body from infection or irritation by foreign materials or organisms. This is important because you inhale 18,000 to 20,000 times daily. All day the moist, sticky mucus collects dirty particles from the air you breathe and keeps it from entering the lungs. If you don’t clean this matter out of the nostrils, it will end up in your stomach, because the mucus lining of the nostrils slowly moves everything backwards until it is swallowed. What’s more, when the mucus becomes dry or laden with dust, it loses its protective function. The nasal wash dissolves and clears away dried mucus and stimulates the nasal linings to secrete fresh, moist mucus, which will help keep your nose—and the rest of your system—healthy.
How It Works
You can use the neti pot to rinse away pollen, dust, germs, and other airborne contaminants; to remove excess mucus when you’re congested; to moisturize the nasal membrane after spending time in planes or in heated or air-conditioned rooms; and to open the nostrils as you prepare for meditation.
The anatomy is simple. As holistic expert Carrie Demers, MD, explains: “Your nose is divided into two passages, and there’s a septum in between. You pour the water in one nostril, it goes around the back of the septum, and gravity helps it flow out the other side.”
The nasal wash, she says, can also prevent or treat sinus infections. “Your sinuses drain into your nasal passages through little openings called meatuses. It’s when these openings get blocked that mucus accumulates and causes pressure and infection. The neti water washes over the meatuses, keeping them open and the mucus inside the sinus cavities flowing out—the water doesn’t actually go into your sinuses.”
The Practice
If you’re wincing at the memory of getting water up your nose while swimming as a kid, don’t worry—jala neti uses a warm saline solution that’s the same temperature and salt concentration as your bodily fluids and is soothing to the sinuses. Neti pots vary in shape and size, so here’s a basic recipe: Mix one-half heaping teaspoon of pure noniodized salt with two cups of warm water until the salt dissolves completely. Adjust the mixture to your own salinity—it should taste like warm tears.
Fill your neti pot and lean over a sink, face downward. Keeping your nose slightly higher than your lips, twist your head to the left. As you breathe through the mouth, insert the spout into the upper nostril until it forms a tight (but comfortable) seal. Raise the handle of the neti pot and let the water flow through the nose and out the lower nostril. When you’ve emptied the pot, exhale through both nostrils into the sink or a tissue. (Do not close off one nostril while blowing, because this could force the water back into the ear.) Then repeat on the other side.
To clear loose mucus and water from the nose after the practice, exhale forcefully into the sink 5 to 10 times with both nostrils open and the face relaxed. Next, do a simple forward bend, turning the head from side to side as you do another round of vigorous exhalations. Remember, one of the goals of the nasal wash is to reduce excess mucus—so don’t be squeamish about blowing it out. You’ll feel better if you do.
The yogis have numerous variations of jala neti. In addition to the beginner’s nostril-to-nostril version described above, you can also learn how to pull water from your nose into your mouth, or push it from your mouth to your nose—which is especially useful if you’re away from home without your neti pot. To try the mouth-to-nose practice, fill your mouth three-quarters full with warm saline solution. Lean over the sink, facedown. To expel the water, tuck your chin toward your neck and press your entire tongue against the roof of the mouth, forcefully exhaling the saline into the sink. Keep the throat relaxed through the entire process. Repeat several times. This nasal wash reverses the natural motion of the cilia and cleans them in a different way. It also reduces postnasal drip.
The Neti Pot Challenge
For those of you who are new to the nasal wash, try spending three to six days learning how to do it. Then use the neti pot every morning for a month to observe its overall effect.
Next, figure out how often you need to do it and what time of day works best for you. To check whether you would benefit from the nasal wash at any given moment, breathe deeply through both nostrils together, then through each nostril separately; if you feel any blockage, you will find the nasal wash helpful and soothing.
Here are a few more suggestions: Use the neti pot before your asana or meditation practice. Try rinsing your nose after exposure to dusty, smoky, or sooty environments and notice the relief you get from it. Anticipate allergy seasons by getting started on a regular schedule of two or more daily washes. Generally, use the pot before meals, instead of afterward, to stay in harmony with the body’s natural mucus-producing schedule.
Meet You at the Sink?
So there it is: nasal irrigation is both comical and practical. It cleanses and protects the nasal passages, counteracting the effects of environmental pollution and treating colds, allergies, and sinus problems naturally and effectively. It improves the quality of your breathing, and hence, your yoga and meditation practices. Now, that’s a pretty convincing argument, isn’t it?
Written by Shannon Sexton, Yoga+’s Editor-at-Large
This month has been both a special time for our ocean planet and a time of great distress. June 7th kicked off a week full of celebratory events: Capitol Hill Ocean Week, World Ocean Day (June 8th), and my grandfather’s 100th birthday commemoration dive. Throughout the week, the beauty, majesty and fragility of our water world were centerpieces of discussion and reverie.
During our June 11th dive on the “Grand Canglouer” off Marseille (the location of my grandfather’s first expedition in the early 50s), my father Jean-Michel, sister Celine and I were honored to be submerged with some of the original crew of Calypso, such as our dear friend Albert Falco. Not only was this an extraordinary moment for us as a family, but also one that was an intimate communion with the “undersea world.”
Churning in the water column, resembling a giant ink cloud from a gigantic octopus, a dark shroud has enveloped our aquatic arena since April 20th, 2010. The sight has grown all too familiar, thanks to hundreds of websites and blogs broadcasting a live feed. The Gulf oil spill, a catastrophe of epic proportions, has commanded the world’s attention for 62+ straight days now. Not only has the disaster not been halted, the current flow estimates are up to an inconceivable 65,000 barrels of crude spewing freely into the Gulf every 24 hours. That is roughly equivalent to an Exxon Valdez spill every four days… Now that’s daunting!
People are frightened, angry, frustrated, and feeling helpless in the face of such a monstrous disaster. In reaction to such stress, mudslinging and finger pointing abound. Although there is a significant list of people who should be held accountable, there is danger in becoming so distracted that we do not actually fix the problem. The longer we stumble over ourselves and argue, the worse the long-term impact on our environment and our future will be.
Aside from actually “plugging the hole,” a major long-term cleanup effort is mandatory. And no, chemical dispersants are not the answer. We must roll up our sleeves and mop up the mess before it suffocates and poisons not just the Gulf Coast, but the Caribbean, the North American Atlantic Coast and eventually Western European shores. There are representatives from government, NGOs, the private sector, and the public pitching in to help with the cleanup effort. While their significant efforts are definitely helping, the scale of the spill requires a tenfold increase if we are to fathom a brighter future. Adoption of new technologies such as EcoSphere’s filtration units can be a great asset to help eliminate the oil from the water column with the least negative impact. Documenting the effects of BP crude on aquatic and avian wildlife (the Ocean Futures team has been filming in the Gulf since April) is also of paramount importance, both to inform the public about progress and to serve as a basis for future restoration efforts (such as the Plant A Fish initiative). And while there are many people willing to volunteer and help with the animals and beaches, unfortunately we lack the training facilities necessary to enlist all of these potential responders.
With almost 9000 oil and gas platforms surrounding U.S. coastal waters, it’s not a matter of IF this happens again but WHEN. We must end our 100-year-old addiction to fossil fuels. One thing is for sure, we will be dealing with the consequences of the BP Gulf oil spill for decades to come. How long we will be dealing with those consequences is dependent on what we can accomplish now, not what we will do tomorrow. Nature will recover from our abuse eventually. It is up to us if we want to recover with her or be relegated to a footnote in history.
Even though the environmental and economic challenges we face are of monumental proportions, human beings are capable of creating miracles when pressed by necessity. We know what we need to do. Now, it’s a matter of learning to live with the planet rather than living on it.
The other day, my eight-year old daughter asked me when she could have a cell phone. Irritated at the mere thought of my precious one joining the masses of teenage texting/twittering junkies, I gave her my stock answer: “When you’re sixteen”. She was horrified, “but all my friends have them, at which my husband butted in with his usual, “and if all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you do the same?” She stomped out of the room. Battle to be continued. This pleasant breakfast conversation, however, got me thinking: Is a cell phone really the new cigarette? Kids are dying to have one and the moment they get it in their sticky mitts, they become completely addicted.
I car pool with one of my daughter’s friends and before this delightful nine-year old got her cell phone, we’d have fascinating conversations on the way to school, or they girls would sing along to Taylor Swift. Now a silence ensues as her neck is crooked down- 3 inches from the screen and her thumbs are like two little Sumo wrestlers going crazy. “You know that that cell phones are dangerous girls,” I stated, as I watched my daughter in the rearview mirror, drooling with envy, “they can give people cancer.” It seemed although they both ignored me and the Sumo wrestlers carried on doing their thing – later, however, I overheard my daughter telling one of her friends that “cell phones can make you sick,” and sadly, I think she’s speaking the truth.
As a Green Expert and a mom who tries to navigate her way through a world, where toxic pollution is inescapable, I feel a responsibility to delve a little deeper into a topic that the media has given little credence too. We’ve heard the odd reports here and there that cell phones could emit dangerous radiation and that some models are worse than others, but we tend to want to believe the Industry backed reporters, who tell us that they’re perfectly safe. Why? Because we’re addicted too, and don’t want to have to turn off our lifeline to feeling connected. Ironically, we’ve become totally disconnected from the pulse of life, and our awareness of what is really going on around us, is completely impaired when we’re on the phone. Numerous tests have shown that after a hands-free phone conversation in a car, the driver’s brain waves are similar to that of a seriously drunk driver! So should we take the warnings of the few scientists who manage to dodge the industry lobbyists and offer us their foreboding warnings about the biggest elephant in the room?
A pollutant is something that is harmful to nature and to oneself. As a Green Expert, I have spent many years investigating the many products that we handle and use throughout our day that could add to our “Body Burden” of toxic chemicals. Many of these chemicals are possible carcinogens and so is a cell phone. These little rectangles of technology that we talk into emit Electromagnetic Radiation, which could cause a plethora of adverse health effects, including brain tumors. Children are particularly susceptible because of the thinness of their skulls and because they have more brain fluid. There has been a 40% increase in brain tumors in children over the past 20 years, which correlates with the time that cell phones have been heavily in use. Interestingly there has also been a 46% increase in cell phone use in children between the ages of 8 – 12 in the past five years. Cell phones still emit EMR when not being talked into and can affect any area of the body where the phone kept, which is why it’s important not to allow a baby or a toddler to play games on your phone, and to always turn the it off when not in use.
Dr George Carlo, former lead epidemiologist of the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, led a $25 billion study on cell phones and public health in the 1990’s. Dr Carlo says, “There are over 300 statistically significant findings showing an increased risk of tumors [from cell phone use]. There are about three or four statistically significant findings showing no increased risk. So it’s like 300 to four. Now how do you reconcile that with what you see in the news media? We have never had an exposure like this before. We’ve never had an exposure that’s dangerous that’s being sustained by four billion people (cell phone users worldwide). We’ve never had it in history.”
So as a girl who relies rather too heavily on her Blackberry (one of the worst EMR emitters,) and mother to a wannabe tweeter, what should I do? I usually try to live by The Precautionary Principle, whereby I won’t use something until it’s proven to be safe (the opposite is generally true in the U.S. in that something isn’t taken off the shelf until is proven to be harmful,) however cell phones have proven to be a huge exception in this case. The truth is, I can’t get by without one.
So unless I become a radical, or risk alienating my daughter forever, I need to exercise caution and this is what I do:
1: Turn off my phone when I’m not using it (a total pain, but actually quite a relief not to be bothered all the time.)
2. Always use the speaker- phone (unless in the car, where I have Bluetooth)
3. When at home, use a landline that’s connected to the wall or put my cordless phone on speaker (cordless phones are just as bad.)
This is what I would advise for a child:
1. Use only in emergencies!
2. Only use the speaker- phone and never put the phone to your ear.
3. Turn off the phone when not in use.
4. Install a landline connected to the wall in their room.
Watching Don Draper and his wife Betty on Madmen, puffing away morning, noon and night, reminds me that it was only fifty or so years ago when my parent’s generation thought that it was perfectly normal and not in the least bit unhealthy to smoke cigarettes all the time. When the warnings started to trickle in, I was a teenager and literally couldn’t live without my Marlboro Lights. All parental warnings seemed prudish and silly – it was something that anyone who was remotely cool did – and therein lies the problem: will it ever – can it ever become cool to not use a cell phone? I highly doubt it. I just pray that my daughter has the sense and awareness to understand the world she’s now living in, a world where cancer rates across the board have tripled over the past 30 years, and many of these diseases have been attributed to environmental causes. Living a Green life is less about eco-chic cell phone covers and more about wising up to the fact that almost everything we use can have a negative impact on the environment and especially our closest environment, which is our body. It’s a tough call to have to dodge the many bullets that we now face, and no one wants to become a Green zealot or a bore, it’s all about awareness and questioning. The greatest gift that my father gave me was to question everything that I was told – in particular what I saw on TV and read. With the cell phone industry being as powerful as it is, I’ll just have to encourage my daughter to do the same.
If you are as concerned as I am about the probable dangers of cell phones, try for one week to limit your use to the bare minimum. You may be pleasantly surprised how easy it is. A friend of mine dropped cell iPhone down the toilet last week and didn’t have time to get another. “It’s the most peaceful week I’ve had in years!” she told me. If the habit proves too hard to break, at least consider getting yourself an Air Tube Hands Free Set, which is apparently the only headset that can protect you from the dangerous rays.
Environmental Pollutants are just about everywhere, so unless you go live off- the- grid in an eco-community (and even then you’ll still get a few,) the most savvy thing you can do is to make a mental list of the worst offenders and then do something about it. If you lived in a community where the local water supply had been polluted with possible carcinogens, you would likely do something about it yesterday! Don’t ignore the elephant in the room and protect yourself and your family today from one of the most ubiquitous environmental pollutants around.
Most of us have heard references to the dangers of large, predatory fish such as swordfish, shark and tuna and correlating high levels of mercury, but is this all that a health-conscious domestic goddess has to worry about when making the weekly shopping list?
In actuality, there are numerous factors that come into play when questioning the health and safety issues surrounding a particular marine animal as a dietary choice:
• Where is the animal found?
• What is its life span?
• What does it primarily feed on, and how does it process its food?
• Do its tissues contain a high percentage of oil or fat?
Many of the finfish and shellfish that are commonly consumed as part of a standard, “healthy” American diet have not been tested for contaminants of any kind. As a vegan, this may be an issue that you feel is irrelevant to you, however, it never hurts to be prepared with a little bit of info when dealing with friends and loved ones when they ask you why you abstain from seafood. While it is true that fish are a good source of lean animal protein as well as healthy fats and oils in many cases, the current state of our planet’s marine environment certainly lends itself to a bit of examination when it comes to harvesting its living resources as a food source. Here are a few of the main areas of concern and how to best minimize the risk of over-exposure for those of you who may still choose to include seafood in your diet:
Metals
Heavy metals such as mercury and lead are currently hot topics when it comes to seafood. When contaminants are released into the air from industrial sources, they eventually find their way down into our water supplies through condensation and rain. Mercury is then transformed into a substance called ‘methylmercury’ in our oceans. As most animals (including humans!) have difficulty ridding themselves of heavy metals, these substances have a tendency to bioaccumulate, meaning that the body tissues of many marine organisms will contain metals in concentrations which are reflective of the contaminated sources which they have consumed over their lifetimes. For this reason, large, long-lived species which eat other long-lived species are most likely to have the highest amount of stored metals in their bodies. Examples of species most at risk include shark, swordfish, tilefish, king mackerel, and albacore tuna.
Pesticides
Agricultural pesticides frequently seep into water supplies including lakes, rivers, creeks and oceans due to terrestrial runoff from storm water or irrigation. Animals which may be affected include any commercially or recreationally caught fish or shellfish which live and feed in coastal and fresh waters, as opposed to the open ocean. Organochlorine and organophosphorous pesticide residues include substances such as DDT, which is commonly detected in food samples despite its ban from agricultural use in the US in 1972.
Pharmaceuticals
As the pharmaceutical industry for both humans and aquaculture continues to grow, medication concentrations in our seafood supply will also be on the rise. Pharmacological substances primarily find their way into rivers and streams through treated sewage water (most sewage treatment centers are not equipped to remove these chemical substances). In addition, diseases which plague fish farms are often combated with antibiotics or anti-parasitic medication, which can remain in seafood tissue long after they were administered.
PCBs
PCBs, or ‘polychlorinated biphenyls,’ are industrial compounds with uses including formulating lubricants, hydraulic fluids, and some plastic products. The use of these substances has been banned in the U.S., but they continue to be employed elsewhere in the world. Research has shown PCBs to be carcinogenic (cancer-causing). PCBs accumulate in the fatty tissue of finfish, as opposed to metals, which can be found throughout the tissues, including muscles and organs.
Dioxins
Dioxins are a group of chemicals which are normally formed as by-products of industrial activity, including waste-burning incinerators, production of PVC plastics and the chlorine-bleaching of paper, and are highly toxic to marine life and humans, linked to cancer and both developmental and reproductive problems. Generally, higher levels of dioxins are found in beef and dairy than in seafood, but avoiding DHA supplements made from fish oils unless they are tested and guaranteed to be free from heavy metals and have been distilled to remove chemical contaminants would be ideal. Another alternative are vegan supplements of omega oils extracted from marine algae, which are widely available for purchase at health food stores or online.
What to do if you just can’t kick the habit?
• Avoiding high-risk fish completely would be the best way to lower your chances of heavy metal poisoning, especially for pregnant women and young children.
• Knowing the source of your seafood will be helpful in avoiding pesticide-contaminated animals. Ideally, one should only purchase seafood from a reputable fish monger who can (and will) answer any questions you might have about where the food for sale is coming from. Checking for local advisories is also essential if you plan to participate in recreational fishing activities.
• There is not much that a consumer can do to avoid pharmaceuticals in the wild population, but buying farmed fish which has been tested and deemed safe to eat would be the best option if you do not choose wild stock animals when shopping.
• A good way to reduce your family’s seafood-related PCB intake would be to avoid some of the worst offenders (bluefish, Atlantic salmon and wild striped bass), remove as much of the fat or oil from your fish before cooking as possible, and choose steaming or grilling as a cooking option so that oils can drip away from the meat and be collected and discarded.
Jennifer Robertson is a cephalopod biologist finishing up her PhD thesis while transitioning to a raw, vegan diet. She has spent the last year living in Mumbai, India with her new husband and blogs about her experiences in maintaining sanity and health in the city of chaos at The Robertsons of Mumbai.
Have you heard of Colin Beavan, the No Impact Man? Well, now he’s part of the CSL Blog Posse! Here’s an introduction to his work, written as he and his family were just getting started. Now that their year-long no impact journey has ended, there is a book, a film, and many more exciting adventures to come. Make sure to check out the trailer for his documentary film below!
You hear of one study saying that the energy used washing ceramic coffee cups is as damaging to the environment as the use of disposable plastic cups that won’t biodegrade for thousands of years. You hear of another that says destroying trees to make paper towels is no worse than using hot water and toxic detergent to wash cloth rags.
Everything, if you listen to conventional wisdom, is as bad as everything else. The spin merchants have got us believing that to try to make any difference is futile. You might as well give up. Throw away another plastic coffee cup. Don’t bother with the hybrid car. Go on, guzzle.
Meanwhile, I mention to a very liberal friend, a guy who used to be spokesman for a Democratic senator, that I’m trying to figure out how to live no impact here in New York. “Forget it. It’s impossible,” he says. It’s one thing to try it in the countryside, maybe in the woods, like Henry David Thoreau, or on a farm, where you grow your own food. But in New York City? No way.
The fact is that if city dwellers can’t learn to live without reducing their ecological footprint then we’re in deep trouble because most of the world’s population now lives in cities. Saving the world can’t be left to the country bumpkins. It’s an urban problem.
True, a city like New York does have the environmental advantage of economy of scale—people share transport, buildings and resources—but cities are also responsible for the production and concentration of pollutants in massive amounts. Thanks to car and truck exhaust alone, which makes for 90 percent of Manhattan’s air pollution, the island’s residents face the highest risk in the country of developing cancer from chemicals in the air.
Add to that the annual 9 billion pounds of carbon dioxide emissions resulting from New York’s electricity use, our 8 billion pounds of garbage and half a trillion gallons of sewage and you have a supersized serving of world-killing poisons. Energy efficient city though New York might be, we remain an ecological nightmare, which is why—in addition to the feeling that we just have to do something—my wife Michelle and I began talking about going off the grid for a year, unplugging from the matrix.
In specific terms, the challenge is to take a year to develop and live a no impact lifestyle. Our approach will be to research our ecological options and run down our damage in one area at a time—solid waste, transportation, energy, for example. Our aim, over the course of the year, is to do no net harm to the environment. We’ll wind down in stages.
But to cause no net impact is impossible to do merely by restricting consumption and waste output. Just participating in society makes us responsible for the negative environmental impacts of society’s functioning, even if our personal lifestyle does no harm. To offset our societal ecological debt, we also plan to take actions that will have positive environmental impact. For example, we’ll volunteer with the Nature Conservancy to clean up garbage off the beach. To help sop up our share of the year’s CO2, we will take part in a reforestation project to help plant trees.
Meanwhile, I’ll research and answer many of the niggling questions that have had us and everyone we know throwing our hands in the air when trying to do less harm to the environment. Do you do more harm by living in the country or the city? Is it better to drive a thousand miles or take an airplane? Is it really true that the tiniest moped, because of its lack of a catalytic converter, causes more pollution than an SUV? Could we all, by video conferencing, virtual collaboration and tele-commuting, cut down our travel enough to cause a worthwhile reduction in carbon emissions? What, exactly, comprises sufficient individual effort that, if taken by each of us, would save the planet?
During the course of the year, Michelle, Isabella and I will traverse the range of lifestyles from making a limited number of concessions to the environment to becoming eco-extremists. This means that when we’re done, we can reenter the world of normal consumerdom equipped to decide which parts of our no impact lifestyle we’re willing to keep and which ones we’re not. In other words, in addition to the no impact year, we’ll have figured out our way forward.
