A yoga friend said to me 6 years ago “You don’t know yoga if you don’t know John Friend.”

Recently, John friend was forced to resign from the Anusura yoga movement he founded because he was accused of sexual impropriety with female students and other charges.

John Friend is yet another person who mis-used power. Bottom line is that we’re all just human and no one is worth idolizing.

Many of you ask me why I write about topics that seemingly don’t have anything to do with cleansing, but the story of John Friend has everything to do with cleansing.

Cleansing is about taking a break in our own lives so we can find our own truth and what works best for us. In the context of how we eat, it’s about discovering what foods are best for our bodies and how and when we should eat them. For example, some of us with fast metabolisms may need to eat several meals per day, but for those of us with slower metabolisms, one meal per day may suffice. It means that for some of us, following a raw diet may be completely acceptable, but for others, we feel better when we eat animal protein every so often.

A few years ago just after a very painful divorce, someone who I deeply respected at the time told me that if I were to be raw, I would feel empowered. I was raw for one year and it was truly one of the worst years of my life. My stomach was distended and I was too skinny. After that year, I did a cleanse and simultaneously had my first Ayurvedic consultation. This experience had such a profound influence me that I founded a company, JOOS, based on both of the principles.

From the cleansing experience, I learned the invaluable lesson to slow down and be more mindful. When my life spins out of control, I now have this basis to return to in cleansing.

From the Ayurveda experience I learned that every body type has different needs and that what is good for one may be highly detrimental to another.