Importance of juicing and juice feasting
I like to use the word “feasting” instead of fasting because in reality your body is getting loads of nutrients when you drink a glass of fresh pressed vegetable juice. Fresh pressed green vegetable juice is one of the best way to get cellular level nutrition. It doesn’t need much digesting and the energy is available to your cells almost instantly. Fresh vegetable juice is something one needs to consider as a daily part of your lifestyle. Spring and Autumn seasons are ideal for doing a gentle cleanse with green vegetable juices. Juice feasting can be done once a week or fortnight, whatever suits your routine. It’s important to prepare your body before you do fasting of any kind. Eating very light and simple meals 2 – 3 days before you intend to do a juice fast will gently prepare your body for the fasting day and it won’t be a shock for your body. During feasting, juices are ideally taken diluted with pure water. Minimum amount of fruit to be used as the sugars in fruit can upset the stomach and create bloating for some people. Besides juice, plenty of pure lukewarm water and herbal teas needs to be taken to flush out toxins. This gives your body a break from digesting foods and it can focus on cleansing and restoring the organs. Along with juice, warm herbal tea and light broth can be taken to support and nourish the body and be gentle. For some constitutions, its important to have both cooked and raw in their diet and raw on its own can be too harsh. One has to be mindful of these things.
Nutritional Value: This juice will not only give your body a gentle cleanse, but also high level of hydration, minerals, trace elements and vitamins. Adding oil to the vegetable juices makes the fat soluble vitamins in the juice like Vit A, D and E, more bio available to the body. Celery provides with natural salts and minerals. Coriander cleanses out heavy metals from the body. Turmeric is a great liver tonic and anti-inflammatory. Ginger stimulates the digestion, makes the juice more digestible and helps detox.
Green Juice recipe Serves 2
Ingredients: organic is the best!
2 Celery stalks with leaves
2 – 3 Cucumbers
1 small lemon with peel on
1 – 2 Green Apples
1 bunch Coriander
1/2 inch of fresh ginger root
1/2 inch pf fresh turmeric root
1 bunch of any or all of these greens – Kale, Spinach, Romaine Lettuce
Optional: Spirulina powder, Barley Grass powder, Wheat grass powder
Dash of any of these cold pressed virgin organic oil – hemp oil, olive oil, flax seed oil, sunflower oil
Method: Put all vegetables and fruit through the juicer, add 1 tsp of oil and 1 tsp of Spirulina powder and enjoy. If you have a slow juicer like Green Star Juicer or Hurom Juicer, you can make a larger quantity and keep the juice in an air tight glass jar or bottle for up to 72 hrs.
Ayurvedic Perspective: Ayurveda favours mainly cooked foods due to the ease in digestibility and assimilation. However on certain occasions it does support including a bit of raw diet done mindfully. This is a Tri-doshic juice, meaning it will balance all the three doshas or 5 elements in the body. Vata balancing ingredients – apple, cucumber, ginger and turmeric. Kapha balancing ingredients – ginger, turmeric, lemon, celery. Pitta balancing ingredients – Cucumber, apple, lemon and turmeric.
