1. Go away and fast. This is the biggy. Fasting (water only) and complete rest under competent supervision at a place like True North Health in Santa Rosa, California, can work wonders of healing. Fasting practitioners would say: “It doesn’t work wonders: it just gives your body the chance to heal.”

2. Stay home (or go away) and do a juice diet. These are basically restricted diets or partial fasts that relieve your body of enough of the work of digestion that lots of healing can transpire. Best juices for fasting are greens with milder veggies and fruits to make them palatable. Healthy people should do fine on juice for a week to ten days, but if you’re under a doctor’s care, get clearance to do this. Among the conditions that contraindicate any unsupervised fasting or  juice-feasting are diabetes, hypoglycemia, anorexia, pregnancy, and breastfeeding.

3. Sweat. In a sauna (not a steam room — too much chlorine is in the steam), or a hot yoga class, or in a hot bath followed a snuggling under warm covers, let yourself sweat. It helps the skin, your largest organ of detoxification, do its job.

4. Rebound, i.e., bounce on a mini-trampoline. All exercise is good, of course, but a mini-tram is

 supposed to particularly target the lymphatic system and help it do its clean-up tasks. The lymphatic system has no pump like the heart, so it can use some help. I do my 5-minute warm-up at the gym on a mini-tram.

5. Scrape your tongue first thing in the morning. Your body does a lot of detoxing during sleep, and that coating on your tongue when you wake up (in Ayurveda, they call it ama, metabolic debris) needs to come off before your first drink of water. They sell inexpensive tongue scrapers in the dental care aisle at health food stores and many drugstores.

6. Use a neti pot. The yogis have long recommended “sinus bathing” as a part of enlightened hygiene, and you can purchase a  neti pot (beautiful ceramic ones and low-cost plastic models) at most health food stores. You fill it with warm water made into a saline solution by the addition of some finely ground salt and, following instructions, let the water flow into one nostril and out the other; then do the other side. This is not always a pleasant experience, but it definitely clears your head, is a godsend during allergy season, and I swear by it after plane flights and when colds and flus are going around.

7. Dry body brush. Before your bath or shower, use a special dry body brush (ask at the health food store: this is a brush with a removable handle, meant to be used on dry body skin) to buff your skin, starting with the feet. Then work up, using upward strokes on the calves and thighs, fingers-to-shoulders moves on your arms, and gentler round motions on your abdomen, hips, and chest; this is not for the face. It helps the skin to detox, removes dead skin cells, is warming and energizing, and in Europe even standard MDs claim that it helps diminish cellulite.

8. Enemas and colonics. I include these because they’re standard-issue detox practices and many, many people swear by them. They say that we have toxic build-up in the colon that’s been there for years and needs to be washed out. Kevin Trudeau, author of Natural Cures They Don’t Want You to Know About, suggests doing fifteen colonics in thirty days. In deference to people I trust who give much of the credit for their health and beauty to this “internal cleansing,” I’m saying, “Do your research.” It doesn’t agree with me, but we’re all different.

9. Get away to somewhere clean and quiet. By “clean,” I mean where the air is pure (mountains, ocean) and where electro-magnetic-field radiation is at a minimum. The New Age Health Spa, pictured here, is in the Catskills, and I go there bi-monthly to speak (I’ll be there October 4-8), is a place like this. Some people are irritated that they can’t get much cell phone reception, but it’s really a blessing. If you can get away for even one weekend a season, it’ll help.

10. Eat raw food and think loving thoughts. Okay, that’s two suggestions, but seriously: just eating a high-raw, plant-based diet, even without fasting or a juice diet, will go far toward your detoxification efforts. If you find yourself having a “detox crisis” — headaches, fatigue — rest, eat lightly, and let it pass, or rest, eat more heavily (add in more cooked food), and slow down the detox process to a comfortable rate. And your thoughts are ever important: make them loving, to yourself, your body, and everyone in your world. That way, you detox negativity from deep, deep inside.