Yoga Kriyas with Heli and Gelly
As part of my Yoga Teacher Training at Rishikesh Yog Peeth, I’ve been doing a daily yoga purification technique called Jala Neti. It’s one of the six yoga kriyas or purification exercises that involves tipping your head to one side and pouring lukewarm salt water through one nostril so it comes out of the other.
Although this felt a bit strange at first, I now love doing it each morning and my nose feels so much clearer afterwards.
The second kriya was a lot harder and felt completely unnatural when I first tried it last week. Thankfully, this kriya is only needed once a week. The technique is called Sutra neti and involves slowly sticking a rubber thread in through one nostril and then pulling the thread back and forwards, before taking it out your mouth. I’ll be doing this every Saturday morning. Intense way to start the weekend!
I wasn’t able to pull the thread out when I first tried as it felt like I was going to gag, but I finally managed it this morning which I was really happy about because Sutra neti is apparently good for everything! At the very least, my nose now feels very clean.
According to the Hatha Yoga Pradipika by Swami Vishnudevananda, “all can benefit from the practice of Jala neti or Sutra neti to keep the nostrils clean.” The book goes onto say that Sutra neti “purifies the skull and enables the eyes to perceive subtle objects. Also, neti soon removes all diseases from the body above the shoulders.”
You can read more about both kriya exercises here:
Jala and Sutra neti instructions
Jala neti, Dr. Swami Shankardevananda, MB, BS
So, if you want to give either of these two kriyas a go, there’s a demonstration of someone very calmly doing both Jala neti and Sutra neti here.
Enjoy and happy nasal cleaning.
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