What is emotional detox?

Emotional detoxification aims to "cleanse" the body and mind of negative and repressed emotions and bad energy that we have accumulated. Just as detox cures are designed to release toxins, emotional detoxification releases toxic emotions.

Where does the term "emotional detox" come from?

Emotional detox is the translation of the title of an American bestseller, The Clarity Cleanse, by osteopathic physician Habib Sadeghi.

The principle? Cleansing the body and soul of emotional and psychic residues.

According to Habib Sedghi, over the years, negative emotions that accumulate in the body can be the cause of illness. Hence the need to cleanse them regularly.

Identifying toxic emotions

An emotion, even a negative one, is not intrinsically toxic. What is toxic is the accumulation and recurrence of these negative emotions: this is what we will try to identify in the context of an emotional detox.

Not rejecting toxic emotions

It is not a question of making these emotions disappear with a wave of a magic wand, but to start by understanding why they are there, why they have accumulated. No one can be cured as long as they ignore their emotions or consider them as enemies to be fought.

Detoxify your body

There is a proverb that says: "Take care of your body so that your soul will want to stay there". It is important to understand that emotional well-being also depends on chemical phenomena in our body.

For example, doing sport releases endorphins, which give us a sense of well-being, eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables helps regulate our mood and getting enough sleep reduces the risk of depression. To begin an emotional detox, it is important to understand that the body and mind are linked.

Writing as an emotional cleansing

After eating, it is time to cleanse the mind.

The exercise invites us to write down on a piece of paper (not on a computer) all our thoughts, everything that bothers us, without thinking, rereading or correcting ourselves, for twelve minutes. After this time, we burn the paper: a symbolic gesture to get rid of our emotional residues: reduce them to ashes. Do this every day for five days.

In general, writing is a great way to identify emotions and frustrations and to release your emotional baggage.

Freeing the mind through meditation

When we meditate, we leave the beta frequencies (13 to 30 Hz) of the waking state and enter the alpha frequencies (8 to 12 Hz), which correspond to a state of relaxation and well-being. This frees up areas of the brain that are often busy processing billions of data points per second. In the darkness and calm of the alpha frequencies, the mind awakens and answers emerge.

If one does not know how to meditate alone, guided meditation, hypnosis, sophrology or cardiac coherence are techniques to detoxify the negative emotions that colonise us.

What is emotional detoxification?