How to Prepare Your Body for a Cleanse: Awareness & Hydration
MEDICAL DISCLAIMER
This cleanse is an educational wellness program and is not medical treatment. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. It is intended for generally healthy adults. If you are pregnant, nursing, diabetic, have a history of eating disorders, chronic illness, are taking medications, or have any medical or psychiatric condition, consult your physician or a licensed healthcare provider before participating. Participation is entirely voluntary. If you experience severe or concerning symptoms, discontinue the cleanse and seek medical care. By choosing to participate, you acknowledge that you are responsible for your own health decisions and outcomes.
🌿 WEEK 1: AWARENESS & HYDRATION
Action Items This Week
✔️ Start each week and each day with intentionality
✔️ Daily: Drink half your body weight (lbs) in water (oz)
✔️Get a nice tumbler to carry water with you throughout the day.
✔️ Drink at least 16 oz of water immediately upon waking. Ideally make it hot lemon water, but any water is better than none. Make this morning ritual a recommitment to your health.
✔️Take time to consciously prepare your food, and eat. Practice at least one intentional, unrushed meal each day, without plastic containers, devices, screens or distractions.
✔️Take note how your system feels before, during and after eating. Journaling can help.
Building the Foundation: Preparation Begins
You have the ten-day cleanse on your calendar. It should start five weeks from now. Today we begin preparation. Each week we will introduce small, steady shifts that help your body adjust, and make the cleanse process go smoother.
Dr. Stone said when it comes to healing — “never force anything, physically or mentally.”
Before asking the body to go through detoxification, it is helpful to insure digestion and elimination are working well. These five weeks of health-building habits build a digestive platform that makes the cleanse easier and more effective.
Some of these habits are meant to continue beyond the cleanse.
We offer text messages as gentle reminders to keep your efforts on track.
We will also be providing important educational content each week on this blog — especially if you’re a practitioner in training, please take a few minutes to read it each week.
We are going to focus on two essential aspects for health building this week: Awareness and Hydration.
Awareness — Start Intentionally
How you start any process impacts how it will go. So let’s start this five-week journey with intention.
☑️ Take a moment right now to pause, and consider the five weeks ahead.
First take a moment to feel into yourself here and now. Notice how you’re doing. Are you Stressed? Excited? Tickled? Bored? Worried? Take some time to meet yourself wherever you’re at and breathe with it.
Try to remember — now and throughout our journey — that this is process is about loving yourself, not being hard on yourself.
Breathe with that for a minute or two.
This process — the five week preparation and the ten day cleanse — are not another “to do” item to complete. They are not a chore. They are actually opposite of so many tasks that objectify us and turn us into busy machines trying to be productive.
Productive for what? You are living now. These food processes are about meeting ourselves in the present and nurturing our aliveness. They are a chance to stop and smell the roses.
Make a Commitment
☑️Make a commitment to yourself and to your health.
You’re invited now to make a commitment to yourself to:
Take more pauses, like this one. Pause and breathe. It can be one second or it can be a couple minutes. Just pause and breathe and notice you’re doing life.
Challenge yourself … gently. Being easy on yourself can quickly turn to complacency and doing nothing. Being hard on yourself can quickly turn into overwhelm, rebellion and giving up. Listen for your balance. No one is forcing you to do anything here. Everything is optional. You have choices.
Stay with excitement. You should feel excited by the challenges offered, but not overwhelmed. If you sense overwhelm, ease up. Consider options that can lower the pressure.
You WILL get off track at some points. When you notice, do one small thing to get back on. Everyone falls off track at certain points of a health building process. It’s normal. if you notice you slipped on something or became complacent, just do one small thing to reconnect. Get yourself in action again. Start small. Even smaller! Take a walk around the block, or maybe half a block. Write one sentence in your journal, or one word. Drink a cup of water. Say a prayer. Take a pause. Do something simple to reconnect with health. Then do another small thing within the hour. You can start over anytime. Keep starting over every day and every hour. Be gentle with yourself. Shame never helped anyone heal — so notice if you’re shaming yourself in the name of healing. The sooner you escape the shame loop the sooner you get back into action.
Ok so now make the commitment! You can write it out if it helps. Or just close your eyes and verbally say to yourself… “I will make this a process about loving myself, not being hard on myself. I will take pauses. I will challenge myself, gently. I will stay focused on excitement. I know I’ll get off track at times and when I do, I’ll take a small action to get reconnected.”
Water, water, water
Ok with that commitment on board, now let’s get started.
Your first task this week is simple:
☑️ Get enough water.
A solid baseline is half your body weight (in pounds) in ounces of water per day.
By Weight Range (Baseline Hydration)
120–140 lbs → 60–70 oz/day
140–160 lbs → 70–80 oz/day
160–180 lbs → 80–90 oz/day
180–200 lbs → 90–100 oz/day
200–220 lbs → 100–110 oz/day
220–240 lbs → 110–120 oz/day
240–260 lbs → 120–130 oz/day
When to Increase
Add 10–20 oz if:
You exercise or sweat regularly
You drink coffee daily
You’re increasing fiber
You’re in a warm or dry climate
You’re actively cleansing
Practical Notes
Spread water through the day — not all at once.
Pale yellow urine is a simple indicator you’re in range.
If someone has kidney disease, heart conditions, or is on diuretics, intake should be individualized. Consult your doctor
Jazz it Up: Lemon, Mint…?
If you’d like, add fresh lemon to your water. Lemon stimulates digestion, provides vitamin C, and often makes water more appealing — which helps you drink it more consistently.
You can also try:
Fresh mint
Cucumber slices
A little grated ginger
Lime or orange slices
A few basil leaves
A rosemary sprig
Keep it simple. A few slices or sprigs in a pitcher is enough. The goal is to make water easy to enjoy and easy to keep drinking.
Why is Consistent Hydration Essential?
Water supports circulation (blood flow), digestion (food flow), elimination (poop flow), and energy flow. When the body is well hydrated, tissues soften, systems function more smoothly, and elimination improves — even before the cleanse begins.
Treat Yourself: Accoutrements Matter
☑️Find or Buy a nice container for your water
It’s recommended you treat yourself to a nice tumbler or container for your water. Yes. Style matters. Carry it with you throughout the day. Keep it at your bedside so you can have some water first thing in the morning. Keep it in the car. Keep it by you at work.
While by and large the cleanse is not about consumerism — you can pretty much drink water out of any old container — sometimes finding or buying special items can help you stay connected to the process and can make it more fun.
For example — get the tumbler that makes you happy. Pick a color you love. You’ll be drinking lots of water from it. What if it made you smile each time you noticed it?
If it makes you feel better to dig out a neglected thermos from the back of your cabinet and put it to new use, or find a recycled tumbler from the thrift store, use those instead.
A 30 or 40 oz option is a nice one — most people get their day’s supply with 2-3 refills.
Just find the container that will be your companion for the next 7 weeks of hydration.
Bless it.
Name it if you’d like.
But above all—use it!
Morning Routine: Waking the Digestive System
☑️ Start your morning with water (preferably hot lemon water), and intentionality.
How you start any process sets the stage for how it goes and whether you’re successful. So pay attention to the start of your day.
Start your day with water! Drink at least 16 ounces upon awakening. This gently signals digestion to wake up, and helps clear mucus and waste that accumulates in the digestive tract overnight. Many people notice improved bowel regularity simply from this single practice.
If you want to kick things up a notch, try having warm water, or even better — warm lemon water. But if you can only have room temperature water upon awakening, do that. Do something!
Repetition creates a sense of safety in the body and creates structure for new habits to be built upon. Start this week to regularize or ritualize your day.
As you have your morning water — make it a time to pause and recommit to this process. Appreciate yourself for what you’re doing.
Conscious Eating
☑️ Have at least one conscious meal a day
Polarity Therapy teaches that how we eat matters as much as what we eat.
Before a meal, pause. Take a few breaths. Notice what’s in front of you:
Are you eating out of a plastic container? Can you place your food on a plate?
Choose your portion consciously. Decide in advance how much you’d like to eat rather than returning repeatedly to the container or the shared bowl of food. Setting a simple boundary in advance around quantity helps prevent mindless or compulsive eating and allows you to stop when you’re satisfied.
Take a moment to acknowledge the people who helped bring this food to you — the growers, transporters, preparers. If you cooked, include yourself! Their energy contributed to the meal you’re enjoying.
You might also recognize the non-human contributors: soil, water, sunshine, air. Food is not separate from nature. When you eat, these elements become part of your body.
Put down your phone! When meals are rushed, eaten while you’re scrolling, working, watching TV or stressed, the nervous system stays in a defensive state. In that state, digestion is less efficient. Give yourself 15-20 minutes without a screen, to focus on food (and company, if you have it).
Have a brief moment of gratitude — a quiet pause, a word of thanks, or say a blessing. Even a few seconds of intention can help shift the body into the parasympathetic “rest and digest” state, supporting digestive enzyme release, circulation to the gut, and nutrient absorption.
If possible, share meals with others. Eating in calm social connection supports regulation.
Reminders: This Week’s Invitation
☑️ Make a commitment to the weeks ahead and this process of self care
☑️ Drink water - half your body weight in ounces
☑️ Get yourself a nice tumbler to track your intake.
☑️ Begin your morning hydration ritual - preferably warm lemon water.
☑️ Sit down and truly experience at least one meal each day. Pay attention to the aesthetics of your meal. Eat with loved ones when possible.
Reflections
Can I build more pauses into my day, to reflect?
Am I thirsty?
Getting supplies for next week
To prepare for next week, where the focus is on fiber and elimination, you will want to purchase or order:
☑️ Psyllium Husk
☑️ Flax Seed
☑️ Triphala (Banyan Botannicals is recommended)