Emotional Detox

Last weekend, I was at a nutrition conference in San Diego, an exhausting and exhilarating 4 days. San Diego is my Alma Matter and I grew up an hour north in the countryside. I have a lot of history and emotional baggage in the area.

Supplement companies often hand out samples for practitioners at these conventions and I like to sample a few myself before I consider recommending them. One stood out to me this time, it was a drink called Detox Cleanse which I would normally NOT do.

If you are unfamiliar with my stance on cleansing, it is this: DONT DO IT. If your detox pathways are not open, toxins release and swarm around the body until they get reabsorbed and cause symptoms of disease. It can be very dangerous! I recommend one of my gentle Food Foundation detoxes first.

However, it happened to be one week into my Food Foundation spring detox and I was feeling physiologically sound to try this super cleanse.

I stirred the powder into my water and took a sip; it was gross. Note to self, probably not going to be a big hit with the clients. Other than ruining my appetite for lunch, the rest of my day felt very normal.

However, that night I woke up at 2:48a in the morning and absolutely could not go back to sleep. I normally sleep like a bear in hibernation and I was not in a new environment. This was my third night staying in my parents house where I come to visit all the time. No, it was because being home triggered all of these old memories locked in my conscious and I blame the detox cleanse for letting them out.

I had a reoccurring nightmare that expressed my darkest fear. I dreamt my husband had cheated on me. This is absurd if you know my husband, we have a deep and fulfilling relationship, but this fear has been buried deep in my memory vault. When I woke up however, I felt the fear purging from the center of my heart.

My first boyfriend in high school had cheated on me. It was spring break and he had a fling with a college girl. She was a bikini model for her college calendar and I found the autographed calendar photo in his room. I was so terribly hurt and too immature for the emotions I was experiencing. I spent the rest of my teen years trying to become the hottest bikini model ever, but the pain grew deeper and deeper into despise of nude models and strippers.

Now, you must know a little secret about me to see the conundrum. I teach sexy pole dance classes. Talk about a 180, how ironic you must think! Yes, but I have always hit challenges straight on and pole dancing is no different. I knew that I had to climb into a strippers' shoes to find empathy and remove the hate in my life. I have been teaching for 5 years and I have found so much compassion and forgiveness in my heart.

Not until last weekend, did I realize the root cause. With this emotional detox, I realized my irrational fears with my husband were because of my high school grief. My poor teen self drove that pain into a lifelong strive to be better than a stripper. I danced hard, studied hard, trained hard, no wonder I ran myself into the ground before I was 30.

Waking from the nightmare, it was crystal clear. I was having an emotional detox and I had to process this crazy emotional dump to come out on the other side. I felt so much gratitude for my husband that I wanted to call him and tell him thank you for living with my irrational fears. I wanted to explain how this gross drink from my conference opened my heart and finally removed the pain.

I figured the biggest gratitude I could show my husband was to let him sleep, so I sat in silence and said goodbye to that insecure teen I had trapped inside. I know the magic elixir was not the only culprit, but I am very clear of this. Emotional dumping plays such a significant role in our health. I encourage you to get it out before it becomes your reoccurring nightmare. There are so many talented practitioners out there that will listen while you share your experiences and I hope to be one of them with my clients.

My good friend Erin Garay of Angel Birthdays is a Grief Specialist who is always pulling my scientific nose out of the books and pointing to our emotional beings. I have learned so much from her and I wanted to share her next workshop, Grief Conciousness with you in case you have a similar experience and think an emotional detox is just what you need.